In April, I climbed my final Wainwright. I bagged all 214 summits in 11 months. It’s safe to say that I spend a huge amount of time outside!
I love the whole process of spending time outdoors, from planning a trip to the final push to the summit.
If you haven’t planned a hike, it’s a lot like planning a holiday but you get to do it every weekend. For me, the ritual starts with mapping out a route, obsessively checking the weather and packing my gear the night before. On the day of the hike, I creep out of the house before dawn and drive down deserted country lanes as the sun rises, watching the beams stride across the mountains; I’m always shocked that anyone would want to sleep through this spectacular light show.
Then there’s the hike itself. Yes, there’s blood, sweat and occasional tears but there’s also an enormous sense of accomplishment and a calm that’s hard to find anywhere else. When I’m focusing on where to put my foot next and only stopping to occasionally take in the view, everything else shuts up. Any background noise, the constant urge to check your phone and those niggling anxieties, all disappear. And that silence, that peace, is extraordinary.
I’m fairly certain that marching through the wilderness keeps me sane.
There have definitely been moments when I’ve wished I had another, perhaps warmer, indoor hobby. I’ve hiked through persistent rain, reached summits in zero visibility, battled through snow storms and been knocked to the ground by gale force winds. But it’s always a short-lived complaint; I’ve never returned from a hike and not started thinking about the next one.
I came across this quote the other day, “The climb speaks to our character, but the view, I think, to our souls.”
Perhaps that’s all I’m trying to say. Reaching a summit makes me feel completely alive and free. The climb to the summit is often only a day or two, but I know these feelings are going to stay with me forever.
And one day, when I can't climb mountains anymore, I’m going to trace my finger across a map, remember all those summits and all those views and think, damn, I did all of that.
