On a mission to preserve the spirit of adventure for all

Founder of the microadventure movement, author and adventurer Alastair has cycled round the world, run across deserts and rowed across the Atlantic. Now he faces his latest discovery – the British hills. And he’d love to hear from you: @Al_Humphreys Alas

“When was the last time you set yourself a really tough challenge?”

When I learned the phrase “Shifting Baseline Syndrome” it profoundly altered the way I look at the natural world. The phrase describes the way that each generation perceives their own experience of the environment to be normal and is willing to tolerate a small decline in those standards. Continued over generations this results in environmental catastrophe: for example, eroded mountain paths, over-fished oceans, concreted landscapes.

The principle of Shifting Baseline Syndrome also applies to the way we engage with the outdoors and participate in adventurous activities. I use it to remind myself that as I become older and busier I should not shift my baseline feelings of how often I want to get into the mountains and what I do in them.

When I was a lad, here’s some of the stuff I got up to in the playgrounds of Britain’s wild places. I completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge in under 12 hours, aged nine. Twenty-four miles of walking and 1500m of ascent is therefore my baseline syndrome of what primary school kids can manage on a tough day out. Aged 12 we did the bigger challenge of Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon in under 24 hours after one of our school friends got cancer.

Senior school sent us off on pleasingly madcap escapades with compulsory early morning river swims on camping trips. The memory of 150 teenagers leaping into chilly Llyn Cau makes me chuckle still. We headed off on night navigation exercises, a 20p piece in our rucksacks for a payphone in case we got so lost and needed picking up. We navigated in small groups through atrocious weather in the Brecon Beacons without adults.

Aged 15 I cycled off-road across England with two friends. We veered somewhat off course (summit of Great Gable with a mountain bike, anyone?) but made it, weary but happy, across to the east coast. Teenagers are quite capable of doing all this stuff.

I’m not writing a misguided diatribe against health and safety, nor a nostalgic endorsement for reckless behaviour in the hills. My hope here is that looking at adventure through the prism of Shifting Baseline Syndrome may help us to check and challenge our own assumptions and behaviours about what young people are capable of in the great outdoors.

We all know that children today are spending too much time indoors and in front of TV and computer screens. I love things like the John Muir Award and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. Some of the best and most formative experiences of my life came from being pushed hard as a youngster and challenged to do things that I thought were beyond me in our hills and mountains. Let us remember not to deprive our young people of that.

But nor should we deprive ourselves of these experiences as adults. When was the last time you set yourself a tough challenge, staggering back down a mountain exhausted – but proud that you have taken on something really difficult? Perhaps in 2018, you might decide to really test yourself. Why not take on Trail’s #EverestAnywhere challenge (see page 28), for instance? Don’t make excuses, don’t let your baseline slip! Get out there and do the best you can. I hope I see you somewhere in the hills this year.

And finally, keep your eyes peeled for the first frogspawn from the new year’s hardiest frogs. Frogspawn and tadpoles are one of my favourite things of the nature calendar!