When we arrived at MCC on 25th April, there was a lot of energy in the air. It was pretty clear that the 24hr teams had all eaten their carbs way in advance and, combined with the seemingly limitless supply of Gatorade available, there was no shortage of wired climbers! The teams were all chatting and discussing the routes in a pretty friendly manner, there was a very friendly atmosphere. After a short motivational speech from the Mayor, a quick safety briefing from the MCC staff and a big “hello” from the Christies bear, the teams got their kit together, stocked up on Gatorade and got under way.

At first our team didn’t really have a plan. We knew that the last thing we should be doing was burning ourselves out by climbing too fast, but this was at best a good idea, not a plan of action. We’d vaguely discussed sleeping arrangements and as far as I can remember, our strategy was “to sleep if you got tired”. This seemed more common sense than a plan. Our focus at first was just to climb as much as we could!

Before we started climbing, we knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, but we decided to set ourselves a goal. The goal, simply, was to not be tired before 22.00pm. By about 21.00pm we seemed to be failing in this goal. We were definitely feeling sorry for ourselves having climbed for 6 hours solid, and by 22.00 fatigue was seriously starting to kick in. Disturbingly, there was no Gatorade left either. In fact, for me, the most dangerous part of the 24 hours was from 22.00pm until about 02.00am. This was the period in which we had enough energy to keep climbing and to get in to a rhythm, but at the same time we were getting quite bored of climbing. When you’re climbing and then being lowered so many times over, you become overly comfortable just sitting back in to your harness at the top of the route having absolutely no idea whether or not your be-layer has you secure.

Despite the early fatigue we pushed on as much as we could. By about Midnight, all notions of fair play had gone out the window and we had now recruited 2 further team players and we had once again re-gained our steam. Having crossed the 22.00pm mark it became pretty clear sailing once again for a while. On top of this, we had just found out that the target of 43,322 metres to be climbed in 24 hours had been reached in only 9 hours, and that a new target had been set. The chick-pea and spinach curry that I had gorged myself on earlier in the night and which originally caused me to feel a little sleepy had kicked in as well and provided me with enough energy to climb unhindered for the next 3 hours or so. At 03.00am, the realisation that we had been climbing for 12 hours seemed to dawn on us and left us tired once again and this time thinking that at some point we really should consider sleeping.

The fatigue was compounded by the DJ’s choice of “Insomnia” by Faithless which seemed like a really appropriate choice of music! The idea we had was that if we slept any amount, maybe we would have tricked our bodies in to thinking that we were now rested, and ready to climb a new day. I don’t know what we were basing this theory on and needless to say, it didn’t work. In retrospect this seemed like a really bad justification for simply wanting to go to bed. Having slept from 05.00am until 07.00am we woke up feeling more or less as tired as we did when we went to sleep. It was only after a healthy serving of sausage butties for breakfast that we found the energy to push on climbing for a further 8 hours.

At about 10am, we had just about reached our limit. Having gone through so many cycles of getting tired then being awake I can’t possibly imagine what my brain thought was going on. In fact I started noticing that I was doing some strange things. For example, I had managed to fall into a strange habit of tying in without realising it, then setting off on a route and momentarily panicking about half way up that I hadn’t tied my knot properly….or at all for that matter.

Concentration was definitely slipping. However the main difficulty at this stage was not necessarily the fact that we were physically drained, or that I couldn’t concentrate for more than 2 seconds, it was the fact that our hands were so worn from climbing and belaying that it was becoming difficult to grip. This problem was only exacerbated by having to change belay plates every couple of sets (we referred to 10 climbs as a “set”) because they were heating up and damaging the sheaths of the ropes.

By 3pm we had climbed just shy of 9,000m, meaning that in 24 hours we had climbed the distance from sea level to the summit of Everest.

The event raised literally thousands of pounds for Christies, and amazingly we smashed the original target of 43,322 metres. By 3pm we had climbed about 166,000 metres, which is the equivalent of lying on the floor in London and dragging yourself to Calais.

It was a lot of fun and now, 2 days later after the hands have recovered and the fatigue disappeared, I’m glad we did it.

Mark / The North Face Store Manchester.