"I thought this is it: the end,” says Lt Colonel (retd) Dr Abdul Jabbar Bhatti. “If I have to die, it’s better that I sleep. But I couldn’t sleep.” It was nightfall when the retired lieutenant colonel crossed the South Summit after becoming the fourth Pakistani to stand atop of Everest (8,848m). It was May 21, 2017.

He had climbed down without supplemental oxygen and it had taken its toll on Bhatti and his young high-altitude porter, Sange Sherpa. Dr Bhatti had slipped twice, it was getting harder to breathe and he was running out of energy. Despite climbers and sherpas constantly passing them by, no one stopped to help. They were at an altitude of 8,600m. Well past the 7,000m ‘death valley’ mark — when the oxygen in the atmosphere is so low that survival is at best precarious. To top it off, it was dark. He was told that help was only one hour away. But no one came that night. “I thought I’d cut my safety line,” he relates.

Why?

“To die,” he responds. “Then I thought: No. This is suicide — a major sin.” Bhatti did the only thing he could at that point: he prayed. Eventually, he slept.

Abdul Jabbar Bhatti is the fourth Pakistani to summit Mount Everest. The mountaineer found himself on the brink of death on a perilous descent. This is the story of how he survived his greatest climb.

Man in the mountains

Bhatti wasn’t new to the mountains. The 60-year-old Gujranwala native has successfully summited two other 8,000m peaks in the Karakoram range: Broad Peak (8,051m, alpine style) in 1985 and Gasherbrum II (8,035m) in 1986. He was then posted abroad, but adventure had seeped into his soul. In 1988, he trained to be a paragliding pilot in Chamonix (France), which he followed up with additional training in both paragliding and mountaineering until 1990. He returned to Pakistan that year and formed the Pakistan Association of Free Flying (PAFF). In 1991, he led a Pak-German joint medical expedition to Broad Peak. Then in 1993 and 1994, he led an expedition to Chogolisa (7,665m) and Broad Peak, respectively, but they could not summit either. He successfully summited Masherbrum II (7,821m) from its north face — taking the more dangerous route.

In 1996, he was posted to the country’s Northern Areas. In 1997, he was the deputy leader of a group that was to attempt scaling K2 but that never materialised. He returned from his post in the mountains after the Kargil War of 1999, wanting to instead focus on paragliding.

Personal tragedy struck in 2003 when he lost three of his children (two daughters and one son) in a boating accident at Tarbela Dam. Only one son survived. It took him several years to move past his grief. “It was harder for my wife,” he says. In 2008, he “pukka” retired.

Bhatti first wanted to summit Everest in 2011 with mountaineer Hassan Sadpara but they failed to collect sufficient funds. The following year in 2012, as part of a Pak-China expedition, he successfully summited Spantik or Golden Peak (7,027m) in Nagar Valley. His last big mountain summit was on Khosar Gang (6,400m) when Bhatti and his group set out to climb this mountain via a new route. In July 2016, he quietly decided he was going to go to Everest (“I didn’t tell anyone,” he says) and began his training.

The push for the summit

Rewind to May 19, when Bhatti and Sange had reached Camp 4 — the final camp after which they would push for the summit. “We spent the night there because we were told the weather was too bad for the summit push the next day,” relates Bhatti. “So we climbed all night on May 20, and made it to the summit around 11:30am on May 21.”

It all sounds well, except when you consider that 20-year-old Sange (himelf on his first summit attempt) didn’t pick up adequate amount of oxygen from the ‘balcony’ — a spot right before a small ridge/platform where climbers rest and change to a new bottle of oxygen. Possibly because of his inexperience, Sange picked up only one extra bottle of oxygen. He was supposed to have picked three — two for Bhatti and one for himself. To top it off, Sange turned his own oxygen off at that point — a dangerously reckless move.

“The oxygen I was already carrying finished at the South Summit,” says Bhatti. The South Summit is like a small plateau and around the corner from it is the Everest summit itself. “The second bottle should’ve brought us back to the South Summit, but it finished at the [Everest] Summit.”

Bhatti suspects the porter, having climbed from the balcony on no supplemental oxygen, may have been hypoxic, his movement and judgement somewhat impaired. “He may have opened the oxygen valve too much while fitting it on me,” he said, “Or maybe the cylinder was half full and he didn’t check. Who knows?”

The retired lieutenant colonel started having problems with his oxygen 50m shy of the summit. He told Sange who responded with, ‘No, no doctor. It’s okay. Go!’ and climbed ahead leaving Bhatti behind. The summit was just within reach. “You can see it,” relates Bhatti.

Bhatti decided to ascend.

Trouble on top

“You can tell that the sherpa was (possibly) suffering from hypoxia just by the way he handled the camera,” relates Bhatti. “He didn’t take a single good photo; he couldn’t even hold the camera straight. Cut this part or that part of my body out of the frame. There’s only one photo where he managed to get my face properly.” Sange handed Bhatti the camera and suggested they make their way down.

The problem was they had no oxygen. “I suggested that we find a way to fix this problem,” recalls Bhatti. “Where are the other bottles?” he asked the porter. “There are no other bottles,” Sange told him. The retired lieutenant colonel then told him to communicate this to the camp below and that those making their way to the summit should bring additional oxygen cylinders with them. Sange promised he had.

It had started to get dark when they crossed the South Summit. “I believed there would be some oxygen cylinders at one of the dumps,” relates Bhatti, “There is none,” Sange told him.

Hanging by a thread

They waited. Night fell. “So many people crossed us,” he says, “I requested them to help. But no one looks at you. No one helps you. One guy asked me if I was from one of the Seven Summits team, I said yes. He took a photo of me and just left.”

One kindly mountaineer did help. “To me, it felt like it was a lady,” says Bhatti. Exhaustion and lack of oxygen at this point had clearly taken its toll. “One lady and three sherpas. She shared some of her oxygen with me, from her own regulator that she was using to breathe herself. Then they moved on.”

This was Ang Tshering Lama’s team. Lama, an experienced climber and guide was ascending the mountain at the time — not as a guide, but as medical and technical support. His team had split into two groups — the first group is the one who helped Bhatti. The second group, including Lama, also came across Bhatti and Sange stranded on the side of the mountain. They found them to be responsive, so they also gave them supplemental oxygen and encouraged the two to continue with their descent. The rescuing team then continued their ascent.

Sometime after that, Bhatti was starting to get frostbite on his hands. He reached for his bag but it slipped away from him. It was here that he waited and prayed at 8,600m. Eventually, he fell asleep.

When Lama’s group came across them on their descent, they found Sange and Bhatti had still not moved and were in a far worse state. No help had arrived. According to an article published in the National Geographic, “The delirious pair had discarded the supplemental oxygen they’d already been given without using it.” So a member from Lama’s team offered his own.

“I felt someone trying to wake me up,” Bhatti says. “It was already day time.” Lama’s group of sherpas was accompanied by a German mountaineer who was also making his descent. The sherpas decided to carry Sange down. “I climbed down,” says Bhatti.

When they reached the Balcony, the sherpas decided to take the porter down to camp and leave Bhatti behind. “The company is sending their people up to get him,” they said to the German mountaineer. The German mountaineer didn’t feel comfortable with that plan and refused to leave the Pakistani mountaineer. “We went down together,” relates Bhatti, “We even crossed that group of sherpas. I was getting so exhausted, but I came with my own two feet to Camp 4.” There he got his first medical assistance.

Dragged down the mountain

Bhatti spent that night alone in the tent. He was woken up that morning, given orange juice concentrate and told to climb down. But his crampons were missing. So was the glove on his left hand. “I tried but I kept slipping,” he says. “They dragged me. My clothes got torn and wet.” They finally reached Camp 3 at 7,200m. “My sleeping bag was there, but in the darkness, I couldn’t find it,” he relates. So he slept without it.

He was woken up in the morning. “They dragged me outside and down the mountain,” he relates. Bhatti started to pray. “Suddenly, they stopped. I asked them what was happening.”

“Helicopter!” came the response. Bhatti was transported to the base camp where he met Saad Mohammad, the other Pakistani mountaineer who had attempted to summit but returned from Camp 3.

Mr Mohammad later gave statements to the press saying he had to abandon his own summit attempt to assist Bhatti, “who was in dire need of medical assistance. It did not make sense to me, but helping my fellow climber overwhelmed all other priorities.”

Bhatti pauses for a few moments. “That statement is incorrect,” he says. “If he had to abandon his climb to help me then why did he go down? He should’ve climbed up [from Camp 3] to get to me. Plus, he lagged behind me by a day. On May 20, when I was climbing up from Camp 4, he was at Camp 3 and began his descent to the base camp. I met him at the base camp.”

After that Bhatti says he was transported to Kathmandu for treatment. He added that he was appreciative of the company Mohammad gave him during his stay at the hospital. Four fingers and half a thumb from Bhatti’s left hand and two-thirds of each finger on his right hand had been hit by frostbite. But rather than have them amputated, he decided to keep them and “let nature take its course.” He reckons that full recovery will take anywhere between three to six months.

Life after scaling Everest

“I was going to go straight to Nanga Parbat,” laughs Bhatti about his plans after summiting Everest. “I was supposed to be back in June. Maybe spend a week at home and then head off to the Nanga Parbat Base Camp.”

With three 8,000m mountains under his belt, ideally Bhatti would like to try and conquer the 11 that are left. “The other option is to do the Seven Summits,” he says, referring to a popular climbing goal for mountaineers in which they try to summit the highest mountain in each continent. In the next three to four years, possibly more, I’ll just try to climb as many mountains as I can.” Godspeed.

The writer is a member of staff

She tweets @madeehasyed

Published in Dawn, EOS, September 1st, 2017