In September Adam, in the company of Jenko, Ryan, and Stew, is going to Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I am much in awe of his drive and strength and determination. I’m the outdoor type in an amble-through-an autumn-park-followed-by-a-punt-on-the-lake sort of way; his type of outdoors is trekking up a mountain and white-water rafting back down. The sort of thing that requires "kit".

To test their fitness and begin getting in shape for the expedition (and I feel that the magnitude of the Kilimanjaro trip warrants the term expedition – it’s not often one can use it without sounding like a nineteenth-century natural philosopher) they undertook some training exercises, beginning with the Yorkshire three peaks, the three highest hills meant to be climbed in twelve hours. Adam, being experienced in these matters, as I know from countless nostalgic reminisces from his boyhood in the scouts, was prepared with suitable clothing (warm, lightweight, waterproof) and sufficient food to power the walk.

Jenko, although seemingly prepared, had come in trainers, which lasted exactly seven minutes before being saturated with bog, and Aneesh, for reasons quite unknown, turned up for a twelve-hour hike, in this:

He didn’t even cut arm holes. He explained this using the cunning logic that arm holes would let the rain in. He fitted the binbag over his rucksack so that from the front he looked a standard insane person but from the side he was also a hunchback. For sustenance he had brought a box of Jaffa cakes. Even a limp snail with a weak chest wouldn’t get far on Jaffa cakes.


Consequently, after ten hours and with twelve miles still to go only Adam was in any fit state to keep walking and needed a thorough stream of rousing encouragement to coax the others the rest of the way round. Stew’s legs were aching so much that he walked the last four miles sideways.


Incidentally, all the outdoor wear featured in today’s post is available from the boys’ online catalogue:

It is Stew that concerns me regarding the Kilimanjaro trip. To begin with, he is afraid of heights. Mountain climbing, though the final objective is to achieve a large amount of height, is not the same as staring into the blank void over the edge of a precipice and seeing Death himself waiting for you at the bottom – if there was a net he’s moved it.

I myself do not like heights and I know that the unsteady, unsafe, sick nervousness in the stomach is edge related. If the height is tapered, such as in a hill situation, it is entirely different and you do not feel as if you might suddenly plunge through open air, gravity snatching you back to solid Earth, and life spiralling away from you.

I was not born with a fear of heights and neither did I aim to achieve it; it was thrust upon me quite suddenly one day and as a short aside I will relate the tale.

Abseiling should be a sport in favour of the vertigo sufferer because the more you do it, the closer you get to the ground. The difficult part is the beginning.

When I was 16 my mother, father, and I decided to take part in an abseil down Manchester Town Hall, to raise money and awareness for the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB). This was a big deal for Mum as she already had her fear of heights – mine, little did I know, was awaiting me at the top where it would introduce itself and pledge never to be separated from me from that day forward.

I signed up to do the abseil as the RNIB is a charity close to home. I’d done abseiling as a child and barely gave it a second thought until the day in May dawned bright and clear. We arrived at the Town Hall, which was thronging with participants, spectators, organizers, St. John’s ambulance, the police, and the press. My first mistake of the day was to look up. Manchester Town Hall is 285 feet (87 metres) tall. I could barely see the platform we would be descending from.

An overwhelming rush of nausea gripped me and all colour, nerve, and hope for the future left my body. Before I knew what was happening I was in the lift with ten other people, my parents included. Dad was completely relaxed and actually looking forward to it; Mum was in some kind of calming trance that she had been practising for weeks beforehand and was channelling her energy and aura into her positive zones or something like that. So nervous was I that I had to stop the lift halfway up, where my ears had begun to pop, to suffer five minutes of dry heaves over the toilet.

I can only think that it was some element of machismo that pressed me back into the lift and out onto the ledge for it was certainly not for the cause – all my do-gooding instincts had got back into the van while we were still on the ground being ticked off the list at the registration table.

Out on the ledge, we were harnessed up and lined up to climb onto the platform, which was jutting out over the edge of the building, on some entirely precarious-looking, or so it appeared to me, scaffolding. I was behind Dad, who was clapping his hands together and urging the queue forward, and in front of Mum, who was pressed back against the wall inside her circle of safety. In a regretful, unthinking moment, I made my second mistake: I looked down. The people on the ground were tiny dots and I could see all the way to France. I believe I began to swoon at this point but the two guys running the operation, whose names floated past my ears, took this movement as an indication of my eagerness to begin and pulled me up. They planted my feet on the edge and leaned me out. I think I must have been resisting as they laughed and told me to relax.

“I don’t feel safe” I stammered out. My legs were shaking so violently that they pulled me back in and told me to take some deep breaths. I suppose he was trying to reassure me when one of them said “Even if you wanted to kill yourself now you couldn’t. Look!” and yanked the rope up and down to demonstrate how securely fastened I was.

There was only one way down from this point and I had to hurry up and come to terms with it. I leaned back out over the edge and breathed deeply. Just then I heard “Sophie! Are you coming or what, I’m waiting for you!"

I looked down behind me: Dad was paused some thirty feet below, clutching his rope. “Ok! Er…coming!” I managed to call back, and that was what made me go. The two guys looked quite relieved and gave me smiling encouragement. I don’t think they’d had to deal with anyone breaking out a panic attack on the edge and weren’t sure what to do. They saw me set off, glad to see the back of me, or the top of my head at least, and turned to begin preparing the next person –which was Mum.

I made my way steadily down the wall, thinking about nothing but what I’d been told about paying out the rope. I caught up with Dad, who was on a rope parallel to mine and we slowly descended together. I was breathing hard, my heart hammering in my chest. I began to descend quicker and quicker until finally I could hear people and traffic and dogs barking and police sirens, and cheering and clapping. I hit the ground with a thud. I stood up wobbly, untangled myself from the rope, and burst into tears.

I’ve had a fear of heights ever since.

A few days later we were in the local paper as the brave family trio doing our bit for charity. The photographer wanted action in the picture and so set up a shot in the garden, which involved us clutching the ropes of my sister’s swings whilst wearing bicycle helmets and trying to look as if we were suspended off the edge of the Town Hall. I did point out that had the photographer actually come to the Town Hall last Sunday he could have taken a real picture like all the other newspapers but he ignored this, instead snapping away and barking orders:

“Come on, make it look as if you’re abseiling for christsake!”

“How do we do that?” asked Mum. It was hard to keep a straight face. Rather than looking pumped full of adrenalin and rearing to throw ourselves over a legde, which I suppose is what he wanted to see, we felt immensely silly, a feeling not helped by him zooming in and out and trying to keep the sandpit out of the shot.

“Smile like you’re high!”

“Like on drugs, you mean?” asked Dad, contorting his face into an arrangement he imagined portrayed him as suitably spaced out. The photographer heaved a resounding sigh that suggested his artistic integrity was being compromised, and departed.

The abseil down Manchester Town Hall was over six years ago now but I have never got over it.

Reasons why I would not climb Kilimanjaro are manifold but fear of heights would not be among them. Stew, however, suffers even on mountains and I commend him most highly for confronting his fears so completely. However, I’m not sure it’s entirely wise as this is what happened when they went climbing for a few days in the Alps.

Stew did not cope well with the altitude and the incline and spent much of the trip on his hands and knees, not daring to stand for fear of bobsleighing to a slushy demise at the bottom of the mountain. The others strolled up as if scaling a steep hill and left Stew at the bottom when things got serious in a way that necessitated the use of crampons and a pickaxe.

Stew, having bought a £400 rucksack and a pair of boots handmade by Edmund Hilary’s grandma, seems to be taking it very seriously even though, as we discussed one evening in the pub, he isn’t aiming for the top.

“Surely you’ll want to make it to the top? You’re going all that way!”

“I know but in a way it’s more satisfying not to get to the top. Do you know what I mean?”

I didn’t. He then went on with his latest insistence that the less healthy the climber, the easier the climb.

“Seriously, it’s easier if you’re not fit. That’s why I’ve stopped going to the gym.”

“What happened to your personal trainer?” I asked. Stew had been paying £30 a session for someone that he insisted wasn’t a personal trainer—he didn’t need one—but a health advisor.

“She was a health advisor, not a personal trainer. And it got too expensive.”

“How can it be easier if you’re not fit? That makes no sense at all” said Adam, looking at me and mouthing the words the book.

“Well it is according to the book.”

“What book?” I asked. There’s always a book.

“This one!” He pulled out Kilimanjaro: The Gentlemen's Route and passed it to Adam.

“Page 48.”

An exasperated sigh from Adam. “Stew, it says that often people who are really fit tend to rush and do too much too quickly. People with a lower level of fitness pace themselves better and consequently have a smoother climb. In no way does it claim it’s easier if you’re unfit.

“I’m reading between the lines mate.”

He’s incorrigible! I really hope he makes it to the top – I feel as if my own fear of heights is somehow tied to his and that if he makes it, it will be a triumph for both of us. Which will save me a trip to Tanzania.