2017Mont Blanc
Summit Mont Blanc 4,807m on the second attempt.
My Story
I was born the year after Hillary and Tenzing became the first to summit Mount Everest
Graham Keene was born in 1954, 10 months after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first stood on top of Mount Everest. He grew up in a country still glowing about it, and then, like most people, got on with life.
1980s — 2010
The working years
He built a global events business through the 1980s and ran it for the best part of three decades. High pressure. High energy. High stakes with other people’s deadlines.
Somewhere in there, in 1998, he took his two sons Ben and Daniel up Kilimanjaro – at 5,895m the highest peak in Africa, more family holiday than expedition. In 2003 he climbed Aconcagua, at 6,959m the highest peak in South America.
Then the business swallowed him again. Seven years of nothing.
2010
The day it stopped
In 2010 the work ended. Not gradually – one week he was in full-time employment and the next he wasn’t.
Nobody hands you a manual for that. The advice on offer was mostly about pensions and downsizing, none of it about what to actually do on a Wednesday.
So he made something up: walk the South West Coast Path. All 630 miles of it, Minehead to Poole, past every cove and caravan park in the West Country. He wasn’t training for anything. He just needed a reason to put his boots on.
Later and for almost ten years he became a Trustee of the South West Coast Path Association which protects, enhances and celebrates the SW Coast Path as one of the world’s great trail experiences.
One thing led to another
Turns out that when you have a purpose, mountains start looking achievable.
2017
2017Mount Vinson, Antarctica
Vinson Massif 4,892m in the coldest place on earth.
2018Cho Oyu, Tibet — turned back
His first attempt at an 8,000m peak. He turned back near the top in need of one more rest day whilst his team pressed on without him. That failure changed everything.
2019Mount Elbrus, Russia
At 5,642m the highest point on the European Continent.
2021Putha Huinchuli, Nepal
At 67 his first summit over 7,000m
Feb 2022Cotopaxi, Ecuador
The final tune-up before the big one.
May 2022Mount Everest, Nepal
8,849m at 6:30am on 13 May, aged 68. No Briton has ever summited older.
2024Carstensz Pyramid, Indonesia
Carstensz Pyramid 4,884m summit.
The highest peak in Oceania.
2020 — 2022
The training nobody photographs
Two years of lockdown were spent in a gym in Exeter with a personal trainer, on Exmouth Beach with a sledge full of weight and walking across Dartmoor in the rain because that’s what the job required.
For the last stretch, he slept in a hypoxic tent in the spare bedroom in Exeter – a machine that strips oxygen out of the air so your body thinks it’s already at altitude. Uncomfortable, unromantic, and the reason he only needed sixteen days on the mountain instead of nine weeks.
And now
He’s 72. He speaks to audiences about what he found on the other side of retirement. He’s a grandfather of five, an Exeter Chiefs supporter, and he has unfinished business with a couple of mountains.
The dream was to climb Mont Blanc, after which the mountains kept coming. I’m looking forward to a nice pint of Otter Ale and then maybe completing the Seven Summits.Graham, on the way down from Everest
Dream bigger than you did at 30
Tell Graham about your event and he’ll come back to you personally.