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On Thursday 15th March, the Siena Society was treated to a truly gripping narrative told by our guest speaker, the mountaineer, filmmaker and author Matt Dickinson.
Matt has 2 passions: mountaineering and writing and we were given a taste of both in a whirlwind snapshot of his life before he had to shoot off down the M4 to give an evening lecture to a Bristol outdoor adventure society.
In 45 minutes we received a lesson in:
Leadership and teamwork in the wilderness. When a team is totally self-reliant, without the possibility of outside assistance in an emergency (as at extreme altitude), it is those teams which ‘talk’ and whose members look out for each other, that do the best. Those whose leader puts the rest of the team first will do best of all. What was interesting was that the leader of Everest expeditions stays behind at base camp in order to plan and organise the logistics of the rest of the group.
The biology of the human body at altitude. Beyond base camp on Everest for example, in order for the body’s haemoglobin levels to carry more oxygen, a climber needs to acclimatize to the lack of oxygen and does so by returning to sleep at base camp after each day’s climbing before pressing on a bit further the next day. Apparently at 29ooo feet, if a climber sustains a cut, the blood is so thick that virtually no blood is produced. This explained the danger of sustaining coronaries at high altitude.
The geology of Everest’s summit. On a photograph of Everest Matt pointed out that towards the summit there was a clear cross section of the mountain that was geologically different to the rest. Apparently this strata contains fossils of fish and other marine life- not what you expect to find 29 000 feet above sea level! It seems that the Himalayas themselves were the result of a collision of the Indian and Tibetan tectonic plates with the sea and its contents forced up and then over the resultant mountains.
Interspersed amongst such fascinating nuggets of information, we learnt that Everest is fast turning into a dumping ground for discarded kit and is in dire need of structured management to oversee the number and suitability of the mountaineering teams who attempt to climb it.
For any of those present who are due to go to Borneo and climb Mount Kinabalu, Matt’s lecture will have been a source of great inspiration and advice. Apparently (Matt had first-hand experience) the climb down is considerably worse than the climb up and any training to strengthen the knees would be a good idea!
When Matt is not busy filming in some far flung and inhospitable corner of the earth, he follows his other interest, writing. He spoke passionately about the importance of reading in a child’s life: ‘a book takes you to a place, deeper and more profound than anything the internet can offer…’ and the series he has written, Mortal Chaos, provides a perfect example of how a story, imaginatively told and well written, can enthral us all. It was good to see so many orders for his books being placed at the end of his lecture.