Darlow

A couple of weeks ago I found myself standing in the bathtub continually putting on and then taking off a rather snug-fitting wet, rubber garment. Before you get the wrong idea, said garment was in fact a wetsuit, and I was practising transitions for my first ever triathlon that was to take place 2 days later - the Olympic distance London Triathlon (a 1,500m swim, 40km bike and 10k run.) A rather short distance (around a quarter of the Ironman that I'm ultimately aiming for) I was looking to break 3 hours for my first crack at the distance. It should have been a walk in the park. Unfortunately, as far as race preparation goes, mine hadn't been ideal. My previous blog entry ended with me falling off my bike in the Alps. At the time ... read more

Blimey, it's been the best part of five months since I updated this thing. Although that's not through laziness, but rather because I haven't done any travelling since Christmas and didn't have much of note to say. Rather I spent January - April in France at the house, and since then I have been back in the UK working. In a rather radical departure from my normal schedule though, my "work" does not involve actually leaving the house. Instead I am setting up a number of internet businesses which, if everything goes to plan, should fund a modest lifestyle - the real beauty of internet ventures though is that you can (almost) literally do them from anywhere. (Ali, the guy who set this website up for example, famously lives in Malaysia, and I now have massive ... read more

After the previous couple of weeks, Island Peak was pretty straightforward. True, summit day itself was a bit of an epic (we started at around 1:30 in the morning and didn't finish until about 4 in the afternoon) but I have no tales of frost bite, -40 degree windchill or nasty toilet experiences to recount. Indeed, I actually got a few hours sleep the evening before the summit bid - thanks mainly to the fact that our camp site (5,100 metres ish) was about 700 metres lower than the camp on Mera Peak and therefore considerably warmer. The climb itself was unremarkable at first: About 3 hours of trudging up a rocky path followed by some easy angled snow. Then, however, it started to get more interesting with a 600 metre climb up to the summit ... read more

One thing that the Nepalis are very good at is persuading tourists to spend money. And it's a good thing too since about 90% of their economy depends on tourists (with most of the rest being international aid). One way in which this makes itself evident is the "Trekking peaks." These are a group of around 30 mountains which the Government has renamed - the thinking being that if you can "trek" these peaks they must be easy. Thus satisfied that they are within most peoples' grasp, many hundreds / thousands of people every year purchase a permit to "trek" to one of the summits and hire the necessary porters and guides etc etc etc Only later do people normally realise that they are actually a bit more involved than just trekking. Mera Peak is perhaps ... read more

The purpose of my first month in Nepal was to get fit and acclimatised before the proper mountaineering begins. To this end I chose to walk to Makalu - the fifth highest mountain in the world, standing at 8,463 metres. Makalu is a particularly hard mountain to climb. Edmund Hillary (of Everest first ascent fame) failed twice to climb it. Even Messner (one of the best mountaineers ever) only succeeded on his third attempt. The day that I arrived at base camp, a group of Polish climbers were leaving. They successfully put three climbers on the summit. At a cost however. They had to call in a team of Nepali climbing sherpas to rescue them after two people were afflicted with such bad frost bite that they could not walk. In the days before helicopter evacuations ... read more