Eleven months later an Indonesian team found his body seated at the foot of the Hillary Step. At the same time, some of us who had been on the team with him had returned to Nepal to put up a memorial for him.

The memorial stands on a hill close to Gorak Shep. We held two ceremonies, one a Buddhist blessing, the other a more personal goodbye.

The text that follows comes from Everest: Free To Decide, the book of the expedition, and gives a little of the flavour of that goodbye.

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?
I must be strong and carry on
‘Cause I know I don’t belong here in heaven.

Philip stepped forward to talk quietly, personally, to the stone memorial.
‘I have come here today, Bruce, to lay a stone in honour of a mountaineer, photographer, but above all a very good friend. During the short time that we knew each other, I would like to think that I was as good a friend to you, as you were to me.’ He stopped momentarily, tears streaking his grey beard.
‘Goodnight, Bruce. God bless you.’

CATHY:
I watch Philip turn away. Suffering and success seem so inextricably interlinked in all we have done. Still watching him, I begin to recite from memory a poem written by another climber for another climber, somewhere else in the world. But the sentiments remain the same.

‘I would give all the world to have you back,
Remember you not in a photograph,
But in your smiling eyes and wild ideal.
And yet I would not pay a price too high:
I would not dream of asking you to change.

I first saw the poem stuck to the wall of London flat, a flat I was sharing with three other mountaineers. Two years later one of them found the bodies of the other two lying, still, at the foot of a great ice-face in Peru. I turned to the poem then to give voice to the complexity of my feelings about death in the mountains, just as I do now...

If you were with me now, I would still help,
Encourage you to reach for the mountain tops,
 Would watch you strive for where you should not go.

And you would go again and die again,
And I would cry - cry how much more
If you should ever cease to be yourself.

Ian’s voice fills the ensuing silence. For a man so self-contained, he expresses his pain with a raw honesty that, for the first time today, reduces me to tears.
Ian looked down at the words he had written out on the scruffy piece of exam pad paper. They were inadequate to the experience, but then all words were, he felt.

For taking in the rain when I’m feeling so dry,
For giving me the answers when I’m asking you why,
And my-oh-my, for that I thank you.

For taking in the sun when I’m feeling so cold,
For giving me a chance when my body is old,
And don’t you know, for that I need you.

Oh! but most of all, for crying out loud, for that I miss you.
Oh! but most of all, for crying out loud, for that I love you.

With a deep breath, he looked up from his piece of paper and began to speak.
‘Many have questioned Bruce’s right to live his life in the manner he chose, but to those of us left behind he was a true free spirit. He was a man who took it upon himself to live his life to the full. He was free to decide his future, and he exercised that right.’
He reached across to the walkman and put in another tape. The song ‘Free to Decide’.

Cranberries singer Delores O’Riordan’s voice emerged strongly, travelling through the thin, clear air, reaching out to the surrounding mountains. It was a song that had become something of a theme tune for the expedition members, expressing what they felt they took away from the experience. As the last words of the last song faded into silence, Ian reached out for Cathy to hug her. Then Philip joined them in their embrace, and the three friends, the three team-mates, stood in heavy silence, emotionally exhausted.

‘Bruce would have liked that,’ Cathy said softly. The tribute of the great open spaces, the proud beauty of the icy mountains, the love and pain of those who had walked so far to see the tribute made, he would have appreciated it, I’d like something similar for myself.’
‘No, I never want to have to do this for you,’ replied Ian abruptly. ‘I’ve done this too often in my life already.’

IAN:
We said we would come back, Bruce, and we did. If any South Africans should pass this way, keep an eye on them for us. Goodbye for now, mate. See you soon.

                      Audio of Bruce on the summit                                                       Top

This book, written by expedition leader Ian Woodall and fellow summit climber Cathy O'Dowd, tells the full story of this dramatic expedition.

The book is now out of print but copies can be found on www.abebooks.com

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