This past christmas I climbed the Kilimanjaro peak that was about 18,000 feet. It took us 6 days to climb and just 6 hours to come down. We took our time to climb because of the serious affects of altitude which cause about 60% of people to turn back if they try and climb it too quickly.

This meant that the 6 days to climb were quite slow so I decided to take the porters luggage for a couple of days – including the chairs we had.

The views on the way up were incredible. In the morning it was normally very clear with cloud gathering over the afternoon.

The final night was the hardest physical challenge of my life. We started at 11pm and climbed to the top constantly until 8am. It was during a massive snow storm with temperatures reaching around -20 degrees centigrade. The altitude was killer and made you feel incredibly light headed. People were throwing up on the way up and being taken down on stretchers.

Once we got back to the camp after the peak we all decided to head straight down and get off the mountain as quickly as possible! This took us just 6 hours to get down.