PICTURES: Inverness friends achieve dream of climbing 5,364 metres to Mount Everest base camp – and raise £13,000 for Highland Hospice
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Two Inverness pals have peaked together to conquer a lifetime's ambition by scaling Mount Everest to base camp – raising a mountainous £13,000 for Highland Hospice.
David Philips, an operations manager with Asda, and offshore worker Ryan Mann flew out to Lukla in Nepal last month to complete preparations for a 12-day trek to the iconic Everest south base camp.
The term base camp is misleading.
A traditional resting point for climbers to acclimatise and avoid altitude sickness, the Nepal base camp sits at 5,364 metres (17,598 ft) – just short of four times the height of Ben Nevis.
The 40-year-olds made it there at 1.14pm on Monday this week, overcoming some extremely tough moments during the ascent.
While they never intended tackling the full 8,848 metres (29,031 ft) of the earth’s highest peak above sea level, the gutsy 40-year-olds later made it to the summit of Kala Pathar (5,545m).
RELATED: Inverness friends' Mount Everest base camp challenge for Highland Hospice
New dad David said: “Myself and Ryan are absolutely buzzing with the achievement as we’ve both long dreamed of making it here one day.
“Our fundraising went amazingly also with us raising almost 13k for the hospice and I can’t thank everyone who has contributed and encouraged us enough over the last year and a half.”
The day after their long climb to base camp, the pair were up at 4am and out into a temperature of -19c with two of their Sherpa team to attempt to summit Kala Pathar.
David added: “I don’t mind saying this was really difficult with the altitude,wind, temperature and not much sleep.
“But to get that close to the top of the world and see the sun come up was absolutely epic and gave us a real sense of achievement.
“This is the closest I’ll ever get to the summit of Mount Everest but, given how difficult it was, I’m quite happy with that.”
Ryan, who has two daughters, added: “I have two amazing girls that have a passion for adventure, so this challenge of reaching base camp of our planet's highest peak is a great way of showing them, and everyone else, that anything is possible if you work hard and put your mind to it."
The fundraising page can be found here.
