Why did you undertake the challenge?
After I suffered frostbite, I set myself a number of challenges to rebuild my climbing life, but once I’d done those, I was looking for something new. An old friend asked me if I wanted to join him on a climbing trip to Baffin Island in northern Canada. So I went, with no intention of completing the 7x7 challenge. We endured a terrible storm that forced us to seek shelter for six days. I started chatting to Jaime Vinals, a well-known Guatemalan mountaineer [the first Central American to climb Mount Everest] who was on the same trip, and he explained that he was doing the seven peaks, seven islands challenge. I was intrigued and wondered if this was something I could do with the injuries I have. I discovered that no-one from these shores had done it before, so thought I’d give it a go. So far, only about 140–150 people in the world have completed the challenge.

Which was the most challenging peak to climb?
Technically, the 5,030-metre Carstensz Pyramid on New Guinea was the most difficult. It’s a good rock climb and scramble but there are some rather hair-raising drops and steep cliff faces. Also, we had to trek for days before we could start to climb the peak proper. It was about a 13-day round trip, and when you’ve lost your toes, it isn’t the easiest thing in the world. I ascended okay, but coming down involved some epic bashing through dense vegetation – one day, we spent 15 hours bush-bashing, then my boots fell to pieces and I had to finish in sandals, which wasn’t fun. Baffin Island was pretty difficult to gain access to as well, but the climb itself was fairly straightforward.

Which peak was the most memorable?
I think probably the 3,805-metre volcano, Gunung Kerinci, on Sumatra – I had to abandon the first attempt because it was erupting. But second time around, the flora and fauna around the peak were just beautiful, and the view overlooking the rainforest was amazing. A couple of the peaks I climbed, such as Mount Fuji, were shrouded in mist and cloud, so I wasn’t rewarded with the view, which sort of dampened the spirits at the summit a bit, but Gunung Kerinci was something else. And, the nine-hour journey to reach it was pretty memorable, too. If you’ve ever taken an Indonesian bus, you’ll know what I mean.

How did you get into climbing originally?
I’ve lived just outside the Peak District all my life and, as a boy, my dad and I would regularly follow 6–13-kilometre walks during the late 1970s and early ’80s. Eventually, I got really into it and started doing 48- and 65-kilometre day walks. Then I started getting more into scrambling and, in 1994, I went on a Raleigh International expedition to Chile; the whole world seemed to change for me overnight. I went to the Jenimeni National Park in southern Chile and got on really well with the guy who was leading us, and went off all over the place scrambling and climbing, and I just never looked back. After that, I started climbing in Scotland and the Alps. I still did a lot of Raleigh-style excursions to South America and Indonesia and did some relief work, then went to Bolivia and did some altitude climbing around La Paz, scaling some 6,500-metre peaks. Then, one day at a dinner party, I bumped into Antony Hollinshead, a mate from years back, and he mentioned he was organising an expedition to Mount McKinley in Alaska and asked if I was interested. And from there we started planning for the fateful 1999 trip.
 
What went wrong and how you were rescued?
Three of us – Antony, Steve Ball and me – followed a fairly technical route to the summit called the West Ring. A few hundred metres from the summit, the weather deteriorated quickly. What you have to understand is that the top of Mount McKinley isn’t the classic tall, thin peak, it’s a very flat-topped mountain. So we were caught out on this very open, exposed area in 100km/h winds with temperatures down to –60°C. It was practically impossible to abseil back down; we had nowhere to go. We found a sort of a crevasse and managed to get ourselves inside and out of the wind for the very long night ahead. I tried to radio for help, but base camp could only hear the click of the button. So after answering 20 questions via a one- or two-click answer, they managed to decipher who we were and our approximate location. They said they’d put a fixed-wing aircraft up at daybreak to get our exact position, but it was very cloudy when we heard it go over and we weren’t convinced it had seen us. At daybreak, we decided to try to walk back to camp and it dawned on me that my feet and hands were really frostbitten – I was struggling to walk and hold on to anything. I wasn’t going to get down under my own steam. I remember watching Steve walk off into the distance and not really understanding why, and it dawned on me later that he’d gone to get help. Around ten hours later, Antony and I were rescued. We were convinced Steve had called for help, but actually he’d fallen, breaking both his legs and almost freezing to death, until he was also rescued the following day. We thought we’d had a rough deal, but this guy had really nasty frostbite and lost a lot more than us.

When did you start climbing again?
I was on a rope within 16 months, climbing in Derbyshire. It was a good thing that one of the doctors in the US hospital had told me I’d climb again, as it helped motivate me through my recovery. It was a hell of a steep learning curve. I started ice-climbing again, adjusting the ice axes to suit my hands, and I got to the point where I was on Ben Nevis and in the French Alps – it was excruciating on my feet but I wasn’t going to stop – then, last October, I completed the 7x7 challenge. Anything’s possible after that.

Nigel’s book, Once Bitten (Ecademy Press, £9.99) is out in early March


March 2008