| Ever since I was a young boy I have loved snow, and mountaineering has always seemed to me to be a glorified way of mucking about in the stuff. Despite their own scant interest in mountaineering, my parents encouraged me to join the school climbing club. The rugged hills of Snowdonia and the Scottish Highlands were the perfect playground to get to grips with ropes, crampons and ice axes and I loved every minute of it.
After school, I took a year off to travel the world and develop my mountain skills further. My travels took my to the Indian Himalayas, Australia and New Zealand, where I had a lucky escape when the volcano I was climbing decided to erupt as I was approaching the summit. It marked the start of the most intense period of volcanic activity in the mountain’s history, during which time vast tracts of New Zealand’s North Island had to be evacuated.
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