Mark Inglis - Mountaineer HARDtalk

the US. And now on BBC News it is There's no-one quite like my guest

today on HARDtalk. Mark Inglis is a double amputee who has climbed

Everest on his prosthetic limbs. You can do anything in life if you

damn well want it, he says. But his was an achievement which was also

marked with controversy. Did his expedition do enough to save

another climber dying on the Mark Inglis, welcome to HARDtalk.

Thanks. Almost 30 years ago in your early 20s when you lost your lower

limbs. Can you explain to me what happened? Well, at the time I was

23 years old and a search-and- rescue mountaineer actually in New

Zealand. On a training climb with a new... we got caught out in a

severe storm. We got caught out right near the summit of the Middle

Pique, right near the summit of our highest mountain. We crawled into a

little ice cave expecting to be there for a few hours and that few

hours turned into 13 and a half days. And you were rescued within a

very short window of opportunity? We certainly were. At that time it

was the longest recorded spell of bad weather in New Zealand history

and shortly after we were rescued, within a three-hour window, it went

bad for a three days afterwards so you need a bit of luck involved. --

13 days. You need luck to be rescued but it certainly was bad

luck that you lost your lower legs. What was the rehabilitation like,

especially for a young man that had been so active? The best way of

explaining it I think is that I always think the person to have his

legs cut off when he's 23 years old is a young man to near. You live

your life then you are so active and you put yourself in positions

that could kill you. When you put yourself into a position on

Christmas Eve in 1982 and the morning having your legs cut off

just below the knee, the whole mindset is how are you going to fix

this, what are you going to do now? Where are the opportunities for the

rest of life? You said also that you lost around ten years of your

life. That must have been difficult for a mountain near? One of the

things that I really struggled with, with a lot of amputees, I was doing

a lot of things I thought were amazing and everyone else thought

were amazing and they were going, "Great" one of the things I did not

realise was that people were given the accolade to a double amputee

when I thought people saw Mark, not a double and -- and beauty. When I

was working within changing a teen culture that I came to get used to

the skills of standing outside of Rosell fans understanding what

other people see and then I like wake of in my mind. Were people

cutting you too much slack? Nobody knows what a tumble and beauty can

to -- a double amputee. If I can do this, think how much more when

people are starting off at a higher level can do. So after 19 years you

decide to i guess confront your demons by making another attempt on

Mount Cook, this mountain that have led to you having the double

amputation. The mountain didn't, mountaineering is like an exam, it

is like a mirror. It is a mirror of your competence. The mountain

didn't take my legs, it was my Competency. That's why I say

confronting your demons. It is less about demons, it is getting the

chance to do it again and that's mountaineering. Every time you

climb a mountain, as soon as you get back down the first thing you

think is you can do that ten times better tomorrow. For me a lot of it

was the understanding that I never went back to climbing for quite

some time because I couldn't do it well enough. The day that I thought

I could do it well enough and do it by myself then that was the day I

went back and that is when I went back in 2001/2002. What did it mean

to you to reach the summit given that not only had he failed to

reach the summit nearly 20 years before but you had also ended up

losing both your legs? It was in the 1920 years before because I had

climbed Mount Cook many times before. Quite often we do not go to

the summit. It was more about understanding how much more I could

do, that was the thing, and to stand on the summit of Cook as a

double amputee, it was like if I can do this I can do anything. In

my mind's eye, there's only one thing I saw from that summit of

Cook, my boyhood dream of growing up in New Zealand as a young

mountaineer and its for every young New Zealand mountaineer, that is

the summit of Everest. Which we will go on to but before we get

there, I'm just wondering at this stage you have a family? Certainly.

Did you not think that whatever you were doing in terms of a sense of

achievement for yourself, with Mount Cook, let alone Everest that

we will get on to, was this a case of rebalancing your sense of risk?

I guess so, that is the impression if you're not a mountain near. I

grew up a mountain here and I guess it gives a different frame of

reference. Are you suggesting it is something genetic that you can't

fight? It is more about being given opportunities to live in situations,

to have experiences that unless you actually do it, and this will come

back with Everest as well, unless you have actually been there you

can't understand. It's one once you've actually been there you

think are, OK and that is the great thing. The reason I am asking you,

mountaineers have extremely intense experiences but there are lots of

war correspondents who have intense experiences for example but you

balance things when it comes to a sense of risk with your family. One

of the quotes that you came out with was that a lot of the

challenges you put yourself through put perspective into your life and

makes the rest of your life have real meaning. I guess that if your

Mark Inglis' Y four children you might be thinking, "Hang on, don't

we have a part to play?". Yes they do. If you were to ask and, she

married a young mountaineer, one of her comments was that she knew I

would climb Everest one day but she did not think it would take me so

long. There would have been no way I would not have gone to Everest If

I did not have the best team. Not going with the best team is too

great a risk. So that was one of the things. In many ways is almost

easier these days because our communication is so great. I can

talk to and every day when I'm away. And that is far better than many

years ago when you get one phone- call, on a scratchy set phone, or a

radio call or something like that and that's much harder on your

family. You decided after Mount Cook, as you say, the next step was

Everest, it was your boyhood dream. For those of us who have never

stood atop a high mountain, let alone Everest, take us there. Give

us a sense of just how hostile the environment is. I mean some days it

can actually be stunningly beautiful. I sunbathed on the

summit of Mount Cook, I have had friends that have spent hours on

the summit of Everest. But on other days it's absolutely... the wind

can turn the core of your jacket into something that's trying to

beat your face to death. It's a living evil force that can be so

disconcerting, you have to be so focused on exactly what you're

doing to make sure that you do the right thing to stay alive.

presumably you're also a very short of breath at the highest altitude?

Absolutely. At Everest, when people see the oxygen masks, that really

doesn't compensate. It doesn't make it like sea level. It perhaps gives

you an extra 1,000 metres or 1,500 metres, perhaps a bit more. You

can't carry enough oxygen to make it seem like sea level. So you're

very short of breath. With you, you said that although you describe

some people going up to the summit of Everest and spending hours their

soaking in the view, you actually... it was a race and you barely

touched the summit before coming back down. We were there on a

really difficult day. When we set off early in the day it was -50

degrees Celsius. It had been clear and very cold. I stood on the

summit and it was minus 38 at 7 am in the sunshine. The biggest

challenge I knew I had was to go down. For a double amputee to climb

up, especially if you've been a climate or your life, is a

relatively straightforward thing. You're down in muscle power and

things like that compared to an able-bodied climb up. But when you

turn around and come down its like ten times harder. I knew my

challenge was from the very minute I got to the summit of Everest was

to get down, that was going to be the biggest challenge of my life.

And you sustain some serious damage. I did a lot of damage to my stumps

on the way down. If I knew that damage would happen, I looked at

every at this situation that I could get myself put into and I

worked out ways to get around it, it is all about visualisation and

planning and injuring you've got a back-up plan for everything. The

two things I didn't have a back-up plan for was my oxygen mask broke

at around 1:30am, so that meant I had far less oxygen than I could of

had. Virtually I could have had none from the second step to the

summit and back down. That meant I got a lot colder than I would have.

The other problem was that your stumps aren't made to be stood on

really. It's really important that they stay really tightly in their

sockets. But you have just burnt so much of your body mass on those

last eight-ten hours on summit day that the stumps actually shrunk

like that, and I went too far and the combination of the severe cold

and the pounding at the bottom means that I popped the bones out

of the stumps. It sounds like a miscalculation, an agonising this

calculation. It didn't hurt at the time because it was none. It is a

bit like frostbite, it is insidious, you don't know that it is happening

to you. If I ever thought it was going to I would have gone back

down and tried to work out a system that would have been better. There

are a lot of an duties going for Everest now and it is the number

one, don't worry, get it fixed. Learn from be. On your ascent you

came across a climber who was close to death, David Sharp, a British

It was brutally cold. About -50. In the cave there was a climber. He

was virtually so -- frozen solid. He was pretty unresponsive. The

unfortunate thing is that I could not do anything. For me personally,

I could not pick him up. In fact, none of us could picking up or move

him. So you couldn't actually stop because it was just so cold at the

time. Doing that night, about 30 climbers came past David. We didn't

know who he was at the time. I have a photo of him of the previous day

at the summit so he must have been up there for about 36 hours without

oxygen and he was in a very serious condition. A UN your team decided

to push on? There was nothing that we could do. -- you and your team.

We made that decision. The last thing I saw of David Wise Owl

- of the day that was. People tried to help him at various times in the

day but there was nothing they could do. They were with him when

he passed away. One of the conflicting accounts that a rose

was you said you sent a radio message to your senior and he said

he never heard from you. Why it was it, that discrepancy? We never

worked that out. For it was you who said he called him. I thought I

called him. But, you know, it may not have worked or whatever. But

that was it. Do you recall having called him? You need to understand

that it is 8,000 metres. It was very difficult to recall, even when

I was writing my book, it was difficult to recall. I had to go

back and speak so many people who were around the at the time. Could

it be that your memory is skewed because you were so focused on this

overriding ambition of reaching the summit? I was so focused but not on

the overall ambition of reaching the summit. That is the difference

between what happened to David unfortunately and what happens when

you are in a team environment. The thing that kills a lot of people on

Everest is that they are so focused on reaching the summit. They keep

on going and going past the point of no return. If you do not stand

on the summit of Everest with enough energy left to get down, you

will not survive. But I am asking about your response, not mistakes

he made. Sir Edward Hillary, your boyhood hero, described the actions

of your team as "pathetic" on that day. He did not have the full

information and that is the most frustrating thing. What you mean

the full information? He knew that you were on an ascent to a place

that he had gone too. He knew what conditions were like and that you

past a climber in deep distress and he thought you should have stopped.

Nobody told him it was -50. Nobody told him there were a range of

other people on the mountain and nobody told him this particular

person actually, from members of our team, got a lot of help that

day but still could not survive. Why was a decision not taken to

stay and comforting until the point of death? Because it was -50. You

cannot stop at -50. It is almost impossible to wear enough clothes

on Everest at -52 actually survive. I had lost two very good friends

who did the exact same thing. I almost lost another friend as well.

That was for the same reason. The only reason he survived his he had

to leave his person. We were in a similar situation. The EU

personally regret what happened? personally regret not going back.

- do you personally. There was nothing I could do to save him.

say that but there was a rescue in 2001 at 8,700 metres, higher than

David Sharpe. Just a couple of hundred metres than the sum it. Two

people who were alive but unresponsive. On the north side?

From what I understand. I am unaware of that. This is the

highest rescue ever on the north side. One of the rescuers who took

36 hours with his colleagues to get these people down, they were two

men, he said it would have been a day that some of crime if we had to

walk past them on the way down without putting in the effort. It

was the obvious thing to do. So it was feasible. It was feasible but I

would have to look at the situation. It is easy to make these situations

about Everest, it was like that on that day, but we were there on a

particularly vicious day and in very extreme weather conditions.

Unfortunately, as a double amputee, I could not picking up and Campbell

-- carry him down. Is there a problem with too many inexperienced,

badly guide climbers going up there? The problem with Everest is

and commercialism but a lack of professionalism. That is what I am

getting at. It is unregulated, isn't it? Anybody can go up there

if they want to? It is not a regulated. You need a permit and

you need to provide a letter, which I did. I bread and climbed another

8,000 metres at peak and I made sure I checked all the right boxes.

The difference is that, forgive me for interrupting, the south side in

the Paul is quite... It is reasonably expensive to get the

permit. It is democratic to get the permit. On the north side, the

Tibetan side, it is a free for all. Many have said it is too much so.

In my experience, I needed to do just as much for either side. That

was my experience. His Everest as much of a challenge as it once was?

As it was when Sir Edmund Hillary did it? It is a remarkable

achievement that he reached the summit but there are those, your

Piers, who say it is pretty much a tourist peak now. It is too much...

The route is all set out with guide ropes and it is too much of a

procession. Everest has been roped since day one, except for so head -

- said that Hillary. It needs to be that way. -- Sir Edmund Hillary.

There are too many people that get up high but in 2006, 11 people died.

The only year that is worse is 1996. The reason in 1996, there was a

huge storm. In 2006, it was the Super cold weather. Too many people

got up high that should not have been there. But in terms of the

achievement itself, do you think that possibly, ironically, you a

man with two prosthetic limbs, has devalued the experience of climbing

Everest because you managed it? Yes... I do not believe so. I know

how hard it was for me. It was not a walk in the park. It is the

hardest thing that I have probably physically and mentally done.

Especially getting down. I know of people that... There are two types

of people on Everest. The mountaineers, of which I

characterise myself, and then there are the people that want to be

climbers. Many of those other people that do not come home. That

is the sadness of it. You are clearly a driven man. Given that

Everest was literally metaphorically the summit of your

ambition, what next? It is a real challenge. No more big mountains.

For me, my Everest is there to insure people we have a far greater

understanding of it. And as I have done, for many years, used what I

have done to help some of those 400 million other disabled people out

there in the world that have no access whatsoever to limbs. I guess

one of the things I see disability as is a lack of access to resources.

Or just bad been keen. In our first World countries, we do not have the

lack of resources but in a lot of third-world countries, they do. The

one thing I do know is that if I can help in some small way for that

to happen, then as long as the thinking is right, which is one of

the things that I need to do as well, then the people in life have

opportunity. I am interested about the range of mountains. A

psychologist who studied mountain's said mountaineers do not feel in

control of the motion in their everyday lives. Mountaineering

allows them to feel fear and control that the motion. Did you

recognise that that is what drives you up mountain's? It is certainly

the challenge. The feeling of the fear, I am scared a lot of the time.

But then I can be mountain biking as well. I can be going out on to

the Velodrome at the Paralympics. For me, it is the environment. And

of the mountain's. I do not have to be climbing. For but you have to be

challenging yourself? Yes but it is more about also been in the

mountains. I love the idea of talent because I understand it

brings real achievement into your life. I am not very good at sports

which are pure competition, where you have to beat someone. That is