Everest: Reality Check

Have you ever had that feeling of trepidation when you look around a room and everyone there is so much more prepared than you?  I’m in a briefing with the rest of the LMAX Exchange Everest Rugby Challenge team, listening to Dave and Carrie from Adventure Peaks telling us what to expect, and I’m pretty much shitting myself.  To make it worse, they are only talking about the training walk around the Lake District tomorrow and not the actual trip to Everest.

It probably doesn’t help that since I last climbed any mountain I have had my L5 disk removed, recovered from a bout of ITP, torn the ACL in my left knee and eaten far too much cheese.  I was pretty sure most of the people in that room could outperform me on the hill in their sleep and I was genuinely not even sure I’d make it out of Ambleside before I started struggling to breath.

The plan was a route known as the Fairfield Horseshoe which has a disarmingly cute “5 Fells” rating.  What that actually means is that people who, like me, look more like Shrek after a substantial pie-eating contest than a mountaineer should seriously think twice about attempting it.  The route itself starts and finishes in Ambleside and contains the following hills: Nab Scar, Low Pike, High Pike (Scandale), Heron Pike North Top, Heron Pike (Rydal), Hart Crag, Great Rigg, Fairfield, and Dove Crag.  All in all, just over a 1000m climb and, with the trek in and out of Waterhead, roughly 20km of walking.

What that really means is a lot of up, followed by a lot more up and then a knee-breaking descent back down after taking in some spectacular views down towards Windermere and Coniston.

So, if that was the plan… what happened?  It started well enough, but then again, I’d like to think I can walk through a town on a road with the best of them.  As we started the climb out of Ambleside, the realisation that I was in for a tough day hit me, along with the fact that judging from the size of everybody else’s rucksacks I had, as usual, gratuitously over-packed.

The initial climb was certainly a reality check; it needed to be.  Climbing Everest, even if only as far as the North Col, is not to be taken lightly.  I knew that if I couldn’t walk up and down a mountain in the Lake District then I had absolutely no chance of doing that at 6500m in the Himalaya.

Barely an hour in and having only climbed a hundred metres or so I genuinely didn’t think that I was going to finish the day’s walk and once again started to wonder what on earth I was doing.  I have no doubt that most of my companions also thought I wouldn’t be capable but that didn’t stop many of them offering encouragement throughout the day.  Their kind words certainly helped me to keep putting one foot in front of the other and I’m pretty sure without them I probably wouldn’t have made it round.

Basically for the next two hours I walked up the side of a mountain trying to keep my breathing under control and focusing on nothing more than one painful step at a time.  I could feel my heart racing in my chest as it got the toughest workout it had received in many a year.  I also think at this point my fitbit had logically assumed that I had either accidentally put it in the washing machine or that I was being chased by a pride of Lions.

The route around the ridge was a relief, the weather holding off meant that we could see down to Windermere and South over the Lake District.  Cumbria is a beautiful place and those views down over the lakes certainly helped remind me that all things that are worth having never come easy.  A brief lunch stop on Fairfield itself and the chance to pull on my trusty old Buffalo shirt was a welcome break – a quick sandwich though was all I had time for and then we were back on our way before our legs stiffened up.  I also realised that trying to lose weight quickly was all well and good but that I needed to make sure I was fueling my body as well.  Again my lack of preparation with regards to food made what was always going to be a difficult day even tougher.

The descent was horrid.  I mean it was actually so awful that falling over the edge might have been preferable to the short agonising steps down the ancient stone path back into Ambleside.  My knees were swollen and my feet ached from the unyielding confines of my new boots and it just seemed to go on for ever.  When I finally reached the tarmac road back to the hotel at Waterhead I was shattered and ready for bed.  I was so stiff I could barely walk to the minibus back to the hotel.

Arriving at the hotel I was taken aback by the kind words I got from the other members of the expedition, many of whom were nursing aches and pains of their own.  Many of them took the time to speak to me and give positive feedback on what had basically been a torturous day in the mountains for me.

Throughout the drive home I started to plan the next six months.  I had a lot of work to do but the fact I hadn’t crashed and burnt in the Lake District gave me the confidence that this expedition was actually doable.  The reality check had been worth it and although success, for me, on Everest was still nothing more than a vague possibility it was no longer the rose tinted pipedream it had been 48 hours earlier.

So what next? How do I get the amount of time I need on the hill?  Not only that but how do I achieve that in the time-frame without breaking my already notoriously fragile body?  In those and so many other unanswered questions, as the Bard would tell us, lies the rub.