Ronan Murphy fell in love with mountaineering over a decade ago in the last financial crash. He was at the time, he recalls, “slinging corporate bonds” for investment bank Merrill Lynch as a junior trader. 

Murphy had joined the investment bank from CitiGroup after college in UCD and school in St Mary’s College in Rathmines. It was a frenetic time to be on a bonds desk as the world’s biggest banks came to the brink of toppling and in some cases fell. As 2008 drew to a close Bank of America stepped in to buy Merrill Lynch on the same weekend that Lehman Brothers collapsed. 

In the aftermath of the deal Murphy found himself out of a job as the investment bank fought to right itself after it lost more than $50 billion in the subprime mortgage crisis. 

“I was one of 10,000 people fired in the same week,” Murphy said. “I’d been saving for a house, but I got a payoff, and decided to go travelling instead.” 

Murphy was just 28 when he flew first to Latin America, where he ended up staying a year. 

“I got really into mountains for the first time. I just got hooked on them. I’d been into them before on a small scale in Ireland but I’d never got into the big stuff.” 

Murphy fell in love with mountaineering and began to learn the skills required to scale snowbound peaks. He climbed Pisco mountain in Peru taking him above 5,700 metres and from there went to Bolivia tackling even taller mountains over 6,000 metres. 

“All I did in South America was go up and down mountains the whole time. I’d an open diary to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted so I worked my way along the Andes range through Peru and Bolivia.” 

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After a year, Murphy decided to try Nepal, the home of the Himalayas, the highest mountain range in the world. He went with a friend and they climbed Island Peak, or Imja Tse, a 6,189 metre tall mountain. For the first time he saw Everest, the world’s tallest mountain. 

“It was the world’s greatest dental pain. I had to shoulder on through it in excruciating pain…until I also got frostbite in my toes.”

“I remember saying to my friend I am going to climb Everest. When I say I am going to do something I mean it – albeit 12 years later!” Murphy said. 

“Mountaineering is a bit of a drug once you get into it. It is such a different sport. It is very individual and tests all of your parameters physical as well as mental. It makes you feel more alive. Obviously there is a risk with Everest. People can fear that risk or harness it into a really positive energy.” 

After his two years travelling Murphy returned to the City in London but he kept climbing on his holidays. He went to Russia and Europe scaling different peaks. In 2014 he faced his toughest challenge when he returned to Nepal. “It gave me a whole new level of pain threshold,” Murphy recalled. 

This time he climbed Lobuche East, a 6,119 metre mountain which is near the Khumbu Glacier. “That was a hairy old mountain, that one,” Murphy recalled. “It was the first time I felt I’m not ready for this or skilled enough. There was a lot of vertical action on it.” Making things more difficult was that he had root canal treatment before the expedition, and somewhere on the way to Nepal his gums had become infected. “It was the world’s greatest dental pain. I had to shoulder on through it in excruciating pain…until I also got frostbite in my toes.” More than half-way up the mountain Murphy had to keep going. “My feet were like two two concrete blocks of ice. That’s where you get to know yourself. It proved to me I could do it but it was insanely painful.”

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After climbing Lobuche East, Murphy returned home to London. He was busy with his job on the London bond desk of French bank  Société Générale. He was still determined to climb Everest and kept climbing other mountains in Europe, Russia and Asia as he gained more experience. 

In Italy he went up Gran Paradiso. In Russia he did Mount Elbrus. In March 2020 he was due to climb the Matterhorn in Switzerland but had to cancel because of Covid-19. As he entered the summer of 2020 he told his boss in Société Générale he planned to take three months off to climb Everest. “I’ve been there ten years, and they were very supportive and understand it is a life goal,” Murphy laughed.

He couldn’t travel due to Covid-19 so he set up a mountain training camp in his home in London. “I’ve been training like an animal in my home gym,” Murphy said. In his back garden he set up elevated ladders to simulate traversing almost bottomless ice cravasses wearing crampons and carrying a heavy backpack.

Murphy contacted Kenton Cool a famous English mountaineer who has climbed Everest fourteen times and led Sir Ranulph Fiennes’s 2008 and 2009 expeditions. 

Cool encouraged him to go for it and introduced Murphy to Garrett Madison. 

The American, besides being a talented mountaineer, also won a Sports Emmy for the virtual reality film Capturing Everest. Madison agreed to allow Murphy to join his team. Cool recommended Madison as not only is he a very experienced climber, he also offered the best base camp conditions, food and oxygen. “When you go to Everest, a big part of it is self-care. You need to be in good psychological and physical shape,” Murphy said, “Having the right base camp conditions and consuming the right food is extremely important.”

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Things were now getting really serious. Murphy knew he needed to do more training so he decided to fly to Ecuador a month ago for a skills refresher and high altitude training despite the pandemic. “I climbed six mountains while I was there,” he said. 

Pic: Estalin Suárez

One of them was Chimborazo, the highest volcano in Ecuador, at 6,263 metres, a climb from which the photographs with this article come from. 

“I found my legs again out there. I got to use most of my skills and feel the power of weather and nature which is just not possible in a gym workout,” he said.

On Wednesday of next week, Murphy is getting on a plane to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, to begin his journey to the top of Everest and back. 

He will spend the first week in quarantine in a hotel there before the trip can begin. 

Murphy was vaccinated on Thursday with a Pfizer jab but he won’t have time to get his second shot. “Most of the other members of the team are American so they’ve also been vaccinated,” Murphy said. If Murphy lived in Ireland as a 40-year old he would be many months, if not longer, away from being vaccinated unlike Britain and the United States.

After quarantine, Murphy will get on a 60-year old Russian plane to take an internal flight to Lukla Airport before starting the ten-day climb up to Everest base camp. 

From base camp he will climb up and down the mountain four times each time getting higher as he prepares to summit. “Camp four is 8,000 metres so in the death zone,” Murphy said. “When you get there you’re near ready for an attempt at the summit.”

“I’m an 8,000 metre virgin. You can be the fittest guy in the world but struggle in altitude. I’m very lucky I operate quite well at altitude but I’ve only ever been tested up to the mid-6000s.” Murphy is part of a big team climbing Everest, but he is hopeful that Covid-19 might make things a little easier. “There should be less people on the mountain,” he said. “This could be one of the best years to climb.” 

“Am I scared? No, I am not scared,” Murphy said. “I’ve made peace with this a long time ago and all the risks that are involved. Anything could happen. In 2019 two Irish guys (Kevin Hynes and Seamus Lawless) climbed Everest and both died. That is a reality.” 

“I had a call with Peter O’Connell, the 33rd Irish guy to climb Everest (in 2013). He told me what an amazing experience it wsa and the buzz of it.” 

“With anything in life you can overthink it and say there is too much risk. You can either look at it and not do it or get amongst it and see what happens.” 

“The experience of when life is on the edge…You just don’t get it in everyday life. I respect the mountain in every way and will be sensible but I don’t fear it.”

Ronan Murphy is climbing Mount Everest to raise funds for the Himalayan Trust founded by Sir Edmund Hillary in 1960 to support education, health services and infrastructure for the people living in the poorest regions of Nepal. You can contribute here.