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Nepalese climbers of the Everest region, would assist with the logistics on the mountain. Different expeditions would employ different Sherpas, but as with most factors on a mountain such as
Everest, everyone would mingle and work together. This, in many ways, is the strength of the climbing fraternity.
    For the Sherpas, climbing runs through their blood, and because of having been born at a high altitude, they climb with the strength of ten men. They became close friends by the end, and are
truly some of the most wonderful people I have ever met.
    Organizing these logistics though was a massive undertaking, but what would have taken all of us months of negotiations, Henry had a knack of being able to arrange in his sleep. He just quietly
got things done.

    The last weekend before leaving I went down once more to the Brecon Beacons with some friends. We walked all day, threw a rugby ball around in the evening, and slept in a sheep
pen during the night. It was bliss.
    A few days later we had a send-off party, for sponsors and journalists to attend. Throughout the whole evening though I began to feel this anxiety. It was all happening very fast now, almost too
fast. Part of me wasn’t even sure that I really wanted to go at all. The champagne flowed, speeches were made, but as I sat through it all, looking at all my friends chatting away and
laughing, I felt hollow. I’d never experienced this sort of loneliness. Even though here I was surrounded by all those I loved, part of me felt so alone. In forty-eight hours’ time I
would leave all of this far behind.
    A radio station rang me the next day and asked for an interview. They said that they would like to do it on the morning show at 6.05 a.m. I gulped. I’m bad in the mornings at the best of
times, but at 6.05 . . .
    Early the next day, the phone rang; I sipped my morning cup of tea, and prepared myself for the questions. They ran thick and fast, and soon it was over. ‘Easy.’ In fact I even
thought that I had done rather well. Ten minutes later though, the phone rang again. They said that I had sounded fast asleep and would I mind waking up and doing it again in twenty minutes. I
apologized profusely, slurped two strong cups of coffee, and tried again – a bit more coherently. All was OK, and I consoled myself with the thought that first time round it must have been a
crackly line.
    The interviewer, though, had raised an issue amongst his many questions that I had been asked over and over again. He had commented that he always believed it wasn’t possible for people in
their twenties to be able to cope with the adverse effects of high altitudes; hence all well-known climbers tended to be in their thirties or forties, and never much younger.
    I couldn’t argue against this. It did always seem to be that the stereotyped climber was bearded and haggard. Well, I might have been haggard but I certainly wasn’t bearded; in fact
all I could really grow was a couple of grandma’s whiskers on my chin. Maybe their assumptions were right. Maybe Everest was only for the hairy and older climbers. But there seemed nothing I
could do about this, apart from believe Mallory when he said that ‘climbing Everest is all about heart.’ It seemed that this was the only card I had to play.
    My last evening, I promised to go and have a drink with a friend. I bustled along on my old 1920s Dutch push-bike to a seedy bar in the depths of night-time London, and joined the queue to get
in. It was heaving with people. The queue stretched right round the corner, and hardly seemed to be moving at all. I joined the end and waited in the chilly night. Eventually as I got closer to the
door and was standing against the window of the bar, I spotted my mate inside. He was swaying from side to side, with beautiful girls draped all over him. I shivered in the cold.
    He spotted me in the queue, and sidled over to the window. We tried to talk through the fogged up glass, but I