Tag: #EverestRugbyChallenge

Everest: Heading Down, Shadow Animals & Alien Abductions

Everest: Heading Down, Shadow Animals & Alien Abductions

Mark "Deano" Dean

I don’t have any photographs of the descent from ABC to Base Camp.  The reason for this is simple: I was fucked.  I ended up in the last group with Jess Cheeseman, Tamara Taylor and Carrie Gibson.  I don’t think any of us was in a good way and our pace was incredibly slow from the very start of the day.

The distance down was some twenty miles, without a stopover at Intermediate Camp, all in one go which on any normal day would take about six hours.  It took considerably longer than that.

This next bit was a blur and involved walking slowly over rocks.

About halfway down I started seeing animals in the shadows.  Dogs hiding behind rocks and other, unidentified, animals flitting in and out of my peripheral vision.  It became a fairly surreal argument between the rational part of my brain, that knew they weren’t really there, and the inner idiot that wanted to go and say hello to them.

This bit was a surreal, exhausting and tedious blur – a bit like if David Lynch and Terry Gilliam had a love child who made musical intermissions for documentaries about mathematical theory.

It was getting dark now which made things more problematic although on the plus side the shadow animals finally left me alone.

After what seemed like an age we saw lights ahead of us and were delighted to meet a group who had walked back up from Base Camp to welcome us and lead us back in.

I don’t know how many there were in the group that came out to meet us but Shippers, Knobber and Ollie were certainly present because one of them had brought me a can of coke which is still to this day the finest beverage I have ever consumed.

By this point I was really quite far gone.  For some reason I became more than a little paranoid and I began to suspect that the group that had met us were Chinese agents who had captured us but eventually settled on the idea that actually they were Alien imposters who were taking us to their “Mothership”.  Worst of all I then spent the rest of the journey planning escapes before dismissing them as unrealistic due to the fact I was too tired to even consider running anywhere.

The last insane idea to run through my head before we reached the safety of Base Camp was that everyone else were cannibals who had caught us for food.  I dismissed this instantly as there no way even Shippers would be able to eat all of me.

I didn’t realise at the time but obviously the “friends and families” group was being updated with who had returned to BC and Buffy had been more than a little apprehensive given my name was one of only a few not accounted for.

Lastly I am internally grateful to Viv Worrall who, having remained at Base Camp, had set us all up with beds in tents so we could quite literally crash straight to sleep.

All in all a pretty epic day and an insight on how fatigue affects the human brain.

I am still not convinced we came down the right way.

 

Everest: Playing Rugby At 6331m

Everest: Playing Rugby At 6331m

Mark "Deano" Dean

On the 30th April 2019 at 6331m at the Rumbok Glacier, Mount Everest I took part in what is almost certainly the worst standard game of rugby in history.  In other news: it was the highest altitude game of rugby ever played and it raised over £250,000 for disadvantaged and disabled children.  I’m not proud of much I’ve done in my life but I’m bloody proud of that.

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Another draw: 5-5.  Shane Williams has still got it.  Building the pitch was harder than playing the match.  Possibly the most disappointing 35 second performance of my life but you’d need to check that with my ex’s.

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The press release from Wooden Spoon can be seen here

Everest: Advanced Base Camp (ABC)

Everest: Advanced Base Camp (ABC)

Mark "Deano" Dean

We left Intermediate Camp to walk the last leg of our upward journey to Advanced Base Camp (ABC) which is situated at a, literally, breathtaking altitude of 6500m.

We made our way up the glacier over a collection of rock and ice.  It was clear and sunny where we were but you could see the snow being blown off the peaks above us in huge clouds of spindrift.  We were told that the weather was so bad above the North Col that there was nobody higher than Advanced Base Camp on the North side at that point.

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It took longer than I expected to reach ABC which is possibly down to being told numerous times that we were thirty minutes out when we were still hours away.  I remember walking in just my thermal top for most of the trek and then the temperature rapidly dropping as the sun went down.  As I tend to stay warm when I’m moving regardless of what I’m wearing I only noticed when I spotted my hands had a bluish tinge and my fingers had cramped around the handles of my walking poles.  Putting gloves on is surprisingly difficult when you don’t have much movement in your fingers!

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The cold air started to aggravate my chest infection causing me to cough more and more.  On top of that I had left my thermal top open and had badly burnt a triangle of skin on the top of my chest which had blistered and was starting to smell worse than the rest of me.

I think we were all struggling to some extent and I genuinely believe if the bad weather above us had blown in at that point the whole project would quite probably have been called off.

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In my tent forcing a smile in -16 degrees at 6500m on Mount  Everest

We had all finally limped into ABC at about 5pm exhausted and cold but quietly triumphant.  We were up and all we had left to do was the small matter of setting up a rugby pitch and playing a game of rugby.

I was popping antibiotics, steroids, anti nausea (for the steroids) and tramadol for the chest infection, pain and sunburn at this point  just to keep going and was incredibly lucky not to have to deal with any altitude sickness like many of the others were.

I spent the first night at ABC sharing a tent with Shane Williams.  I remember trying to sleep in a sleeping bag that seemed to have shrunk on the way up whilst continually coughing and having to piss every hour or so.  The only benefit of having to piss so often into a plastic bottle jar was that I could then use it as a hot water bottle.  My tent mate was not having much fun either, in addition to me keeping him awake with my spluttering he’d manage to get a case of the shits which meant he was running to and from the toilet tent all night.  There was a moment, at around 3am, with ice falling off the inside of the tent like snow and our breath freezing on our beards that we quietly agreed there was not a more miserable tent anywhere else on earth.

Trivia

  1. ABC was the camp with my favourite Trip Adviser toilet review by Rob Callaway
  2. It is possible to snore whilst still awake at 6500m
  3. You don’t care if you dribble while pissing into a bottle in your sleeping bag when it is -16 degrees outside
  4. The best piece of kit I took with me was a fleece head over (which was not made by RAB and was not on the extensive kit list of shit I didn’t need that was given to us by the guiding company…..)

 

 

 

Everest: Intermediate Camp

Everest: Intermediate Camp

Mark "Deano" Dean

Intermediate camp is, without doubt, the most inhospitable place I have ever been.  A collection of tents perched on rock and ice halfway between Base Camp and Advanced Base Camp providing a very basic temporary home for those heading upwards

We arrived just as the sun dropped behind the ridge which immediately saw the temperature plummet well below zero.  Walking up the ridge towards the tents was a bundle of laughs, the rock was wet and quickly froze as the light dwindled meaning that those last thirty yards or so took twenty minutes and roughly three sense of humour failures to achieve.

We all crammed into the communal mess tent, sitting where we could on upturned containers and boxes, for what I recollect being a watery garlicky pak choi soup.  The Doc, as usual, had seconds and quite probably thirds.

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A quick stop on the way up to Intermediate Camp

I am pretty sure when I got to my tent that I didn’t so much fall asleep but drift into a hypothermic coma.

 

Everest: The Highest Ever Game Of Touch Rugby

Everest: The Highest Ever Game Of Touch Rugby

Mark "Deano" Dean

On the 25th April 2019 at 5119m above sea level we played the highest altitude game of touch rugby ever.  Final score 15-15

It was great to play a game with everyone involved.  Unfortunately after the acclimatisation walks several of the group had to either depart for Nepal due to ill health or remain at base camp due to altitude sickness.

The press release from Wooden Spoon can be found here

Everest: Acclimatisation

Everest: Acclimatisation

Mark "Deano" Dean

So we had our first real “walk” in the mountains around base camp today getting up to around 5900m before heading down to the balmy depths of 5200m.  The weather was clear and sunny which meant we weren’t having to wear too much cold weather gear

I remember being pleased with how my body was handling the altitude particularly as I didn’t have the same fitness levels as most of the group.  I also remember this was the point that I was beginning to feel the effects of a chest infection which had spread around the group and that was to cause me issues further up the mountain.

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Heading back down to Base Camp.  Photo by Mark Dean

I remember this as a genuinely pleasant walk with a few hair raising moments on some unstable ground when we realised that there weren’t really any “paths” as such in this part of the world.