大象传媒 Scotland - 大象传媒 Scotland - The youngest Briton to summit Everest from both the north and south sides explains why getting to the top is only half the battle

The youngest Briton to summit Everest from both the north and south sides explains why getting to the top is only half the battle

16 November 2017

In May 2017 26-year-old Mollie Hughes from Edinburgh became .

The descent is where people die, where they get in to trouble

Mollie Hughes

what it’s like to reach the top of the world.

“It’s incredible, says Mollie. You’re higher than every other piece of land, you can see the whole of the Himalayas sprawled out beneath you.

“You’re exhausted and you’re completely shattered but taking it in is incredible.”

But the celebrations can’t last for too long, according to Mollie, because you still have to get back down through the mountain’s infamous ‘death zone’.

This is the area above 8000 metres where exhaustion and lack of oxygen have contributed to the deaths of many climbers and sherpas.

“In your mind you can never think of reaching the top as the achievement, you think ‘that’s great we’ve got there, but now we’ve got to turn our focus and really concentrate on this descent’.

“The descent is where people die, where they get in to trouble.”

Mollie Hughes approaching the summit of Mount Everest in May 2017

Acclimatising to Everest’s potentially life-threatening conditions is not quick or straightforward.

Looking up to the summit

It took Mollie five weeks to complete the ascent.

“It’s a case of yo-yo-ing up and down the mountain,” she says.

“You can’t go from base camp at the bottom all the way to the summit because you’d be so ill your head would basically explode!

“So you slowly acclimatise. You go up to camp one, you come back to base camp and you rest for a few days.

“By the time you get to camp three you’re so physically exhausted you’re not fully acclimatised yet.

“With going down to base camp and resting for a week or so, the next time you’re up there you’re going to be in the right frame of mind [and] physically, hopefully, be able to get up there.”