Everest

Everest had been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I had a poster of the mountain hanging on my bedroom wall. Now I was finally going there.

I'd already summited Annapurna on April 18 and Makalu on May 3. After eight days recovering in Kathmandu, we flew by helicopter on May 12 via Lukla and Dingboche, arriving at Everest Base Camp around 10am.

Coming directly from Makalu meant I was already acclimatised, so there was no need for the traditional Everest rotations. After a few days at Base Camp, Pechhumbe Sherpa and I left on the evening of May 16 and pushed directly to Camp 2.

Our original plan was to summit on May 20, but so was everyone else's. With huge numbers of climbers moving up the mountain, we deliberately spent an extra day at Camp 2 to let the crowds get ahead of us.

It proved to be the right decision.

INTO THE DEATH ZONE

On May 19, we climbed from Camp 2 to Camp 3 in around three hours, gaining roughly 700 metres on the Lhotse Face.

The following morning we left Camp 3 around 5am. Most climbers had departed several hours earlier, but within an hour or two we'd caught much of the traffic below the Yellow Band.

Passing Lhotse Camp 4, we cached oxygen for our planned Lhotse attempt and I crossed paths with my friend Saeed, who had just summited Lhotse.

We reached Everest Camp 4 at around 3pm.

The South Col is a strange place, a little city at almost 8,000 metres filled with tents, oxygen cylinders, climbers and an unbelievable amount of trash.

There I also caught up with Cris from Train to Summit, who had just returned from Everest's summit.

Then we ate, prepared our equipment and waited.

While most teams departed around 5pm, we held back until shortly after 9pm.

Above us was already a long trail of headlamps stretching toward the Balcony.

THE SUMMIT

We quickly caught the back of the queue and began overtaking where it was safe.

At around 1:30am we reached the Balcony. Rather than stopping with everyone else, we continued through, briefly crossing paths with Victor and his Sherpa, Narwung.

By 4am we were below the South Summit watching an incredible sunrise over the Himalayas.

I felt great. We were warm, moving quickly and everything was going to plan.

At around 7am we reached the Hillary Step, where descending climbers created a short bottleneck. After about 15 minutes, we were through.

A little after 8:30am on May 21, I stepped onto the summit of Mount Everest.

A few tears rolled down my face beneath my goggles.

I'd finally done it.

The mountain that had been on my bedroom wall as a kid was now beneath my feet.

After another team descended, Pechhumbe and I had the summit completely to ourselves for around fifteen minutes.

For one tiny moment, I was standing higher than every other person on the planet.

Then the next climbers began arriving.

It was time to descend.

8,744 METRES

Near the South Summit, I noticed a Sherpa moving incredibly slowly. He was unstable on his feet and, more concerningly, wasn't clipped into the fixed line on a knife-edge traverse.

I moved carefully past him, asked if he was okay and received almost no response.

I sat him down, clipped him safely into the line and began trying to work out what was wrong.

He was showing clear signs of severe hypoxia.

His oxygen cylinder still had around 150 psi, so I checked his mask. It was heavily iced and wasn't delivering oxygen properly.

We repeatedly tried clearing it. I used my knife to chip ice from the exhaust, but it continued freezing again.

At 8,744 metres, a seemingly small equipment failure was rapidly becoming life-threatening.

Eventually we contacted Victor's team by radio. They had a spare mask, and once a replacement mask and fresh oxygen arrived, Pemba began responding quickly.

Within about fifteen minutes he was back on his feet. Other Sherpas were there to assist him down, and once they had the situation under control, I continued my descent.

MORE THAN A SUMMIT

I arrived back at Camp 4 at around 7pm.

In less than 24 hours I'd fulfilled one of my biggest lifelong ambitions and then been reminded, only a few hundred vertical metres below the summit, just how quickly things can go wrong at extreme altitude.

Everest was a major objective for me, part of the Seven Summits, part of my journey through the world's 8,000-metre peaks, and a mountain I'd dreamed about since I was a kid.

Standing on top was everything I'd hoped it would be.

But that day also reinforced something much more important:

The summit is only half the climb.