 HIGHLIGHT:?JaMES HOOPER: PULLED INTO THE VOID: They were fearless adventurers; the youngest Britons to climb Everest. But when Rob Gauntlett died in the alps aged 21, James Hooper found himself in debt, in mourning and struggling to find meaning in his life. Two years on, award-winning author David Vann - who knew both men personally - reveals their astonishing story: There was a distinctive crack, then I could feel the water, like knives everywhere: I think of James calling out in that cold darkness, stepping down into nothing   T  he arctic Ocean was close beneath them. a thin layer of ice, but they could believe it was the earth's crust, could believe this entire plain of white was land, attached to the coastal bluffs of Greenland, still very clear 20 miles away. Here, looking west, they could imagine the world a globe, a curve of white stretching on beyond horizons. and it seemed they should be able to travel easily, plan their route and fly along it, blown by  wind or even spirit alone. James Hooper and Rob Gauntlett were only 19 years old, fresh from summiting Everest, and their optimism, their exuberance, was a force of nature itself. But they were hitting obstacles now.  The dog sleds were falling through snow to fresh water below, puddles over the ice. This was something new for the Inuit hunters - the ice melting from above rather than from below. and when they fell through past their knees they could feel the ice flexing, bowing under their weight. So they turned around. They were heading north again, back to Savissivik, back to solid land, trying to outrun the melt.  It was a clear day, bright and blue. The only clouds off to the west, forming over open water, a break in the ice. Beside the sleds, a long thin crack, a floe of exposed water. James was on the first sled, Rob on the second, sitting sideways, back to back with Peter, an Inuit hunter who had shot off his own jaw trying to commit suicide. He had watched his brother killed by  a walrus; lost his wife and daughter, too.  The dogs were struggling in the slush, the sled going four or five miles an hour, hardly faster than a walk. The air was warm, about zero degrees, much warmer than the 40 below they'd had recently. Rob took off the outer layer of his three sets of gloves and then, after a minute or two, realised he had dropped one. They stopped the sled and Rob walked back along the track. He was up to his knees in snow and slush, but he made it back to the glove.  "There was a distinctive crack," Rob told me later. "and for a second I knew exactly what was happening. I remember thinking: 'Man, this actually isn't that bad', but then I could feel the water, like knives everywhere." With all his bulky clothing and the slush on top, the fall through was slow - slow enough for him to feel the water flood his clothing to his skin, but then he hit his head on the ice and lost consciousness. The current underneath was pulling at him, his clothing caught. He was dangling  at the roof of the world below.  Peter ran back for him but was 200m away. James saw the fall from the sled farther in front and ran immediately, too, but he was more than 300m away. It took him four minutes to cover that distance, struggling through all that snow. and when he arrived, exhausted, he found Peter trying to pull Rob out, but Peter just wasn't big enough. He was less than 5ft tall,  a small, thin man. James lay down on the ice and snow, bridging out with his legs and reaching for Rob's red parka. He managed to pull him out to the waist but then was stuck again, Rob's legs still in the water. So he slid farther forward and got hold of Rob's waist and pulled him the rest of the way out.  Rob was blue from the cold. The water below freezing, the air zero degrees. His pulse was faint, his breathing very light and shallow, and he was unconscious.  The hunter paired with James had arrived with their sled, so James grabbed a sleeping bag, a towel and some furs. He laid the furs beside Rob on the ice and took off all of Rob's wet clothing, dried him with the towel, and then put him in the sleeping bag. The hunters had built a tent over the sled and lit a camp stove inside the tent, so they set Rob in his sleeping bag inside and tried to get the tent as warm as possible. James hugged Rob to try to warm him up, but he was still just blue and cold.  One of the hunters took James's place at Rob's side and James used the satellite phone to call for a rescue helicopter. The pilot would call en route with more instructions, but for now James should prepare a small bag of their things to take on the helicopter and leave the rest of their stuff with the hunters.  It's an odd thing that tragedies so often become ordeals of housekeeping. James had to sort through all their stuff out there on the ice. They had provisions for several more weeks on the ice, the first leg of a year-long expedition (named "180 Degrees") from geomagnetic north pole to geomagnetic south pole by  dog sledding, sailing and cycling. The cycling alone would be 11,000 miles, from New York  to the tip of South america. But this kind of ordeal, of aftermath, was something James was destined to repeat. It would become, overwhelmingly, his future.  aT THE aGE OF 23, James Hooper has already had fame and seen it slip away into nothing. at 19, he and Rob Gauntlett had been the youngest Britons to summit Everest, the culmination of years of training. Then they embarked on "180 Degrees", intending to inspire youth and call attention to climate change. They succeeded, despite all the risks and problems, and their website had 10m hits. They were on weekly television in the UK and interviewed in many other countries. I profiled them for National Geographic adventure's "adventurers of the Year" in November 2008. They became Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society. National Geographic was interested in a film, and I was going to write the book.  Then Rob died in January 2009, climbing in the alps. He was eulogised by David Beckham and many others, and the book and film were still going to happen. James was even more motivated to tell Rob's story and make sure he wasn't forgotten. He wanted to spread his message about inspiring youth. But then  everything just kind of faded away.  It's difficult to describe how nothing happens and how a life, once large, slips into despondency so quickly. James was left with ? 90,000 in debt from "180 Degrees". He had this ferocious determination to pay it back, but the movie deal didn't quite happen. The book deal didn't happen, either. My UK publisher, Viking/Penguin, had already signed another adventure book, and  I didn't want to switch publishers, so that was just bad luck. a dead end. James tried to give talks as a motivational speaker - something he and Rob had done to fund "180 Degrees" - visiting schools and corporations, but nothing much came of that. He was forced to take a low-paying desk job in London, and a friend lent him a place to stay, but it was lonely and empty. James was devastated by the loss of  Rob, and as everything else turned into nothing, he quickly became despondent.  In the autumn of 2010 he left for university in South Korea, a place that pays him to study there (it is trying to attract foreign students), because that's the only way he can afford university. But I don't think money is the only reason he's moved to the other side of the world. He's desperate to find a new life.  FIVE YEaRS aGO, James was dangling mid-air on a rope, waiting to fall. Rob was below him, dangling at the other end of the rope. The two of them slowly twirling over 60ft of air and then rocks - the sea cliffs at Swanage. all the small bits of climbing gear that anchored them to the overhanging cliff above had ripped out, one by one, and only one piece was left, a temporary piece, something not meant to hold for long. They expected to die.  It must be an intimate moment with another human being, to be tied together literally as you're about to plunge. This is how Rob died later in the alps with another friend, plummeting down snow and ice and rock. I think it's difficult for most of us to understand the weight of the friendship between James and Rob and what it means to lose this friendship.  Rob and James met during their first autumn at Christ's Hospital school in West Sussex at the age of 11, scheming together, their first project a letter-writing campaign to chocolate manufacturers complaining about "strange objects" such as small pieces of wood or rotten apples found in their chocolate bars.  It was a welcome friendship for James, who was homesick. He and Rob shared a study, and Rob got on well with everyone, always sociable, but James wasn't as popular. Kids sat on his bed to use his roommate's PlayStation, so he was often telling people to get out. after one of these tirades, Rob opened cod-liver oil capsules all over James's pillow. When James lay down to sleep, he retched from the smell then ran out the door with his pillow to throw it away, everyone laughing. He found out eventually that it was Rob, and he resented this prank deeply.  It didn't feel like a prank. It felt like betrayal. He didn't have a pillow for several weeks.  Rob did something worse at the start of their third year. James had a cuddly toy named Bryn, which means "hill" in Welsh. James wasn't Welsh, but he'd lived there for most of his childhood. The kids teased him mercilessly. They'd put on a fake Welsh accent and say: "Hello, I'm from Wales. I like shagging sheep." This toy named Bryn was a little brown sheep, and Rob stole it and locked it in a tool box they used to store sweets. They were 13 years old, but Bryn was important to James - a bit of home. So he tore into this tool box, managed to get one end open and scraped up his forearms rescuing Bryn. By now he didn't consider Rob such  a good friend. The two were falling out - and then Rob played another mean trick.  James liked a girl named Pandora and sat next to her in class, so Rob wrote on the front of James's homework notebook: "I love Pandora." When James pulled the book out, he saw this right away and had to hide it, had to tell his teacher he hadn't done his homework and got into trouble for it.  and so Rob and James didn't become friends again until two years later, through the cycle-touring club. Rob enlisted James's help  to play a prank on another friend, hoisting  a bike into a tree, out of reach. Everyone laughed, and Rob gradually started to become friends again with James. Rob was a great friend to have but a terrible friend to lose.  IT WaS ON a CYCLING trip to the Lake  District that Rob and James came up with the idea for Everest. It was 29 May 2003, the 50th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest. They decided they would do it.  In each episode of their adventures together, though, it was Rob leading and James, pushed to the edge, often having to save them.  The climbing route at the sea cliffs of Swanage, for instance, had been Rob's idea. James had wanted an easier route. He was hungry for lunch. But he didn't protest.  James found himself dangling higher than Rob, closer to the rock. His legs were shaking so badly he couldn't do anything at first, but then he got his head together and managed to calm down a bit and pull himself up carefully to where he could place another cam into the rock. It wasn't a good placement, and might just fail, but he moved on and placed another and another. He saved their lives.  Rob came very close to death many times, and I think part of James's despondency now comes from having saved Rob so many times, only to lose him in the end. The worst was when Rob fell through the ice in Greenland. But even before that, on their first expedition together at the age of 16, cycling in Norway in November in ice and snow, Rob fell over in the middle of the road and a truck skidded for 100m and came to a stop just short of him.  James was often terrified during their adventures. Their first climb in snow and ice took place where Rob would eventually die, in Chamonix. Early one morning, they took the aiguille du Midi cable car to an unbelievable station perched high in jagged pinnacles. They arrived in a warren of tunnels carved into the rock, crossed an unlikely bridge between two outcrops, the mountainside falling away beneath, and finally passed through another tunnel  into an icy chamber with a door at the far end. The door opened on to the ridge, just like that. a doorway into another realm.  Rob was the first out, roped to James and then their guide, Jean-Marie. as James waited his turn, he was cold and having trouble breathing the thin air. Perhaps he was already starting to panic a little. and when he stepped out on to that snowy, rocky ridge, he felt instantly the exposure, both sides dropping away into vacuum, the ridge itself falling away steeply in front of him. He shouted at Rob, because Rob was moving too fast. James felt almost pulled off his feet by the rope, and this struck him quickly as a kind of metaphor for their friendship. He was at his limit here. It was a stunning day, very little wind, bright sun in a pale blue sky, and this removed some of the menace, but not all. James felt the beginnings of vertigo, of being pulled into the void.  But he kept moving, kept picking his way down that ridge, trying to keep up with Rob, and somehow they made it to the bottom, to the glacier. Then they trudged through heavy, deep snow and climbed up to another ridge. and here the exposure was even worse than before. The drop to the left, down to Chamonix, was severe: vertical for a long way. James felt overwhelmed by fear. He couldn't understand why he would want to be doing this. He wanted to be anywhere else at that moment.  as they stepped along the rocky outcrops, James tried to focus on his breathing and not look down towards Chamonix. and after a while he came to a kind of dull resignation which was better than fear, not as debilitating. He could see more clearly and move more  easily. If he wanted to achieve his goals he'd just have to get on with it. "I'm here now," he told himself. "Just deal with it. Keep moving."  By the end of the day, after stepping across abyss after abyss and clinging to tiny ledges, James was moving naturally. He and Rob both felt an intense exhilaration, nothing less than elation. They felt they could achieve anything.  So the next morning they headed up to argentiere, without a guide. They'd do a little climbing on their own.  It was a bright, sunny day. Much of the snow had melted, so the ice cliffs were clearly  visible. "I want to do some lead climbs today," Rob said. "a few vertical sections. a challenge." It seemed too soon to James. He didn't like this. They had almost no experience, after all, but Rob seemed determined.  They put on their crampons and other equipment at the base, then Rob started climbing. They had only four ice screws, so he had to make abalakovs. He bored into the ice at an angle with a screw, then bored again at another angle so that the two holes met at the back. Then he passed a small bit of cord through. Done correctly, this made a strong anchor point. The risk, of course, was in going too shallow or too close together or creating cracks, any of which could make the entire thing rip out under pressure.  all of Rob's anchor points held, though. He was good at this. He worked his way up the cliff and took on some of the vertical sections, hanging from his ice axes, driving his boot tips in and pushing out away from the face, using good technique and feeling no fear.  James was amazed. Rob was tremendously talented. They kept climbing through the long, perfect day, and the only problems they faced came from James following some of the more difficult vertical sections.  They were having such a perfect day that they weren't thinking about time. They started a new route late, and as they rose on the cliff the light was disappearing. By the time they reached the top it was very nearly dark.  They had made a mistake now. They knew that. There wasn't much to say. "I guess we just go down," James said. It would take them quite a while. They'd be finishing the descent in utter darkness. Neither of them had a headlamp or any other kind of light. There were no other climbers left in the area. Everyone had gone home. and descents are always more dangerous than climbs, trying to work your way back down, unable to see what's coming.  So they did the only thing they could do. They started climbing down, going carefully but trying to make it as quickly as possible. Before they were all the way down, it became pitch black. They couldn't see a thing. They called out to each other in that darkness, shouting encouragement, each letting the other know what he was doing next, t 