Episode 029 - Mollie Hughes

The following is a conversation with Mollie Hughes, a British alpinist, world record holder, company director, and entrepreneur.

This podcast will appeal to anybody and everybody. It's very easy to listen to Mollie speak and you can kind of get a sense of what it takes to summit Everest and go to the South Pole. She broke the world record for becoming the youngest woman to climb both sides of Mount Everest and the youngest woman to ski solo to the South Pole. And now she's building an amazing adventure business, going around the world talking about her endeavours, and writing a book.

We explore how Mollie developed her mindset both before and during her incredible quests, she explains what it’s like to be caught in an 8-day whiteout on the South Pole and how affirmations helped keep her skis moving.

Everyone can get something practical from this conversation, especially when it comes to developing a mindset to enable you to achieve your goals and deal with adversity along the way.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of the listeners and supporters of the podcast for everything you've done to help us build the name, and the brand, and to get the message out there around microbiome being critically important and gut health being really important for wider body health.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Introduction

00:01:33 Mollie’s background

00:05:00 Tackling extreme activities

00:08:59 Controlling fear

00:10:46 Deciding to climb Everest

00:11:34 Fitness to climb Everest

00:15:00 Costs to climb Everest

00:17:47 Kit required to climb Everest

00:20:14 Mollie’s first climb of Everest

00:23:29 Everest’s death zone

00:26:22 Hillary’s Step

00:32:51 Communication and food on Everest

00:35:06 Climbing north face of Everest

00:44:59 Human landmarks on Everest

00:52:31 Skiing to the South Pole

00:58:58 Dealing with isolation

01:07:16 Silence of the South Pole

01:09:20 Joining Ocean Vertical

Full Transcript:

INSIDE MATTERS - MOLLIE HUGHES

[00:00:00] James: The following is a conversation with Molly Hughes, a British alpinist, world record holder, company director, entrepreneur. And just, generally, a very nice person and a good friend. I've recorded this intro a couple times and I'm kind of struggling to do Molly justice because she's done so many unbelievable things.

[00:00:24] James: In no particular order, she broke the world record for becoming the youngest woman to climb both sides of Mount Everest and also became the youngest woman to ski solo to the South Pole. And now she's building an amazing adventure business and going around the world talking about her endeavors and is writing a book.

[00:00:44] James: Molly's an amazing person and I thoroughly enjoyed the one and a half hours we spent together. talking all about her amazing feats. We spoke about the journey to and from, the amazing things that she's done, and the mental [00:01:00] strength, resilience, and fortitude required to get through these kind of crazy and immense feats.

[00:01:06] James: This podcast will appeal to anybody and everybody. It's very easy to listen to Molly speak and you can kind of get a sense for what it takes to summit Everest and go to the South Pole. This is Inside Matters. My name is Dr James McElroy, I hope you enjoy it.

[00:01:31] James: How did you get interested in these crazy things? 

[00:01:33] Mollie: Yeah, so I grew up in South Devon, so right on the bottom of England, probably as far from any mountains as you get in the UK. So mountaineering wasn't on my radar at all. Um, it's sunnier, for sure. And it's outdoorsy, it's by the coast. So I loved all of everything to do with that.

[00:01:51] Mollie: I started surfing when I was a teenager. I started a bit of hiking and Dartmoor stuff. Um, but it wasn't until I was 17. And when I was 17, my school was organizing this [00:02:00] expedition to go to Kenya, East Africa. And now I went to a school that was like a huge, big, rough, comprehensive. So this kind of opportunity that came to us was completely out of anyone's mind.

[00:02:11] Mollie: It kind of blew my mind and I knew I needed to go. So we worked away to raise some money, bag packing in supermarkets, um, car boot sales. Sorry mate, 

[00:02:19] James: coffee's quite spicy. Because a certain person has put some cayenne pepper in it. 

[00:02:24] Mollie: I'm glad I avoided that. So in the end it raised all the money to head off to Kenya, went to Kenya, did a bit of charity work, a bit of safari, and then had the chance at the end of the trip to climb Mount Kenya, which was stunning.

[00:02:38] Mollie: We got to just over 5, 000 meters, my first bit of altitude at the age of 17. And I was hooked, like, the clouds were swirling around us, you could see the savannah thousands of meters down below. And I knew that this, and this experience of altitude, which I actually really enjoyed, I enjoyed how it felt on my body, and I felt like I could do it, like, I was with maybe, I don't know, 15, 16 classmates.

[00:02:59] Mollie: [00:03:00] And I just felt like I was, you know. They might have been struggling, having headaches, but I just was just loving the whole experience. Did you have 

[00:03:05] James: any symptoms or signs? 

[00:03:07] Mollie: Not that, not that first time. I mean, how did you do something that's come and gone throughout your sickness throughout my life? Um, but not that time.

[00:03:13] Mollie: So yeah, really instilled something in me though. It was, I want to travel. and see the world, but to do it through climbing mountains. And what happened next? Um, so after that, I carried on at school, went to university, and I just kind of got into a pattern of being at school or uni in the term time, saving up money, having part time jobs, and then you get those big summers, don't you, at uni?

[00:03:34] Mollie: Well, you probably didn't if you went to school, but We still got good summers, yeah. You had that time, and I would have worked hard in the year and got my money together and gone off on trips in the summer. So the year after Kenya I went to the Himalayas and joined an expedition to do a bit of climbing in the Ladakh region of India.

[00:03:53] Mollie: The year after that I went to Did you see 

[00:03:54] James: one of the big, big mountains at that time? 

[00:03:56] Mollie: Um, [00:04:00] we saw the Karakoram range, so the range where K2 is, really far in the distance, and that was, yeah, mind blowing. 

[00:04:09] James: Does that stimulate something in you, going, I maybe want to climb one of them one day? Not yet. 

[00:04:13] Mollie: Like, awe and wonder were there, and when we flew into Ley, which is just an amazing flight and Himalayas just there, just like white peak mountains in every direction, it was definitely absolute awe and wonder.

[00:04:25] Mollie: But it was so different, like I was like a small town girl from this place, and Devon just getting my mind blown by different places. Um, and then the year after it was South America, and also that summer we squeezed in a trip to Morocco and climbed Jebel Toubkal, which is an awesome climb, which you should do one day, for sure.

[00:04:39] Mollie: I'd love to, yeah. You'd love it. 

[00:04:41] James: Is this the one where you can go from, like, lying on a beach 

[00:04:44] Mollie: in part of the day and then Not quite. Four or five days. Okay, 

[00:04:49] James: maybe that's some other place 

[00:04:50] Mollie: I'm thinking about. I think it's like 4, 000 metres, around 4, 000 metres. Okay, it's a big one then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's cool.

[00:04:57] Mollie: And snowy in winter but, like, warm in the summer. [00:05:00] 

[00:05:00] James: Maybe that's the one I'm thinking of then, yeah, I've heard about this. Now, none of this is, I hope I don't take this the wrong way, like, extreme. Activity. Right? I mean, it's like, it's hard, but you went on to do a lot of extreme stuff. So had the extreme gene started to express itself in your body at that time, were you going, I need more, like I need to do crazy stuff?

[00:05:25] Mollie: Not yet, no, and I don't know if it, what is the point where I did, no I do know the point where I did. But we're going to get to that, so maybe we can just. So it was, it was just this wanting to travel, see different parts of the world, climb mountains over there, went to East Africa again, did Kilimanjaro with some friends, spent three weeks on the beaches.

[00:05:42] Mollie: Um, but that kind of switch happened when I was at uni. So I was studying Bristol, studying sports. The degree was called psychology with sports biology. So it's kind of half psychology, half sports biology. And then it kind of ended coming together with sports psychology, was what I kind of did my dissertation [00:06:00] in.

[00:06:00] Mollie: And I wrote my dissertation all about the psychology of Everest climbers. Um, yeah, so that's kind of when that kind of switch happened. Um, and for like various reasons I did it, I knew I wanted to write about something interesting for me to sit down. Um, I'm pretty dyslexic, so the idea of sitting down and writing 10, 000 words at the time, I knew it had to be interesting.

[00:06:20] Mollie: My classmates were doing all sorts of studies, it just weren't One interesting to me, I knew it had to really grab me. Um, and I found seven guys around the UK. I was really searching for female climbers, but I couldn't really get hold of anyone. So I found seven guys, travelled around, went to the Lake District, went to London, um, and sat down with these guys.

[00:06:38] Mollie: Interviewed them, explored their ability to control fear on the mountain, their motivation for actually going to Everest in the first place, the, the psychological pressure they faced. Sat down at base camp and this huge obstacle just in front of them. Um, and I was hooked on Everest within the first interview with this guy, Scott, in his big posh office in London.

[00:06:59] Mollie: Um, 

[00:06:59] James: [00:07:00] oh, he's just, was he a professional mountaineer or was he just like, he was a 

[00:07:03] Mollie: professional business type. Um, but he'd done Everest a few years before. Yeah. Just the way he explained the western comb and climbing the Lhotse face and Taking these kind of final few steps up towards the top. Um, I was like, okay, something switched in me and I was like, okay, at some point in my life, I need to experience this in some sort of way.

[00:07:21] Mollie: What were the common 

[00:07:22] James: traits that you, like, what did you find in your research? 

[00:07:25] Mollie: So, it was very much an undergrad project. And it wasn't a long time ago now, um, but it was a qualitative study. So I was looking at the different aspects and where I could find, um, similarities and differences. And I kind of came up with four themes that ran through them all.

[00:07:40] Mollie: Um, and the first one that really jumped out at me and still kind of holds true is talking about the allure of Everest. So Everest is simply a big lump of rock and on top of the snow and different levels of snow. Um, But it holds this incredible kind of deep seated allure over all sorts of people.

[00:07:59] Mollie: People that are [00:08:00] never ever gonna see it, people that are never ever gonna step foot on it, people that maybe done a tiny bit of climbing and want to have it in their head but they're never gonna get there, or people that actually make it happen and want to get there. So it really kind of entices people on this because of its history, because it's so famous, it's the highest mountain in the world.

[00:08:18] Mollie: So that was something that really, everyone had to be grabbed by this allure in one way or another. 

[00:08:23] James: And it's something you felt as well, 

[00:08:24] Mollie: right? Yeah, as soon as I spoke to this first guy, it grabbed me, absolutely. I feel it a little bit as 

[00:08:29] James: well. Yeah. But of course I wouldn't because I'm not allowed to based on the key man insurance.

[00:08:32] Mollie: That sounds sensible, for sure. 

[00:08:38] James: So this sparked this interest, if you like. Um, we're going to speak about your latest book, which is currently in the works as we progress through the podcast. But are any, like, just to try and. pull it all together, any of the themes that You were researching at the very start, during your dissertation, coming through now in your research.

[00:08:58] James: Yeah, 

[00:08:59] Mollie: [00:09:00] definitely. There's the one about, well there's a few, there's like controlling fear. It's a really interesting thing, what fear actually is. And it is just a innate emotion that's been passed down to us from our earliest ancestors. And actually these days it works in overdrive. We don't need it to do all the things that we needed to do when we were out hunter gathering, having all these threats around us.

[00:09:23] Mollie: So, working out ways to control that is, is, yeah, really interesting. Um, and the part's about self belief as well. So I think that's what I drew from these seven guys I interviewed. They might not have been super in your face, they weren't these big confident people, but they all, deep down inside of them, knew they could succeed.

[00:09:40] Mollie: Wow. If things played into, if everything else kind of worked, they knew deep down they could do it. And that is a huge thing. And I knew, somehow, I had that self belief that I could do it, even though I was 21 at the time, and it was my first 8, 000 meter peak, but I always had this deep down feeling that I could, could do it and could achieve it, if everything else kind of played ball.[00:10:00] 

[00:10:00] James: Why, at that time, were there maybe less female Everest summiters than men? Yeah, 

[00:10:07] Mollie: I mean, it's probably still the case. Um, I actually don't know the stats so I shouldn't, shouldn't. Guess at them when I, from kind of the feeling of being on the mountain, it always feels like there's maybe about 10 percent women to 90 percent men of people 

[00:10:22] James: going for it.

[00:10:22] James: But some of the best helping us now are women, right? Yeah, 

[00:10:25] Mollie: absolutely. Crazy feats. Great people doing some, some really good stuff recently. Um, but yeah, definitely in the minority. So 

[00:10:31] James: bringing it back then to what happened next, like. What was the road to, to Everest? Yeah. Your first crazy. It was quick 

[00:10:39] Mollie: for me and it all worked out, um, luckily, but I was young and, um, kind of going for it.

[00:10:46] Mollie: So I finished uni in maybe the summer, May, June, um, and I had kind of three main tasks to do before I could leave for Everest the following April. Right. Because the season you climb is April and May. Well, so you decided that I [00:11:00] decided that was the time I wanted to get. You were going to do it? Yeah, I was going to be age 21.

[00:11:05] Mollie: And it was the time I needed to get. So I had to train. I had to get super fit. Fit that I've been in my whole life. I did a little sport growing up at uni. I was part of the netball team. That was probably more drinking than training. But you know, that probably helped as well. So I had to get super fit. So I went to the uni gym and I met the strength and conditioning coach.

[00:11:25] Mollie: I was like, I need help. And he was amazing. He just helped me out. So he got me strong and super fit. The next one was to increase my mountaineering experience. One 

[00:11:34] James: element on the fitness then, like what does the program look like for someone who needs to get fit for Everest? 

[00:11:39] Mollie: It's differed throughout the years and as I've gone back to Everest or climbed or done other stuff in Antarctica, so it's always differed.

[00:11:46] Mollie: Um, then it was a lot of strength and conditioning. So it was, um, stronger, get stronger, absolutely. Every part of my body needed to be strong for carrying a heavy rucksack. That really slow movement. You take one step and all of your weight goes [00:12:00] through that step and you take another step. Um, cardiovascularly, everything needed to be on point.

[00:12:05] Mollie: I was up there where there's such little oxygen up there. Life can't be sustained for long. Um, a lot of anaerobic threshold training we did. So lots of big sprints on. Treadmills and bikes and stuff. Yeah, it was good. Did you enjoy it? Yeah, I enjoy the process of training and it's, it's good if you have a target.

[00:12:24] Mollie: So I do my best training and hit my best fitness when I have a target that I need to. Because I knew every time I didn't turn up for a session that I was going to regret that on Everest. And 

[00:12:34] James: the sort of dates that you go, are they, are there particular times in the year where it's best to climb Everest?

[00:12:39] James: Yeah, for 

[00:12:40] Mollie: sure. So it's busier? It's, it's the only time it's climbed, really, is April and May. There's sometimes a small window in, in the autumn, um, but not many people climb there. So for, for most of the year, the summit of Everest is hit by the jet stream. So it's buffered by the jet stream. Um, the winds could be 100 miles an hour or whatever.

[00:12:58] Mollie: Having been on Ben Chonsley this weekend at 60. [00:13:00] Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So nobody goes up there. Nobody goes near it. Too strong. Yeah, you'd be blown off. Yeah. So when the monsoon season starts to kind of brew in the valleys of the Himalayas, it somehow pushes, again I'm not really sure of the details, but it pushes the jet stream just off the top.

[00:13:15] Mollie: Um, so for maybe a couple of weeks, if you're lucky, around the end of May, the jet stream lifts a bit off the summit and the winds die down. And when they die down to 20 miles an hour, or less if you're lucky, you've got your chance to get up there. So you spend April, the first part of May, acclimatizing, so on the lower slopes, getting your body used to the altitude, and then you wait, you sit tight at base camp, and you wait for the jet stream to lift, for the winds to die down, and you see it on the weather forecasting, and then you go for it, and you make your attempt.

[00:13:44] Mollie: Wow. 

[00:13:45] James: Okay. So I've got so many questions. I don't even know where to start. Can we fast forward to the, so assuming, I'm assuming the training went well, I just want to jump right in now to like, how heavy is the pack? How did you go to the toilet? [00:14:00] 

[00:14:00] Mollie: Control it, James, control it. So I guess the other really important thing with the training and the prep was mountaineering experience.

[00:14:07] Mollie: So I headed off to the Alps, had a guide there, trained as much as I could. That autumn I went to the Himalayas and I was climbing on a different mountain, training on that. So that kind of got me up. I wasn't the most experienced mountaineer in the world, I was 21 years old from Devon, but I climbed enough and spent a lot of time at altitude over the last four or five years.

[00:14:25] Mollie: Um, then the hardest thing I had to do was raise the money. The money, yeah, the money. How much did you need to raise? So it was 2012 I was there the first time. So then I needed about 35 grand. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. But these days it'll be even more. And what's that for? It's for For everything.

[00:14:42] Mollie: Guides. Yeah, a big chunk goes to the Nepalese government as for your permits, so maybe about ten, ten, eleven thousand dollars. Um, and then it's all the set up on the mountain, your Sherpa guides, it's the, the base camp set up, all the food, all the tents, all the extra equipment, it's kind of not personal stuff.[00:15:00] 

[00:15:00] Mollie: Um, 

[00:15:00] James: yeah. I'm jumping way ahead again, I'm going to stop myself, but There's this sort of notion at the moment that if you've got tons of money you can do Everest easily with lots of Sherpa support. Is that a load of nonsense because it's such a big mountain? Yeah, 

[00:15:13] Mollie: it's, um. Yeah, it's an interesting one. I think you can make it easier for yourself.

[00:15:19] Mollie: You can absolutely make it easier for yourself with more money. You can buy more shepherd support. You can not carry a thing. You can have more oxygen. So you have your bottled oxygen and you can have it on a crazy high flow rate from the bottom to the top of the mountain. You can probably train better, have a high Boxing 10 home to sleep in.

[00:15:37] Mollie: There's all sorts you can do. Um, so you can make it easier for yourself, but the thing about that mountain is you still got to put one foot in front of the other day after day after day and you've got to suffer every single day. Um, so it will never ever be easy, but you can, can make things easier with a bit of money for sure.

[00:15:52] Mollie: Good to know. 

[00:15:54] James: Now on the money side of things, how did you raise your money? It's unbelievably hard. Raising money is hard. [00:16:00] Just for the listener 

[00:16:01] Mollie: to know. It's never easy. And I didn't like what I wanted. to achieve was corporate sponsorship. So to get a company on board who could put their logos all over my down suit, all over my backpack.

[00:16:13] Mollie: I could then go in and talk to them afterwards. PR opportunities, um, but again, I was 20 at the time. Knew nothing about PR or marketing. So I created this like massive proposal. It was probably like 40 pages long of me just like blathering on about what I thought I could offer a company and talking about the history of Everest.

[00:16:31] Mollie: It was far too much. Um, But every week I'd send it out to 30 or 40 different companies and every week get 30 or 40 rejections or just not, not hit back. Um, yeah, and that went on and on and on for months and months and months. Um, and a lot of people told me that with these kinds of trips, funding comes through right at the last moment.

[00:16:49] Mollie: So if you can hold on until that last moment. then it, you've got more of a chance. Um, I think you've built a bit of, kind of, no, bit of noise around your [00:17:00] expedition and people kind of take note. Um, so I did, I kind of held on to the last moment with keeping the training, keeping the other climbs and then, yeah, it kind of came in right, right at the last moment.

[00:17:09] Mollie: One company came and funded? A few different ones. Um, so I kind of pieced together one was a charity, one was a lawyer firm, pieced it all together. 

[00:17:15] James: Some of the things I've spoken about a lot on this podcast relate to If you believe in something and you want something enough, serendipity does just run its course and somehow it just happens.

[00:17:26] James: Yeah, for 

[00:17:26] Mollie: sure. The universe sort of If you persevere enough, I think, and if you don't give up, because it's so easy to, like, have all that rejection, that constant rejection, and think, this isn't worth it, nobody believes in it. Must have 

[00:17:40] James: been a good day for you, when all the money was 

[00:17:42] Mollie: secured. And then I had to book my flights, buy my kit, think, oh shit, I've got to go.

[00:17:46] Mollie: So 

[00:17:47] James: on the kit then, what kit does one require for Everest? How does it differ to, you know, your Scottish Munro bagging kit, for example? 

[00:17:55] Mollie: So you need a big down suit. Which you wouldn't want to wear in Scotland. Too hot. Too hot. [00:18:00] And it's down feathers, so it's good for really kind of cold, dry environments like the Himalayas.

[00:18:04] Mollie: So it's like a, like a sleeping bag with arms and legs and a hood. 

[00:18:08] James: And you just wear base layers under that? Base layers 

[00:18:10] Mollie: and then maybe a thin mid layer. And that's it? Yeah. And you're warm enough? Yeah. About minus 30, minus 35. Wow. It's kind of constant movement. And boots are special warm boots? Huge boots, like double layered in a boot and an outer boot.

[00:18:24] Mollie: Two massive sleeping bags, having it at different levels, all sorts of personal kit. Yeah, thousands and thousands of pounds, so a lot of the sponsorship had to be pushed into that 

[00:18:32] James: as well. Into the kit. And also, how do you choose the right Sherpa team, like, there's lots of people who 

[00:18:38] Mollie: take people up professionally.

[00:18:39] Mollie: Yeah, yeah. So Everest is kind of a commercial operation and there's various teams running trips every single year on the north side and the south side. I was climbing the south side the first time in 2012. And I kind of went to all the British teams that I knew, the British guys that I knew of, and asked if, if they'd take me on.

[00:18:57] Mollie: Um, and one guy agreed to [00:19:00] it, so I joined his team. Um, and he's, he's called Kenton Coole, and he's one of the most famous Everest guys. He's climbed it, I don't even know now, 12, 13, 14 times or more. Um, so I joined his team, and then his extended team have all the Sherpas that he's used for every single climb.

[00:19:15] Mollie: Um, so I was kind of amalgamated into, into that team. And it was, I think, probably the best team on the mountain. Wow. 

[00:19:20] James: How do you know if you've got the best team for the expedition? It's experience? 

[00:19:24] Mollie: Um, yeah. Or just ego maybe. So they were like, yeah, we're absolutely doing 

[00:19:28] James: it. We're going 

[00:19:29] Mollie: to smash it. Yeah.

[00:19:30] Mollie: Yeah. So, um, I, the team I joined in the end you're together and in the end on the summit night, you're just kind of a one on one with your Sherpa guide. And my Sherpa guide was a guy called Lakpa Andrew Sherpa, who I'd climbed with a few months before in another place in the Himalayas. And he was amazing.

[00:19:46] Mollie: I think he was maybe 28 when we climbed together first time. He'd already climbed like eight times, super humble, super down to earth and just so, so on it. They're just mountain goats. Yeah, absolutely. And just why [00:20:00] differently, but in an incredibly humble way. That's 

[00:20:02] James: amazing. Are you still in touch with this 

[00:20:04] Mollie: gentleman?

[00:20:04] Mollie: Yeah. Yeah. We did the north side together as well. So I went back to the north side in 2017 and he joined me there. And I've climbed with him in a few other places. That's fantastic. 

[00:20:14] James: Now, we'll get to 2017, but tell us about your first climb then of Everest. How did it feel? The mindset? 

[00:20:22] Mollie: Yeah. 

[00:20:22] James: What it's like?

[00:20:23] James: You mentioned one 

[00:20:24] Mollie: foot in front of the other. Yep. So it's, it's two months you're on the mountain for, about. Six, seven, eight weeks. The first big section, you're acclimatizing, so you've got base camp set up at the bottom, which is a big kind of tented village, teams from all over the world based there for their chance to get to the top of the world, if they're lucky enough.

[00:20:44] Mollie: You spend the first six weeks acclimatizing, so you'll go from base camp to camp one. You might just touch camp one, you'll come back to base camp, rest, recover for a few days, let your body get used to it. Then you might go up to camp one and spend the night there. And then the following day, you might push a [00:21:00] little bit further through the Western Coombe, and then you come back, and you'll rest, you'll recover, you'll then go all the way up to maybe Camp 2, spend a night or two there, come all the way back, rest for a few days.

[00:21:10] Mollie: Then the kind of final bit is touching Camp 3. So Camp 3 on the south side is about 7, 100 metres, and it's not really thought that the human body can acclimatise much past that. Yeah, because the oxygen content's so low. So low, yeah, yeah. And our bodies, yeah, just can't. You're always making gains as you go up, but above, above that you're kind of just, everything's just kind of dying a little bit.

[00:21:33] Mollie: Are you on oxygen at that point? No, not then. So you want to get up, you want to hit that camp, probably not spend the night, but kind of touch it, have a little breather there, and then get down as fast as you can, back to base camp. And that's where you're waiting for the weather window. So you're resting and recovering at base camp and waiting for that.

[00:21:48] James: And then when you've got a weather window, it's all systems go? 

[00:21:50] Mollie: It's all go, um, and it takes a good few days to get, retrace all those steps to Camp 3, spend a night at Camp 3, and then you push up to the [00:22:00] South Coal, which on the south side is, uh, 7, 950 metres. So you're high, but you're just shy of the death zone.

[00:22:09] Mollie: And have you heard of the death zone before? I have, but for the listener, what are we talking about here? So the death zone is that area above 8, 000 metres. So the sum of Eris being 8, 848 metres above sea level. So basically it's a Monroe on top of the Death Zone. Yeah. So a good almost 900 metres, um, and in this place called the Death Zone.

[00:22:25] Mollie: And it's a phrase used by climbers and people to, to talk about this area where there's such little available oxygen. That no life can survive for long. Your body is really rapidly deteriorating on itself. You could say it's dying on itself, if you wanted to. Um, but everything's slowing down. And everything takes a long time.

[00:22:43] Mollie: Yep. So, melting snow and ice with drinking water, at the South Coal Camp, takes, you know, a couple of hours. Putting your boots on takes 20 minutes or so because you're just fatigued or just slow, even with oxygen. Yeah. So you're not, you do have oxygen as you come up [00:23:00] through it, but a really small kind of flow rate.

[00:23:02] Mollie: Um, yeah, everything is slow. 

[00:23:05] James: How are the Sherpas at this point? Are they still rocking and rolling because they're used to it or are they 

[00:23:09] Mollie: still a little bit better? I think they would be, Lapua was on bottled oxygen then as well, I think. Again, a small flow rate, but just, it's all about getting yourself in the best possible position for the following day, which is a summit attempt.

[00:23:22] Mollie: Um, so you want to be as ready as you possibly can be for that day, because that's the biggest day of your life. 

[00:23:27] James: So you have one day at the 

[00:23:29] Mollie: death zone. Um, so that camp, the South Coal, you, actually not long, just a few hours. So I think we got there maybe 4 p. m. Yeah. And then we rested, melted snow, drank. To rehydrate, cooked food, try to eat but your appetite is so suppressed by the altitude.

[00:23:46] Mollie: You're psyching yourself up, and then 8pm was the time we left. So, four hours. Four hours to get ready for the hardest night of your life. 

[00:23:55] James: Now tell us about the hardest night. Why is it so hard? Because the oxygen, 

[00:23:59] Mollie: it's [00:24:00] cold. Yeah, yeah. So, imagine you've got your down suit on, your massive boots, your gloves, your hood's up, your goggles are probably on your head ready for sunrise.

[00:24:09] Mollie: And you kind of begin out of that initial camp. It feels like a long time ago now. I'm trying to put myself back into where I was. And you clip into the first ropes and you kind of begin taking steps up and up and up. You get into the death zone quite quickly. And with each step your body just kind of screams at you that it needs more oxygen.

[00:24:27] Mollie: And that sort of, oh I should turn around, I should get lower, my body needs to be lower. It's there the whole time. And it's pitch black because it's nighttime, so you're just following the kind of beam of your head torch. The 

[00:24:36] James: voices are in your head saying stop, turn back, 

[00:24:38] Mollie: you might die. For sure. So I think it's, your body is close to its kind of physical limit, at least mine, mine definitely was.

[00:24:46] Mollie: Um, but it's keeping your body that tiny, sorry, your mind that tiny bit stronger, just kind of will it and let your body know it can do it. So was 

[00:24:54] James: it a constant dialogue in your head? Like, come on, you can do it. What were you saying to yourself? Just [00:25:00] come 

[00:25:00] Mollie: so far? Yeah. And all the, it took so much to get to that point, like with all the training and all this hell of getting all the sponsorships together and everyone kind of believing in me being there.

[00:25:10] Mollie: Um, and also this, this want to do it. And I think with all of that dialogue, I could, I think a deep down under it all belief that I could do it if I could. It's about withstanding suffering. And if you can withstand suffering for the whole two months and that whole night, then you can get it. Cause it will end at some point.

[00:25:28] Mollie: The 

[00:25:28] James: hardest part then is the night. 

[00:25:29] Mollie: Yeah. Yeah, 

[00:25:30] James: for sure. Is that like ubiquitous? All the climbers say, gosh, that last night is hard. 

[00:25:34] Mollie: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And yet mostly because of the altitude. Um, so you push on and throughout all the darkness and then around maybe five, six. 4 a. m. ish. It suddenly starts to get light and it's it's not like a snap into sunrise It's the darkness slowly starts to clear and as it does you can kind of make out the route that you're on You look down and that's when you see the Himalayas for the first time because [00:26:00] everything's shrouded in darkness during the night Nothing to really tell you you're heading to the top of the world Nothing to tell you on Everest and you're so in your head with your ox your mask on you can't communicate you could be anywhere Um, but as soon as that light starts to come, and the Himalayas just kind of appear, and you're on that kind of final ridge, and I remember kind of looking down at Nepal just being sprawled out beneath me, just mountains, as far as you can see.

[00:26:22] Mollie: And then on my right hand side, Tibet, as far as you can see, these kind of white peak mountains. Amazing. Um, pushed on, you're on the ridge, then you get to the bottom of the Hillary Step. On the south side. I've heard of this, yeah. And this is kind of like the crux of the summit day, so it's a big rocky section that you've got to climb.

[00:26:37] Mollie: Um, we got up and over it with a bit of a struggle, like any kind of climbing over a rock at 8, 800 metres is so hard. Do you have 

[00:26:45] James: to like dig your feet in with the 

[00:26:48] Mollie: crampons? Yeah, there's a bit of a balancing act and there's a big lump of rock to get over, um, which is actually Do you have a huge drop below?

[00:26:54] Mollie: Is it scary? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Like 2, 000 metres around you. Oh really? Is it just that exposed? Yeah, it's [00:27:00] horrific. Don't fancy it so much now. I don't blame you. I wouldn't want to go back. Then you're on the final ridgeline, and the sun, by the time I got there, the sun was up, and we took the final few steps up, and at 8am, me and Lakpa reached the top.

[00:27:13] Mollie: Wow. So 12 hours of climbing from the south cliff to the top. How long did you stay at the top for? Not long. 10 minutes the first time. That's it, you've got to 

[00:27:20] James: move. We've got to get down, yeah. How many other groups were climbing at the time? Can you remember? 

[00:27:25] Mollie: So the South side is busy, so it's the Nepalese side.

[00:27:28] Mollie: And that year I was there, 2012, was the first year that started to be overcrowding. Right. Because people see it a lot these days, and it's in the media a lot, but that year, 2012, was the first year. And I think there was a picture that year on the front page of the Daily Mail. Off the line. That was that was the first line.

[00:27:45] Mollie: Yeah. Wow. I think I've been on the front page of the Daily Mail.

[00:27:52] James: That's crazy. Is it not quite scary knowing that there's such a long line of people behind you? Yeah. So we 

[00:27:58] Mollie: decide who goes first. You just, [00:28:00] you gotta go for it. And so we, we left the South Col at 8pm because we knew it was busy. It felt busy. Usually you'd leave the South Col maybe at 9, 10. Um, so we wanted to get ahead of everyone and get up there and get it done.

[00:28:12] Mollie: And we did, we got up there before most people, but we actually met them all on the way down. And I met a lot of them on the Hillary step and it was, it was super hard. Um, to get down past them. How'd you do 

[00:28:23] James: that? Because people, they must be a bit annoyed that we're trying to get up and get to somewhere.

[00:28:27] Mollie: Everyone's kind of zoned in on themselves. Like if you imagine you've got your goggles on, your oxygen mask, your hood up, communication is so hard. You're, everything is focused on breathing and slowly moving. So everyone's kind of these. I'm a little bit zombie like in a way, trying to get up. Um, and we have that desperation of needing to get down.

[00:28:45] Mollie: We've only got enough bottled oxygen in our bags and we've stashed a bit along the route. Um, but we had to, we had to reach it. And our, our time was kind of drawing slower and slower. Um, and me and Lak had a bit of an issue on, on the, on the Hillary step, getting down past them. I think we were, in the [00:29:00] end, stuck on it for maybe 40, 45 minutes.

[00:29:03] Mollie: Wow. Of kind of being in this one place. Just because you were trying to navigate around other people? And they, they, it was kind of, they were coming up the crux of the big rock section to come up and they couldn't really see us around the corner and we kept trying to look around to get past them but they were just coming and coming and coming.

[00:29:16] Mollie: Did you feel scared? Yeah, everything's kind of slightly numbed by the lack of oxygen and that kind of hypoxic state you're kind of getting into. Um, after a while, I kind of knew something was up with me because I started to feel kind of dizzy and even more like I wasn't really there. Um, and at that point I remember kind of like tapping Lakpa on the shoulder and being like, I think something's wrong.

[00:29:37] Mollie: And he checks the gauge that kind of gauges on my oxygen bottle and I see this kind of like panic flick across his face And I think oh shit. Okay, my oxygen's run out. We've been stood here for far too long Our next kind of stashed oxygen is is further down the route Um, but at that point after we'd had you run out, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:29:53] Mollie: I don't know how long I'd been stood there without without breathing bottle oxygen either. Because when you're still you can, you know, you don't [00:30:00] die like there's oxygen in the air and the oxygen we're breathing is a mixture of bottled oxygen ambient air anyway. So you are. A little bit acclimatised. Um, What did he do?

[00:30:10] Mollie: He just, just went into complete gear and just shouted at everyone to just stop, cut me up and got me down the Hillary step down that section. I think I slid down the main rock on my bum at that point. Um, pulled me along to the, kind of along the ridgeline and I remember just sitting me in this kind of snowy snowy corner and pulled out, I think he was carrying two oxygen bottles, and he pulled out one from his backpack and put it on my mask.

[00:30:31] Mollie: And within a few, literally a couple of minutes of breathing it, I started to feel much better. Wow. And then we kind of regained ourselves and then continued along past all these people as much as we could. But, yeah, I was helpless in the point 

[00:30:44] James: without him. People think of Everest, they think there's like, this is going to sound really horrible, but landmarks which are people.

[00:30:50] James: Yeah. Is that a 

[00:30:50] Mollie: thing still? More on the north side. Right. So, people die up there every single, every single year. The South 

[00:30:58] James: side's less [00:31:00] dangerous? 

[00:31:00] Mollie: Um, I'm not sure on death rate these days, actually, because the south side is so busy. Um, there's more bodies left on the north side, because on the south side it's a little bit easier to bring people down.

[00:31:11] Mollie: Um, the north side is, is harder for sure, it's more technical. And if you die quite hard, it's really hard to get bodies down. Right. So there's more of those kind of landmarks on 

[00:31:21] James: the north side, for sure. So um. That kind of brings us to you coming down then and celebrating, and you felt amazing. 

[00:31:29] Mollie: No, it felt really rough.

[00:31:31] Mollie: It felt really rough. Part of you felt amazing, maybe. I was a mess. You were sick. I was a mess. We got back to the South Coal, um, I had a bit of frostbite on this little finger. It was just, all went super pale. So, so white, and a little bit here. And I think from being on the Hillary Step, not breathing oxygen for too long, um, and just being stood still, not much blood pumping around my body.

[00:31:51] Mollie: Wow. I had a little bit of my cheeks. I have these quite big chubby cheeks and they always get it. Um, and I also, it sounds, it was quite [00:32:00] rough. The north side was a better expedition, but I also had, um, tracheitis. So the, my trachea, like right deep in my windpipe, I was super inflamed because of the altitude, being so dry, all that dry air, and also the breathing, the botox was really, really dry as well.

[00:32:16] Mollie: So everything in here was super inflamed and just like constant, constant coughing. Um, so I spent a really uncomfortable night at. The South Col, camp number four. Um, one of the guys who was leading my summer bit was a guy called Dr. Rob Casserly, who thankfully was a doctor. He'd climbed Everest eight times or something and he definitely looked after me.

[00:32:34] Mollie: He gave me some drugs and kept an eye on me that night. And then the next day we slowly retraced our steps all the way to base camp. We left at first light and got there just after dark. Wow. You made it. Just done. Exhausted. My body was, um, wrecked. Can 

[00:32:48] James: you communicate with people when you're on the mountain?

[00:32:51] Mollie: A high up it's hard, so on that final summit night in the dark with a lot of kit it's hard. But after you get a little bit lower, yeah, absolutely. And what about 

[00:32:59] James: things like [00:33:00] meals and going to the loo, that kind of thing? Yeah, 

[00:33:02] Mollie: so eating is super, super important. So it's all about like freeze dried ration packs.

[00:33:07] Mollie: So you're melting snow and ice, pouring it into like pre made packets of spaghetti bolognese or curry. It's kind of packed 

[00:33:13] James: full.

[00:33:18] James: This is Christmas dinner on the South Pole. This is a quote from you, I think. I'm going to pick out my favourite freeze dried meal for the day, spaghetti bolognese, while I'll be dreaming of turkey and roast potatoes. Yeah, absolutely. So you've had a lot of freeze dried 

[00:33:31] Mollie: food? Far too much over the last ten years.

[00:33:34] James: We'll get to the pools. But, uh, you made it down and what happened after that? Like, were you down because you'd done this thing and you, because people talk about the post event blues 

[00:33:47] Mollie: as, you know, like initially it was great and we got back to Kathmandu and our little team had a lot of, a lot of fun eating food.

[00:33:55] Mollie: Wine was great. Drinking, having actual showers and beds. So all the [00:34:00] luxuries are great. And then getting home. Yeah, you definitely get that post Expedition blues and it's especially that point like I was 21. I've done uni Suddenly completely focused on this trip and raising the money 12 months of my life Just crazy focused on getting this done and I did it and I was home and I was back living at my mom's house in Devon What did she think without a job?

[00:34:22] Mollie: Yeah, what did she 

[00:34:23] James: think of 

[00:34:23] Mollie: this? You'd have to ask 

[00:34:25] James: her I'm just imagining being in Devon and You know, no one really does that in Devon and you've just gone and done Everest. 

[00:34:34] Mollie: Yeah, I think my parents and family have always been super supportive. Yeah, good. But it's a lot, you know, for them, especially. Of course.

[00:34:42] Mollie: Yeah, I don't think she slept for the couple of months I was there. Especially the first one. Wonder 

[00:34:46] James: where my Molly is. Yeah, exactly. Eating freeze dried spaghetti in a dirt suit. With frozen fingers. So the crazy gene was fully switched on by this point. 

[00:34:58] Mollie: The want to do stuff, for sure. [00:35:00] 

[00:35:00] James: It's probably a crazy gene.

[00:35:01] James: Yeah. And then you went, did you go back to Everest before you did your 

[00:35:06] Mollie: Antarctica trip? Yeah. So the first time was 2012. 2012. Then 2017 was the Northside. What drew you back? Um, I like moved to, I moved to London for a bit and then I eventually moved to Scotland. So, Edinburgh and I've been there for the last 10 years.

[00:35:22] Mollie: Um, and just getting more into the outdoor world, the outdoor community. 

[00:35:27] James: Had Ocean Vertigo started in 2017? 

[00:35:30] Mollie: Uh, yes. I didn't join until 2021. Got it. Okay, got it. No, no, no, 2019? Got it. 2018. I think it was 2018. Got it. I should know that. Got it. So yeah, I moved to Scotland. Um, and then, the north side had always like, been in my mind.

[00:35:49] Mollie: So when I wrote my dissertation, half the guys had done the south side, half had done the north side. Really different experiences. The sides of the mountain are very different. The south side you're in Nepal the whole time, [00:36:00] and it's a bit chaotic with all the people there and all sorts going on. The north side is in Tibet.

[00:36:05] Mollie: And it's colder, it's windier, much more technical climb, um, but much more kind of a remote feeling to it. Um, less people, way less people, maybe a third of the people on that side of the mountain. Has it got 

[00:36:18] James: increasingly busier or has it kind of levelled off now, the 

[00:36:20] Mollie: south and the north? Um, I think the north is still much quieter, absolutely.

[00:36:24] Mollie: And the south is more busy? The south is still pretty crazy, yeah. Mad, yeah? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. If I was going to go back, I'd go back to the north. Really? Yeah, 

[00:36:31] James: definitely. Even though it's harder? Yeah. More dangerous? Yeah, for sure. Are you going to go back? No. 

[00:36:39] Mollie: Absolutely not. 

[00:36:42] James: You've done that now. Yeah. Okay.

[00:36:44] James: Take that off. So the north side then, did you go with the same 

[00:36:47] Mollie: people? So, yeah, it was always kind of in my head to maybe go and go and see it. And the more I kind of learn about it, this whole picture of it, I kind of knew that, I don't know, I kind of, I spent a [00:37:00] long thinking of studying Everest. I kind of felt like I'd only experienced half of it.

[00:37:03] Mollie: Right. And that experience was as amazing as it was. Right. To get there and get to the top. There was also a hell of a lot of suffering, and getting so sick on the way down, and the crowds and the people. I didn't feel like I did it in a particular good style. Okay. And it wasn't quite what I kind of maybe thought it was going to be like, or what I wanted from this mountain.

[00:37:22] Mollie: Um, whereas the north side um, 

[00:37:25] James: sort of majestic, euphoric experience, 

[00:37:27] Mollie: yeah. Maybe I wanted to enjoy it more. Yep. Which is a bit weird. Because I should never enjoy it. But I guess I love the north side. And um Yeah, so I decided to push for the north side, but through the whole process of getting funding again this time It's still super super hard made it a little bit easier by the fact.

[00:37:46] Mollie: I was going for a record so I worked out that if I did both sides I would be the First English woman to climb Everest from the north and south side and I'd also be the youngest woman in the world at the time I was gonna be 26 Wow to climb the [00:38:00] north and south side So having that unique selling point, aim thing, yeah, so having those kind of aims makes fundraising a tiny bit easier.

[00:38:09] Mollie: And you're a world record holder. Yeah. Yeah, actually. Yeah, and for Antarctica as well. But some, so I'm, I'm the first woman to climb Everest, first English woman from the north south side. And then I was the youngest, but another girl's done it now, but at the time 

[00:38:20] James: I wasn't. Still, that's insane. I didn't realize this.

[00:38:22] James: Yeah. Wow. I didn't realise you were so accomplished in the books and stuff. Amazing! It's an honour to have you! It's such a pleasure! No, that's why I was 

[00:38:33] Mollie: there. What did we do 

[00:38:36] James: together first? Ben Leddy? 

[00:38:40] Mollie: We didn't even get to the top. 

[00:38:44] James: We didn't make it to the top, Ben Leddy. We went to the 

[00:38:46] Mollie: Greenwelly. 

[00:38:47] James: World record Everest, Mountaineer.

[00:38:50] James: Failed to summit Bentley. How did 

[00:38:54] Mollie: that happen? Oh, that's funny. Um, but yeah, the records are good because [00:39:00] they 

[00:39:00] James: Also just for the listener, I'm laughing so much now. There was a guy who came down and was like, you better make sure you've got your head torch. Some older guy. Okay. 

[00:39:15] Mollie: There's always those people in Scotland, isn't there?

[00:39:17] James: Really funny. Yeah. That was really funny. So, you decided you were going to do the North. 

[00:39:23] Mollie: Yeah. So I had the records, which, uh, you know, they're great for gaining traction on these trips, gaining publicity, and hopefully convincing sponsors, um, and that's what, what they're for. I didn't, you know, I didn't really care about them.

[00:39:38] Mollie: I wanted to see the North side and experience it. But this helped get traction. But I actually have to get money. Um, Yeah. It's a huge amount of money, more expensive for sure. The North is maybe a little bit more expensive, but also the way in which I wanted to do it. So I wanted to do it with a really small team.

[00:39:55] Mollie: And one of my good friends is called John Gupta and he's a UK [00:40:00] mountain guide. And I climbed on another peak with him and I climbed with him to Scotland a wee bit. But I knew I wanted to come with him and we were going to have a great time. He'd done the south side, he'd not done the north side. Do 

[00:40:10] James: the, I mean you are a very accomplished mountaineer.

[00:40:14] James: Do people like John and yourself still get a lot of enjoyment from the 

[00:40:16] Mollie: Scottish Munros? Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah? Absolutely, yeah yeah. There's all sorts of hard stuff you can do in Scotland. But also just having nice days in Scotland is so good. Too good. Yeah, 

[00:40:25] James: absolutely. It's good to know, 

[00:40:26] Mollie: good to know, good to know.

[00:40:28] Mollie: So I wanted to kind of employ John to be the guide and run the logistics of the trip. So I raised, yeah, the 50 grand for that. So it's me and John and then we had Lhakpa was back again, Lhakpa Anjushepa, which was awesome to have him with us. And then we had another Nepalese guide called Leela Tamang, so four of us.

[00:40:44] Mollie: Which was great. It was compact and it meant we could be flexible and we could be quick and when the weather was good we could go and if the weather wasn't good or one of us wasn't feeling like good we could just kind of chill out a little bit. Um, so flexibility with a small team was amazing. [00:41:00] Raised all the money in the end, trained, got ourselves there to Tibet, which was cool.

[00:41:06] Mollie: Always wanted to go to Tibet and it was, it was amazing, like mountains were just mind blowing. And you drive to base camp. Do you? So on the south side you walk in, on the north side you drive, you leave the capital Lhasa and four or five days later you're dropped off literally outside your tent at base camp.

[00:41:22] Mollie: Um, and the kind of, the challenging thing about the north side, and what I definitely picked up in my dissertation, is the psychological pressure of it. So, on the south side, Everest and the summit and the mountain is kind of hidden from view. It's behind the west shoulder and you don't really see the true summit until you're kind of much higher on the mountain.

[00:41:40] Mollie: Whereas on the north side. It's just there. I'll show you some pictures, but we'll Google it, because it's just, the whole mountain is just there, and you're sat at the bottom of it, and the whole of Everest is just in front of you. And it's so big. It's so big, and base gump is five and a half thousand meters, and you feel crap, you've got a headache, you feel sick, you're at [00:42:00] that altitude.

[00:42:00] Mollie: And you look up at this mountain and you think, how the hell am I going to climb all the way up there when I feel this bad? Um, so it's intimidating. Oh, we're getting it on 

[00:42:09] James: the screen. Oh, nice. 

[00:42:12] Mollie: Yeah, so that's the north side. So that's just there. And you see it when the Oh, she does look beautiful though, doesn't she?

[00:42:16] Mollie: Yeah. And some days it's covered in clouds. And then the cloud kind of clears and it's just white because it's been snowing up there so much. And you see, when it's really windy, you see kind of plumes of spindrift coming off the top. It looks like the mountain's smoking. And you just see, all in all, it's different kind of faces and moods.

[00:42:34] Mollie: And you see it at night. Awesome. It's awe inspiring. It's awesome. And terrifying. It looks absolutely awesome. And that ridge line you can see on the left hand side is the North East Ridge, and that's the main route to the top of Everest, skirting past the North Face, um, and it's epic, and it's technical, much more technical than the South Side.

[00:42:55] Mollie: When you say technical, what does that mean for the listener? So, much more rock climbing [00:43:00] sections. So, along the North East Ridge, you've got the first, second and third step to get over. Big rock sections. On the south side, it's just really the Hillary step is the only kind of crux technical bit. 

[00:43:10] James: And when you say rock climbing, what happens when you're that high up?

[00:43:12] James: Do you have to like, have an axe and you sort of bit bits in, or? 

[00:43:14] Mollie: So, it's all got fixed ropes on it, which are much more helpful. Who fixed the ropes? Who are these people? Usually a team of Sherpas, rope fixing Sherpas, who are just amazingly skilled. And they'll fix them every season. days or a week or so before the main climbing party gets up there.

[00:43:30] Mollie: Which is incredible. This is crazy. Yep. 

[00:43:33] James: So they do it every year. It's 

[00:43:34] Mollie: not just like they're there forever. Because they get battered in the winter with the jet stream and all that kind of thing. Has anyone done 

[00:43:39] James: Everest in the winter? Probably some crazy crazies. 

[00:43:45] Mollie: Don't ask me that because I don't actually know.

[00:43:46] Mollie: You 

[00:43:46] James: don't know, yeah. We must. Maybe there's some crazy, crazy. I don't know, 

[00:43:48] Mollie: because, well, I'm not sure. We'll look it up. We'll 

[00:43:51] James: look it up. We'll look it up. But it looks, it looks amazing. It looks really 

[00:43:54] Mollie: amazing. And then also the kind of technicality comes from, at points, it's really narrow on that ridgeline.

[00:43:59] Mollie: [00:44:00] So just enough, like one foot in front of the other. Drops everywhere, um, and you've got to be on it the whole time you climb, you've got to be on it. Talk us through that trip 

[00:44:08] James: then. You got off top of the three 

[00:44:09] Mollie: levels. Yep. So, again, it was another six weeks of acclimatising, slowly going up and down, um, and then that summer night came, and the whole trip was, like, incredible.

[00:44:22] Mollie: I enjoyed it so much more than the south side. It was stunning, it felt remote, it felt wild, and it really felt like you're climbing Everest. Um, this side of the mountain was the original, like, side that those British teams were trying to climb in the 1920s. Wow. So the story is of like Mallory and Irvine getting somewhere near the top, and then nobody really knows if it's summited or not.

[00:44:42] Mollie: No one knows what happened. Yeah, exactly. Wow. It's known that they got up over the first step, so you could kind of think about that as you were climbing. Wow. Again, it was pitch black, night time. They were there somewhere, maybe. Yeah, yeah, and you left at 8pm again, followed your head torch up over the first step, um, after And we talked about 

[00:44:59] James: the [00:45:00] Human landmarks.

[00:45:01] James: Yeah, that's a 

[00:45:01] Mollie: thing. So yeah, so on the south side, the first side I did, I didn't see any bodies on the north side on that summit night. I saw five. Oh, goodness me. And the first one. 

[00:45:13] James: What's it like? They're just 

[00:45:14] Mollie: there. Well, the first one. I mean, it's harrowing. Absolutely. The first one I saw was in the night time.

[00:45:19] Mollie: So before the summit on the way up, just after the third step, So you've got up over these steps, um, the idea of bringing a body down across them is dangerous and pretty incomprehensible to me. Bodies, they get frozen, they get, you know, they're heavy, really, really heavy. And these rock steps are challenging.

[00:45:39] Mollie: So you need a team of people and it will put them in danger. So a lot of time if it's higher than that on the left, um, there was the one that was just above the third step. So we're getting closer and closer to the summit. We were like within kind of touching distance and I, I saw this guy. And he was, I was on the rope coming up here, and he was maybe a meter, meter and a half from me.

[00:45:59] Mollie: And he was facing [00:46:00] down the slope. And at some kind of time in his last few hours, he'd lost his gloves. And it was kind of like his hands were reaching out towards me. Um, and they were so pale, they were like as white as the snow that they were resting on. Um, and I literally looked at this, this guy, this body for less than a second.

[00:46:16] Mollie: And I saw it, I took the whole scene in, I turned away, and I moved as fast as I could to get away from him. Gosh. And in my head, because you're so kind of hypoxic and you're so focused on survival, I guess, looking after yourself, I didn't really think of him as a person at the time. I just thought of him as this thing I needed to get away from, something negative and bad that I had to get away from.

[00:46:39] Mollie: And I didn't think about who he was or who he'd left behind or the last person he touched with those hands. I just got away from him. And I thought about that a lot because it's a weird way to react to seeing a body, like if you saw it at home, you know, here in Glasgow, you'd be, you'd ruin your week, your month, you'd think about it for a long time, there'd be a lot of trauma there.

[00:46:59] Mollie: Um, [00:47:00] but actually I think my body or my mind was kind of reacting how it needed to. If I'd stopped and thought about his family or who he was, yeah, I would have got emotional and that emotion would have slowed me down and it would have more importantly kind of made everything more dangerous, um, and my situation I was in.

[00:47:18] Mollie: So I got away from him, carried on, but then on the way down I saw four more bodies on the way down. Um, further away and not quite as graphic, but yeah. Are they like 

[00:47:26] James: known 

[00:47:27] Mollie: landmarks, or? There is the one that I didn't actually see called Green Boots, and that's on the north side and He's just his boots sticking out.

[00:47:34] Mollie: He's got green boots on. People do use that as a landmark to know where they are. Um, I didn't see him. I don't know if there was too much snow there that year or maybe he's gone now. I'm not sure. It's just crazy, 

[00:47:43] James: isn't it, that there's people there and they were all motivated people who wanted to do something amazing and something 

[00:47:49] Mollie: happened.

[00:47:50] Mollie: And the kind of scary thing about the guy I saw just there was he looked like us. He looked like John, he looked Latva, he looked like me. Same [00:48:00] outfit. Because he was still fully clothed. Same outfit, yeah. 

[00:48:01] James: He just got too cold? Or does 

[00:48:03] Mollie: anyone know? I'm not sure. Fair enough. No idea. No one knows. I don't think he died that season, maybe the year before that.

[00:48:09] Mollie: Um, yeah. So yeah, So coming 

[00:48:12] James: to the psychology then of all of this, like, did you learn a lot about yourself climbing these mountains? Yeah. Like, how to. Be resilient and what matters and what 

[00:48:21] Mollie: doesn't for sure. Yeah, yeah. So I think I'm definitely a different person than when when I did the first side. Um, before that I always had this self belief, but I never had the kind of confidence to tell her about it.

[00:48:33] Mollie: I had real little self confidence growing up. I was super shy. And at school, I would never put my hand up. If teachers asked me a question, I'd just have this thing where I'd just go bright red. I'd get super embarrassed. I would never express myself or talk about anything, really. And even at uni, like, giving presentations to five people was terrifying.

[00:48:50] Mollie: So I'm a very different person. Last week, I gave a presentation in Barcelona to 600 people in this massive auditorium. Wow. What did you talk about? Just, there's all this kind of, all of crap, you know, , , [00:49:00] all this expedition 

[00:49:01] James: stuff. We're gonna have you into our office. It'll be less grand, but, um, we are Oh, nice.

[00:49:04] James: It'd be amazing. Yeah. If you're keen. Yeah. Great. Really talk about all this and the mindset. Yeah. Because I, I often describe to our team that we are trying to climb a big burn together. Yeah. And it's really, really, really hard. Yeah. Like what we're trying to do technically at our company is so hard. Yeah.

[00:49:21] James: And there's always an issue. We're trying to do something that no one else has ever done before, to be honest. So we kind of have to have that, nothing is impossible, just keep going mindset 

[00:49:31] Mollie: every day. And that resilience to have setbacks and come back from them stronger. And keep going. 

[00:49:38] James: Did you have setbacks in your prep and on the mountains?

[00:49:40] Mollie: Yeah, all the time. A lot with the funding. Trying to get the money together is hard and I wanted to go the first time in 2016 and I had to get to the end, didn't get any money so I had to cancel that and try again for the next year. Um. Um. And there's, yeah, there's adversity, there's setbacks. That's kind of where resilience grows from.

[00:49:57] Mollie: And it's all about how we respond to [00:50:00] setbacks is where resilience grows. Um, I don't want to fast forward too much, but when I got to Antarctica, that was a million times harder psychologically than anything I'd done before. But during all those years of climbing everything from the south side, the north side, all the bits and stuff I did in between, yeah, that resilience just grew and grew.

[00:50:17] Mollie: Um, so when I was 21, there's no way I could have spent 58 days alone in Antarctica. because I spent the last almost 10 years pushing myself, being outside of my comfort zone, um, and responding in a positive way to the adversity I felt. So not blaming it on the outside world, but taking that kind of, it's called like a low cost of control.

[00:50:37] Mollie: So saying that. I achieved because of these steps that I did, or these things didn't go wrong because I could have done this better. So not blaming the outside world, but, but looking internally about my own control over my, my destiny and what I do. Um, and I think that built up a lot of resilience over the years and I helped get through the north side and then later on Antarctica.

[00:50:58] James: So you'd done, we'd broken a [00:51:00] world record. Um, what then in your mind was like, okay, I want to do something even, is it even harder? Was Antarctica harder? Yeah, 

[00:51:07] Mollie: so there's always, like, I'm not like, I don't get back from a trip and I'm like, okay, what's next? Let's go. It's all, it's a chill time. It organically happens.

[00:51:14] Mollie: Yeah, for sure. I have to be super inspired by a place, and it has to get under my skin, and I have to want to see it and experience it, and Everest did that through the dissertation. I did both sides and I kind of, I was, I was done with it, pleased with everything that happened. Um, but there was always one place that was in the back of my mind and it was this vast frozen continent.

[00:51:37] Mollie: Um, I used to have a housemate, I worked with him in London and I live with him in Edinburgh and he did a bit of work with British Antarctic Survey as a glaciologist. So he did field research down there as he was doing his PhD and would come back with incredible photos and videos of Antarctica. Wow. Wow.

[00:51:52] Mollie: And I knew I wanted to just like experience it in some capacity. I wanted to be there surrounded by nothingness, by white and snow [00:52:00] and wind and just kind of feel this continent that nobody's ever really, nobody's settled on it. Nobody's civilizations have lived there. It's a really interesting, special place.

[00:52:09] Mollie: The world's biggest desert because it's so dry. Wow. Even though it's covered in frozen water. Um, and I was looking at expeditions that I could do. Again, it's about, all about money and getting a sponsorship. So Are 

[00:52:21] James: you getting better at fundraising, do you think? 

[00:52:23] Mollie: Um, yeah, I think you always get a bit better at these things, but it's, it's not fun and it's still challenging even after both sides of Everest.

[00:52:31] Mollie: Um, and I found a trip I wanted to do skiing from the edge of the continent to the South Pole, 700 miles, 1, 100 kilometers. And if I did it solo, so no teammates, no guides, I would be the youngest woman to do it at the age of 29 now. So I had my USP and that's what I could use to go out and try and find the 75 odd grand I Yeah, for sure.

[00:52:55] Mollie: Yeah, you need it. But the money was bigger, 75 grand. And it was, [00:53:00] yeah, unbelievably hard again. 

[00:53:01] James: Yeah, this sounds crazy though, because you're 700 miles on your own. 

[00:53:05] Mollie: Yeah. In your own thoughts. Yeah. 

[00:53:09] James: How 

[00:53:09] Mollie: many days did it take? 58 in the end. 58 

[00:53:11] James: days on your own. You didn't speak to anybody? Uh, yeah. You had a 

[00:53:14] Mollie: walkie talkie?

[00:53:14] Mollie: I had um, yeah, like a sat phone. Um, which was, was good for that, and I had to call in every night, so I had a conversation with somebody every day. But, yeah, it was, it was psychological, that expedition. 

[00:53:26] James: Were you fitter for that than Everest, do you think, or is it sort 

[00:53:28] Mollie: of? Yeah, I was stronger, actually. I had a really good strength program with a, I had a really good trainer at a gym in Edinburgh, and he got me really strong, um, mostly because you're pulling your sled.

[00:53:39] Mollie: So, all of your supplies are in your sled behind you. Um, turns out it's uphill, because you go from the coast to the South Pole. So, sea level to about 2, 800 meters. Wow. It's like a gradual hill for two months. Wow. And you're pulling the sled. And my sled was 105 kilos at the start. Wow. It's big. Really, really heavy.

[00:53:56] Mollie: Yep. It's big. So I had to be strong. Everything had to be strong. [00:54:00] Posterior train, everything, core, legs, um, So I was definitely stronger, but during the 58 days, I got really fit. What do you think 

[00:54:08] James: about when you're over there on your own? Seriously, you talk to yourself, sing? 

[00:54:13] Mollie: So it's, it's psychological. It's a long time to be on your own, right?

[00:54:17] Mollie: Yeah, and you can't really train for it. Like you can train physically. I got strong. I pulled tires. I'm down the beach, but it's really hard to find actual solitude Anywhere even in the UK you can probably go off into the highlands and maybe get a week or so But there'll be people around and you have some sort of contact I spent a lot of time in Norway in a place called the Hardanger Vida training there, which is this big frozen plateau It's absolutely stunning.

[00:54:44] Mollie: But even there I was bumping into people. There were people in the distance So that kind of true solitude of feeling, being alone is, is hard to find. Um, and what did I think about? It varied, day on day. It um, the expedition actually started really badly. [00:55:00] Oh, what happened? Because I, I got dropped off at Hokey's Inlet.

[00:55:04] Mollie: The pilots flew off into the distance, um, I began the trip and after the first couple of hours I hit the first kind of incline as I came from the sea ice onto the land mass of the continent. And you were just map and compassing 

[00:55:15] James: it, or did you nav? GPS, 

[00:55:18] Mollie: yeah, yeah. Digital map, yeah. And then you get your bearings from that and then put it into your compass and your compass is on like a chest mount in front of you.

[00:55:23] Mollie: So you can hold your ski pose and you just keep the line in the box the whole way. Okay, wow. Um, but as I kind of hit that first hill, I looked behind me and saw these kind of clouds coming over the horizon. Uh oh. And as they did, they brought, uh, really strong winds. And in Antarctica, the wind blows from the inside of the cont almost always blows from the inside of the continent outwards.

[00:55:44] Mollie: Um, so if you're heading to the middle, to the south pole Into the headwind. Yeah, it's a headwind every, every day. Um, so the winds increased. Uh, that night I pitched my tent, it took ages in strong winds. The next morning I woke super early because my whole tent was just like violently shaking in, in what was a huge storm.[00:56:00] 

[00:56:00] Mollie: And I looked outside, it was complete whiteout. So I'm sure you've had whiteouts in the mountains. I guess for people that don't know it's when left looks the same as right, up looks the same as down. People say it's like being inside a ping pong ball, just real like disorientating ness of it all. Um, so this huge storm had hit and the winds were gusting 30 knots, 35, 40 knots.

[00:56:22] Mollie: And I had to push on and I had to try and ski that first day. I had to put my tent down, which is the hardest thing. because and the scariest thing here because it can blow away and that's really only shelter from from anything out there. Put the tent down, skied a few hours and in the end there's nothing right it's just ice just snow yeah yeah snow and hills and big and that kind of coastal side of it at the beginning of the trip there's big lumps of snow and then there's big patches of ice where it's wind scorched.

[00:56:48] Mollie: No bothies. No bothies unfortunately no no nothing no polar bears absolutely no penguins. Um that's good 

[00:56:55] James: yeah polar bears are Serious. 

[00:56:57] Mollie: Yeah. Luckily there were a few [00:57:00] thousand miles of it. And that storm actually stuck on me for the first eight days of the trip. So I was white out conditions. The whole time?

[00:57:07] Mollie: And yeah. And the winds got to up to like gusting 50 knots, which is crazy. Wow. Kind of hard to move then. Yeah. As it's coming in the headwind and with that you get the wind chill. So ambient temperature at the time maybe minus 15, minus 20, but with the wind chill, minus 45. It's so cold. It really gets you.

[00:57:26] Mollie: Colder than Everest? Yeah. With that windshield, yeah. So what do 

[00:57:29] James: you wear then in Antarctica? Downsuit 

[00:57:31] Mollie: again? Well, actually, less. Less stuff. Because you're moving. Because you're moving. So on Everest, you're slowly, so slow every single step, but there, your only real way to generate heat is through movement.

[00:57:41] Mollie: And you want to be moving constantly, so one of my big sponsors, which was awesome for Antarctica, was Gore Tex. And together we, with mountain equipment, we designed like some new Gore Tex salopettes and jacket with a big fur ruff to protect my face. And under that, mid layers and base layers, lots of merino wool.

[00:57:58] Mollie: So it was a really thin, windproof layer, [00:58:00] but just moving all the time to generate heat. Wow. What happens if you get injured? Um, well you need to stop, pitch your tent, you've got a big down jacket in your bag, you've got down sleeping bags, um, you need to get your tent up as quick. 

[00:58:11] James: So you were in a whiteout for like 8 days, couldn't see anything, that must have been hard mentally.

[00:58:16] James: For sure, yeah. And does this bring me now to the book?

[00:58:23] James: How does it tie in then to your book, because that must have been a really hard point in your life. Yeah, 

[00:58:28] Mollie: absolutely. So, yeah, this book that I'm writing at the moment, hopefully coming out spring 2025. So a bit of time to get out and get it done. Um, but it's kind of like a psychological analysis of adventure.

[00:58:41] Mollie: And the book is separated into seven different themes, and it's kind of like seven lessons from the edge of the world. And one is about fear, and one is about resilience, and one is about self belief. The Antarctic sections are all about, well, one is, the big one is resilience, like getting through that storm.

[00:58:58] Mollie: One is about isolation, how to spend [00:59:00] that amount of time by yourself. Um, and yeah, so I, I, Like look into my own story, I bring in psychological research that kind of pushes, pushes the story in different ways. And I also interview a few other adventurers and learn about how they relate to that theme in different environments.

[00:59:15] Mollie: If it's rowing across oceans, if it's swimming, if it's, and there's 

[00:59:19] James: common parallels between all these people. Yeah, 

[00:59:21] Mollie: for sure. Yeah, 

[00:59:22] James: yeah. What are they, like, in summary, without delving into the good stuff that's going 

[00:59:27] Mollie: in your book? Yeah, well, I don't know, I haven't finished writing it yet. But really, I mean, it's all interesting.

[00:59:32] Mollie: And everyone has their own kind of personal journey. Um, and it depends on the situation, the environment that you're in. But it is, yeah, it's that self belief. It's really believing that you can do it. It's learning how to control fear, it's dealing with isolation in whatever way you do, um, and I guess, I guess what I've learned from everything is that it really isn't all in the head.

[00:59:52] Mollie: Everything's in there. Yeah, really it's like, you know. 

[00:59:55] James: What tools could you, like, a toolkit a little [01:00:00] bit, 

[01:00:00] Mollie: like a mental toolkit? Developed it and developing it. I guess one that. I speak about a lot in the book and it really helped me in Antarctica, um, is the process of using positive affirmations. So when I finally came out of the storm, it was day nine, I was super behind schedule.

[01:00:18] Mollie: I'd been battered by the storm. Physically I was okay, but I was really It'd been, it'd been, yeah, traumatic the first nine days of the trip, um, and my head wasn't a bad place. And on other expeditions, I've always found it easy to like, make myself feel better. There's other people around you, usually really fun people that you can laugh about crappy situations with.

[01:00:38] Mollie: I think it's quite a British thing to do if something's a bit crap, you can make a joke about it and it gets better. This is great, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. People to give you a hug, people to make decisions with. is, is also quite crucial, but actually when I came in through the storm it was all just sat on my shoulders.

[01:00:54] Mollie: And with that I kind of found a big kind of black cloud kind of came over me and I couldn't shift it. And I've never [01:01:00] really felt When you say black cloud, like, negative thoughts? Super negative thoughts. Unbelievably negative. And I've never felt that before. Like, you have bits of it, but they're easy to bat away usually, but there it just kind of consumed me.

[01:01:10] Mollie: And it was thoughts like, what on earth are you doing here? Like, how are you ever gonna make it another 650 miles to the South Pole? Things like, is it your ego that's led you down here? Like, what makes you think you can actually achieve this? Like, you're a 29 year old 5'4 girl. What have you possibly got to make you special to get down there?

[01:01:31] Mollie: So just, yeah, swamps. And every step you take, it's harder. And every hill you hit, it gets harder and harder. And it's almost like your mind is bullying you and it's pushing you in the corner and and trying to derail everything. Um, so yeah, one night I, I was thinking what I could do. And the idea of positive affirmations kind of came to me, I have, um, when I did a TED talk a few years ago in Glasgow, and one of the guys that I was doing alongside that day, his was all about positive affirmations.

[01:01:59] Mollie: And at the time I [01:02:00] was kind of thinking, you know, this is awesome and it's worked for him, but there's no way I could stand there in the mirror and be like, you're great. You can do this. Like that's not for me. Um, but in my kind of desperate hour of need in Antarctica, I came up with three phrases. that I had to use and I would say them out loud over and over again and in the end I'd shout them to Antarctica and the shift in my mindset was, was monumental.

[01:02:24] Mollie: Absolutely incredible. I suddenly felt like myself again. I suddenly made good decisions. Yeah, absolutely. What were they? Can you tell us? Yeah, I'm allowed to swear. Of course. Okay. , of course encourage you. You can swear. Yeah. So the first one was really simple. Yeah. And it was just to say I am strong. So at that point, I'd never felt weaker mentally, physically, I was just felt like a tiny, shriveled, weak thing.

[01:02:48] Mollie: So saying I'm strong, that's how I needed to feel. That's how I wanted to feel. The second was to say, I'm inspiring people. And that felt important because the whole trip was too hard just to be about me and [01:03:00] my own achievement. And I knew so many people were following it back home, school groups, whoever.

[01:03:04] Mollie: I had to be doing it for them. The third one was the rude one, but the most effective. And it's not how I was feeling, but it's how I needed to feel. And I would say, I am a fucking badass. As loud as I possibly could. And I would shout it as loud as I could to Antarctica. It's true. But it's how I needed to be to reach the South Pole.

[01:03:25] Mollie: Where did 

[01:03:25] James: they come from? They just appeared in your mind? Yeah, 

[01:03:27] Mollie: yeah, yeah. Amazing. Just one night. Some download. Yeah. Yeah, it was incredible. It got you through. Yeah. And the black cow would come back and I would shout it at them, and after maybe two or three days of really kind of practicing this, yeah, I was myself again.

[01:03:40] Mollie: That's incredible. 

[01:03:41] James: Yeah. Do you use affirmations now in your life? I've tried. the morning and go, I am a 

[01:03:47] Mollie: fucking badass. I should. Um, I haven't needed them since then. Um, and at times I think maybe I should, but it feels different here. But they are good. And in, in the book, in Breathe, I've been looking at the research [01:04:00] behind it, and it's there.

[01:04:01] Mollie: It's absolutely there. We can rewire our brain to, to think about the good things. I think we're kind of preset to always be focusing on the negative side of things, reacting to situations negatively, worrying, having anxiety. But we can rewire that, and we are all fucking badasses. Absolutely. I 

[01:04:18] James: love that. I love that.

[01:04:19] James: Seriously, Glasshouse is cool. Absolutely. Glass half full always. Yeah. You can create your destiny. Absolutely. If you want it badly enough and you can, yeah, maybe through affirmations or through writing something down. Yeah. Just say it. 

[01:04:31] Mollie: And there's a, that's the way to do it. You can either, if you don't have that confidence, which I don't, I actually don't have here, unless I'm on my own in Antarctica, you can write them on a note, put them on your mirror so you just see them every morning.

[01:04:41] Mollie: You just glance at them and it slowly gets into your, into your mindset. I've got one. 

[01:04:45] James: Yeah. Awesome. Each and every day I'm becoming more successful in every way. Nice. Amazing. So it's on my whiteboards. Great. I wake up and I say that. Great. And success is all encompassing. It's your happiness, it's relationships, it's physical [01:05:00] fitness, and yeah.

[01:05:01] James: It's just a nice way 

[01:05:02] Mollie: to start the day. And it's true. And I think it's probably true for everyone. Each day we're growing. We're learning. Getting better. Becoming more resilient. Becoming more successful. Yeah. 

[01:05:11] James: Yeah. Nice. Now, you've done all this amazingly hard stuff. Oh, we've not finished 

[01:05:15] Mollie: Antarctica. Sorry.

[01:05:16] Mollie: Did I make it? Oh. Did you make it? No. Yeah, I didn't. You 

[01:05:19] James: made it. Yeah. I made it. You made it. Lots of me. The affirmations got you 

[01:05:24] Mollie: through. Got me through that kind of black cloud bear. Lots more. Lots more stuff happening. We could spend hours talking about it. Um. But yeah, got there eventually. Some of the highlights 

[01:05:32] James: and lowlights.

[01:05:34] James: I recall you telling me you got some crazy injury where like Your, your flesh started eating itself or something like that. I got this wrong. 

[01:05:45] Mollie: I've got it wrong. I've got it wrong. 

[01:05:47] James: Parasite. No, I'll tell you what. I know what it was. The sheathing is bad. Yeah. That's what it is. It's a sheathing. Yeah. Sorry. No eating.

[01:05:53] James: No 

[01:05:54] Mollie: flesh eating. No flesh eating. Antarctic aliens. So I got a little bit of what's called [01:06:00] polar thigh. That's what you told me about. So, it's a cold injury that's only really seen in polar regions and especially Antarctica. And it's a mix of cold and chafing and some people get it horrifically badly.

[01:06:13] Mollie: There was a girl also there when I was down there who's horrific, she had to have skin grafts and stuff afterwards. I got just a tiny bit on my thigh, so yeah, that was a low point and it had to be managed as I was skiing along, not letting it get affected was really important. Um, just the weather in general was really hard, the loneliness, the, um, yeah, getting through every single day and becoming disciplined.

[01:06:39] Mollie: The highlights were, it's just an incredible place, um, Christmas day by myself was amazing. Then just the kind of, the naturalness of it all, so, I think it was amazing. It was amazing, 

[01:06:48] James: why? Did you give yourself presents? Mmm, 

[01:06:50] Mollie: a little bit. I had like a two hour light and then it was just a cool place to spend Christmas.

[01:06:54] Mollie: Right. Um, I don't think I want to spend it again on my own, but it was just, it was cool to be there for that. Very unique. [01:07:00] Yeah. Very unique. And then the day I'll never ever forget, I think it was day 53, I was close. And I woke up that day and something felt different. Right. And I couldn't work out for a long time and I put my tent down and I began skiing, um, and then after a while I had my break, so I was regimented.

[01:07:16] Mollie: I skied for an hour and a half, stopped for ten minutes, skied for an hour and a half, over and over again. Stopped for my first ten minute break, had a drink, had something to eat, and then I realised there was something missing. And it was, well it wasn't even something that was missing, it was something that was present.

[01:07:30] Mollie: And what was present was silence. This kind of huge, deafening silence. Because every single day there'd be noise. It's always windy, the wind's always blowing strong at you. Sometimes the light caresses, sometimes it's gone. Gale force and crazy. There's noise of your skis scraping along, your sled scraping along, your Gore Tex making noises.

[01:07:51] Mollie: But when I sat there, it was all missing. There was absolutely not a breath of wind. And with, like, in the wake of leaving that wind, there was just this kind of deafening silence [01:08:00] just encompassed me from every single angle. And I actually don't think there's silence like that anywhere else in the world.

[01:08:05] Mollie: You don't find that level of quiet. Like, in Scotland, you might be on your own in the highlands, but There's a little stream running, there's a bird in the distance, there's something, but this just felt like a huge presence around me of just deafening nothingness. And then I just sat on the sled, I needed to be there for 10 minutes, I was there for like half an hour just kind of absorbing it all.

[01:08:27] Mollie: Like a 

[01:08:27] James: meditation? Yeah. It felt like that. As quiet 

[01:08:29] Mollie: as it gets? Yeah. In the real world. I think it might be. And I began skiing and scraping my skis along again. And then the wind started coming back. Now when you 

[01:08:36] James: make it to the end, do you get a heli, heli 

[01:08:39] Mollie: lift? You get a plane. Yeah, yeah. So it's all Plane?

[01:08:42] Mollie: Plane, yeah. So there's no helicopters in Antarctica. But there's lots of different planes. This is cool. So yeah, got to the end. Day fifty It was actually, I always get it a little bit wrong, I got my maths wrong when I was down there, but it's actually something like 57 days and 18 hours or something, almost the whole trip.

[01:08:58] Mollie: And was that the record? [01:09:00] There was no record that was, it was quite slow actually for people doing it, but the record I got was becoming the youngest woman to do it solo. That's 

[01:09:06] James: right. Yeah. Amazing. Absolutely. Yeah. Now what does someone who's done so much do after doing so much? You're running, you're running a business, you're writing a book, maybe you want to talk a little bit about your business and the books you've written and what you're writing in the future.

[01:09:20] Mollie: Yeah, for sure. So after Antarctica, everything else is just normal. Like it's normal life. I do stuff that most people do. I think. Normally. But then work wise, yeah, so in 2021, I joined a company called Ocean Vertical and I came on as like a part owner and director and we're an ethical adventure company based in Dunbar in East Lothian.

[01:09:42] Mollie: So right on the beach near Belhaven Bay. And we run adventures all over Scotland, from the ocean, that's the ocean part of it, surfing, coasteering, paddle boarding, the vertical part is being in the mountains, in the highlands, in winter, in summer, multi day expeditions. Um, and now we've just started doing [01:10:00] overseas trips as well.

[01:10:01] Mollie: So last year we led our first expedition to the Himalayas, to Nepal. Twelve amazing clients joined us and we trekked for two weeks. And what happened then on the trip? Oh, it was just epic. Yeah, I'm trying to convince you to come. I know you are, yeah. And 

[01:10:12] James: I think I might be successful. I'm keen, yeah, I'm keen.

[01:10:14] James: So what, what, it's Cool group of people, big 

[01:10:18] Mollie: days. You're at altitude, so the highest we got on that trip was four and a half thousand meters, which is high. It's almost as high as Mont Blanc. So it's slow days, slow walking, but surrounded by absolute stunningness. You've got 8, 000 meter peaks, 7, 000 meter peaks.

[01:10:34] Mollie: There's this beautiful mountain called Fishtail, which is right in front of us the whole time. You wake up in the morning and see it, you go to bed and it's there in all the stars. Wow. Um, the route we do is called the Mahdi Himal trek, and it's quite new, and you're on a ridge line for most of the way, so you can kind of just see everything around you.

[01:10:51] Mollie: And where do you stay? Is it in huts or a camp? Yeah, so in uh, tea houses. It's along the way, there's kind of basic accommodations. Someone's told me about this. Yeah, and they're like family run. Actually, [01:11:00] I'll tell you who told me 

[01:11:00] James: about it. It's the amazing guy, Ian Wally, who does the branding. Uh, for Inside Matters, number two in terabiotics.

[01:11:07] James: He told me I should do a Nepal tea house walk. 

[01:11:10] Mollie: Okay. Is that what it is? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Wow. You should do it with me and Stevie. 

[01:11:16] James: I'm keen. What do you eat in these? 

[01:11:19] Mollie: Uh, the kind of staple of Nepal is dal bat. What is that? Dal and rice. You'd actually love the diet. I think I would like that. 

[01:11:24] James: Yeah. It's just like really high fiber 

[01:11:26] Mollie: goodness.

[01:11:27] Mollie: And it's a lot of vegetarian stuff. Oh, pretty healthy. Perfect. And in Nepal, that's what they eat twice a day. as a kind of staple, that's basically what most people. Dal and rice. Dal and rice. Wow. The little bits of spices and all sorts of 

[01:11:39] James: things. Yeah, that sounds really, really good. 

[01:11:41] Mollie: You'd love it. Arun, sign me up.

[01:11:43] Mollie: Sign me 

[01:11:43] James: for the Dal. Wonderful. It'd be really Lovely to see a mountain that big as well. It will blow your mind. I think the biggest I've seen is the Matterhorn, which looks unbelievable 

[01:11:53] Mollie: by the way. And this mountain, the Fishtail Mountain, is a bit like that, but like twice the height. Not [01:12:00] quite twice, but a bit more.

[01:12:00] Mollie: Oh, here it is. Oh, 

[01:12:02] James: wow. Nice. Look at that. When I saw the Matterhorn for the first time, I I almost cried when I saw the Matterhorn for the first time. This is last summer. Amazing. Just wasn't, you know, you go to Zermatt and I saw photos of it, but when I saw it, I was just like, 

[01:12:19] Mollie: Whoa. 

[01:12:21] James: That's so much bigger than I thought and it's got its own little microclimate at the top and it's just so beautiful and it was like glistening and I just thought, wow, I need 

[01:12:29] Mollie: to get up there.

[01:12:30] Mollie: And I love that emotional reaction because that's what it is. Unbelievable. And I think that's why people climb mountains and why people go to these places for that level of awe and wonder that these lumps of rock and ice kind of instill in us. 

[01:12:42] James: And Molly, we are actually, uh, very unfortunately out of time.

[01:12:46] James: All good. And it's zoomed by. We've covered a lot, haven't we? So, uh, we have covered a lot now. Thank you very much. If people would like to learn more about you, follow your journey. Yeah. Where do they go? 

[01:12:59] Mollie: Well, [01:13:00] Instagram, it's a good place. So I'm at Molly J Hughes and then I've got a website, mollyhughes. co.

[01:13:05] Mollie: uk and Ocean Vertical, check that out, oceanvertical. com. For adventures in Scotland. For adventures in Scotland and Nepal. And Nepal. Yeah. Amazing. 

[01:13:14] James: So yeah. Molly, thank you so much. Pleasure. Absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

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