My fight to reach the summit of the Iconic Himalayan peak
Ama Dablam stands at 6812 metres high (22,349ft) in the Himalayas of Nepal. As I’m sure you can tell by looking at it, it is considered a very technical climb. Its elevation is not among the highest in the Himalayas, but the technical difficulty makes it one of the most challenging and iconic climbs in the world. As a mountaineer, naturally, you dream of reaching its summit (as I have since 2016 when I first laid eyes on it).
One month in Nepal – the expedition
This year, having been kindly granted funding from PWRR (go on the Tigers!) I embarked on an expedition to fly the regimental flag on the summit. I wanted to keep the expedition simple; just me and a Sherpa, Dawa (legend!).
We spent the first two weeks going progressively higher in the Sagarmatha National Park, acclimatising to the altitude, including stopping by Everest Base camp, doing a mountain pass at 5535m and climbing a warmup peak called Lobuche East at 6119m. We summited Lobuche shortly after sunrise on 30th October in perfect conditions. The view at dawn, looking over the rolling peaks of the Himalayas, far into Tibet, was stunning. Lobuche’s summit came easy, but I knew Ama Dablam was a different beast altogether, and in the following days we made our way to its base camp.
Lobuche peak summit ridge
The main objective
The real technical challenges begin above camp 1 on Ama Dablam. The climbing between camps 1 and 2 is incredibly exposed – you spend the entire time reminding yourself that making a mistake here will result in falling for the rest of your life, which won’t be very long! Weirdly enough, you get used to this kind of stress quite quickly. I’ve never learned to love it, but it does help focus you. Oddly, it surprises a lot of my friends to discover that I don’t like heights, but who does?
I had heard a lot about The Yellow Tower; an infamous, technical and near-vertical rock section (graded 5.9 on the YDS system) at around 6000m. Surprisingly, I found it quite comfortable. Instead, my difficulties were found in the many traverses on smooth granite rock. Ascending is physically demanding, abseiling down is fast and fun… but traversing (going sideways) on tricky sections with huge drops I found tough. There is always the mild concern of climbing yourself into a position that you are unable to climb out of; what you can climb going in one direction, may not be possible for you going in the other.
We reached camp 2 on 4th Nov. Camp 2 is just a handful of tents perched on the top of a rock tower. Bad weather was scheduled for that night and much of the follow day. Subsequently, we were the only ones mad enough to be higher than camp 1 on the mountain.
We had initially planned to attack the summit from camp 2, skipping camp 3, due to its risk of being wiped out by a huge overhang of ice (called a serac) which sits above it. This happened in 2006 destroying the camp and killing 6. Instead of sitting in camp 2 for a day, waiting-out the bad weather, we decided to climb up to camp 3 for the couple of hours that the skies were due to be clear, and attack the summit from there that night. That good weather did not last long but presented some decent views, before dumping a lot of snow on us and engulfing the mountain in cloud.
The summit push
We bedded down at camp 3 in the afternoon, preparing for our summit push that night. Off little sleep, at 2230 we set off in what the forecast said was a -33C windchill (but I’m sure was a lot colder). It would be a 21hour day of non-stop climbing. It was so cold that I snapped the leather on my La Sportiva Olympus Mons – a £700 boot – while trying to put
them on. The ripped leather, which had half the buckle system on, came off in my hand (commence major concern of how I would be able to get down the mountain if I wasn’t able to secure my boots to my feet). These are boots that have endured a lot already, including reaching the top of the world with me 2021. Thankfully, I ‘MacGyvered’ them onto my feet and our summit push was back on.
I have had some cold nights out climbing in my time, but that night was up there! The heavy snowfall the day before meant that the ropes were buried, and we were breaking trail through often knee-high snow on sleep snow slopes. The wind would pick up the fresh powered snow which blasted us in waves. It went from being serenely quiet, to hitting us with such fury that all I could do was stop climbing and bury my face in my elbows while keeping my frozen hands inside my down suit.
I was concerned for my fingers. I hadn’t been able to feel them for hours. At one-point Dawa gave my hands a rigorous massage to get the blood flowing, which was incredibly painful.
My struggles with the cold were about to get more concerning. Shortly after I took these photos, on a very steep section I had some admin to do which required me to take off one of my gloves. The gloves were tethered to my wrists, but when I went to put them back on, one was simply no longer there. Hanging from the rope by my harness, I looked down to see if I could spot the missing glove below me, but there was only snow beneath me (along with a couple thousand metre drop). Severe frost bite, loss of fingers, the inability to grip the rope or abseil down to safety, were all easily conceivable ways that the day could end. I was mildly concerned.
In the coming hour or so, the rising sun brought its warmth, and thankfully, at the next flat standing, we managed to dig out a spare lightweight glove which would at least tie me over. That flat standing was in fact the summit of Ama Dablam, which we reached at around 0800 on 6th November. The final few slopes to the summit seemed to be never-ending, but at last, from the top of Ama Dablam we looked out towards Mount Everest, just 20km away, and a full 360 view of the highest peaks the world has to offer. Every now and then we had to shelter behind our bergans from the strong winds, but the views were clear, and we basked in the satisfaction of our success.
Many photos and videos ensued, until the cold got too much and we began to go down. We descended until a bit after 1900 that evening, all the way down to camp 1, with all ten fingers and all ten toes, and one (in my case, slightly larger than normal) nose.
Pte Simon Ferrier May on the summit of Ama Dablam
People often ask me about a sense of euphoria when reaching summits like this. In my case, it’s more a sense of relief. Relief that now I can go down, and relief that I’ve reached the top so I don’t have to come back again for another expedition. But the sense of shared achievement and camaraderie on a summit like this is something special. In my opinion, these types of endeavours are where we truly learn about ourselves. They are where we get to know the depths of our characters. And when we come back, they allow us to look in the mirror with quiet self-assuredness, based on experience, not on bravado. There are a few moments in these expeditions where all the suffering and hard work is truly worth it. The summit, unsurprisingly, is one of those… Thinking about it now… actually, it’s quite a nice feeling up there!
I would very much like to express my gratitude to The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, the 4th Battalion and B Company, who have all been so incredibly supportive of this endeavour, and who made it possible with huge generosity and support. My thanks are to everybody involved in giving me the opportunity to take the Regimental flag up to the summit of such an iconic Himalayan mountain, which I was incredibly proud to do.
Pte Simon Ferrier May
4 Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment
