In only 9 days, our CEO of Middle East & Africa Carry, is setting off to his trip to Everest Base Camp to raise money and awareness to his two chosen charities, and to challenge himself against the world’s tallest mountain. 

We asked Gary how he is getting prepared for his adventure on setting off to EBC in only a few days.

”My preparations for Everest base camp are going very well and our most recent training was over the weekend just past where myself and another member of the group going to EBC set ourselves the challenge of reaching the summit of the UAE’s highest mountain, Jebel Jais. This mountain is a popular tourist destination as it has several of the UAE’s premier outdoor adventure attractions, such as the world’s longest zipline (Jais Flight) and the newly opened toboggan ride (Jais Sledder).

Bergig väg. ¨
Jebel skylt. ¨

”We arrived at the Jais Summit meeting trail meeting point at 8am and registered with the safety team there, our trek quickly took us up a steep set of steps to ascend the first 1 km section and breach the first checkpoint. Here we were greeted with amazing views across the Hajar mountains of Oman on one side and the steep mountain descent to the sea on the other – but we still had a long way to go to reach the summit, so we caught our breath under the UAE flag there, took on some water and moved on. 

Here we were greeted with amazing views across the Hajar mountains of Oman
Gary och vän. ¨

The second section saw us trek along the edge of the undulating ridge always climbing higher with each undulation, we crossed bridges and climbed rocky steps to get to the next check point about 2 hours after setting off, here we took on water and sugar in preparation for the last 1km push to the summit.  The summit was made up of two marker boards, one for the north and the slightly higher one at the south, the south summit being the highest publicly accessible point in the UAE at 1640m. The journey back down was slightly shorter as we took fewer breaks and the momentum is better that way. We were both using walking poles to preserve our (old) knees and ankles. The views on the way back down were amazing too. 

The total trek time was 5 hours and 15 minutes and we both left tired but happy. My wife and I stayed locally to the Jebel Jais mountain so that we could make the most of the last remaining spring weather here. We set off for Kathmandu from Dubai on 7th April – so only 17 days to go now!”