I've got nine tips for Mountaineers in general they are fresh from mont blanc i've just got back by the way i do want to make a video specifically about that batman and what happened but i will i'm just trying to figure out which elements of the story i want to share because hey guys welcome to the channel if you're new here this is all about mountaineering mountain sports and getting as fit as prepared as possible so in this channel i share tips just like this one that we're sharing with you in this video so this first tip is probably the most important in fact it's really the first thing you want to do immediately after you've booked the trip and that's get mountaineering specific travel insurance your average travel insurance is not going to cover you from rolling an ankle and getting stranded on a mountain if you roll an ankle and have a simple injury like that you need helicopter rescue it's basically impossible to get people off mountains and less they can walk so you need to get mountaineering insurance that actually covers helicopter rescue this happened on my most recent trip to not blog and cost 3000 euro to get the helicopter off the mountain luckily he had insurance so number one tip is to get good insurance with a good track record of pulling people off the mountains the second tip especially for my blog is to choose your route wisely there is probably a dozen commonly climbed routes on mont blanc the normal route or the good Guto Guto route gets most of the traffic we decided to climb from the italian side and then down to the french side so weather and glacial activity can really affect your success on this summit a lot of people who come from international areas that give themselves 4 or 5 days to climb Mont Blanc it's just not enough to give you a decent weather window and that happens with a lot of for tina's as well people try and get it done in like a long weekend if you're going to spend the time and the money and do all the training the preparation to go and climb a mountain why not give yourself an extra three days to have that weather window we did that and we absolutely needed it there's there's no way that we would have been able to climb Mont Blanc in four days because we had a lot of rain because we left ourselves that window we were able to get to the summit tip number three is about learning and practicing crampon technique even if you live in a desert you don't have mountains nearby you can research different crampon techniques you can wear the French technique the American technique you can practice putting your crampons on your boots taking them off again and just getting to know that piece of equipment and understanding fully how they use a lot of the times I see many people out in the mountains and it's clear that that's the first time mountaineering or maybe it's not but they just don't know how to walk in crampons properly they've got like duck feet they're stretching their carves they're putting way too much energy into using crampons so get practice if you can walking around on snow and icy if it's possible if not there's a couple of really good books like the Freedom of the hills that I learned when I was living in Australia how to use crampons just from reading and doing a little bit of preparation like that beforehand tip number four is to take a buff or some sort of neck scarf to protect you from the wind when we were on Mont Blanc the wind was incredible it really really strong wind and I started to feel like I was getting wind burn on my cheek and having the buff to be able to pull it up over my face really made a massive difference to how comfortable I was feeling and they're like less than 20 bucks this is a tip that I tell everybody whether they're going trekking or mountaineering so important to use one of these things because not only kind of help moisturize your breath which helps with the dry air Alps you they're just covering your face when it's really cold it does make you feel kind of more cozy and a lot more comfortable so get tip number five is to bring proper sun protection so good sunscreen that's really strong like 50 plus you need zinc and excellent sunglasses I would say minimum category 3 that's what I used but the gold standard is cat 4 so if you when you're looking at sunglasses you want to get a really really dark lens to protect you from the incredible brightness once the Sun comes up when you're walking around on snow and ice that is a deal breaker if you've forgotten your sunglasses the trip is over you can get away with a lot of things but if you're on a glacier and I'm surrounded by snow number 6 is take a thermos with either ginger lemon tea or something you like I took coffee but it doesn't have to be coffee anything that'll give you a little boost at 3 o'clock in the morning when the Sun hasn't come up and you are really suffering from the cold having a hot drink is something that you know it does away a little bit but carry that thermos with a hot drink it'll make yourself and everyone around you feel so much better when you share that that is an incredible tip that I don't really see a lot of people doing a lot of having a long drink good amount that's just number 7 take plenty of high energy snacks hydration supplements to keep you going Blanc especially is an incredibly long day most people will spend sort of 1618 maybe even 20 hours on the mountain you depart at 1 a.m. or 12:00 midnight usually and you could be going until 6 o'clock the following day so you're gonna need to continually fuel your body yes there is refuges along the way where you can have a big meal but when I am active I really want to have a big meal I'm better off having you know like I'm usually bar maybe it's got some protein in it to keep me going your hydration supplements are incredibly important because it does get hot once the Sun comes up remember you're in Europe in the middle of summer and it does get hot Sun comes up so you're gonna be sweating this kind of activity is [Music] so you're gonna be constantly drinking a little bit at a time just like you would tip number eight is to spend as much time at our shoes you can beforehand for Mont Blanc this is 15,000 feet or 4,000 810 meters to be exact we spent a weekend in the Pyrenees here in Spain the weekend beforehand at around 3000 meters or 9,000 feet we actually spent the following two days before going to Mont Blanc at around 3,000 meters so we really put the nail in the coffin in terms of the altitude we knew that it just wasn't going to affect us because we had spent a total of sort of four or five days at 3,000 meters and that really eliminated any problems we were likely that I have without a tube so if you're coming from the other side of the world to climb a big mountain why not give yourself an extra few days to acclimatize and the same goes with the weather window tip number nine is to bring lightweight runners not Mont Blanc is a huge mountain but it's not all covered in snow you won't be continually needing to use mountaineering boots which are heavy they're cumbersome they're awkward and they can become very uncomfortable by the end of the day so what I did is I took my trail runners up with me and the pack and once we descended past the snow line I put my mountaineering boots my backpack that is reducing a whole lot of weight from my feet and I put my lightweight trail runners on and I can cruise the rest of the mountain unhindered by the boots so that is a huge tip when it comes to mountaineering I'm pretty much always taking a really light pair of trail runners both for the approach and the last part of the descent my final bonus tip that I'm going to throw in is and you guys know that I love trekking poles take trekking poles with you yes you've got probably a long straight basic mountaineering axe but when the terrain isn't so steep a basic mountaineering actually kind of have to hunch it over to put it into the snow to help support you on the more flat sections and as a few on Mont Blanc and similar mountains like this it's so handy to have tractor poles to help with your propulsion to help with the ballast to keep you upright to keep you breathing steadily and to put you in a rhythm I'm a massive fan of trekking poles you guys have probably seen my video on how to use trekking poles maybe redoing that soon but I mean they weigh almost nothing and they're so so useful when you learn how to use them so now you might have noticed that I didn't cover any tips to do with fitness and that's really a lot of what this channel is about so there's all the fitness tips okay well I'm gonna be putting all of my fitness related tips into my Montblanc training program which I'm gonna release in a couple of weeks I'm just putting the final touches on it now I will post a video up here all about that program so you can learn about exactly what I did to prepare myself for Mont Blanc yes we did get to the summit yes I felt absolutely fine this really felt like a fun easy trip for me I didn't really suffer at any point not physically anyway so long story I'll tell you the story of Mont Blanc in another video coming very soon but thanks for watching guys I hope you learned something I'll see you on Summit