You Can't Possibly Imagine

For the first few weeks you are always cold on Everest. Russell does all he can to make you feel comfortable, which is when you really start appreciating that you are on his expedition, not one of the smaller, less-equipped affairs you see all around.

Some people complain that Russell is too large and his expedition too easy. But all he does is attempt to keep you well-fed and as rested as possible, because once on the mountain, you need every little bit of strength you can muster to get up and down again alive. And that's the one thing Russell can't give you. You have to climb the mountain yourself — he just gives you the backup so that if things do go wrong, someone will notice and take care of you, rather than your attempt quietly becoming another tragic statistic.

One of the best things I discovered at Base Camp was that getting into your sleeping bag at night with all your synthetic clothing and layered thermals creates an amazing static electricity storm in your tent. At first I thought I was seeing things — who knows what side effects the altitude has? But I soon realized that if I moved around, tiny bolts of lightning would streak across my sleeping bag. I felt like a character out of the X-Men.

The light show, however, didn't detract from the fact that even rolling over in your sleep would leave you out of breath, and inevitably you would repeatedly wake up throughout the night needing to pee. As your body acclimatizes it changes the pH of your blood and increases the number of red blood cells it contains — the consequences of which are that you need to drink huge amounts of liquid and you develop a weaker bladder than your grandmother.

Another highlight of those initial weeks was when Mark Inglis gave Tilly, a local Sherpa, the ability to walk. Both of them lost their legs to frostbite around 20 years ago in very similar circumstances. While Mark had gone on to win medals in the Sydney Paralympics, Tilly had spent that entire time walking around on his knees with a pair of car tires for feet.

I don't think there was a dry eye at Base Camp the day that Mark helped Tilly to stand up for the first time on an old pair of prosthetic limbs he had given him. Within minutes Tilly and Mark were taking steps around camp holding on to each other, grinning from ear to ear and not a single leg between them.

Before long most people began to feel almost normal again. Of course, this could only mean one thing — we would soon be moving higher and we would return to feeling like we had a permanent hangover, even though we hadn't drunk a drop.

The two-day trek up to Advanced Base Camp (ABC) was, without doubt, one of the hardest slogs I have ever put my body through. It was physically so exhausting — just a nonstop, relentless trudge with no respite. You think that if you stop and take a breather you will recover, but no, you barely catch your breath and when you try and walk again, you are just as tired as when you stopped. Ridiculous really, as it all looks so innocuous, but that's the problem with altitude and a lack of oxygen — you can't see that it's not there.

Even after a week at ABC (21,000 feet), my blood-oxygen saturation was still hovering around the high 60s, a percentage that would have you instantly placed in intensive care should you turn up at an ER hospital at sea level.

Once we were at ABC, the filming started in earnest. Every day we would force ourselves up and about to film a little bit of life around the camp, an interview with one of the climbers or an acclimatization trek that someone was doing. Mustering the energy was tough as your body wanted nothing more than to remain inert as it coped with the alien environment.

Next: This Is Real and It's No Joke