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| HH Prince Bandar on the summit of Mount Vinson. All images © HH Prince Bandar bin Khalid bin Fahad |
We were originally due to meet on Tuesday afternoon, and I was tickled to be stood up by what can only be, for avid mountaineers, an excuse as old as the dog ate my homework: “I went on a sudden camping and climbing trip.” However, an hour after meeting His Highness Prince Bandar Bin Khalid Bin Fahad Al-Saud, the first Saudi to climb the highest mountain on each of the seven continents and the second to summit Everest, I found myself vicariously breathless, giddy and yes, gobbling his excuse hook line and sinker.
The 28-year-old Prince Bandar completed this extraordinary feat in May, summiting Everest during what has been called the most dangerous year to climb the mountain and the second deadliest since the 1996 tragedy, which saw 15 fatalities. The drama started shortly above Base Camp, at the Khumbu Icefall, a massive glacier. The route climbers took around the Icefall this year brought them to the West Shoulder of Everest – in direct danger of daily ice avalanches: “The amount of ice that came down in each episode was about equivalent to a cruise ship. The whole area was littered in mangled ladders and pieces of gear.”
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| HH Prince Bandar on his sixth summit: Aconcagua |
Successfully dodging the avalanches, Prince Bandar still had to battle a mountain perilously low on snow due to warm, dry weather conditions. This meant they were climbing predominantly on slippery ice, and led to more rockfall. When establishing camp on the Lhotse Face (a formidable, 60 degree wall of ice), “it was a bowling alley – rocks flying down and hitting people. We saw one guy, a rock had taken off half his jaw.”
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| HH Prince Bandar on the summit of Everest. © |
Granted, it was always bound to be a dangerous climb. But when Himalayan Experience, the largest climbing team on the mountain, pulled their group off in an unprecedented move, claiming the mountain was too dangerous to proceed, the prince and his team started second guessing their decision to continue.
The struggles followed them to the top. 13.5 hours from the summit, the freezing conditions prohibited Prince Bandar from sealing the regulator, which controls the flow of oxygen, to his first oxygen bottle. With only two precious litres of water rationed for the day, he poured one litre on the bottle to thaw it out, which successfully allowed the regulator to seal. 3.5 hours from the summit, when changing to a new oxygen bottle, the trick failed him; and now with no oxygen and no water, he decided he had to turn back. “Will this decision make you happy?” shrieked his Sherpa over the 60mph wind. “Take my oxygen! I will go without oxygen!” The prince reluctantly switched oxygen bottles with the Sherpa to complete the summit, but pressed the Sherpa to leave him and go back down the mountain.
At 9.30am on May 19th 2012, low on oxygen, high on euphoria, and 3 years, 300 days from the day he peaked Kilimanjaro, his first summit, Prince Bandar became the first Saudi to climb the seven summits... when all of a sudden, his oxygen went out. “Air was going into my lungs, but I was suffocating”. (At this point, he casually drops in that he is asthmatic.) He started to scramble down the mountain, his body tingling and going numb as he bullied past those ascending – who have the right of way, and their own safety to worry about – trying to reach the spare oxygen bottles at the south summit. “Two days later, it was down to Base Camp. And that was Everest.”
Much has been written about the toll this extreme sport has taken on both human life and compassion. Climbers walk past the dead and dying focused on one thing only – summit – refusing to let others get in the way of their dream. They are all conscious, after all, of the inherent risks involved. But for the prince, it was worth every frostbitten minute. “It’s so real when you’re on the mountain; you realise that life is very fragile. You don’t want to take for granted the days that you live and the breaths that you breathe. It’s important to cherish every moment and realise that you are able to live and survive where others didn’t and that life is a gift. I know I want to take advantage of that.” Prince Bandar is now the President of the Mountain Climbing Development Committee, part of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities. You can read his blog here: www.climbksa.com
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