Mark Inglis - The Death Zone

By Joshua Drummond

'Mountaineer' is a neat summation of not just Mark Inglis' career but his entire life. He's spent it managing a literal and figurative series of ups and downs. Ironically enough, peak moments like fulfilling his life-long ambition to stand on the summit of Mount Everest have coincided with some abyssal lows - like the controversy that erupted when Inglis revealed his party had passed dying climber David Sharp. Then, of course, there were the 14 days Inglis and climbing partner Phillip Doole spent in an ice cave they dubbed 'Middle Peak Hotel' near the summit of Mount Cook, which resulted in both Inglis' legs being amputated below the knee. He could have been excused for taking up a quiet life, or even spending it in a wheelchair. But from talking to the man it soon becomes clear that a quiet life was never even an option.

Inglis is softly spoken and given to exclamations like 'golly!' which might lead someone unfamiliar with his achievements to think him something of a nana. Of course, he's anything but. When I first called he was busy, and given his list of accomplishments, he's probably always busy. He'd have to be. Since he lost his legs on Christmas Eve, 1982, Inglis has become a competitive skier, a wine-maker, a graduate from Lincoln University with an honours degree in Human Biochemistry, and a silver medallist in cycling at the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games. He's also worked as a motivational speaker, written several books, and is involved with a plethora of charities and trusts. 

Now he's back from Everest, Inglis says his charity projects will be his focus for some time. He'd just gotten back from two weeks in Kathmandu when I called him at his home in Hamner Springs, and he sounded jet-lagged and not a little tired, if not grumpy. But talking about his passions, he perked up fast. Asked about his trip to Nepal, which he took to sort out Limbs4All support for Kathmandu's Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre, providing them with specialist rough-country wheelchairs, it's hard to slow him down. "Golly - I spent three months in a wheelchair after Everest. It's hard enough being in a wheelchair here [in New Zealand] let alone there. But they've come up with a fantastic rough country wheelchair, and it's available for $300 New Zealand dollars," he says, slightly breathlessly. "There are so many projects out there, a tiny bit of time and money to make a huge different to a lot of people's quality of life."

Another project he's throwing himself into is the Everest Rescue Trust. He's working on it with patron Peter Hillary, the son of Edmund Hillary. "Rescuers put their lives on the line. The same year I climbed Everest 10 climbers died. Our expedition rescued three climbers, but it's dangerous for everyone involved." The idea, Inglis says, is that the Trust will be able to "fly a helicopter to the summit of Everest with a sizeable payload, and be able to carry a human being back down. The thing is, it'll be remote controlled" - hopefully eliminating some of the risk for rescuers and helping many more climbers than previously possible. "That's cool!" I exclaim. Inglis laughs. "Yes, it is cool!" He goes on to talk about other cool projects. One, he says, he can't say too much about. I ask for a hint. "Well, one of the things that is most needed [in Nepal] is tourism, but it's restricted to the main trek routes. The idea we've got will direct people away from those routes into the hinterland, where the desperately poor people are. We think we can encourage people out into those places - I mean, you can walk for hours and never see another European. If we can do that we will automatically help communities there," he says.

It's typical of the Inglis approach that deadly serious activities like economic development and acting as the ambassador for an ambitious rescue project (203 people have died on Mount Everest at the time of writing; more die every year) are approached with a mixture of high energy and boyish enthusiasm.  It's an attitude that saw him well equipped to handle the loss of his legs and "get on with life," as he says.

But does he dwell on what it would be like to still have legs? If the accident hadn't happened?

"Can I imagine life without a disability? Put it like this. I see a lot more people disabled by their thinking than by an actual disability. Compared to that, a physical disability is a minor thing. That being said, if someone was to wave a fairy wand and bring my legs back, I'd be more than happy."

But in a world without fairy wands, Inglis has had to rely on himself - and the support of his family and friends, not to mention the engineers and artificial limb technicians that have enabled him to keep up a variety of adventurous pursuits, from skiing to mountain biking to, of course, mountaineering.

 In 1998 Inglis collaborated with Wayne Alexander, who was involved with the pioneering Britten Motorcycle Company, to develop specialised, ultra-light carbon fibre limbs for cycle racing. Inglis and Alexander are still working together, developing a range of specialised artificial limbs.

"I get emails from around the world from people asking about what they can do with artificial limbs. Wayne Alexander and I are basically exploring the limits of leg technology. The things we come up with - like the climbing leg - tend to do one thing really well, but for general stuff - I wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy," he says.

The partnership contributed to Inglis winning a silver medal at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics. "It didn't even register that it was 'only a silver,'" Inglis writes, "it was as though I'd won the whole world." It was on the podium at the Paralympics that Inglis decided to set his sights on climbing Mount Cook again, this time as a double amputee.

He conquered Cook in January 2002, 20 years after he had last stood on the summit, and began immediately to think of his next target. "[I thought] 'nothing can stop me now, I can do anything eventually.' On the last couple of steps, all I could think was, 'Here we are on top of New Zealand - how about the top of the world next?'"

Of course, it isn't just one accomplishment followed by another. For Everest, Cook and essentially all his endeavours, Inglis had to put himself through a gruelling training regime to get his body, and especially his stumps, into shape. He explains some of his regimen - 'I mostly use my mountain bike. It's a really powerful tool, gives me a physical workout without trashing my stumps. I also spend a lot of time in the gym' - and I'm brought to the inevitable question; how much can he bench-press? He laughs, quite a lot. 'Ha! Bugger all! I hate and love the gym, really. It's pretty monotonous. Leg press, leg extension, over and over. It's what got me the silver medal, what got me Everest. The critical thing is to get on with it. It takes me about three times as long to train as it would an able-bodied person. The problem is it's all dependent on the stumps. I usually hit my stump limit way before I hit my actual physiological limit. The trick is getting the stumps up to my physio limit, and then go from there,' he explains.

The stumps again. It's far from self-pity, a feature that Inglis appears mostly to lack, but a hard fact. Inglis admits it's tough in many ways. 'The thing is, you know you're a double amp, but you still want to do bigger, go harder. The mental thing is the hardest of the lot. It's the whole Kiwi male mentality - you see guys around doing more than you, you want to be able to match them,' he says.

It must be quite a mental balancing act, I suggest. Inglis agrees. 'Yeah. I spend my life forgetting I'm a double amputee. It's only when I do something stupid - like putting my tibia through my stump on the way down Everest - that it's forced home to me.'

He did what on the way down Everest? I try to imagine a leg bone sticking out the bottom of my foot. It's bad enough hearing it over the phone - I can't imagine what it would be like in real life on the world's tallest mountain. But I get a decent idea as Inglis provides some hair-raising detail.

'What happened was I ended up with a massive haematoma from pounding the stump, over and over, on the descent. If I had known I would do that much damage, I would have stopped and come right back.' You mean abort the climb? 'Yep. No question about it. You lose weight up high, very fast. I lost eight kilos in the last few days. Your metabolism changes, and your body basically cannibalises protein to stay alive.' Now I am stuck with a mental picture of a body with bones sticking out that is also eating itself. Later, reading Inglis' Legs On Everest, I don't have to imagine. The pictures are there in vivid detail; Inglis with the bottoms of his stumps a terrible blue-black, looking quite sick. This was because he was, in fact, extremely sick.

'Balanced on the edge of the bath,' he writes in Legs On Everest,  'I pull the [stump] socks off and almost vomit with the smell of the rotting stumps. This is after just ten hours or so in the sockets; it is tough to imagine what they will be like after the 13-hour [flight] home. To get from the bathroom to the bed I need to stop every two or three metres to lie either completely prone or else on my back with the stumps in the air to minimise the throbbing pain. This time I do chuck up with the pain. The only good thing is I know pain is temporary.'

The damage to the stumps left surgeons needing to perform what was essentially a second amputation, all around the same time as he was being given a media roasting over the David Sharp controversy. Then there's the fingertips he had to have amputated due to frostbite.

'[After Everest]I had three centimetres taken off both stumps, and had to have the bone trimmed. I lost four fingertips to frostbite. A lot of people were fairly concerned about the injuries, but it was the stumps that mattered. What's a fingertip? All it means is that I drop the odd olive oil bottle, and I've got four less nails to cut. They're just fingertips.'

Inglis admits that had he known what Everest would do to him, he might not have gone.

'I was surprised how much it took out of me,' he says, and it sounds as if the memory is still very fresh. 'They say you need three months to get over Everest. I think I need about double that. One of the differences between me and an able-bodied climber is I've got much less muscle, and I need more time to recover.'

One of the key elements in his recovery, and in all aspects of Inglis' adventures, has been the support he gets from his family. I ask him about the part his wife and children have played, from amputation to Everest. 'My wife, Anne, married a mountaineer, and she knew it. That explains a lot,' he says. 'My family are fantastic, because they let me do the things I do. I had to stretch my limits for Everest, and they weren't  100 percent happy about that. But they knew how organised I was, and knew I wouldn't do it if it wasn't achievable. I simply couldn't have done it without them letting me do it. The whole controversy over Everest, with David Sharp - the hardest part of that was knowing my family had to bear all of it as well. It was hard for everyone, but I've never been so proud of my wife and kids.'

And with that, he mentions what he must have known we'd talk about eventually; the David Sharp controversy. When Inglis returned from Everest, he revealed in an interview that his party and other climbers had, as it was put, 'walked past,' distressed climber David Sharp. The story was ready-made, or so it seemed; a modern-day Good Samaritan tale with a twist, the disabled man who did not help a dying one. A comment from revered Sir Edmund Hillary -  'I think the whole attitude towards climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying' - was the icing on the media cake, and Inglis was vilified in the world press with glee.

The story was not, of course, nearly as simple as it was made out. At 'death zone' altitude - 8000-plus metres - brain function is reduced, and the reports on Sharp's death were many and conflicting. Later, footage from the Discovery Channel documentary Everest: Beyond the Limit showed that Inglis' party had passed Sharp on the way down from the summit, when they were low on oxygen and several members, including Inglis, were suffering from frostbite. His party had also offered Sharp oxygen, with Everest guide Jamie McGuiness providing Explorers Web with this harrowing description. 'Dawa also gave oxygen to David and tried to help him move, repeatedly, for perhaps an hour. But he could not get David to stand alone or even stand resting on his shoulders, and crying, Dawa had to leave him too. Even with two Sherpas it was not going to be possible to get David down the tricky sections below.'

'Dawa, who did not summit because of giving his oxygen to David, told this to me less than 24 hours later when I met him on the fixed ropes. He was close to tears even then,' McGuiness said. 

Inglis' reaction to the controversy and media storm was a mixture of confusion and frustration, made worse by the fact that he was singled out, as he says, as if he was the only one on the mountain at the time. 'When you're involved in mountaineering, and have been a lot of your life, it's surreal to see people making comments about something they essentially know nothing about. It was like, "what are these people on about?" So many people wanted to comment without knowing the facts - without knowing what it's like at 8,500 meters at -40 degrees centigrade. The feeling was one of frustration, more than anything,' he says.

'People just don't know what it's like. It's difficult surviving at the same altitude as Base Camp, let alone at near-summit altitude. Everest kills people. There was a (Discovery Channel) documentary crew up filming us, and the whole time the media was going over the controversy, I was thinking, "Christ, I wish [the doco] had come out earlier." It'll show people what Everest is really like.' [The documentary, Everest: Beyond the Limit, has since aired on the Discovery Channel.]

The Sharp controversy might have been particularly painful for Inglis if only because of his breadth of knowledge on mountain rescues, having been the subject of a particularly intensive rescue himself. He'd also worked in Search and Rescue on Mount Cook as well as climbing recreationally before his accident - being trapped in an ice cave for 14 days during the worst recorded storm in the Mount Cook area. What was it like? I ask.

'Gee, it's 25 years ago now,' he says. 'I'd been working in search and rescue on the mountain for years and I understood the environment, what happens to people, what could happen to us. As a worker in the park, it was like my own Discovery Channel doco playing in front of me. 'A lot of what I felt at the time was a kind of professional embarrassment - it was bad enough being rescued by my own team, and I was also worried that someone might be hurt in the rescue. When the helicopter crashed [An Air Force Iroquois that had been called out for the search - miraculously, no one was hurt], that was a bad moment. But through the whole thing we knew what would be going on. We were guessing the ground team's movements, and they were guessing ours. It was funny - after we compared notes, we found that we'd guessed exactly right. They would be saying "Mark and Philip would be doing such-and-such about now," and we were saying "If we were them, we'd be doing this" - and we'd be right. 'A lot of the work of surviving, keeping going, was having faith in the people outside.'

So where to from now? What can you do once you've stood on the world's highest mountain? Inglis says there's plenty more adventures to be had, working on his many projects and charities, like his Limbs4All project and the Cambodia Trust, which provides support and prosthetics to amputees in that country. Cambodia has no shortage of amputees, mostly because of a correspondingly large amount of landmines littering the countryside - making it the third most mined country in the world. Then there's his work with the Everest Rescue Trust, which involves tackling social problems as well as rescues.

'Part of the purpose of the latest trip to Kathmandu was to spend time with the Sherpas to find out what they want and need from us. They need more medicine, doctors and to put their kids through school. You ask most Sherpas what they want, they'll answer "do something for our children." It's really touching,' he says.

It's a typical answer from an adventurer who couldn't be stopped when he lost his legs and is passionate about any number of projects, from poverty to prosthetics to Everest. When you're Mark Inglis, it seems, there is always another mountain to climb.

Join Mark for an inspiring and motivational fundraising evening for his new charity Limbs4all.com on Tuesday 13th May 2008 at 6.00pm, The Bluestone Room, 9 Durham Lane, Auckland.