The man who survived the bloodiest day of Mount Everest. Then he returned sport

Jim Davidson knows what it looks like to take shelter in place after a once-in-a-lifetime disaster. His introduction of that kind of resilience did not come through the Covid-19 pandemic, but six years ago, on Mount Everest.

Davidson, a veteran mountaineer, was making his first attempt to reach the world’s highest peak in 2015. On the morning of April 25, he and his team were at 19,700 feet at the site of Camp One – a narrow glacier between two towering ridges. Then they heard a loud bang descending from the western shoulder of Everest, several hundred yards away. Then a second clatter came from the opposite direction.

“Two big collapses at the same time – it just wasn’t true,” Davidson told The Guardian in a phone interview. “[The second rumble] It got louder and louder too. We wanted to get out of there. “

Davidson knew it was dire when his tent began hovering eight inches off the ground. “I went down, and then it came up again,” he recalls. “I knew it was an earthquake. We would have a very serious problem at some point.”

After five minutes the initial tremors stopped and Davidson and the 180 or so climbers camped out on the glacier were all unscathed. However, they learned from the base camp that others on Everest needed urgent medical care. As for Davidson and the others in Camp One, the tremors blocked their only escape route.

The next morning, a blizzard struck, temporarily ruling out evacuation by helicopter. They had enough food, but the fuel was running out, making it impossible to melt snow in the water – essential against dehydration at high altitudes. Davidson, a trained geologist, also feared the effects of the potentially fatal aftershocks.

“We were right in sight,” he says. “We couldn’t go anywhere.” All they can do is “accept the uncertainty, sit tight, and take care of ourselves.”

Davidson praises the Nepalese Sherpa “who tried to be reassuring.”

“They were surprised, like all of us, by the earthquake,” he says. “They didn’t expect this size.”

It was only after Davidson was finally evacuated by helicopter, 40 hours after the earthquake, that he began to understand what had happened. It was the deadliest day in Everest history: 18 deaths by that evening, with 19 deaths after that. In Nepal overall, the 7.8 magnitude earthquake was the worst in more than 80 years, killing nearly 9,000 people. Davidson revisits the tragedy in his new book, The Next Everest, before the six-year anniversary of the tragedy.

Everest Base Camp the day after an earthquake-induced avalanche destroyed the site in April 2015. Photo: Roberto Schmidt / AFP / Getty Images

After being scarred by his first climbing experience, Davidson wrestled with the decision to return to the mountain.

“Mentally, I knew how dangerous it was to climb Everest, after I had survived [the first attempt]Davidson says.

“I’ve been through tragedy before,” he notes, referring to a devastating loss on Mount Rainier in 1992 when he and his climbing partner Mike Price fell into a crack in a glacier. The accident killed Price and injured Davidson, as reported in Davidson’s first book, The Ledge.

In the months after his first attempt on Everest, he doubted he would try again. “I definitely had to do some tough to get back on the scene,” says Davidson. However, he adds, “Hard challenges make you more resilient.”

He has the support of his wife Gloria and their two children. He also recalls lessons he learned as a teenager at his father’s painting company in Massachusetts, where the future mountaineer climbed stairs to paint church spiers and electric towers.

“I was inspired by what my dad told me about big goals – try to achieve them with all you have,” Davidson says.

Davidson gradually defended the idea of ​​going again to Everest. He felt a connection with Nepal and its people after collecting donations for earthquake recovery from his home in Colorado. Meanwhile, watch the 2016 climbing season on Mount Everest. After that season, he thought, “Maybe I should be back.”

He prepared by “stacking” your exercise days so that one difficult day would follow a more difficult day. He mixed his running trail with weightlifting and box jumps while improving his diet, all with an emphasis on avoiding the deadly snowfall of Everest and getting to the top of it.

“Everything I did was intense,” he says.

By the spring of 2017, when I was 54 years old, “I was in the best condition of my life,” he recalls, “the most mentally ready for mountain climbing. I felt ready to go.”

Jim Davidson at an altitude of 23,700 feet during his second attempt to climb Mount Everest. Photography: Jim Davidson

As the climbers gradually made their way up the mountain, they found debris from the 2015 earthquake still remained. Close to the summit, Davidson had to walk past the corpses of the fallen climbers. In another tragedy, famous Swiss climber Ully Steck died on a nearby summit around the same time Davidson was trying to reach Everest.

Davidson managed to see his dream on top of Everest after about two months on the mountain. “I am very grateful that I made it this far,” he says. “I’m very fortunate to have survived the kind of disaster I went through on Everest … for me, it’s a very humbling experience.” “It is wonderful to see the view as the sun rises over the Tibetan plains … it dawned in some of the highest mountains,” he says. [most] Majestic peaks of the world. “

Davidson encourages his readers to search for big goals on their own – their “next Everest summit,” as the title of the book puts it.

“I think the important thing is to choose a goal within your passion,” he says. “For me, it’s the mountains. Everyone can choose a target that resonates with them. I think the key is.” [it being] Big enough to scare you. “

As he explains, “If you were a regular runner who ran a 5-kilometer race, the four-mile race wouldn’t scare you. You wouldn’t do more. You might never have run a 10-mile race or a marathon. That would probably make you feel very nervous -” I should do more, And become more, than I did before. “If you don’t do more, be more, you will not grow.”

What’s the next challenge for Davidson now that the world’s highest peak is off his agenda? When the epidemic is over, he said, he will look to tackle the soaring peaks again, “maybe Mexico and California with my usual climbing partner.”

“There is always the next Everest,” he says.

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