I lost my love to Everest

I first met Bruce Herrod at unromantic Gatwick airport in 1990. He was leading the trekking and climbing trip I'd booked in Ladakh, India, and I'd just given up a 10-year career in the City as an investment analyst and broker. He was 31 and I was 33. In India, I climbed to 20,000ft and fell in love.

Bruce was a scientist, with degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge, and he'd worked for the British Antarctic Survey before becoming a professional photographer and explorer. Within a year, he had moved into my Kensington flat - and for the next six years we travelled and worked round the world together.

He always dreamed of climbing Mount Everest and in 1996 he hooked up with a team led by a South African climber, Ian Woodall. The trip was going to make history: it would be the first party from the African continent to conquer Everest. Nelson Mandela was personally supportive.

Bruce left Britain in February 1996, but we stayed in constant phone contact. The three-month period of preparation for the climb did not run smoothly - three climbers, half the team, quit at the last moment - but Bruce remained loyal to Woodall.

I felt increasingly anxious. When I look back, it seems that I knew deep down what was going to happen. By 10 May, the team were safely established on the South Col, the position from which all attempts on the peak are staged, when a storm unexpectedly blew up on the higher reaches of Everest. It was a tragic day: eight climbers from other expeditions were lost. Despite this, Bruce and the South Africans decided to push on.

It's hard to understand the power the mountain exerts on those who have spent years planning and imagining a summit. Attempting Everest is a selfish pursuit, but it also defines the limits of human endurance and achievement. Against my better judgment, I supported his decision.

Two weeks later - having waited for a break in the weather - Ian Woodall and team-mate Cathy O'Dowd set out for the peak together. Bruce stayed behind on the South Col alone. Exactly why I'll never know. I've heard various reasons over the years - that he had to sort out equipment, that he'd hit a sudden wall of fatigue.

Whatever the explanation, he pledged to catch up with them. At 7am, I rang base camp - which was 29,000ft below the summit - from London to find out what was happening, and was told that Ian and Cathy had made the peak and were on their way back. Their paths had crossed with Bruce on a lower peak called the South Summit, and they had talked briefly before he continued upwards. Their decision to let Bruce climb on alone has caused huge controversy within the mountaineering world.

Bruce was the last man on the mountain that spring before the monsoon season. He called base camp on his walkie-talkie to say he had reached the summit at 5.15pm on 25 May. By sheer coincidence, I was on the other line from London and they patched us through. Bruce told me that he had made it, that he was standing on the top of the world, and all I could say - numb with incredulity - was get moving, come back.

It had taken him 17 hours to reach the peak, which was far too long to be safe. As Bruce began the descent, daylight and his reserves of energy would have been fading fast.

He would have needed every spark of concentration simply to focus on moving one foot in front of the other. That was the last time I spoke to Bruce. I regret enormously that I didn't congratulate him on what he had achieved. I called several times during the night, but by dawn base camp told me it was informing the British Embassy that he was missing.

Rescue attempts are usually impossible on Everest - as soon as I heard he was missing I knew he must be dead. My grief was clichéd in many ways. You go through stages of bereavement. It was only later that I felt angry at Bruce for leaving me, and bewildered by the insensitivity of his team-mates, some of whom scarcely said they were sorry he was dead. I flew out 10 days later to collect his things, in a stupor of disbelief.

His body was discovered a year later by a Russian climber - but bad weather stopped anyone reaching it. I emailed the expeditions who were at base camp waiting to ascend and asked them whether they could do anything to dignify Bruce's memory. An American climber called Peter Athans was on the summit three weeks later and found Bruce.

He thought that he had probably died half an hour after leaving the summit. It's likely he caught his foot on an old rope as he inched his way down the Hillary Step, and that the weight of his rucksack dragged him backwards so that he hit his head on a rock - I'll never know for sure.

Peter retrieved Bruce's camera and then cut the ropes that tied him to the mountain, letting him fall over the side. More than 100 bodies are still on Everest - if they are found climbers simply don't have the energy to carry them. When I developed the film, I found just two frames - both selfportraits of Bruce on the summit.

I visited base camp in 1999, and met Athans. I finally came to terms, as far as I could, with Bruce's death. I shook the hand that cut Bruce down and seemed, with that gesture, to close a chapter of my life.

Now I'm a translator and writer, and part-own a tour operator called Far Frontiers, organising tailor-made trips for adventurous travellers - at present I have a team of Royal Marines and members of the Royal Navy on the slopes of Everest.

I never once blamed the mountain for Bruce's death. Conquering Everest requires human judgment and human teamwork, and as long as it's there, people will climb it.

The Dark Side of Everest is broadcast tonight on the National Geographic channel at 9pm.