24 hours on, and I’m still shivering gently with a faint touch of blue. The first day of spring in Cape Town might sound delightful, but yesterday was a great example of a beautiful city waking up in a foul mood; a mood I had to endure as I hauled myself off into the Atlantic Ocean so that Heart FM’s breakfast team could laugh raucously as the icy water kicked in. Still, I didn’t have it so bad; Paul Snodgrass and Chester Williams were in Speedos that probably should have been more revealing, and Roxy Louw was dragged into the water by her dad in a bikini. We should all have fringe pneumonia by now...

Plunging into the ocean to mark the start of summer isn’t something a non-swimming Zimbabwean would usually do; that Heart managed to get me into the water was in part thanks to a meeting I had with a cheerfully deranged pensioner earlier in the week. I’ve been filming a television pilot for the JAG Foundation, the guys who give Robbie Fleck sheltered employment when he’s not coaching the Province backline in the art of ten-man rugby, and on Monday we went up Table Mountain with the aforementioned pensioner, who, it turns out, is an extraordinary man.

Ronnie Muhl was the tenth South African to summit Everest, leading an expedition up the north face two years ago, and has now made it up six of the seven highest peaks on each of the continents. Antarctica is missing from his collection, but it’s on his horizon; before that, though, he’s heading back to Everest to lead another expedition, and (hopefully) become one of the few climbers to have made it to the top from both sides.

Climbing mountains has never been on my own list of targeted endeavour — I get mildly unsteady going down long escalators to the tube in London, and collapsed in a nervous, foetal heap at the top of l’Aguile du Midi above Chamonix a couple of years ago. But for some people, and Ronnie is clearly one of them, the world of snow capped peaks and dizzying drops is a natural playground, and tackling the planet’s highest points does make for a life most adventurous.

And while summiting the hills in question makes for the glamorous finale to each expedition, it’s the detail of the trek to get there that’s most fascinating. Land a man on the summit by helicopter, dressed in every bit of mountain gear available, and he’d be unconscious in minutes, and dead in half an hour — acclimatising to a world where oxygen is sparse and altitude severe is a painstaking process, and the two-month haul to the top of Everest is needed just to allow your body to adjust to an environment the human body shouldn’t naturally be anywhere near.

There are hours spent in tents, waiting for nasty weather to let up, and playing (in Ronnie’s case) endless games of bridge. You have to force yourself to eat, as your appetite vanishes, and to drink, to keep your system flushed and ready to adapt to the increasingly oppressive heights you’re scaling. You develop the gait of a constipated astronaut in giant moonboots, and you have to accept — as Ronnie did in 2006, his first attempt — that you might well get to within a couple of hundred metres of the top, and have to turn back for the sake of survival.

You don’t meet an awful lot of people who’ve summated the world’s highest mountain, let alone six of the Seven Summits; detail of the challenges inherent in being a top climber give a little perspective to your own more modest challenges. Ronnie’s now trying to convince me to slog up to base camp with him next year, a plan which would almost certainly see him charged with culpable homicide; still, there’s an undeniable appeal to exploring a rare and exotic part of the planet so few of us will ever see. I’ll think about it, Mr. Muhl, but for now going swimming in the Atlantic in spring is challenge enough; mind you, if I can survive both the sight of a luminescent white Snodgrass in a Speedo, and three degree water as the sun comes up, then surely a gentle stroll up to Base Camp can’t be that hard?

Contact Dan at dan@metropolis.co.za

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