Gavin Bate
This year I am returning to Mt Everest, this time guiding two clients on the SE ridge route. It will be my fifth time on the worlds highest peak, which has been the setting for so many adventures over the years. In some ways Everest has become my mentor.
In 2000 I organised and co-led the Millennium expedition to climb the Seven Summits in one year. At the South Summit, using bottled oxygen, I was turned back but my team summitted successfully. I climbed the rest of the Seven Summits successfully with my friend Andrew Salter who, for a while, held the record of the fastest ascent of the Seven.
In 2002 I climbed the northeast ridge with Will Canning, without bottled oxygen or Sherpas and using high camps at 7000 metres and at 7900 metres. In fine conditions we reached 8650 metres when Will dislocated his knee and we were forced to make a dramatic descent in three days in stormy weather.
In 2005 I climbed the SE ridge without bottled oxygen and with one Sherpa (Ngima Sherpa) as my 'insurance policy', using only the original 1953 Base Camp and one high camp at 7000 metres. I reached a high point of 8760 metres (Hillary Step) and turned back due to queuing on the summit and the fact that Ngima had hypothermia and I had to help him down.
In 2007 I climbed the north face/northeast ridge, attempting a traverse of the mountain without bottled oxygen and using no camps at all. My 'insurance policy' this time was Pasang Tendi Sherpa. I reached a height of 8760 metres (Second Step) when I was stopped by a rather violent pulmonary oedema, followed by hypothermia and near collapse. With the urging of Pasang I made a non-stop descent in 13 hours back to base camp, glad to be alive.
I have had some very rewarding and dramatic experiences in the Death Zone, and I have survived because of my high altitude experience, a strong inner drive, an understanding of my core values, a cautious attitude, and luck. I hope that my track record will show that I am not compromising my personal aesthetic towards climbing Mount Everest.
Because for me, high altitude climbing is about the aesthetic of climbing high with less. Clearly Messner, Scott, Boukreev and Loretan have set high precedents, and I fully concur with them that the purity of movement without the support of siege tactics is preferable. I think it is only possible to truly understand what it means to climb big mountains when you have to make your own decisions and unclip from the fixed line.
Personally I enjoy the feeling of being in a place where mind exists over matter, and success is largely down to the force of one's will power in overcoming physical frailty and fear. There is liberation in it, and not only from being so high that you feel disconnected to the world below. I enjoy the simplicity of life up there, where the decisions and consequences are so clear-cut, and where survival is down to ones own resources as a human being.
I climb Everest to raise money for the charity that I founded called Moving Mountains, which is doing very well these days but needs continual support.
We have built schools and hospitals and community centres in Kenya, a monastery and hydro-electric project in Nepal, and we support many hundreds of children and their families in deprived circumstances. I've worked and lived in slum areas for much of my adult life so I have strong principles about how to make aid work. I have worked with street kids for so long now, but I have never forgetten that however much I may have helped them, their influence on me has been inspirational.
Some might say mountaineering is rather egotistical and pointless, (other than for the individual concerned) and to some extent I agree. I find nowadays I need a more worthy motivation than the personal ambition of standing on a piece of real estate five miles high in the sky.
If my summit of Everest can assist the hundreds of street kids in Kenya who are being educated and assisted through my charity, and enable funding for the hospitals, schools, orphanages and monasteries that I have built over the years to continue, then I would consider it worthwhile.