Once something new and exciting gets lodged into my imagination, I become driven to plunge ‘head-first’ into it. It totally consumes my passion and energy to learn it, try it, go for it. It becomes a freight train and there is just no stopping it.

From drawing on toilet paper at four years old, to getting up at 4 am to go duck hunting when I was twelve, I had to squeeze in every moment I could to pursue my passions. At 20, after getting a taste of the world working at Expo 67 in Montreal, I was ready to get out there and go explore the world myself.

Hitchhiking all the way from Scotland to Afghanistan in 1969, I then bused it to India and Nepal. In Kathmandu I met a New Zealand climber who had just returned from trekking about 300 miles to Everest Base Camp and back. His story, within seconds, shot so much adrenaline into my bloodstream, I knew I had to go and try to do it too.

Within days I was crossing over high mountain passes, dropping into tropical valleys, vaguely finding my way up and over the Khumbu Range. With no mountaineering experience, alone, no tent, only a summer sleeping bag, eating potatoes and rice, I somehow managed to climb up the Khumbu Glacier to approximately 19,000 feet to Everest Base Camp. I spent 32 days alone in the greatest mountain range on earth surviving only on my energy and wits.