I’m going to die...’
reason why I shouldn’t do it,” he says. “Everyone knows Everest is dangerous. My family were concerned, but they were excited for me and they understood. If you stay in your comfort zone your whole life, you waste your potential, and I didn’t think I’d climb Everest, even then. I thought I’d and climb Everest.”
With just weeks to prepare, Jules joined a group of 16 climbers and set off for Nepal, intent on conquering a mountain that claims the lives of one in 60 who dare try. He acclimatised well, spending five weeks climbing peaks around Everest before settling at Base Camp to wait for the big push. Then the earthquake came.
“It was total chaos in the aftermath,” he says. “Not only were so many people’s expeditions destroyed and lives lost, but rescue efforts were made impossible by the conditions. I saw some horrible things, a lot of bodies and bad injuries. In a way I was amazed by the lack of preparation there, given they had been expecting an earthquake for 20 years. The scale was extraordinary.”
A lot of locals left the mountain in fear of further quakes, but unlike many other climbing groups, Jules and his expedition team stayed at Base Camp in the days afterwards, both to assist the emergency services and to see if it was still possible to ascend. But the icefall had wrecked many pre-planned routes and five days after the avalanche, the climb was called off.
“We all wanted to carry on. Those 22 people didn’t die in vain, so we felt it would be right to try, but they stopped anybody attempting it,” he says. “There is a psychology about Everest. I met one American woman who had waited 14 years to climb it. It had become my life’s ambition, and getting so close meant I just had to go back and finish the job.”
The following year, he did that. Despite fearing that returning to the scene may trigger latent trauma from the horror of 2015, Jules joined another expedition and set about raising money, as he’d done before, for Haemotalogy Cancer Care. He conquered Everest on Friday May 13 2016.
“Climbing Everest is 50 per cent your feet and 50 per cent your loaf,” he says, tapping his temple. “The avalanche was devastating, but I wasn’t going to let it put me off. I had a goal, and I wouldn’t stop until I’d achieved it.”