At the age of 22, Bonita (from Berkshire, Great Britain) has eclipsed the record of Victoria James, who was 25 when she climbed Everest.

In the wake of her achievement, a number of newspapers have focused, rather disrespectfully, upon Bonita’s novice status as a climber, picking up on the remarkable fact that in 2008, she had never before climbed a mountain. Going from unfit to Everest’s summit within two years is quite a feat, but it belies the fact that Bonita had trained and prepared fully for the task.

Ten days prior to her summit bid, and impatient for a propitious gap in the winter weather, Bonita quit Base Camp for a few days, heading down the Everest Base Camp Trek route towards Pangboche. On her blog she said how, by descending to “thick air,” she “felt like a super charged human” with “rugby player thighs”, demonstrating how well she had acclimatised to the reduced oxygen at altitude.

Training for Everest

There’s no denying that Bonita’s development was remarkably quick between her statement of intent in 2008 and completing her goal. In fitness training, she was clocking some fifty miles per week jogging, as well as participating in “extreme marathon” events. To practise climbing, she began by trekking up Snowdon in wintery conditions, and progressed to learning more technical climbing techniques from experienced mountaineers. Along the way to Everest, Bonita set a world record for being the youngest woman ever to summit Nepal’s formidable Mount Manaslu (8,163m). Then came the acclimatisation effort, with further training climbs along the route of the famous Everest Base Camp Trek.

Despite Bonita’s diligence, her Everest success coincides with that of 13-year-old Jordan Romero, which has led to suggestions in the media that climbing Everest has become ‘too easy’.

Sagarmatha: Safer and Smarter

There is no avoiding the fact that with addition of climbing lines, extensive Sherpa assistance, weather prediction technology and the services at Everest Base Camp, trekking to the top of the world has become a safer than it once was. But the commentators who imply it is easy are mistaken. No one should come to Mount Everest presuming that success is guaranteed; even in a climbing season such as the one we have just seen in 2010, two mountaineers not only suffered failure but also serious injury while attempting to reach the summit.

There is no belittling the mountain, or the achievements of those who have summited. When Bonita embarked from Everest Base Camp to trek towards the summit, she crossed crevasses, avalanche fields, and made steady progress up the mountain’s storm-buffeted sides. After these difficulties, climbers will reach altitudes in excess of the infamous 8,000 metre mark where the air becomes unspeakably thin.

It Doesn’t Get Any Shorter

Rugby star, Josh Lewsey, another amateur climber hoping to reach the top this season, put things quite succinctly when he commented that Everest “doesn’t get any shorter.”

I think the ‘mountaineering purists’ have been misrepresented in reports. Any dissatisfaction the media has picked up on from veteran climbers is in fact related to Mount Everest’s popularity, rather than the ease of the climb. Contrary to one article that suggested Everest has lost “its lustre as a benchmark of adventure,” the mountaineers are reacting to some recent congestion on the trek up from Everest Base Camp to the summit.

Over the years there has been an increase in the concentration of climbing activity packed into a narrow, busy weather window. The fact that the successful summit bids are condensed into a matter of hours within a season simply shows that “the Goddess of the Sky”, Sagarmatha, doesn’t just let anyone march up and down her whenever they please.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the Everest Base Camp Trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

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“Measuring Everest”: Q&A

How tall is Mt. Everest exactly?

8,844.43m [± 0.21m], according to the Chinese State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping. This is based upon the highest point of rock and ignores the snow and ice upon it, if they are included we arrive at the widely accepted figure of 8,848m.

Are they the only group to have measured the mountain?

No. The peaks of the Himalaya range have been officially measured by British, Indian, American and International expeditions, the earliest having been commissioned around 200 years ago.

What techniques do they employ?

A variety. These have ranged from the use of theodolites, to anchoring GPS devices upon the summit, to satellite measurement.

Do all the results agree?

No, although the variations are so small that they will not affect its position as the world’s highest peak. It is even suggested that the summit may be increasing in height due to the movements of the tectonic plates constantly shifting deep beneath Everest base camp.

Who first measured the height of Everest?

Between 1847 and 1856, during their occupation of India, the British measured the Himalayan peaks as part of the wider-ranging Great Trigonometric Survey. At first believing Kangchenjunga to be the tallest mountain, Andrew Waugh and his team eventually discovered that Everest (or peak XV as they called it) was over 250m higher. They declared it to be 29,002ft tall, despite their measurements showing an even 29,000ft, in order to avoid the accusation that they’d simply rounded the figure up or down.

Peak XV?

Where possible Waugh’s expedition used local names for the peaks they measured (e.g. Kangchenjunga and Dhaulagiri), but as many were unnamed and Nepal and Tibet were closed to visitors at the time they often had to simply apply numeric titles.

So Everest was unnamed?

No. In fact the mountain already had many names. It was variously known as Chomolungma (Tibet), Shèngmǔ Fēng (China), Deodungha (Darjeeling) and a host of other local names. Refusing to favour one name over another, Waugh argued that naming it after his predecessor as Surveyor General of India, George Everest, was the wisest solution.

He must have been flattered.

Actually, no. Everest opposed the naming of Peak XV after himself, reasoning that his surname could neither be written in Hindi nor pronounced by a native of India. His objections were, however, futile and in 1865 the mountain was officially named Everest by the Royal Geographic Society.

Is Everest without doubt the highest peak on Earth?

Logically speaking, yes. It is the highest point above sea-level. However, Chimborazo in Ecuador actually reaches over 2,000m further from the centre of the Earth than the summit of Everest due to the fact that the planet bulges at the equator; but it’s peak is still only 6,267m above sea-level. Mauna Kea in Hawaii likewise reaches over 10,000m from its base in the mid-ocean floor, despite being only 4,205m above sea-level. Attempting an Everest Base Camp Trek is therefore far easier than attempting the same feat for Mauna Kea.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have offered expeditions to Everest base camp for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Flying Over Everest

Together with his pilot Chris Dewhirst, Leo was on board the first successful balloon flight over Mt Everest (8848 m), in October of 1991. It had taken ten years of preparation for the team, and was quite an undertaking to get all the equipment up the trail. They were keen to avoid the fate of the Japanese balloon pilots who attempted it the year before. That attempt had ended with a crash and a fire, and one of the pilots was forced to descend to Everest Base Camp looking for help while the other two sheltered under their parachutes.

But with the help of Meteorologists, Leo Dickinson’s balloon was successful. They took off from Gokyo, (4750m) which is a village in Nepal at a height just 610 meters lower than climbers begin their expeditions from Everest Base Camp. The route of the balloons utilised the power of the jet stream to move them over the peak, a tactic which earned them a feature of the recent BBC documentary “The Jet Stream and Us”.

As they approached Everest, Leo was worried that the burners might not be powerful enough to clear the mountain, and when the jet stream took hold of his balloon he said it was “almost like a hand pushing the basket and shaking it.” He described what he saw as he passed over the peak – and what he filmed – as “quite humbling.”

Extreme Canoeing

But Leo’s association with the mountain goes back even further. In 1976, he made a film called “Dudh Kosi – Canoeing Down Everest”, chronicling the pioneering journey of some British canoeists who took their kayaks down the Dudh Kosi river. The Dudh Kosi draws its freezing waters from the Tsholo Lake at 4555 metres altitude, which is just 800 meters shy of the Everest Base Camp on the Nepali side. The film captures the dangers involved in paddling down unusually steep rapids; it’s such an exciting white water challenge that adventurers have since duplicated the journey Leo filmed.

Filming the Impossible

Two years later Leo brought his camera back to the Himalaya to capture the events of a record breaking climb. European mountaineers Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler became the first humans to climb Mount Everest without carrying supplementary oxygen. Leo’s film called “Unmasked” follows their trek up Everest to heights where usually climbers would take tanks and masks because of the thin air. From Everest Base Camp the trek took a route past the Khumbu icefall up to the South Col and then successfully to the summit at 8,840 metres above sea level. And like many of the amazing things that happen on Mt Everest, Leo had his camera there to film it.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run Everest Base Camp treks for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

For mountaineers, the trek to Everest Base Camp is just the start of their adventure. When they reach the head of the Khumbu Valley, they establish their Everest Base Camp on the Khumbu glacier as they launch into the final stages of their training and acclimatisation that comes before any summit attempt. It is a gradual process that can take months, and often years, of preparation and planning.

For the famous television survival expert, Bear Grylls, his 1998 expedition to Everest’s summit took three months to complete. At that time, he was the youngest Briton to safely reach the peak. The following year, his British record was then eclipsed by Rob Gauntlett from Sussex, aged just nineteen.

But in nine years later, Bear Grylls returned to the Everest trekking region and made an even more audacious and dangerous venture. He attempted to fly a paraglider to an altitude exceeding the summit of Mount Everest. Bear would fly in a supercharged vehicle designed by his friend Giles “Gilo” Cardozo, trying to exceed the existing altitude record for paragliding of 20,017 feet (6101 metres).

In May 2007, the team set up their “Mission Everest” Base Camp having trekked with their heavy equipment to an altitude of 4400 metres in Nepal. On the day of the flight, with three hours’ worth of good weather, fuel and oxygen, Bear and Gilo launched themselves into the air strapped to what looked to be little more than a chair with a motor and parachute attached.

Soon they were spiralling up to a height further than that capable by the camera helicopter that was following their progress. However, the cameras onboard the paragliders showed a spectacular sight of a ribbon of blue sky merging into the blackness of space above, which at the heights they reached they could see even though it was daytime.

After seventy two minutes of flying upwards, when he was sure he had succeeded, Bear turned off his engine and glided down through the stunning mountain landscape that makes Everest trekking so special. The plan was to corroborate their altitude with a global positioning system and altimeters; unfortunately, they found in the thin air and sub-zero temperatures, their instruments froze when they were about four miles above the Mission Everest Base Camp.

Although the reading the instruments took before they froze showed that Bear, at 7621 metres, had surpassed the existing paragliding record by 1524 metres and was still climbing, the record cannot be official without a valid reading from the altimeter. Nonetheless, is clear what Bear had achieved in Gilo’s machine. The images from the onboard cameras showed Bear had cleared the height of Mount Everest, and the team estimated he had reached about 150 metres higher. This took him to above 3640 metres higher than the Everest Base Camp (that’s more than two miles) and almost five miles above sea level.

So as you embark on your Everest Base Camp Trek, spare a thought to the complex preparations, activities and adventures that may be going on ahead of you at the high end of the trail.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the Everest Base Camp Trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Thank you for visiting Travel Articles Directory. Feel free to use any of our travel writing articles for your own website, on the condition that you also take the link we have included in the text. Check back for more travel writing soon; we’re uploading more original travel articles all the time!

Despite living in an isolated and difficult environment, they are world-renowned for their friendliness and the warm welcomes they offer to visitors on the trail to Everest Base Camp and on similar treks in the Everest region. In fact, without the Sherpas’ co-operation and assistance, the journey would barely be possible for the thousands of travellers and climbers that trek in Nepal each year.

Everest trekking holidays rely upon the local knowledge and experience of the Sherpas who act as guides and porters on the various routes, under the watchful eye of the head guide or Sirdar. The in-depth knowledge and understanding of their native landscape and conditions, means that the Sherpa guides can ensure the safety of travellers on an Everest Base Camp Trek and other Everest treks, whilst the porters will help to transport the gear and supplies that the trekkers bring with them.

The Sherpas are invaluable to the mountaineers who embark from Everest Base camp on summit bids to the world’s highest mountain. While the climbers use Everest Base camp as a place to acclimatise, recuperate and make training runs up the mountain, the Sherpas will be busy servicing the camp and looking after the climbers. More importantly, they will constantly conduct essential repairs to the route for the treks up Everest. In a single day the Sherpas may make multiple trips up the formidable mountain to fix ropes and the ladder bridges across the crevasses on the Khumbu Icefall, and to maintain the supplies on the higher stages of the climb.

The Sherpa capital is a town in the Everest region of Nepal called Namche Bazaar, a colourful town hanging on the side of the Khumbu valley at an altitude of 3,440 metres. This is a vital stop on many Everest trekking routes where people can rest and get used to the increased altitude. This is a market town where trekkers can find access to the internet as well as a range of goods sold by the Nepali traders.

When visitors stop in Namche Bazaar, they will enjoy the legendary Sherpa hospitality that they will also experience in the villages along the way, where trekkers can rest as they acclimatise. Treks frequently make use of the traditional Sherpa tea houses for rest stops, meals and overnight stays on most of the Everest trekking routes.

From the tea houses to the temples and the colourful streamers decorating the trails, you will be immersed in the Sherpa culture while on the Everest Base Camp Trek. You will take home fond memories of an under-appreciated race of people who are happy to share their beautiful country with travellers from all over world.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the Everest Base Camp Trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Thank you for visiting Travel Articles Directory. Feel free to use any of our travel writing articles for your own website, on the condition that you also take the link we have included in the text. Check back for more travel writing soon; we’re uploading more original travel articles all the time!

Blessed’s Everest Trek Emulates Mallory

He made his first run at the mountain in 1991, as part of a film called Galahad of Everest, which was a tribute to his childhood hero, George Leigh Mallory. On this occasion, Blessed reached Camp IV which, at an altitude of 8000 metres, is 2650 metres up from Everest base camp. This is the last major camp where climbers make their final preparations for the summit. It is also where exhausted climbers rest on their way down from a summit attempt. Blessed’s achievement at reaching this point was made more poignant by the fact he was dressed in same type of clothing as Mallory wore in 1924, for the sake of the film’s authenticity, and he climbed without bottled oxygen.

Blessed’s Second Everest Trek Breaks Records

Blessed returned for another Everest trek in 1993. This was the first successful commercial ascent of Everest run by the expedition company Himalayan Kingdoms, now called Mountain Kingdoms Ltd. This time Blessed came better prepared. On this occasion he was forced to turn back at an altitude of 8,595 metres, but by reaching this height at the age of 56 years, he had climbed higher than any other man of his age. It remains Blessed’s proudest moment despite his record being broken in 2003 by a climber called Yuichiro Miura.

The Dalai Lama Blesses Brian’s Everest Trek

A determined man, Blessed tried a third ascent in 1996. This time he was sent back by the expedition leader when the weather worsened. He reached about 7,680 metres, but then was advised he had gone far enough. Blessed was pragmatic: “You have to obey the rules of the mountain,” he said. While he waited for his team at Everest base camp, they were able to reach the top, and tie a scarf from the Dalai Lama to the summit pole on behalf of Brian. Brian had become friends with the Dalai Lama after meeting him on his several visits to Nepal. They even exchanged phone numbers.

Clearly his Himalaya adventures have had a profound effect on the actor. In one interview, Blessed described the impact that the scenery can have: “My favourite walk is from the Lukla airstrip just outside Kathmandu to Everest base camp.” This Everest trek would mean ascending more than 2500 metres on foot. The classic route takes you through pretty Sherpa villages and dramatic high mountain scenery. “You walk through jungles and valleys and, suddenly, the giant mountains appear through the clouds.” But his passion for the region and the mountain are summed up better by his succinct words: “Adventure is life. Everest is life.”

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run Everest Base Camp treks for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Northallerton Dummies

It’s common for people to go to unusual lengths to raise money for an Everest trek, knowing that something special awaits them when they reach the Himalayan Mountains. In August 2009, sixteen students and three teachers from Northallerton College in Yorkshire will be doing something quite original to raise money for their Everest Base Camp trek later in the year.

With all the activity and exercise of the Everest trek ahead of them, the students aim to raise money for the trip by sitting very still. A high street store in their town has hired them to assume poses in the window displays in the place of mannequins. The stunt coincides with Yorkshire Day on the 1st of August, so the students can expect to attract the attention, and hopefully the donations, of many of the locals that pass by.

Fourteeners

The Northallerton students are not the only young people in the news for their fundraising right now. In July 2009, the diminutive and fresh-faced Matt Moniz aims to ascend fourteen of Colorado’s highest mountains within two weeks to raise money and awareness for a crippling disease. He has dubbed the expedition “14 in 14″, because each of the peaks he is climbing is in excess of 14,000 feet. What makes this expedition more audacious is the fact that Matt is only eleven years old.

In the build up to this feat, he trained by trekking to Everest Base Camp. He and his father, Mike, took the variation that includes summiting the neighbouring Kala Pattar (5545m) where they got a great view overlooking Everest Base Camp. The idea of Matt’s series of climbs is to reach heights where he might experience the shortness of breath that his best friend, a Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension suffer, has to endure daily.

Having reached Everest Base Camp at 5,360 metres (17,600 ft) Matt has already ventured to altitudes beyond the ‘14ers’ he has ahead of him, but the Everest trek is a more gradual ascent than what he has ahead. Although several of Colorado’s mountains are hiking grade ascents by their easiest routes, doing one every day for two weeks is an exhausting prospect.

If they complete all fourteen of the intended peaks in a fortnight, they will have ascended vertically about the equivalent of Everest-and-a-quarter and more than twice the vertical distance from sea level to Everest Base Camp. Matt and his team, which includes the family of his sick friend, have already raised 14,000 dollars for charity, and climbing.

The Chocolate Sherpa

For 30 days earlier this year, the Belgian explorer, Louis-Philippe Loncke, led a small team on a 400km trek from Kathmandu to Everest Base Camp. Known as the ‘Crazy Belgian’ from his previous mad expeditions, Louis Philippe wanted to raise money towards setting up a much needed mobile hospital in Nepal. Apart from the distance covered, the unusual feature of this Everest trek was that it involved distributing 100 kilos of Belgian chocolate en route to the local Sherpa population and holding a high altitude chocolate tasting session when they eventually reached Everest Base Camp.

The team called themselves the Chocolate Sherpas and used their unusual mission, not only for fundraising, but also to give something back to the Sherpa people and porters who have helped support so many Everest treks over the years. Their expedition successfully reached Everest Base Camp on the 1st May and, for the many climbers and porters who were waiting there to make their summit bids, their arrival was a very tasty and welcome break from their regular routine.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the classic trek to Everest Base Camp for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

Thank you for visiting Travel Articles Directory. Feel free to use any of our travel writing articles for your own website, on the condition that you also take the link we have included in the text. Check back for more travel writing soon; we’re uploading more original travel articles all the time!

From summit pictures to those taken along the course of the Everest Base Camp Trek, the best photographs are those that capture some of the scale and beauty of the Everest landscape and transport us to places seen only by an adventurous few.

Tensing on Top of the World

Everyone will remember the iconic image of Tensing Norgay, masked and hooded with one boot on the peak of Everest, with blue daylight merging from the horizon into the darkness of space above. Above his head he is holds his ice axe, which bears the national flags of the expedition team that waits expectantly at Everest Base Camp three thousand metres beneath him. You can also see the guide rope curled at his feet which ties him to his climbing partner, who is out of shot. This photograph, of course, was taken by Edmund Hillary on May 29, 1953, just after they became the first mountaineers to reach the summit.

This is one of several striking images of Everest expeditions belonging to the Royal Geographic Society. Another powerful picture (that you can see for yourself on the National Geographic website) features Hillary and Norgay on the way up one of the steeper stages. They labour towards the camera which looks down the mountain, with the slopes twisting down behind them in giddy perspective towards the South Col and Lhotse Face below. As well as giving an impression of the steepness of the climb, this image conveys some of the effort involved in the long hard, trek from Everest Base Camp.

Reinhold Messner’s Tent

Reinhold Messner was the first recorded mountaineer to reach the summit alone and without the use of bottled oxygen. Imposing these limitations upon himself, it is no surprise that he described himself as “a single, narrow, gasping lung, floating over the mists.” This notion is depicted by one of his arresting photographs: his tent tied on a precarious outcrop of snow in the foreground with only an expanse of cloud behind, and no sign of a safe place to stand.

Part of the visual impact of these images comes from the innate difficulty in attaining them; but you don’t have to be a professional photographer – or even a mountaineer – to take a breathtaking shot of Mount Everest. Internet photo sharing sites like Flickr contain a bounty of amateur snaps taken along the Everest Base Camp Trek trails and at Base Camp itself. They show that anyone has the potential to catch the world’s mightiest mountain in a good light, emerging from the mist, or cutting an impressive silhouette from the sky.

If you like the idea of gathering your own photo diary of an unforgettable adventure, then you should investigate the classic Everest Base Camp Trek, with the chance to see Mount Everest with your own eyes, and take some memorable photographs.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the Everest Base Camp Trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

The most daring stunt aiming to influence the Copenhagen summit from Everest’s summit had been planned by an Indian expedition. They intended to draw attention to the effects of global warming by skiing from Everest’s peak down to Everest Base Camp and, in doing so, set a high-altitude skiing record. Unfortunately, an increase in avalanche risk from heavy snows meant they had to abandon the expedition.

Base Camp Swim Trek

In April 2010, a hardy individual and adventurer, called Lewis Gordon Pugh, is planning to use his courage to help the environmental cause in Nepal. Lewis is a long-distance swimmer who has previously demonstrated his remarkable constitution and determination by swimming in the sub-zero Arctic Ocean. He put up with the intense cold on that occasion to draw media attention to the receding icecaps, and intends to stage a similar publicity stunt at Everest next year to draw attention to the disappearing glaciers in the Himalaya and worldwide.

Wearing only trunks and goggles, he will swim a kilometre in the Khumbu Glacier’s lake, close to Everest Base Camp. Lewis expects the experience will be “excruciating”, and points out that there aren’t facilities to take a hot shower on the mountain. There will be a dinghy accompanying him on his freezing swim in case he gets into difficulty, and Lewis has enlisted the help of some Sherpas to haul the escort boat along the Everest Base Camp Trek trail to the lake.

Everest Biker

As part of an ongoing odyssey, Japanese cyclist Keiichi Iwasaki has shown he is the ultimate green traveller, setting an example for everyone. Keiichi has been travelling around the world for years, but has been doing it entirely under his own steam: by bicycle. During his eight-year journey, he has travelled through thirty seven countries and had amazing experiences, all at a low cost to the planet and his pocket.

One of the stops on his grand tour was Nepal, where Keiichi diverted his round-the-world bicycle trek to Everest Base Camp so he could summit the world’s tallest mountain. He successfully reached the peak of Everest in 2005, having clearly developed the necessary stamina and lung power from all those hours of cycling. Because of this, Keiichi has earned the curious accolade of being the only man known to have journeyed from sea-level to the top of Everest unassisted, in other words, using just his own power.

The Everest Trekking Environment

Despite concerns for its preservation, the Everest landscape is far from ruined. It remains an incredibly beautiful and varied environment that changes visibly at different altitudes; something that can be witnessed on the many trekking routes through the Himalayan countryside.

These treks are predominantly led by Nepalese guides who take pride in their country and its maintenance, and come from communities living along the Everest Base Camp Trek trails, communities that have learned to have a limited impact on their surroundings. It’s a lesson the rest of the world needs to learn in order to preserve our planet’s most breathtaking and vulnerable environments.

Jude Limburn Turner is the Marketing Manager for Mountain Kingdoms, an adventure tour company who have run the Everest Base Camp Trek for over 20 years. They now offer treks and tours worldwide, including destinations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

In May 2009, Sir Ranulph Fiennes finally achieved his ambition of reaching the summit of Mount Everest, having tried the Everest trekking routes up both the Tibetan and Nepalese sides of the mighty mountain. It was the culmination of a long-running charitable effort in which he raised huge amounts of money for Marie Curie Cancer care. It has been a cause close to his heart after Ranulph’s wife and several of his family members died from Cancer within a period of a few months.

Sir Ranulph’s accomplishments, which have always been startling, were even more remarkable with these Everest trekking expeditions because of his age and his state of health while he was climbing. At the age of 65 years, Fiennes is the oldest Britain to have reached the summit and the first pensioner.

His Everest adventure began in 2003 when he began preparing for a 2005 summit attempt from the Tibetan side of Everest. His first challenge was to prove that, at the age of 60 and recovering from cardiac surgery, he was strong enough even to attempt the mountain. After a series of trial mountain climbs and training expeditions Fiennes was passed fit for Everest. Nonetheless, because of a troublesome medical condition, he had to wear a gas mask while sleeping at base camp. Everest was clearly going to be one of his greater challenges.

On his first summit bid he suffered serious chest pains and considered himself lucky to get back down the mountain alive, having to rely on emergency medication to keep his heart working. In 2008 he tried again, but again, due to exhaustion, didn’t make it. But Sir Ranulph was a determined man, even spending his honeymoon with his second wife at Everest Base Camp.

In 2009, he tried a third time, taking a route up the South East Ridge from the Nepal side of Everest. Because of his health issues, Fiennes was well-placed to appreciate the difference in altitude between the Advance Base Camp in Tibet (at 6500 metres) and the Nepalese Everest Base Camp (5,380 metres), calling the latter “a far healthier launch point for the summit.” To keep him healthy, Fiennes was kept separate from other climbers at base camp to avoid catching a virus.

During the climb, Fiennes relied heavily on the skills and encouragement of his Sherpa co-climber, Thundu. They established a slow, steady pace out of Everest Base Camp, and Fiennes rested as much as he could at the camps along the route. Despite his uncertain health, and his difficulties in holding an ice axe properly because of his missing fingertips (that is another story), they made it to the summit of Everest on May 21st 2009.

When he returned to Everest Base Camp, exhausted, he told reporters what he had seen at the zenith of his Everest trekking adventure: “It felt like you could dive into the clouds,” he said. He could see “the sickle moon and stars everywhere.”

Not bad for a man with a fear of heights.

Kirsty Parsons is the Marketing Coordinator for Everest Base Camp Trek, an adventure website which features the classic trek to Everest Base Camp as well as several alternative Everest trekking routes in the Himalayan region.