Peak performance

A few weeks ago I mentioned seeing Mount Teide on a brief visit to Tenerife.

We saw it from the comfort of an air-conditioned coach as we crossed from one side of the island to the other.

I’d never heard of it before but according to the website Volcano Teide:

Mount Teide is the third highest volcanic structure and most voluminous in the world after Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It is the highest peak on the Canary Islands and in the whole of Spain.

By coincidence my friend Bill had previously told me he was about to climb that very peak at the beginning of May.

I’ve known Bill since primary school. We then went to the same secondary school, in St Andrews, and although our lives took different directions after that we kept in touch and see each other quite regularly.

He has lived in Ireland for over 20 years but before that he worked in Hong Kong, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

He semi-retired at 40 and has since spent much of his time climbing mountains including Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn and a previously unchartered peak in Greenland that he and his team named Mount Crean after an Irish explorer.

He also been to both the North and South Poles.

Mount Teide seemed a less arduous proposition and I was amused to learn that my parents had both climbed the volcano 25 years ago, albeit with the help of a cable car that takes visitors a considerable way, if not quite to the very top.

Stung perhaps by this information, Bill emailed me this morning with a message and a picture:

On summit yesterday. Cable car cancelled so we climbed all way up and down.

As it happens I feel I must take some credit for Bill’s exploits because in 1974, when I was 15, we spent a week camping in Pitlochry.

The following year we went hiking in the Lake District. A photo of that ‘holiday’ emerged in 2010 and I posted it here.

The year after that (1976) we spent ten days cycling around central Scotland staying in youth hostels.

It was a generally miserable experience. The wind and rain were so bad that on some days we struggled to cycle ten miles.

Everything seemed to go against us and the hostels were nothing like the clean, dry budget hotels many have become.

The exception was the hostel at Loch Lomond which was based inside a castle. It even had its own library where we spent hours reading old copies of Punch.

We liked it so much more than being on the road, fighting a permanent headwind, that we stayed there for two or three days until the weather changed.

(On our final day, with the wind behind us for the first time, we cycled 40 miles in two hours, arriving home at midday having told everyone to expect us around 8.00pm.)

I also remember spending a few days with Bill in Aviemore, the Scottish ski resort famous for its lack of snow.

We stayed in a tiny caravan and the memory of going to a local disco is a moment in my life I’d like to forget but can’t.

Nevertheless I believe these adventures, good and bad, sowed the seed that led to my friend’s subsequent exploits around the world.

In my case they had the opposite effect and I can’t speak highly enough of clean clothes, hot water and a comfortable bed.

Climbing up mountains? Not so much.

See also: Mountain to climb (July 2010).

Above: Bill on the summit of Mount Teide, Tenerife, 2022; below, on the summit of the Matterhorn, 2013