71: Everest 50 - Remote Expeditions with Mick Fowler

The third of an extra special 5 part series celebrating 50 years since Doug Scott and Dougal Haston became the first Britons to stand on the summit of Everest, Cathy & Wayne are joined by special guest Mick Fowler.

Voted the Mountaineer’s Mountaineer by a poll of his peers in 1989, Mick is a three times Piolet D’or winner who is the master of small, extreme expeditions.  From tales of climbing in flares and crampons to brushes with the law, be prepared for your jaw to drop as he describes using clothing (most of the time) and equipment at the cutting edge of technical climbing for the last 50 years. 

Among stories of horrendous bivouacks and nail biting climbs Mick also shares his top tips for contact lens users and how to manage Reynauds Syndrome. A self proclaimed Pioneering Pensioner, he describes working with his long term sponsor Berghaus to create bespoke clothing for the additional needs of his body post cancer surgery.

Don't miss this fascinating episode with one of the countries favourite (retired) tax inspectors.

Listen ,learn and if you are able, please consider donating to our chosen charity: Community Action Nepal


The Climbers Shop and Joe Brown Shops | Outdoor Clothing & Equipment UK
The Joe Brown Outdoor Academy

Joe Brown Outdoor Academy

Buy: On Thin Ice by Mick Fowler

Buy: No Easy Way by Mick Fowler

Thank you to Berghaus for making this episode possible.

If you found this interesting then don't forget to download our earlier episodes:

Episode 70: Everest 50 with Mike Parsons

Episode 69: Everest 50 with Sir Chris Bonington and Paul 'Tut' Braithwaite

Episode 67: Joe Brown and Kangchenjunga 1955 

Episode 66: Kit Lists - Alpine Climbing with BMG Tom Ripley

Episode 62: Community Action Nepal @KMF24

Episode 55: Berghaus Adapts @KMF24

Episode 31: Adaptive Outdoor Kit with Paul Pritchard

Episode 30: Kit Lists - 8000m Peaks With Jon Gupta

Episode 26: Kit Lists - Expeditions With Andy Cave

Episode 13: Joe Browns and The Climbers Shop Big History

Episode 4: Sleeping Bags - Slip Into Something Silky

The v

Transcript

Wayne Singleton   0:10
Hi there, welcome to Outdoor Gear chat and we are off episode 71 and this is the third part of our Everest specials celebrating the 50th anniversary of the summiting of Everest. I'm joined as always by Cathy, hello.
 
Cathy   0:13 
Hi Wayne, I'm Cathy and I'm the co-owner and director of the Joe Brown shops in Snowdonia and the climbers shop in Ambleside and we have a long tradition of working with Community Action Nepal, which is a charity founded by Doug. So it's brilliant to be able to join them in celebrating this 50th anniversary. For Doug being the First Britain, one of the first Britons to stand on the summit of Everest and we've put kind of put together this series to look at how kit and also the sport of mountaineering has evolved, and how kit has been able to help along that path. So we're talking to some really quite diverse people, which is fantastic and today we are joined by the Master of the small remote expedition. Mick has carefully balanced family life and a full-time job at the tax office throughout his career as a tax man. 

But you didn't fancy settling down in retirement, Mick, obviously because you became one of the pioneering pensioners in your selection of latest talks. 
And climbing remote peaks often that a Westerner has never even seen, let alone been near, and attempted. So you've got many first ascents to your name, I can't possibly list them all off, but it does mean that you've been using technical clothing and equipment throughout your climbing year, which somehow, and I suspect this is as much as a surprise to you, has spanned 50 years. 

Mick Fowler   2:14
Remarkably, yes. I must be very old. 

Cathy   2:21 
Just experienced surely. 

Mick Fowler   2:23 
Oh yeah, that's better. That's better. 

Cathy   2:27
So we're gonna kind of start by going back to the 1970s and an era when you discovered that crampons and flares were a bad combination for pioneering being the niche sport of chalk climbing. And I wonder if you can tell us how this discovery came about and? Was it more from a safety point of view or more to do with an unexpected appearance on BBC Television?
 
Mick Fowler   2:57
It was more to do with practicalities really. I mean, big flares loons were very much in fashion back in the 1970s. And when they became a bit scruffy for the disco action, I would relegate them to climbing. And so we'd use them climbing down at Dover. But of course, the trouble is sharp crampon points and lots of fabric flipping around your feet. It really doesn't work that well, but that's OK. We just tucked them into our socks and that was alright. It looks silly, but it didn't matter.
 
Wayne Singleton   3:06 
Brilliant. 

Cathy   3:07 

The look of champions right there, isn't it? 

Mick Fowler   3:34 
Yeah, it didn't stop us getting up. 

Cathy   3:36 
But it got you on telly. 

Mick Fowler   3:38 
Got semi arrested, yeah. 

Wayne Singleton   3:42 
Semi arrested. That's brilliant. And with the with the denim flares as well, Mick. So really the pinnacle of uncomfortableness, yeah. 

Mick Fowler   3:51
I have various different sorts. I believe the ones that featured on the news after we climbed at Dover were denim flares, yes, but I had a nice pair of red loons that were sort of cotton fabric as well. They were quite fetching little numbers.
 
Cathy   4:06 
Fantastic. 

Wayne Singleton   4:07 
Brilliant. So I guess the pinnacle of technical fabric is, is absolutely that. Straight off the cliff and into the disco or vice versa. Was it?  

Mick Fowler   4:13
That's what you need at Dover, yeah.
 
Cathy   4:25 
Oh, so We'll move on to slightly more serious expeditions. And in 1984, you headed out to Pakistan on I'm going to probably not say this correctly. Bojohadur expedition and where you explained you saw no sense in seeing a holiday degenerate into a logistical nightmare. And so you adopted an Alpine style lightweight approach to the mountain, which really probably at the time was quite different to a lot of the major expeditions in that kind of big line of porters and equipment leading into the mountain and taking a long time and certainly something quite new for a 7000 metre peak. And was this sort of new approach also due to sort of time limitations and were there any sort of downsides that you found on that trip? 

Mick Fowler   5:22 
Well, the reason for it was a combination of all sorts of things really. I mean, firstly, we were dead lucky. We were dead lucky generation in that, you know, up until perhaps the 1970s it was so expensive and took so long to get out to climb a Himalayan peak that it really wasn't practical in your average person's annual holidays, and so we were almost, I suppose the 1st generation that were able to go as a small group. 

And the reason that we climbed Alpine style was twofold in a way. Firstly, that's the way we'd always climbed in the Alps. That's what we were used to. We're climbing as a small group, and that was the attractive and only way of climbing to us and also hammering a mountain into submission with a huge expedition with porters and camps and spending most of your time slogging away up fixed ropes was really not my idea of climbing at all. And so it's a matter of, really, it being the most enjoyable way of doing things for us. And I think it's probably fair to say we felt that was the only fair way to climb mountains was to climb the mountain alpine style. It's the way we'd always done it. We'd always enjoyed it. And at the end of the day, we're going there to enjoy ourselves.

Cathy   6:36 
It is a holiday at the end of the day, isn't it? 

Mick Fowler   6:43 
It is. 

Cathy   6:44 
Although I think your definition of holiday is going through your books, you've written three really, really good books. I've really enjoyed read re-reading them and they do seem to be a collection of nightmarish bivy followed by nightmarish bivvy followed by even more nightmarish bivvy, which we'll get onto in in a little while.  

Mick Fowler   7:07 
No, no, no, Cathy. They are a record of my enjoyable climbs is a better way to put it. 

Cathy   7:13 
I must have been reading them wrong. I was reading different books, clearly. 

Mick Fowler   7:13 
With the occasional uncomfortable night. 

Wayne Singleton   7:15 
Brilliant.  

Mick Fowler   7:22 
I am quite serious, you know, those uncomfortable nights? Yeah, they're uncomfortable at the time, but, I mean, they're great memories, you know, we still chat about them over beers now, sort of many, many years later. 

Wayne Singleton   7:23 
 On reflection, yeah, it doesn't seem as bad. 

Mick Fowler   7:36 
You know, they're not. They're not all bad. 

Cathy   7:38 
Was that Pakistan trip, the one where one of you ended up with the stove on one level of Bivvy and the other ended up with the pan on the other level of Bivi? 

Mick Fowler   7:47 
That is good of you to remind me of that. Yes, thank you. Yes. 
Victor Saunders, who's you know, still my main planning partner at the moment. 
The remarkable 75 year old Mr. Saunders, who is still keen to climb technical roots. 
He had moved faster than me and he was carrying the stove and it got dark or afternoon slash and he ended up bivouacked on one rock sticking out of an ice slope and I was spending the night on a different rock. And yeah, he had all the pans, but I had the stove and so, well, there was a challenge on how do I actually use the stove to actually melt some water because I was really thirsty. And I can confirm that yeah, using your fiberglass helmet is not really a good idea, so it did get singed a bit and the water was a bit sort of greasy and not very nice, but it was wet and I survived a night, so all was well.

Wayne Singleton   8:49 
It did the trick. Oh my goodness. 

Mick Fowler   8:51
Another rich memory.
 
Cathy   8:54 
Did the helmet survive? Is it there as memento somewhere in the storeroom? 

Mick Fowler   8:58 
Sadly I don't have it anymore, but it did survive. Yes. Yeah, I carried on using it. 

Cathy   9:03 
What, did you really? 

Mick Fowler   9:04 
Oh, yeah, yeah, no, It didn't destroy the helmet. It just made it a bit black and sooty. 

Cathy   9:13 
Brilliant. 

Wayne Singleton   9:15
Oh my goodness, there's so many so many questions. Again. It's just where I start with all that, isn't it? 
 
Mick Fowler   9:23 
Yeah, Victor found it very funny. Yeah. So much so that we did a climb at Gogarth, which he insisted on calling helmet boiler after this incident so that he could look at his guidebook and remember it and laugh at me forevermore. 

Cathy   9:39 
That's brilliant. But that 84 trip, I know you write about it not being quite as successful as you as you hoped because you were pipped to the summit by another group, weren't you? 

Mick Fowler   9:55
Well, we weren’t just Pipped to the summit. The Hiroshima walking club, walked extremely strongly to the summit, using fixed ropes all the way and the supposedly and technically competent north London mountaineering club team ground to a rather unspectacular halt. So I think it's a bit unfair to say that they pipped us at the post. We didn't even get to the post. But it was a good introduction. It was my first proper Himalayan trip and it was a steep learning curve, let's say.
 
Wayne Singleton   10:36 
It's interesting what you're saying about back, to the lucky point and the timing where you did this as well though we were talking to Mike earlier on in the 2nd part of this series and he was talking about how the end of the Second World War sort of opened, opened it up to a different class I suppose to more working class or you know because climbing was an upper class thing before and I guess in my head what you're talking about is almost an extension of that as well. As you know, it's the world became more accessible in the sort of late 70s, early 80s to mean like you say, you weren't having to take three months to go and travel to the other side of the world to do something. It could be done in a relatively short time scale and it or a comparatively short time scale, would that be right? how long were you spending over there?   

Mick Fowler   11:26 
Absolutely. That that was completely correct and also the cost had to come down to a level that you know the average person could realistically save up the money. So I do remember my first greater range trip was 1982 to Peru and the airfare was 400 and something pounds, which was a lot, but it was doable. 

Wayne Singleton   11:51
Yeah. 
 
Mick Fowler   11:52 
And you know, you look at it now it's, I don't know what the fair is now. 
But it's not massively more than that now. So I think the greater ranges have become more and more accessible cost wise. And from the point of view of accessibility, when you get there with roads being forced further and further into the mountains, you know those early expeditions to some mountains, what they were taking sort of 10-15 days to walk in from the road head to their base camp and usually now we're talking about two or three days at the most because you can just fly to an airstrip somewhere, and from there, you know, get porters for two or three days and you're at base camp. 

Wayne Singleton   12:28
Yeah. Flight are £450 return from London to Lima, so there you go. And I wonder, comparatively at the time, I wonder how much it would have cost for all the various stages if both travel back in the day and so on. But yeah, sorry. It's just as a distraction that just I found that dead. Interesting. Sorry, you're getting distracted 
 
Mick Fowler   12:43
Really. Well, that's interesting. I have a recollection in my mind that it was our tickets were £485.
 
Cathy   13:10 
A taxman likes to remember those kind of things. 

Mick Fowler   13:10 
I've got the ticket still somewhere but, but yeah, basically. you're right. That a huge change happened in the 1970s, going through to the 1980s that it became possible for your average person, if they were so inclined to go on a sort of Himalayan expedition in a four week period and climb a six and a half 7000 metre peak in that period. 

Wayne Singleton   13:40 
Yeah, brilliant. And then the next question, I suppose that we've got for you is just absolutely fantastic idea. During the winter of 1987, you became the 1st and possibly only climber to claim a first ascent of an ice climb in the City of London. And does that rate as your most bizarre belay? 

Mick Fowler   14:02 
Probably yes, is the answer to that. The belay in question was a parking metre and Mike Morrison who was one of my main climbing partners, a good friend of mine at the time and he had driven down from Manchester especially for this and he belayed himself to a parking metre. While I climbed up this frozen drainpipe, it was just a perfect frozen drainpipe climb because there were three parallel drainpipes and the ice from a leaking toilet outflow actually. But it could completely encased two of the drainpipes and the third drainpipe was free enough to just thread slings around the drainpipe support brackets, and so it was relatively well protected as long as the drainpipes stayed in place. 

Wayne Singleton   14:41 
Right. 

Mick Fowler   14:48 
You're good, strong Victorian engineering. 

Cathy   14:48 
Good old Victorian engineering. 

Wayne Singleton   14:54 
And I mean, obviously given earlier conversation, this lends itself to what were you wearing? you know, you weren't in flares and crampons, this was the late 80s, not the 70s. Where you in technical kit by this stage? 

Mick Fowler   15:08 
There are no flares. No, but I do. I remember that I did wear my rucksack because my ice axes where actually attached to my rucksack in those days and I can remember passers by asking odd questions about why I was wearing a rucksack to climb this this drain pipe. 

Wayne Singleton   15:11 
You don't remember the brand of the Rucksack, do you?  

Mick Fowler   15:32 
I do it was it was an old outward bound rucksack with a leather trim around the pockets. 

Cathy   15:40 
Oh, fantastic. Wait, that that's actually likely to be originally made by Karrimor.   

Wayne Singleton   15:41 
Oh wow. 

Mick Fowler   15:42 
It probably was, yeah. And it got nicked; it got stolen from my car. Yeah, my car was stolen in London and there was a bit of ice climbing kit in the back of the car. And the only thing that they stole because my car was found after a bit was the rucksack and what was in it you know, chalk and rust covered ice climbing kit that I'd use down at Dover. 

Wayne Singleton   15:48 
Yeah. Wow. 

Cathy   15:53 
No.  

Mick Fowler   16:14 
What a weird thing to steal from somebody's car in central London. 

Cathy   16:18 
Oh, gosh, yeah. That's really bizarre. But, we just spoke with Mike Parsons from Karrimor in the previous episode and that particular rucksack he made a number of rucksacks for outward bound in conjunction, I think it was due to an introduction by Frank Davis, who founded the Climbers shop in Ambleside. So it's a very small world. 

Mick Fowler   16:28 
Oh yeah. 

Wayne Singleton   16:29
Not that long ago at this time. It was a very, very small world, wasn't it, when, like, like we said before, the emergence of the OR the continued emergence of mountaineering climbing as a sport. Really. Yeah. There was a few key figures in that weren't there. And then, yeah, there was also with Ryan saying there was another unexpected appearance on BBC. Was that linked to the drain pipes as well?
 
Wayne Singleton   17:14 
You're looking very confused and maybe I get my timings wrong Cathy a bit? 

Cathy   17:20 
I think maybe the press did turn up, but the ice had melted by that point or something. They were too late. 

Mick Fowler   17:25 
Oh well, that was the police turned up. Yeah, it didn't appear on television. 

Cathy   17:28 
Oh, the police. 

Mick Fowler   17:31 
Yes, that became all very awkward. 

Wayne Singleton   17:33 
So we should we move on? 

Cathy   17:36 
This is another almost arrest. 

Wayne Singleton   17:36 
Dicing with the Law again. 

Mick Fowler   17:37 
I think it's fair to say that the end result was very unfortunate for Mike Morrison, who'd driven all the way down from Manchester and the police stopped him climbing the ice form that, you know, the drain pipe there was me, Mike and the chap called Chris Watts. I did it. Chris Watts did it. And then the police stepped in and said that they would prosecute us for something or the other if Mike Morrison climbed it, and so we decided that maybe it was best to, you know, put our tails between our legs and slunk off.

Cathy   18:04 
Oh damn. 

Wayne Singleton   18:10 
Yeah. Off your skulk. 

Cathy   18:12 
Time for a pint. 

Mick Fowler   18:14 
But we did make the front page was or the Backpage of the Daily Telegraph. So we weren't actually on the television, but we did make the broad sheet newspapers. 

Wayne Singleton   18:22 
 OK. Brilliant. Yeah. 

Cathy   18:24 
Excellent. 

Mick Fowler   18:24 
But the management of Saint Pancras station were, you know, really not very friendly. And they must have asked the fire brigade to remove the icicle, and the fire brigade appeared overnight and removed it. Because I remember Victor Saunders was so upset that he was unable to do it. It gave me great pleasure telling him that it was no longer there. 

Cathy   18:39 
Brilliant. We talked earlier about climbing Alpine style in the Himalayas and throughout your career you've achieved a succession of very, very difficult assets in extremely remote locations and in a small group using minimal equipment. Have you ever had a situation where you felt you've gone too minimalist? 

Mick Fowler   19:15 
Maybe there’s one where I most felt that was when I was climbing with Dave Turnbull, who was the CEO of the BMC at the time, and we're on a mountain called Mugu Chuli in West Nepal and it's my fault really. I suggested that we did the route on half rations because I thought we had enough extra blubber around us. And also, you know, it would be lighter, won't have to carry so much food. And that was all very nice until Dave became quite I'll with a throat problem and more significantly, we got caught in bad weather and it all started to take much longer than we had expected. And so we ended up on the summit area having run out of food and feeling rather hungry and feeling that maybe we didn't have enough blubber around our waist after all. So I think I can remember lying there saying I wish we'd brought more food. But it was entirely my fault. 

Wayne Singleton   20:22 
Whose bright idea was that? Yeah, I've been in a similar position before. Somebody's great idea. 

Mick Fowler   20:24 
So yeah, I think if you asked me to pick a time when we've gone too minimalist, that would be it. 

Cathy   20:37 
And there was also a rather humorous story in one of your books. I can't remember which one it was about. A climb on the old man of Hoy, and that's for some reason you ended up abseiling, I think, without clothes. 

Mick Fowler   20:55 
Yeah, I was on the old man of Hoy last week, actually, with my son.   

Cathy   20:59
Oh, really? Clothed? 
 
Mick Fowler   21:21 

Yeah. And that link without clothes. Now, that was the needle on Hoy, which is a proper sea stack because, of course, remember the old man of Hoy is not surrounded by water. So you can't really call it a sea stack. Whereas a needle which is at the other end of the island is much more adventurous. 

And there you do have to abseil into the sea. Tie two ropes together actually, to get down to the sea level and then swim across. In the rather cold and usually not very calm Pentland Firth, to get across to the stack, which is then quite challenging to climb as well. So yeah, that was a very memorable trip, yeah. 

Cathy   21:45 
Chilly. 

Mick Fowler   21:46 
Well, well, it was a nice day. So chilly in the water. But you soon warmed up once you got out the water. 

Cathy   21:54 
Was there company in the water? I think you may have written about a seal. 

Mick Fowler   21:57 
Well, that's true. Yes, there were quite a lot of seals about. And of course, they're very inquisitive and it's amazing how exposed you can feel when you have no clothes on and you're not a very good swimmer anyway. And a seal pops up in front of you, like, literally sort of five or six feet in front of me. Then gives you a good look in the eye and then disappears under the water. You know, there's a sort of natural tendency to sort of try and cover everything up and wonder where this creature that is clearly a lot more relaxed in the water than I was has gone. 

Wayne Singleton   22:32 
Gives you a little wink, and off it goes. 

Mick Fowler   22:37 
But anyway, it was a very friendly seal and no damage was done. 

Cathy   22:41 
Excellent. I think the other sort of stand out story with the going minimalist for me and this for me was climbing genius on the part of Pat Littlejohn because I hadn't heard of anything remotely like this before. But I think it was on Taweche and the retrieval ice screw belays. 

Mick Fowler   23:09 
Oh yeah, here. 

Cathy   23:09 
My jaw was open reading that I was like, how can you even do that? That's amazing. 

Mick Fowler   23:14 
Oh, they were very much a thing before Abalakov threads came in. You know nowadays with use a system whereby you drill holes in the ice and then thread a sling through the drilled holes, but no retrieval ice screw belays. I'd never used them before but you know Pat is a guide and was very clued up on these things and yeah it seemed to involve wrapping a prusik loop around the ice screw in such a way that when you pull the rope when you pulled it down, it would twist around the ice screw and unscrew the ice screw, which would miraculously come down after you. And we did that two or three times in a row. I remember. So yeah, full marks to Mr Little John. It was a good effort. 

Cathy   24:01 
Unbelievable. Absolutely fab. This next question, it does centre around 2 words, torture tube. 
And this is genuine, you do put a diagram in your book of this. And when I looked at it, I genuinely thought I was looking at a diagram from a child birthing manual because it shouldn't...it shouldn't happen in nature with adults. I think you describe it as a 50 centimetre diameter frictionless tube in hard ice and you got into your sleeping bag and slid in. You're climbing with Pat Littlejohn on this one as well, on Taweche. He put in the stove and the boots and then got in afterwards, but the rucksack stayed outside and the spin drift blew in. And I mean it just sounded awful.   

Mick Fowler   25:02 
It was worse than that, actually. That was without doubt the worst bivouac I've ever had. 

Wayne Singleton   25:05 
Right. 

Mick Fowler   25:13 
I mean basically, yes, it was a fairly unique feature in that I can't imagine quite how it would formed, but the ground that where we were was very steep and it was snowing when we were looking for somewhere to spend the night and in a sort of ice patch was this tube as you described. It must have been caused by the wind and by spin drift coming blowing down the face in a particular way. I can't really explain how it formed. 

Cathy   25:44 
Yeah. 

Mick Fowler   25:46 
Yeah, it went down at about 45° then it levelled out at the bottom. And I slid down and started to get in my sleeping bag and then pat threw the stove and various other bits and pieces down on top of me as I struggled. So it was very constricted at the bottom and then Pat Hung himself in the sort of 45° section of the tube. 
But then the wind must have changed and the spin drift started to pour in. 
And you know, one of the worst things you can do when you're four or five days out on a really steep face is get your sleeping bag full of snow because it would just melt and, you know, it's probably your trips over. So I had to get out of my sleeping bag and pack it away. 

Cathy   26:32 
Oh no. 

Mick Fowler   26:33 
And then the spin drift by this time had covered up the stove. And I think it was Pat's boots at the bottom of it. And it really did develop into a bit of a nightmare. Pat managed to get the tent fabric over his head. 

Cathy   26:44 
A bit. 

Mick Fowler   26:50 
Which once he'd done that, that sort of blocked out quite a bit of the spindrift coming in, but it didn't really help that much, and it was a memorable night, let's say, yeah. 

Wayne Singleton   27:03 
Wow, not much sleep going on that night, then. Yeah, it's just a lot of shivering.  

Mick Fowler   27:07
There wasn't. There wasn't. I remember Pat at one point saying that I've just got to have a brew. You know, I'm really cold and I absolutely need something to drink and me, just thinking, you must be joking. But you know, it was clearly a good thing to do, but there are all these tassels you have the hanging down from the tent, the tent fabric, and I was struggling at the bottom to light the stove and yeah, that's right. The chances of, you know, catching the whole show alight were pretty high, which would not have added to interest, but it would have added to interest. But it would have made it even more memorable, I suppose. But we were successful, you know, we did actually get a cup of tea out of it. And the next morning was nice weather and on we went.
 
Cathy   27:56 
Amazing. So I mean I've got to gotta ask what temperature rating of sleeping bag works in that kind of scenario? 

Mick Fowler   28:03 
Well, you know that rated down to about -20, I think something like that minus is it -30? 

Cathy   28:11 
And what? What do you do with your with your sleeping bag when you get home after that kind of trip, do you launder it? Do you bin it? Do you? 

Wayne Singleton   28:17 
Set fire to it? 

Mick Fowler   28:19
No, no. You pack it away. Ready for next time.
 
Cathy   28:25 
Now I'm assuming there were a lack of pillows on that particular bivy because your evident incredulity at Dave Turnbull's head comfort on Mugo chilli was, I mean, I had a laugh out loud moment reading that bit. But that that expedition was actually the one where Berghaus had incorporated hydrophobic down into their clothing, and their sleeping bags for the first time. So I'm assuming from what you just described, which is the ideal scenario for hydrophobic down. It made a big difference to your trips. 

Mick Fowler   29:03 
Oh, absolutely. And yeah, it was a great advertisement for hydrophobic down that trip because I'd asked Berghaus if they could design a really warm down jacket. 
And they truly did. This wonderful jacket arrived, and I wore it. And we had a bit of a bad night. Nothing like the torture tube. But I ended up getting quite a bit of snow in my sleeping bag. And also in my jacket. 
And yeah, and as down does when it gets wet, it completely lost its loft. And in the morning, my sleeping bag had seriously cricket ball sized lumps of ice in it, and as the day progressed, I had it hanging out of my rucksack to try and, you know, dry them out or whatever completely unsuccessful. But during the day the down jacket just completely recovered. And I just, could not understand why and it was only afterwards that Berghaus told me that they'd, you know, they'd filled it with what was experimental hydrophobic down. 

Cathy   29:59 
Wow. Wow. 

Mick Fowler   30:10
So you can imagine that hydrophobic down has made a big, big difference, yeah.
 
Wayne Singleton   30:16 
A life saving difference, I guess in a lot of cases as well, hasn't it on all sorts of levels? 

Mick Fowler   30:18 
Potentially yes. I remember on that trip. You know the cricket ball size, lumps of ice never did come out and I spent the rest of the climb wondering whether I should just take a knife to my sleeping bag and just cut them out because they were just a waste of time. Yeah.  And yet my down jacket was wonderful. Cosy. Fantastic. Yeah. 

Cathy   30:39 
Amazing. I think I'll probably just explain for the benefit of listeners who are unfamiliar with the term hydrophobic, it means that the down is treated with a water hating chemical or as often they're water based. They can be a water based chemical and it means that the down doesn't soak up or absorb that moisture whether it's from condensation, whether it's from melted snow or if it's from condensed breath as well. 
But a lot of people in when they come in the shop, they say well, surely you know, you've never seen a like a wet or frozen duckling. Why? Why do we need to add the chemicals to the down to bring back that sort of hydrophobic that's there naturally. And of course, it's to make the feathers hypoallergenic. They have to get washed and that strips the oils that are then kind of synthetically put back into to create that hydrophobic down that that, yeah, I mean just that case in point the sleeping bag never recovered, and the jacket did. That's fantastic. 

Wayne Singleton   31:40
We did do a podcast on down, didn't we at one point? Yeah. We Dr down. That was fascinating, wasn't it? Yeah. Actually, talking to the experts in, in about how, yeah. How down works and  lofting and so on. Yeah. Oh, it was. Yeah. It was mind blowing, wasn't it? But dead interesting to have your experience, Mick. About how that worked for you. 
 
Cathy   32:15 
Yeah. So I guess moving away from technical climbing equipment, but in many ways sort of equally as critical a lot of more senior climbers, myself included wear glasses and contact lenses and we all know they're liable to fog up in a warm kitchen, let alone an altitude in a snow hole or in a crevasse. How do you cope with those? 
In extreme environments.

Mick Fowler   32:44 
I've never found them to be a problem, to be honest, apart from the fact that you have to carry them. But I always think back to you know, very, very early days and I was doing the North Face of the Matterhorn the climb in the Alps and I'd left my contact lenses in the lid of my sack where we were bivouacking and come the morning. They're just frozen solid and it was amazing. I just, you know, put the block of ice in my mouth, melted it out, put the contact lens in. Absolutely no problem. 
And I mean I'm. I'm sure, you know, Opticians would, yeah. 

Wayne Singleton   33:20 
They'll be cringing as they listen. 

Mick Fowler   33:21 
Hold their head in their hands. But I've never really had a problem at all. 

Cathy   33:27 
Yeah. 

Mick Fowler   33:27 
I carry the contact lenses in the lid of my sack. If I remember, I'd pop a couple into a chest pocket overnight so that they don't freeze. But even if they do, I don't lose any sleep over it and it's really not been a problem for me. 

Cathy   33:35 
 Oh, super. I'm kind of at that stage now where if I get the map there, that's it. I've got to have my mate hold the map. 

Mick Fowler   33:53 
Ah, well yeah, one in one else is the answer that works remarkably well, and I frequently. Yeah. Because, you know, I'm short sighted, so. Yeah, I need one in so that I can actually see distance and one with no lens in so that I can actually see the settings on the back of the camera or closer or something like that. 

Wayne Singleton   34:14 
Close. Brilliant. 

Cathy   34:18
Perfect. We discovered that my walking pal and I that she's actually short. She can read close up. So she was on the map and I was on the long-distance landform spotting because I can see for miles so that worked very well. .
 
Mick Fowler   34:31 
Perfect partnership. 

Cathy   34:36 
So you've been sponsored by Berghaus for many years, Mick and fairly recently you had cancer, and you've recovered. Thank goodness. 

Mick Fowler   34:49 
I hope so, yeah. 

Cathy   34:49 
It hasn't held you back. You've obviously been out doing some fantastic trips since, and you've recently started working with Berghaus adapts and we spoke with them at Kendall Mountain Festival and there was absolutely fascinating chat with Alice.   

Wayne Singleton   35:01 
Yeah, it was. It was fascinating, wasn't it? Brilliant, the work that's going on. 

Cathy   35:10 
They're obviously working with you now to design clothing for your next expedition and trip. Can you just explain a little bit about what that involves? And how that's going to work for you moving forward? 

Mick Fowler   35:23 
Yeah, yeah, I suppose, yeah firstly, the issues that I'm left with, which I need adapted clothing for, if you like. 

Cathy   35:31 
Yeah. 

Mick Fowler   35:33 
Well, basically my anus and rectum were removed, and they had to fold or do plastic surgery on my buttocks and fold lots of skin in. And that means that I have virtually no padding left in my buttocks. 

Cathy   35:47 
OK. 

Mick Fowler   35:48 
Which, sitting down on an uncomfortable bivouac, is excruciatingly uncomfortable. 
And so what we're working on at the moment is trousers, which have padding, separate padding, amounts of padding in each buttock. 

Cathy   36:07 
Right. 

Mick Fowler   36:08 
Because just putting a piece of foam or something across the back of the trousers doesn't really work that well.  Because you know, my bottom is just very, very sensitive, just a bit of extra pressure by sticking something inside the trousers, which makes it a bit tighter across the hips, just makes it really, really uncomfortable. And so we're working on getting just the right amount of padding at just the right level in in each buttock and to go down to just above the knee. 

Cathy   36:32 
Yeah. 

Mick Fowler   36:42 
So that on a sitting bivouac you can actually use the padding to sort of take the strain as such. So that's the main thing that we're working on and yeah, the first prototype should be ready soon for me to check that, and that's what we're out to West Nepal in September and that will be a pretty key item of equipment for me because sitting bivouacs, you know, since the operation have been excruciatingly uncomfortable. So I'm looking forward to trying that a lot. 

Cathy   37:12 
Yeah, yeah. 

Mick Fowler   37:16
The other thing is nothing to do with my cancer, but I suffer from ray nodes syndrome from my fingers. And again, you know the tension within the mittens that I wear. I've always worn large mittens suffer from cold hands. If they're just a little bit too tight or a little bit too loose. It really makes a big difference for me. And so again they're producing a pair of mittens there. Absolutely just the right specifications for me.
But also have little very thin pockets inside on the palm side of the intermittent so that I can put a hand warmer in there, and so the pockets will slope towards the toe to the end. The finger end of the Mitt, so that if I hang, the mitts upside down on a stance while I'm belaying or something like that or doing something that needs, you know, fine work. And the hand warmer doesn't fall out because those hand warmers are a combination of getting it just right in my hands. Is really important. So we're working on that as well. And I have a pair of Berghaus mittens actually from many years ago that they made-up for me that are just right. So we're working to improve that even more.
 
Cathy   38:25 
Yeah, super building on that kit. 

Mick Fowler   38:40
Yeah and they've been fantastic in that way. Looking forward to a perfect kit for the imperfect man.
 
Wayne Singleton   38:53 
I guess it was really interesting like Cath said, talking to Alice at Kendal Mountain Festival about the Berghaus adapts programme for want of a better phrase. And you know the work that's going on there to encourage more people to get out and about and have kit, which suits particular bodies. However you are and however we are, I guess. It was really, really interesting. And like you say, there's so much difference depending on your ability. And whatever's gone on physically for you, they were working with someone who… 

Cathy   39:34 
Yes, everything from sort of hand loops on trousers to help lift legs where there's limb disability or lack of movement. And so I guess it's really addressing individual need, isn't it? 

It's not necessarily something they're going to be able to ramp out commercially, but I think just being able to or enabling folk to carry on after whether it's an illness or whether it's an accident or a long term disability and maintaining so others can see that you know life's not over. There's a large slice of it still to be enjoyed. 

Mick Fowler   40:08 
Well, very much so. And I mean it's a service really that enables people to get outdoors and enjoy the outdoors when maybe they wouldn't have been able to before or at least to make it as safer and a more pleasant experience. And yes, incredible help, very small adjustments can make a very, very big difference to people. 

Cathy   40:22 
Yeah, absolutely fantastic. Mick, it's been an absolute pleasure to talk with you. Thank you again for your time and the big thank you to your sponsor, Berghaus, for making this chat possible as well, because it's been absolutely super and I hope we bump into you either at the mountain festival or out and about. 

Wayne Singleton   40:50 
Yeah. 

Cathy   40:54
And we've got links in our show notes to the Berghaus adapts programme and there'll be links in there to your three books as well, Mick, which I very much recommend. And we have all the books available at our shop, so you can go online to our website, which is https://www.climbers-shop.com/  and if you're planning an expedition or an adventure for whatever level you love getting out into the outdoors. There's a wealth, there's a wealth of free information. At our sister website, the Joe Brown Outdoor Academy and that is available at https://www.joebrownoutdooracademy.com/