With apologies to Miley Cyrus for pinching her song title, here is a long-ish blog about 36 hrs in the mountains with my husband.

I live in the mountains. In the Swiss Alps, no less. I see them every single day. Even as I lie here in bed, I can see them out my window.

I have climbed them on skins and skied on them in the winter. I have hiked and run on the sunnier, well-trodden paths in summer and autumn. I have cycled over their tarmacked cols and sweated buckets in the process. And I have oohed and aahed over how beautiful they look at all times of the year.

I considered myself to be someone who knows mountains fairly well. Pfft, well that turned out to be nonsense!

My husband, Graham, is a driven, high achieving, goal oriented person. I could write a whole bog post on that alone, but maybe another time. His current goal is to climb all the 4000m peaks in Switzerland (i.e. all the mountains over 4000m).

He spends a lot of time pursuing this goal and I spend a lot of that time wondering what sort of far-too-young widow I would be. Often, though, I think ignorance is bliss, because despite the tales of derring-do he reports and the beautiful pictures he takes combined with the large number of mountaineering adventure books I have read, I have never actually been “up there”.

It’s no secret to anyone that knows us or who followed my “Mummy School” posts through lockdown that we often have a tempestuous marriage. A great team when we pull together, we are a downright shambles when we annoy the hell out of each other and start pulling in opposite directions.

We have been trying to do more stuff just the two of us but lockdown plus school holidays has made that more difficult than usual. Not unusual in these crazy days, but difficult nonetheless.

And so it was that Graham decided that we should climb a mountain together. Metaphorical or what?

He wanted me to share in the hard slog, the daybreak Alpenglow, the camaraderie of the mountain huts and the pleasure of a day’s hard work “in the hills” (as my dad would call it).

And for the sake of our marriage and the fact that for once I didn’t have to organise a damn thing, I agreed.

We left the kids and the dog, scattered amongst good friends, and left home at 5am on Tuesday morning. After a 2.5hr drive to Italy and a 30 minute cable car, we arrived at Passo dei Salati-Punta Indren at 3275m.

By this point I was harnassed up, with jangly things I don’t know how to use clanking from my waist, wearing big mountaineering boots and crampons. Anyone who has followed any of my adventures before will know that I have the most easily blistered feet on the planet. The wrong kind of flip flops can leave me hobbling, so this was a concern as I prayed to the pre-emptive compeeds and anti-chafing powder to keep me pain-free!

The idea was to take a day to acclimatise to the altitude and then head to the Gnifetti hut, stay overnight and attempt Parrotspitze the next day. So far, so nervous but good.

We roped up (we were on a glacier with stunningly beautiful but potentially lethal crevasses) and off we went. Pace was good, I was nervous but chattering and listening to Graham’s advice as we walked up.

The plan apparently was to summit Punta Giordani at 4046m. The word apparently is important here because I was not aware of their being a summit in day one’s plan, the significance of which will become clear.

This was supposed to be an “easy” climb, a simple plod up the glacier and pop up on the top. I wasn’t sure what easy was supposed to mean and having pushed myself to do some pretty hard things in the past, I didn’t think too much of the clambering over rocks in inch long crampon spikes. (Side note: the unnatural sound and sensation of pointed metal on rock is deeply unnerving.)

A large icy patch without much snow had my heart rate elevated as I struggled initially to understand that I had to roll my feet with the mountain so that I had as many points of the crampons in contact with the surface as possible. It’s not for anyone with weak ankles, this game!

We passed that and it got snowier again but steeper and nearing the 4000m mark my breathing was laboured. A couple sped past us, a woman leading a very puffed out man, and we exchanged the customary “buongiorno”. The views behind us were stunning.

Some time later, I had to resort to 40 steps, stop, deep breaths, repeat. I was feeling a little teary, but remembered from previous ski mountaineering adventures that altitude can do funny things to your brain and emotions and I was now higher up than I had ever been. Mostly, I was feeling ok though.

We could see the couple stopped for quite a while before we reached them, only about 100m from the summit. They were waving and shouting now about how they were stuck on a band of rock surrounded by ice and didn’t know how to proceed up or down. She was scared and as it was apparent that Graham was the most experienced in the group, we all looked to him for guidance. And this is where my day took a turn for the worse.

At Graham’s suggestion, they all took their crampons off to tried to climb the bit of rock. Too slippy. I was happy to have stood dumbly and not removed mine. My anxiety levels were rising dramatically as my actual physical lifeline was slipping down a rock on the side of a mountain.

Crampons back on and Graham clambered with reasonable ease over the icy part and shouted “it’s fine, just come up”. By this point, the fear from the woman next to me had leached well and truly into me and I froze. She had asked for help getting down, Graham was trying to go up and it all got a bit confused. Both her partner and me stood and waited for instructions from our lead climbers.

At this point, I called “red light, I’m tired and scared, I want to go down now”. Now, I KNOW that this means no matter what the other person wants to do, they must 100% honour the feelings of their climbing partner.

So what did he do? He untied himself, said “I’ll just go to the summit and come back for you.” And left his very novice wife at 4000m with two panicking people and disappeared round the back of a rock.

Yes, you read that correctly. That is exactly what he did. And at that point, for the first time in our tempestuous marriage, I really, truly thought “this is it. I am getting off this mountain, I am packing up the kids and I’m out. Everything I thought was wrong has just manifested itself here on an exposed mountainside as summit fever has addled his already selfish brain.” But with a lot more swear words.

The other couple sorted themselves out and made their way gingerly down the ice and soon I was on my own, not knowing what to do. Soon, Graham appeared beside me and said “it’s totally fine, let’s just go up.” And then all hell broke out of me. Sobbing, shaking, shouting and more pure white angry than I have ever felt, I demanded he get me off this fucking mountain and home - IMMEDIATELY.

I knew then, even as I was wailing and shaking, that I was not actually in any immediate danger. I was perched on a band of rock and perfectly safe (relatively speaking), but the fear, betrayal and loss of confidence I felt at that moment was unlike anything I had ever experienced.

After trying unsuccessfully to get me to move up the mountain to the oh-so-close summit, he lowered me down the icy patch below the rock as I freaked out, having to find grip on the points of my crampons, and then a few minutes later we were on the softish snow again where we carried on down the way we had come up.

Feeling calmer and more composed, we stopped and I looked him in the eye and told him I would go on to the hut that night for the experience of it, but not climb the mountain the next day. Most importantly, he was never ever to ignore my feelings and fear again or I would go straight home. Non-negotiable.

He explained that he had thought he had made it clear he was scouting the summit for him to bring me and the other couple up behind him but fully realised that he had cocked up and not communicated with either me or the other team that had asked for his help.

It is rare that Graham makes a full and unreserved apology but when he does it is so obvious that he knows he was wrong and that he is genuinely sorry that I always forgive him. It will take a while to forget, but we were ok and my packing plans were shelved.

When he asked if I regretted not getting to the summit, my reply was that as I hadn’t known there was a summit to be had, I was satisfied with how much I had pushed myself and was ready to go down.

We set off and soon I was fairly skipping down the mountain on my new-found confidence in my crampons. I was in the front, the snow was softer and grippier with the midday sun and I was on crevasse-spotting duty which kept me occupied and I was even chattering and telling stories as we descended.

Crevasses - beuatiful but lethal. As close as I could get for a photo!

It reminded me of the prologue to a book I am reading by an incredible adventurer, aptly named Jenny Tough. She finds herself in an actual life and death situation, swears that if she gets out alive she will simply can her expedition and go straight home. Inevitably, as soon as she is safe, has cried hard, fast, snotty, sobbing tears at the relief of it all, she simply picks up her pack and carries on.

We descended almost back to the lift and as I had acquiesced and decided to stay in the hut - it’s no romantic night sharing a mountain hut with a lot of smelly, snoring mountaineers, but it was still a night away from home together - we started round the mountain to the path that led up to it. I had been promised exceptional food in this particular hut. And wine. So I was in!

Now began the second adrenaline-filled part of my day.

There were two paths to the Gnifetti Hut. I said to Graham, when offered the choice, that I would prefer longer and less steep as I was already tired and a bit wrung out. When we got to the divergence, it said Rifugio Mantova to the left and Rifugio Gnifetti to the right. I was easily persuaded by my now forgiven lead climber that actually we really had to go right as he wasn’t sure it would all lead to the same place.

I looked up and I thought, well, it said an hour in the guidebook, how hard can it be?

Famous last words. Bear in mind we were still wearing big stiff mountaineering boots, carrying a pack with ice axes on the back and I was tired and a little bit wobbly already. And so we start following what can only be described as a rocky outcrop up a sheer cliff.

Can you see the route up this “wall of death”?

Despite living in the mountains, loving skiing and ski mountaineering and having jumped off some fairly high edifices in my life, attached to bungees/harnesses etc, I actually have a reasonable amount of vertigo. I know, WHAT??? I HATE rock climbing, even in the tiny proper shoes and harnessed up and attached to the rock.

And suddenly it just wasn’t fun AT ALL anymore. For half an hour we walked, scrambled, teetered and hauled ourselves up a rockface I couldn’t even look down. Panic struck at least three times as I howled with fear and misery. Sobbing loudly as Graham quietly coaxed me up via ferrata style ladders, metal rungs in the rock and sections so slick there were ropes on the side for support. All with a seriously vertiginous drop to the right.

I consider myself to be quite adventurous, pretty brave and all in all a fairly tough cookie, but this was next level actual, visceral fear. Again, I recognise that probably other than throwing myself off the mountain, I was probably pretty safe. But as anyone with vertigo will attest to, that’s exactly what you think you’re going to do - throw yourself off the mountain.

When we finally popped out at the top, Graham said “I can see the hut” but more sobs wracked my poor adrenaline-filled body as I looked up. And up. And up. It seemed miles away and I was already so fried, I couldn’t think straight.

We had to put our crampons back on, traverse a hideously steep glacier on which the snow was melting and melt water was gushing down in small rivers. Bad enough, but I was ok on my crampons so just put one foot in front of the other and watched Graham’s boots the whole way.

And then, as I looked up to the hut from the snow and ice, my last nerve gave way and I saw that to get to the eagle’s nest, high on a cliff, I had to climb up a via ferrata, including ladders, rungs and overhangs.

Now you know when you read about people saying their minds have to be stronger than their bodies in difficult situations and you think “gosh, you’re so strong, I would never manage that”? Turns out sometimes you have no choice but to go forward.

I was hooked to the first ladder, tears streaming but quiet now, as Graham climbed up like a monkey and belayed me from the top (he had me hooked into the mountain from the top, so even if I slipped, I wouldn’t go anywhere).

I am always aware in situations where I feel like this that no matter what panic is gripping me, how utterly out of my comfort zone I might be, that no-one else can get me out of there. I can be helped and coached and supported but I cannot be physically lifted or carried so out of the corner of my mind comes the hideous truth that if I don’t move, we are all in serious trouble.

So I muttered to myself “just keep going, just keep going” over and over and over as I put one foot up and then the other, one hand up and then the other. And once at the top I stumbled onto the terrace of the hut, where people were enjoying beers and a laugh and lay down on the floor and once more sobbed my heart out.

Winston Churchill once said, “If you are going through hell, keep going.” Well, for most people there that day it may have been a lovely day in the mountains, but for me I felt I had pushed through the fiery pits of hell and was now stuck in Satan’s own mountain hut, furiously trying to think of ways I could legitimately call for a helicopter to get me back down.

As the evening wore on and I ate and had a drink, I started to feel calmer. I was still insisting that I would not be climbing our intended peak in the morning, but even I wasn’t convinced by my protestations. I was more tired, mentally fried and sore than I had been for a while so the legendary good food, camaraderie and excitement of the most glorious sunset from 3647m mostly passed me by.

Eventually, I drifted off into a fitful sleep and all too soon it was 4am and time for breakfast and more mountains…

Rifugio Gnifetti - access bottom left, that’s the stroll up after the ladders…

Now, you may be wondering - how did I cope with the downclimb of the cursed via ferrata? Well, one of the reasons I agreed to do the following day’s climb is because out of the other side of the hut, it’s four steps down to the glacier and away you go….

So, headtorches on, off we set in the pitch black at 5:05am. Weirdly, I am way more relaxed about heights, mountains etc in the dark. I think it must be to do with not being able to see the potential death traps??

On day two, I was on more familiar ground. I’ve started many a ski mountaineering race at that time of the morning and I actually really like the quiet plodding up the hill in the cold and dark. Only the sound of your breathing and the crunch of the snow for company.

By this point I was familiar with the use of my crampons, I was acclimatised and I know how to dig in and trudge with purpose. We took it really steadily, and we stopped several times for removing layers, changing gloves, eating, looking behind us at the sunrise, but only two other groups passed us, which meant we were moving at a fairly tidy pace.

I started to feel pleased with myself, despite the fact that the two songs going round in my head were “The Sweet Escape” (that made me giggle when I realised what I was singing) and “Waaaaaaah, Bodyform” (yup, perfect timing. If you know, you know. Screw white jeans on a bicycle, this was next level extreme activity!)

My body hurt everywhere and the steep bits were tough going, but as soon as it flattened out and my body sighed with relief, my brain replied “oh, this is a bit boring”. What is wrong with me???

The wind picked up and as we came on to the plateau below the Margherita Hut (Europe’s highest hut at 4554m!) we stopped to put on hard shells (windproof jackets) and big gloves. We could see so many well-known mountains from there but we could also see the top of our intended summit, the Parrotspitze, and it had snow billowing off it.

The familiar rise of heart rate and adrenaline started to kick in as Graham pointed out the route, which appeared to stop at a rocky outcrop (similar to the previous day’s first drama site). I decided to trust him and to push my personal fears aside as I knew he really wanted this for me and for his tally.

We climbed higher, now well over 4000m with the wind whipping us quite wildly now. At one point I had to stop as the tips of my fingers were dangerously and painfully cold, but several arm swings later we pushed on.

As we neared the rocky outcrop, the panicky vertigo started to kick in and I worked really hard to keep it together. Graham popped up effortlessly, found a solid rock to belay me and hauled me up over the icy steps as my crampons fought for purchase and I used my ice axe properly for the first time ever.

Small sobs of “I can’t do this” rose up but eventually I was on the rocks, which we climbed, our crampons screeching as we went. And then onto a ridge of snow with about 100m to get to the summit.

By this time the wind was howling, the snow was blowing and suddenly there was another team coming down towards us. Graham said casually, “just step to the side”. If I could have I’d have swung for him. He was completely fine, albeit cold, but I was frozen into a half-shut knife position, unable to look anywhere but my boots and he wanted me to MOVE TO THE SIDE!

He dug me a little ledge and stood slightly behind me and they squeezed past. I was nearly sick with the fear as the ridge got narrower and I was struggling to stand up so I called it. 10m from the summit, I very clearly had a vison of our two kids. With us standing on a snowy ridge in a howling gale, despite Graham being very comfortable and not worried, my fear of not seeing them again was so real that I said “enough”.

This time he heard me and he listened. We turned round and we came off that bloody mountain. He awarded us the summit as there was no defined point (no cross, no cairn) just one bit slightly higher than the rest.

We got over the rocks, down the icy part and onto the snow, where I got my slightly belated summit photo taken and despite Graham trying to persuade me to do two more easily reached summits, I put on my determined face of steel and declared, not for the first time on this trip but definitively for the last time, “I want to go home.”

Just after the summit at 4432m. You can see it along the ridge on the right. Looks pathetic from this angle! (photo: Graham Friend)

We fairly trotted down the hill, marvelling at the crevasses now glistening in full sunshine. I was so sad they were so dangerous because they are so incredibly beautiful and fascinating that I wanted to stare right into every one! Keep moving, came the chat from the front end of the rope.

We were in the Mantova hut drinking tea and eating apfelstrudel by 10am, having summitted Parrotspitze at around 7:30am and all we had to do was take the “easy” route back round to where we had started the day before.

Adding to a cairn on the way home (photo: Graham Friend)

By midday we were in Gressoney-St-Jean having lunch in shorts and t-shirts and after a large dose of caffeine, we drove home and collapsed in a small heap.

The flippant but good news from all of this? Not one single blister. This must be some kind of record but also I think it was a little reward for all the other suffering!

The actual good news? Well, we managed our mountain. We spent 36hrs together, doing something hard. There were many points where I had to repeat to myself Glennon Doyle’s words from her incredible book “Untamed” where she says: “I can do hard things”. This wasn’t a hard trip for Graham but it was so far our of my comfort zone, I didn’t even recognise the zone anymore.

Do I feel proud of myself, Graham keeps asking me? It’s a hard one, because I cried A LOT. My levels of fear were so great sometimes and I let that get the better of me more than once. I let that fear tell me I was weak and pathetic and stupid for even agreeing to do it. I am, probably unnecessarily, a bit embarrassed at the level of hardcore snottering and crying I did, but I still did it so maybe that’s something to be proud of.

Lessons learned? I still love the mountains, but I only really love the trudging up the snow pack; hard work but stable, physically demanding but all that is needed mentally is a bit of grit in the face of body fatigue. However, the exposed rockfaces and ridges, the skittering crampons over ice and stone? You can keep that.

Contemplating a tough couple of days before the descent to the valley floor.

I would like to finish by saying that despite the very real anger I felt at Graham for that stupid error of judgement on day one, I am very grateful for his calm, kind, (otherwise) always thoughtful and selfless protection of me on the mountain.

He really knows what he’s doing, he loves sharing it and he is a good and patient teacher. It’s a side of him I don’t always see or I perhaps I choose to ignore because of all the noise of real life, but it is one of the reasons I fell in love with him 17 years ago and it was good to be reminded of it, even though I'd rather have been reminded in a less extreme, hostile environment!

For example, in a spa hotel beside the sea, cocktail in hand. Ah, well, a girl can dream…