In May 2017 26-year-old Mollie Hughes from Edinburgh became the youngest British woman to climb Mount Everest from both the north and south sides.
The descent is where people die, where they get in to trouble
Mollie Hughes
She told Out of Doors what it’s like to reach the top of the world.
“It’s incredible, says Mollie. You’re higher than every other piece of land, you can see the whole of the Himalayas sprawled out beneath you.
“You’re exhausted and you’re completely shattered but taking it in is incredible.”
But the celebrations can’t last for too long, according to Mollie, because you still have to get back down through the mountain’s infamous ‘death zone’.
This is the area above 8000 metres where exhaustion and lack of oxygen have contributed to the deaths of many climbers and sherpas.
“In your mind you can never think of reaching the top as the achievement, you think ‘that’s great we’ve got there, but now we’ve got to turn our focus and really concentrate on this descent’.
“The descent is where people die, where they get in to trouble.”
