At 7.30am on Wednesday 16th May, John Ross from Foindle near Scourie stepped onto the small plateau which marks the top of 29,000ft Mount Everest.

He stayed at the top for around an hour, enjoying a beautiful morning and savouring the stunning views to be had at the roof of the world.

"The views were unforgettable and I was able to see from Katchenjunga in the east to Shishapangma in the west – both of which are over 8,000 metres – and the vast Tibetan plateau towards the north," he recalled.

"The summit is quite a small and reasonably flat area. It's maybe around 20 metres square. There's nothing permanent up there, just some sort of structure with Tibetan flags."

John, who called his solo trip the Foindle Everest Expedition, ascended the mountain from the Tibet side by its north face. This route was first made famous by George Mallory in 1924 and is considered more difficult than the south-west ridge by which Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay made the first successful ascent in 1953.

But amazingly, he felt no overwhelming sense of achievement when he set foot on the world's highest point.

"It's all to do with the altitude. When you're at that kind of altitude, it dampens your feelings a bit," he explained.

But it is indeed a remarkable achievement for the 43-year-old who started climbing only eight years ago and whose professional instruction in technical climbing has been limited to a three-day course.

Before the Everest ascent, he had already climbed five of the world's highest mountains, all in different continents, and along the way had to cope with debilitating food poisoning, a near fatal plunge into a crevasse, and a traumatic political shooting.

John, who is single, was brought up in Sutherland with his family moving from Foindle to Ardgay when he was a youngster – although they retained a home in the north-west. He went to Scourie Primary School, Gledfield Primary School and Tain Royal Academy.

He left home to study for an HND in engineering at Napier University in Edinburgh, but then decided it wasn't for him and returned to the family home at Foindle where he found a job as a fish farm worker. His mum, Mary Ross, also lives in Foindle.

John started Loch Laxford Shellfish Ltd in 1985 and the company now produces up to 300 tonnes of mussels a year from three farms at Loch Laxford, Loch Inchard and Kylesku. The firm, which employs three full-time workers with temporary staff taken on to help out during summer, sells its produce mainly to the major supermarkets through the Scottish Shellfish Marketing Group, of which John is a director.

It was during a round-the-world trip in 1999 that the mountaineering bug first bit, after someone suggested to John that he climb Kilimanjaro – the highest mountain in Africa, known as The Everyman's Everest.

Climbers are normally expected to take four or five days to climb the 19,341ft mountain, but John found it a relatively easy ascent and did it in three days, despite having virtually no high-altitude mountaineering experience.

He credits his fitness to his lifestyle as a mussel farmer, which involves working and lifting heavy weights outside in all weathers. He said: "The sort of work we do up here in the winter is pretty good training for a climber, but I believe that the most important factor is the mental desire to succeed despite all the hardships."

At home again after the Kilimanjaro ascent and keen to experience more high altitude climbing, John surfed the internet and discovered a company who were organising an expedition to Mount McKinley – at 20,320 feet the highest peak in North America. They initially said all the places had been booked, but e-mailed John back at the last minute to say someone had dropped out. A quick phone interview and he was on the climbing team.

He prepared for the trip by undertaking a three-day course in snow climbing techniques and crevasse rescue run by Andy Cunningham of Ullapool, who himself had led a team up Mount McKinley.

And it was during the McKinley expedition in 2000 that John first experienced the perils of the mountain. He fell 50ft into a crevasse and was only feet away from slamming into the bottom when he was saved by a quick thinking fellow mountaineer.

He recalls: "Three of us were roped together, with me in the lead, when I fell into the crevasse after stepping a metre off the trail to adjust my sled.

"I was saved from serious injury or even death by the man at the end of the rope team, Dr Rick Wilkerson, a surgeon from Iowa and now a good friend. He fell towards the ground and plunged his ice axe into the snow creating an anchor to stop my fall. When I finally came to a halt I was only 10ft from the bottom of the crevasse."

Left to right: John Ross, Chaaby the cook, and Sherpa Moti on the road to Base Camp.

But even that experience could not put John off and in 2002 he was part of a team who in tough weather conditions climbed the 22,284 ft Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Andes and commonly known as the Roof of the Americas.

The following year, he joined a British team to climb Elbrus, in the western Caucasus mountains near the border of Georgia and the highest mountain in Europe. He suffered from food poisoning the night before he was due to reach the summit, but still made it to the top.

In autumn last year John teamed up with Sherpa Moti to climb Cho Oyu, which in Tibetan means the Turquoise Goddess. The world's sixth highest mountain, Cho Oyu is located in the Himalayan range about 30 km west of Everest and proved to be his most challenging climb yet.

"While I was there, some Chinese soldiers shot at some Tibetans trying to escape illegally across to Nepal through a mountain pass, right in front of Advance Base Camp," he recalled. "There were around 200 people at the camp at the time. At least one Tibetan woman was ruthlessly shot dead and others were wounded, including small children. Thankfully, I didn't witness this as I was further up the mountain at the time. The incident was reported internationally."

Back in Foindle once again last winter, he began thinking seriously about a solo expedition to Everest.

"I've always had the ambition to climb Everest, but never thought it would happen simply because of the time factor. May is our busiest time of year on the mussel farms, but that's the month that you need to summit Everest," he said.

"It's too cold to climb it in the winter and June, July and August are the monsoon season. So you need to get to the top when the weather starts heating up but before the monsoon starts.

"Also, you can't just go ahead and book a trip for the month of May. You've got to leave this country at the end of March and be on the mountain at the beginning of April so you have time to acclimatise. You need to allow yourself nine weeks in total for the whole expedition."

He continued: "After I climbed Cho Oyu, I couldn't make up my mind whether I would climb Everest or not, but over the past winter I realised I was really getting on top of the work at the farm and it would be possible for me to go away."

Leaving his business in the capable hands of friends including Jamie Dawson and Rebecca MacInnes, John arrived in Tibet on 9th April.

He spent the rest of the month acclimatising to the altitude, during which time he and Moti helped a seriously ill Sherpa from another group descend from Advance Base Camp to Base Camp, and also met the grandson of Tenzing Norgay, the famous Sherpa who first climbed Everest.

John said: "At Advance Base Camp, Tenzing's grandson was camping beside us and guiding a Portuguese climber up the mountain. He supplied us with bacon, which was a real luxury for me as my appetite was very poor at this altitude."

An initial attempt by John and Moti to reach the top in early May failed after they were caught in a snowstorm at Camp Two and forced to head back down the mountain.

But on Monday, 14th May, they left Base Camp once again and reached Camp Two where they spent the night before setting off for Camp Three which they reached the following afternoon. After some hours' rest, they set off for the final push to the summit at 10.30pm with the aid of a head-torch. But Moti, aged 56, turned back after two hours due to the altitude and the cold. Another Sherpa, Dawa, climbed with John part of the way to the summit. And nine hours after setting out, John was on top of Everest.

He carried with him to the top a banner advertising Hopscotch, the charity founded by his sister Roberta to give underprivileged inner city kids a holiday in the country. The charity owns a large mansion near Fort William. He hopes his trip to Everest will help raise money for the charity.

However, there was a shock in store as he made his descent. "When we were climbing back down I saw the dead body of a 62-year-old Japanese or Korean climber who had reached the summit earlier and had suffered a heart attack on the way down," he said. "It was quite a shock, as he was lying outside his tent without any cover put over him."

John has now climbed the highest mountains in five of the world's continents with only Mount Vinson in Antarctica and Carstensz Pyramid in Australasia to ascend before he completes what is known as the Seven Summits. He has no plans at present to climb these comparatively easy but inaccessible mountains, but he says tantalisingly: "You never know!"

carolinem@northern-times.co.uk

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