Gloves sine qua non

Assisted by the High Point team I’m working through my gear & wear checklist. The choice of mountain wear for an eight-thousander is critical. Night temperatures, mind you, routinely range from minus 30 to minus 40 centigrade. The climbing starts when it’s still dark, the summit attempt commences around midnight. See what’s on the list: jacket, pants, gloves, boots, sweatshirts, socks – several of each, plus some more as a reserve. Just like peels of an onion.

Off-the-rack sizes don’t do it for me. Get this as an example: tech pants need to accommodate another two warm layers underneath, which normal pants won’t do. The jacket fits just fine … except that shoulder-width needs to be expanded and sleeves prolonged. Once again I’ll make my seamstresses happy – yet more custom adjustments to do – but I’m telling you, up on the hill, these will be of a value that no money can buy! Trying out a down suit at this time of the year makes me a bit sweaty but not much. What’s really funny is that it’s getting sunny and warm outside whereas I’m here in my puff pants and down jacket, resembling the Michelin Man if he was a woman.

Feedback from climbers combined with cutting-edge technologies have made it possible for manufacturers to upgrade the expedition gear to higher and higher levels of perfection. It would seem today that early pioneers who were first discovering the beauty of Himalayan peaks must’ve been through sheer hell under such extreme conditions… But hang on a minute: down and wool have constituted the core part of warm mountain wear ever since the old days – back then just like today – and do their job alright. The only difference is, the Alps sheep have given way to Merino sheep.

Normal hiking boots are good to get you to the base camp, but further on you need to wear expedition boots which make you look like an astronaut… but who cares? Main thing is they consist of three layers and a warm insole inside. Unfortunately, not even those provide you with 100 per cent safeguard against frostbite, Radek Jaros could speak volumes. Luckily my feet don’t sweat, which otherwise causes huge problems, to men in particular. Soggy socks will freeze up damn fast – and toes will follow suit.

What’s the key item that you can by no means do without? For me it’s gloves. Typically for a woman, my fingers tend to suffer from hypoperfusion. I had enough of that back on Everest which sent me home with frostbite – a farewell present which the body will remember forever. Every time the outside temperatures drop to zero, my fingers will let me know about themselves. It will never go away. I need to learn to work with it and look after my hands more carefully. Unlike Radek I don’t use heated boots, but I do invest in heated gloves. (Alas, they were of little use for me in Alaska on McKinley: at minus thirty centigrade the battery barely lasted for twenty minutes.)