A group of hikers from across Ireland will be making their way home from Nepal next week after taking on the challenge of reaching Everest Base Camp.
The tour, which was led by Mourne Mountain Wildmountain NI, saw the group face the physical and mental challenge of climbing to the camp over a period of 15 days.
Wild Mountain NI founder Cathy Reavy had the idea of setting up a hiking tour company after receiving positive feedback on social media.
Read more: NI guided hiking company heads for Everest Base Camp
She explained: "We provide guided hiking adventures mainly in our magnificent Mourne Mountains but also all over Ireland, the UK and now Nepal.
"We are a female led company made up of myself and Petra Armstrong who are both qualified Mountain Leaders. We both met doing our mountain leader training in 2019, clicked straight away and Wild Mountain NI was born.
"I had been hiking in the Mournes for years and posting on social media where people were saying they would love to come along. I then had the idea of setting up a company to take doing what I love and make it my career."
The group teamed up with Mohan from Namaste Nomad, a Nepali now living in Donegal, to make this epic bucket list trip possible.
It took the team eight days of trekking to get to Everest Base Camp. which is at a height of 5364m and on Easter Monday, they achieved their goal.
Cathy added: "We surprised the team with bespoke wooden medals at base camp in recognition of their amazing achievement. These were made specifically for us by Belfast based company The Dribbly Yak. The next day a few of the team also summited Kalapathar 5600m for a close up view of Everest at sunrise.
"We were totally blessed with sunshine on the whole trek and I still can’t quite believe I didn’t have to put my waterproofs on once. On checking the weather though we realised that the weather was to change for the worst which could have meant no flights in or out of Lukla for five or six days.
"This meant that we had to do four days of hiking in two days (almost 50km) but everyone dug deep and pulled it out of the bag - such a resilient bunch of adventurers."
Cathy said the trekking team of 28 ranged in age from 16 to 71 and hailed from all over Ireland.
She added: "The whole team got on so well and not every day was easy but the support and encouragement of each other all the way was quite overwhelming to watch. We had a full team of nearly 50 counting our amazing Sherpas and porters.
"These guys are super human and we could not have done it without them. We were definitely in safe hands."
The team is now all safely back in Kathmandu for some well deserved R&R before flying back home on Tuesday.
"We were all amused as we arrived back in Kathmandu on New Years Eve of 2080 - their calendar is a little different over here. We left in 2023 and came back in 2080. Time travel!" Cathy said.
"We could not be more proud of each and every one of our resilient team members. This was a tough challenge and not one for the faint hearted but it definitely pushed each person outside their comfort zones.
"They had not only the effects of altitude to deal with but also a complete culture change from the food, hiking everyday at altitude, living conditions, lack of sleep and early starts all within a group that they didn’t know.
"We are already chatting about plans for our next Nepali adventure, again teaming up with Mohan and his team at Namaste Nomad so watch this space!"
You can check out the team's amazing journey on Instagram and Facebook.
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