Feel that it's about time that I updated the site with my recent 'goings on'...

First off, I spent 2 weeks up North in Scotland and northern England on my Regiment's annual training camp. We started off with 5 days in Edinburgh, which gave us a great opportunity to see the city (somehow I've never made it there before!), before embarking on a 6 day 1100km Exercise around that part of the world. I had a great Troop, who all worked really hard and professionally, and our Sqn performed very admirably throughout the Exercise.

Having won numerous battles in our great Northern Campaign, there was hardly time for 'tea and medals' before I had to head back down south again and out to the Med for P&O Cruises.

This time, I took my Mum along with me, and we had a ball! Having met the Ship (The Ventura) out in Italy, we then went to Alicante and Gibraltar before heading back to Southampton. The weather was absolutely marvellous and even crossing Biscay was relatively calm and embarrassingly I've even come back with a little bit of a tan!

Straight up to London to catch up with the GF and friends all weekend (as it's been about a month of galavanting around the UK and Europe since I saw everyone).

Was in the BBC's Westway House in the West End this morning doing a live interview for BBC Wales promoting a talk I'll be doing at the Coliseum Theatre in Aberdare on the 22nd October. Bumped into Terry Wogan outside who was being asked for his autograph by my chauffeur. At first I thought that it was just some chap trying to steal my car, and was about to say something before I realised who it was... Could have been embarrassing! And after Sas and I bumped into Piers Morgan on Ken High Street on Friday, I thought that I'd have my fairshare of celeb spotting for the weekend!

A couple of days in the office now, catching up on all the paperwork which is overflowing my desk. Popping off to Rome for a long weekend of sightseeing with Sas on Thursday which will be great - I hope the Med weather is as kind as it was last week!

Just finished a rather busy week of speaking, and now preparing for my (TA) Regiment's Annual Training Camp, where we'll be up in Scotland for 2 weeks. I've just been promoted from 2Lt to Lt (and given another pip), which I'm very pleased about. A particular highlight of this week's speaking tour, was speaking to the Board of Directors of Moneysupermarket.com on Tuesday evening up in Chester. It was facinating to hear all about the Dotcom and PCS industry, and I'm now understand why these company can offer policies cheaper than by going direct to the policy provider themselves. I'm also looking forward to hopefully doing some more work with them in the near future.

Another stormy day on K2

I'm finally beginning to sort through some of the video footage that I took on K2 this summer. This is an example of a 'less than perfect' day on the hill!

Also, I had a look at Fabrizio Zangrilli's Blog today (http://fabriziozangrilli.blogspot.com/), and alongside a picture of me her wrote: "Jake Meyer carrying many kilos 100m above camp 3, 7200m, on K2's Cesen Route. At 24 (sic) he has accomplished alot, and was certainly one of the strongest clients I had this summer."

To have this written about me by one of the world's strongest and most experienced alpinists is tremendously flattering. Of course in comparision to Fabrizio, I was a weakling!

In the midst of a busy few days on the lecture circuit at the moment - spoke to BT at Gatwick yesterday, Money Supermarket Board of Directors in Chester tonight and then Beneden Girls school in Kent tomorrow. Of course it's great to have lots of work on at the moment, but I'm certainly getting the road miles in!

So- many apologies for not having written sooner -according to my last post, we'd still be somewhere in the Hushe Valley! Fortunately, as beautiful as it is, I'm now safely back home and enjoying a well earned break (if I do say so myself!). I arrived back in the UK on the 15th and am now catching up on the mountain of work that has accrued whilst I've been away. Photos are all developed and now in the photo album, which I'm very proud of (I'll post them onto this site asap). Lecture bookings already coming in for the next few months, which is great.

It's a little weird being back. As usual, I've expected the whole world to have changed whilst I was away, and there to be lots of good gossip. However as I catch up with friends and family, I realise that not much has happened over the summer, and how most of them didn't even miss me!

It can sometimes be difficult returning from a big trip, especially one like this which has required so much planning, and has been the focus of my dreams for 3 year, because once the initial excitment of being home dies down, one can be left feeling quite empty, with the void that the post-expedition return to normality brings. However, luckily I don't feel like that. I've got enough exciting projects lined up for the rest of the year to be looking forward to getting my teeth stuck into them. All I could dream about whilst I was away was more trips, expeditions and adventures, and now I'm back, I'm in a position where I can start trying to get those balls rolling. I hope that the next 4 months should be quite exciting, and set me up nicely for 2010 and what the new decade will bring.

In the meantime, I'm taking part in a charity dodgeball tournament tomorrow in Wimbledon Park, so I'm psyching myself up for that. Just remember the 5 D's of Dodgeball:
Dodge
Duck
Dip
Dive
and Dodge.

and that if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball...

2.30am. Ouch. I hardly felt as though I’d even slept before I was groggily trying to stuff my sleeping bag back into its stuffsack. It was too early to have anything significant for breakfast, so Kamil brought us biscuits and tea and some stale bread to get us going. The camp was a flurry of activity, with porters anxious to get collect their loads and make an early start towards the Ghandogoro La. Most of the porters don't have headlamps, but ours, and those of our staff cut swathes of light through the inky blackness. The cloud was low and although the moon was full, provided almost no ambient light to guide us through the darkness. As we set off it started to snow, and the precipitation got steadily heavier throughout the early morning. We walked along the moraine and across the ice of the glacier to the base of the Pass, which took us about 1.5hours. A thin trail of dark shapes illuminated by flickering torches lead up a rapidly steepening slope, seemingly without end. As the slope progressed beyond about 25 degrees, a single thin rope ran alongside the trail through the snow, to act as a handrail for the porters. We walked like a train of elephants, our weary heads practically resting on the pack of the person in front.

It took about another hour and a half to reach the 'summit' of the Pass, which was also just as it was beginning to get light. Coming down the far side, Fabrizio commented on how he'd never seen so much snow in the Hushe Valley, and that normally the mountainsides would be green and lush, not covered with snow and ice. The descent was even more treacherous than the ascent, as we came down the steep, snow and ice encrusted pathway, complete with a liberal sprinkling of loose stones underfoot to ensure that correct balance was almost non-existent. Although there were more ropes running down the trail as well, many of these were either held together with duct tape, or were so iced up that you couldn't grip them with your hands.

Eventually as the dizzying angle began to become more gentle, I could similarly begin to relax a little. The path turned from a series of jack-knife switchbacks to a more gradually winding one as the trail reached towards the base of the valley. After an hour or so of walking along first the moraine, and then the valley side we reached something that we hadn't seen for nearly 8 weeks - grass.

Lush green grassy slopes covered in wild alpine flowers of a multitude of beautiful colours. It was a wonderful sensory overload as the wonderful palette of colours, sweet floral odours and richer, more oxygenated atmosphere sent the brain into a spin. Upon reaching the camp, most of the porters had freshly picked buds behind their ears.

By 9.30am with the team all safely in camp, we had a real breakfast of tea and omelettes in our mess tent, just as the heavens opened. The first flowers, greenery and rain for weeks. Beautiful! Every step out of the mountains brings the return of the wonderfully mundane things that we usually take for granted, but have missed so much during our time at K2 BC.

This is it - finally we leave BC. I must admit, that after 45 days here, we are all ready to head out, and this morning couldn't have come soon enough. Having said that, it certainly doesn't make the early start any more palatable, and we are up at 4.30 to pack up the last of our stuff, collapse our tents and have breakfast.

As we start walking out of BC for the last time (this time down the glacier rather than the 12+ times up), the weather is overcast and dreary. The mountain lies veiled in thick cloud, restricting any final parting glance, like some widow hiding behind a thick curtain. As we walk down the glacial moraine the mist rolls in thick swathes, leaving us damp and moist. The porters appear like ghostly spectres through the cloud and soon catch us up. Despite the moraine seeming like some intelligible jumble of leg-breaking rock and scree, the porters seem drawn to invisible trails which snake through the ever changing landscape. We follow them as they trace out the easiest routes which pose least resistance. We pass the site of Broad Peak BC, where only a few slightly unnatural circles of stone, or ice platforms belie any former human habitation. It has been clear for only two weeks and already the glacial action of the environment is already reclaiming the location as though it was a jungle rapidly encroaching on an ancient Mayan citadel.

We trek for several hours straight down the central strip of moraine of the Godwin Austin Glacier. Towards Concordia the glacier starts to become heavily affected by the convergence of the multiple glaciers and our straight line of travel rapidly becomes more circuitous as we struggle to pick our way through the maze of intersecting mounds of rock and ice, and make tentative crossings of hazardously fast flowing glacial streams.

I arrived at the ATP (Adventure Tours Pakistan - our expedition outfitter) Concordia camp at around 9.30am, where I collapsed into the tent and was rewarded with a very refreshing, and much needed cup of hot sweet milk tea, and a plate of biscuits. The rest of the team drifted in over the next hour or so, and we all had a bit of a break before the next stage of the day's walk to Ali Camp, near the base of the Ghandogoro La (Pass).

The second half of the day, which was a similar distance (approx 8-10 miles) was spent trekking up the Vigne glacier, which is an incredible wide flat glacier. The morning's snowfall has subsided, and at times the sun threatened to appear through the lifting cloud. The first of us arrived into Ali Camp (4900m) at about 3.30pm, thankful for finally being able to halt and make camp for the day.

Most of our bags and equipment had gone with the bulk of the porters down the Baltoro, and only about 20 or so (enough for some personal gear and the kitchen tent and equipment) would actually come over the Ghandogoro pass with us, as it was a treacherous and difficult crossing for all involved. Our reasoning for going this way is that it is about a third of the distance, and that when we reach Hushe (the main village), the route to Skardu by Jeep is a lot easier, quicker and safer. The only problem of course is going over the Pass itself, which is at over 5400m. The steep snow and ice covered route is roped for safety (a hand rope), but as you can imagine, the porters, with their heavy loads, sockless trainers and rudimentary clothes, still find it incredibly difficult and it can be extremely dangerous.

Ali Camp is a pretty insignificant camp, and once we arrived we all piled into a 12x12 ft box tent (no individual North Face tents anymore). From a similar tent the kitchen staff prepared us a delicious supper of soup, rice and vegetables (no great surprise there then), followed by pineapple chunks. Somehow, all 7 of us (Chris had gone down the Baltoro) managed to find floor space and tried to get an early night, as we'd be getting up quite early the next morning to cross the Pass...