Everest The Easy Way

As part of the Keswick Mountain Festival, the Wainwright Society challenged its members to collectively climb Everest – the easy way!

Everest at 29,035 ft is roughly 10 times higher than Skiddaw at 3,054 ft so every 10 ascents of Skiddaw equals one ascent of Everest from sea level.

For a more personal challenge, I walk up Skiddaw 10 times between Saturday 12th and Sunday 20th May 2007 to claim my own ‘ascent’ of Everest.

Participants were asked to donate a minimum of five pounds to Keswick Mountain Rescue Team (KMRT) for each ascent. So I donated my £50 in advance in anticipation of completing my challenge.

I walked 85 miles and ascended 30,085 feet during the week and discovered ways up and down Skiddaw that I had not done before, taking a total of 40 hours and 15 minutes. All the routes offered something different, the low point was ascending the ‘Tourist Path’ from Keswick on Thursday with the cloud base at 1,600 feet ensuring I did not get any views. The most enjoyable was the Ullock Pike / Long Side ridge and I was surprised by the ascent up Skiddaw’s northwest ridge (Skiddaw 15 in Wainwright’s guide) which was a lot easier than I expected and gave great views over the Solway Firth into Scotland.

The weather ranged from clear blue skies to gale force winds and driving hail in the week showing that even in May you have to be prepared for the worst on a mountain like Skiddaw, the top just seems to attract the wind!

Many thanks for all the very generous donations from visitors to my website, friends, family and work colleagues, I have sent the £876 collected to Keswick Mountain Rescue Team in addition to the £50 I donated myself.