So, here I am, 50 years old in July, a family doctor in the northwest of England, with an overdraft rivalling the size of my stomach, and a dream that I'm stubbornly holding on to that has exceeded my grasp so far after two previous attempts. I want to stand on the top of Everest. What am I doing???

I've always been happiest in hills and mountains, despite growing up in the flat south of England. My interest was developed after scout camps in North Wales, and from a precocious age I discovered some aptitude to match my affinity, so off I went. If it wasn't for my parallel competing drive to study medicine I think I'd have pursued climbing as a total way of life, but I found medicine all consuming through my youth, along with later marriage, the birth of my two sons, and the improvement of our medical practice in the sunny(?) Lake District. Throughout this period of my life, mountains were reduced increasingly to a minor hobby, with so much time pressure to do other things.

    Everest dream begins

I guess I had the first of a subsequent series of mid-life crises once settled in the area, precipitated by an invitation to help guide visually impaired climbers to Mera Peak, in Nepal, then little-known, though around 6500m in height. I had a broad base of previous mountaineering experience at that time, including significant alpine outings, and felt competent enough to wish to stretch myself in the Himalaya, at greater altitude. As a family man, I had certainly noticed a new attitude to risk-taking, and felt more drawn to the challenges of endurance rather than technique. Like most of us, I'd been drawn by the Everest struggles of the 1920's, 30's, and then 50's, and from an early age had always wondered how it would feel high in the Himalayan-sized mountains.
The trip to Mera, and a similar trip a couple of years later to trek in Nepal,again with the visually impaired, really set me thinking about trying greater high altitude challenges. This was made possible for a part-time mountaineer like myself by the development around that time of commercial expeditions in their various guises. I was drawn to a double headed trip to Shishapangma and Cho Oyu, 14th and 6th highest mountains in the world, at a time when few climbers had summited two 8000m peaks in the same season. Ambitious? Me? I vaguely thought that if I performed reasonably well on that trip, then maybe, just maybe, I'd look towards Everest one day. My Everest dream was thus born.

I did reasonably well on that first double trip, with minimal training, but turned down just short of the summit of Shishapangma at 7800m. Later, with some broken ribs, in a small group of five in alpine style, alone on the mountain as the monsoon approached, we retreated honorably from Cho Oyu too. I learned a great deal about altitude on that trip, but not quite enough about myself. So in 1998 I returned to Cho Oyu, having trained more seriously, and eventually turned down at 7400m in extreme cold from a steep variation on the normal route(avalanche risk on the normal way), and very much affected by the tragic death of a climber from another group on the mountain...a family man like myself. At that stage my Everest dream was in tatters. I thought I shouldn't take the risk.
This loss of confidence didn't put me off somewhat smaller hills, and trips to India to 6500m peaks such as Nanda Ghunti and Shivling revealed to me that although those sort of mountains had a manageable challenge, in relative comfort, for me, I was still inexorably drawn back to the special test set by more extreme altitude.
I then decided the risk of Everest was acceptable after all, not least because of the improving safety record on the peak, the increasing age and maturity of my sons, and the sad demise of my marriage. This latter development was not related directly to my mountain activities, but I don't suppose they helped things.

             Everest 2004 and 2006

So in 2004, with the kind support of my many partner's at work, I attempted Everest from the north with Dave Pritt's Adventure Peak's support. This provided another great learning experience, and a great trip all round, but the vagaries of weather forecasting in the mountains lead to us picking the wrong weather window in which to try and summit, and I turned down at 7760m in poor conditions. This experience didn't really help me to decide if I had the necessary strength to summit, so in 2006 I took the opportunity to return to the mountain, this time from the south, with the services of Henry Todd's Ice8000 organization.
That was another fine expedition, with even more learning, but sadly I turned back from 8650m in really good conditions ,due to persisting sleepiness and slow progress. I persuaded myself at the time that I had insufficient time to summit safely,a decision I have thought about a great deal since, of course. I now know I had more time than I realised, and I had descended in decent style too, so I have to say I've had considerable anguish subsequently about not pressing on that sunny day.

           Everest 2008...the final chance

After a period of reflection, I eventually decided to ask my long-suffering work partners for one more opportunity to try for the summit, in my 50th year, and with distinctly fading fitness. They kindly agreed, and here I am, both nervous and excited about trying to put everything I've learned in the mountains to good use for one big effort.
This time I will have three friends attempting it with me, again from the south, and again using Henry Todd's help.These are Ray Smith, Greg Roberts and Andre Zlattinger.
I met Ray in on the 2004 trip, and Greg was ready to try Everest in 2002, but became ill before departure and had to cancel. Andre subsequently tried from the north and turned down from high on the ridge, so you can see that we all have had our various disappointments with respect to this mountain. I'm certain that our mutual support throughout this next trip will help us all in one way or another, and hopefully increase our chances of success. I look forward to sharing their company. They will hopefully contribute to this site from time to time.

              Reflections on a dream

Having come so near to summiting Everest in my middle age, I now know that in my stronger, younger years I would probably have coped somewhat better on the mountain (though I couldn't have afforded to be there!), but those prime years have definitely gone for me, and I have to do what I can with my ailing body as it is now. It only ails in the sense that I have had a severe back problem over the last 2 years or more, with significant disc damage at three levels and recurrent pain and limited mobility throughout this period. This has inevitably reduced my capacity for hard training, indeed often for any training at all, and I have had to ponder on whether trying to summit one more time is likely to be,at best, a pointless exercise, and at worst, a foolish one. I certainly know that any successful bid will come by nurturing my frame up and down the hill, not by force.
I so wish that I'd completed this task of mine last time, so I could now be easing my thickening frame into more genteel activities suited to middle age, but I'm currently trapped between ambition and common sense. Time will tell if I have judged my decision correctly.

             Web-site journey

This very personal journey of mine is clearly of great interest to me, but after the events of 2006 I became aware that a good number of other people were interested in my efforts,including many of my abandoned patients! On discovering Paul and Fiona's excellent site subsequently, I became attracted to the idea of sharing this next trip in more detail than had been previously possible with the news updates of www.ice8000.com . I mostly imagined friends and family would be interested in my progress, but I now understand that there are many others who can vicariously enjoy the struggles of strangers like me, aided by the phenomenal power of the internet. Such is the draw of Everest still.

I can only hope that this journey of mine helps to inspire a few others to realise that very ordinary people can achieve quite extraordinary things if we put our minds to it. I hope anybody following the trip through with me will be able to share some of my hopes,dreams, fears,despair, and hopefully, joy.....at last, after 15 years of my life.

None of us can know how this phase of my journey will unfold, but we have a chance to find out together. I need luck above all, as we all do, but I hope to draw strength from your support, perhaps enough to get me that 200m beyond my previous high point.

Welcome to my dream world. Except I'm trying to make it real for once.