With my goal set to climb over 1500m in two days I set out with a combination of determination and trepidation on the first of those two days. I had decided that One Tree Hill would provide the best nearby combination of decent elevation and gradual slope. After a lap to calibrate what each summit would earn me in terms of altitude, I climbed up the North-facing "goat track" to the summit, and returned to the fence line at about 140m before returning to the summit five times in a row, each of which gave me about 50 metres. I then went down the South-Western side of the hill and returned to the summit, and finished off with five circuits of the cone. Whole thing took me about three hours to gain a total of about 810m, and although I was pretty tired and sore by the end of it, I was feeling confident that I would be able to do a similar effort the following day to complete.
This brought my total climb for the Summit Challenge to 8110m leaving me with around 740m to complete on my last day before lockdown.
This altitude is just above the South Col, where climbers rest at Camp 4 before making the summit attempt. This is charmingly known as the Death Zone and is where most climbers start to rely on bottled oxygen. The conditions at this altitude are punishing and expeditions will generally only stay at this altitude and above for between 8 and 12 hours in total.
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