Everest, Friday 3 August, 2007
Most like you'll as be wondering what I'm doing writing outdoors
diary from roughly 8,000 metres on world's highest peak. Well,
happens that 2007 is 40th anniversary of my sponsors Mounting
Excitement, and to mark the occasion, they approached me and asked me
to attempt ascent of Everest, dressed in exact same clothes as their
first sponsored climber, the legendary Sir Crispin Bodington.
Naturally, after some gentle financial persuasion, I agreed and
set off for Nepal. However it weren't until I'd reached Everest Base
Camp that I realised magnitude of task in front of me. Not only, did
it transpire, were Bodington's clothes unfeasibly tight, but he also
wore frilly underwear with lacy bits.
I were faced with a huge moral problem - did I wear my own M&S
grundies or, true to the spirit of the recreation of Bodington's
legendary ascent, don the exact same lingerie that the great man
himself favoured.
That night I wrestled with the dilemma, three sherpas and a large
Austrian matron who tripped over my guy ropes. The next morning, with
a heavy heart, I called Mounting Excitement's marketing guru Gary
Giblet, and told him I would wear the clothing.
I don't mind telling you, I were petrified. If locals at
Muckthwaite Arms ever found out I'd worn women's underwear on
Everest, my reputation would be in tatters. More prosaically, I found
the outfit strangely restrictive, yet curiously exciting in a way I
couldn't really explain, but which almost caused me to
absent-mindedly stroll into a crevasse the size of Muckthwaite in
middle of Khumbu ice fall.
Fortunately I were saved by my Sherpa companion, Am Bodach, the
very same legendary climber who accompanied Bodington himself and
still surprisingly spritely for an 86-year-old. As we climbed
steadily upwards, the wizened old Sherpa told me takes of that first
climb with the Great Man of British Mountaineering himself.
'This,' he said - somewhat unconvincingly I thought - 'is where
Bodington, sir, stopped to play cricket mid-way through the ice
fall.' And, pointing at another spot, he declared it the site of a
phlegmatic high altitude picnic and the spot where Bodington had
wrestled a yeti to the ground after it stole a cucumber sandwich.
Something, I thought, didn't reet ring true, but it weren't until
we were tucked up in Bodington's ancient orange ridge tent at site of
camp 2 that the veteran Sherpa dropped his bombshell. Fortunately I
were able to unzip tent entrance and gulp in fresh air, or
consequences could have been dire, what with thin air and all...
More from higher oop the mountain next week.
Alfred Todger
