There was a moment on our first evening in Switzerland when the trip seemed to begin without anyone really noticing.

One by one, people came down from their rooms and joined the group. Another chair was pulled in, then another, until we were all sitting around in a circle talking about bag weights, who had already wandered into the village, and who had drawn the short straw and been given the top bunk.

Nobody had climbed a mountain yet. Nobody had faced a steep ascent, sore knees, blisters or a night of “passing the night away” in shared sleeping quarters. But looking back, I think that was the moment the trip really started.

Over the months leading up to it, this adventure had existed mostly as a goal. Something we were all training towards. There had been prep hikes, kit conversations, questions about fitness, excitement, nerves and plenty of uncertainty about what the Swiss Alps would actually feel like once we got there.

By that first evening, though, it had stopped being an idea. We were there.

The first night also gave us what would become one of the trip’s running jokes: cheese fondue. It certainly divided opinion, and from that point on every arrival at a new hut seemed to come with the same slightly nervous question about what might be on the menu that evening.

It was one of those small things that became part of the story of the trip. And that, I think, was something I hadn’t appreciated beforehand. The mountains would give us huge moments, but some of the memories we would talk about most came from the smaller ones.

Day one gave us our first proper taste of the challenge ahead. The opening walk through the forest was beautiful, but far warmer than any of us expected. I remember the sweat literally dripping from my fingertips as we climbed.

It was also our first taste of the way Tom guided the trip. We didn’t just walk. We stopped. We looked. We smelt different plants and listened to Tom explain what was growing around us. Predictably, when one of them apparently smelled like gin, suddenly everyone became an expert botanist.

Later that day, we stopped for lunch beside a lake. Nothing around us but mountains. For a while, everyone just sat there quietly eating and taking it all in. No noise. No rush. No real need for conversation. It felt like one of those rare moments where everyone was completely present.

And then someone broke their sunglasses. That probably sums the trip up quite well! There were breathtaking moments, emotional moments and profound moments. And then there were moments that were just very funny!

Our first night on the mountain brought another change. We were staying high up, with our first summit waiting for us the following morning. The sleeping arrangements were cosy, to put it mildly. Tom had warned us that hut life did not always lend itself to a perfect night’s sleep. He didn’t call it a bad night, though. He described it as “passing the night away.” It became another phrase that stuck. By the end of the trip, nobody really asked if you had slept well. You simply compared notes on how successfully you had passed the night away.

The following day was when everything changed. On the way up to Bella Tolla we reached a small hut after what had been our first really demanding ascent. Those of us at the front had been told to keep going until we reached it, and when we arrived the view was extraordinary. We weren’t even at the summit yet.

That was what made the moment so special. There was still more climbing to do, but people already felt that they had achieved something enormous. Some became emotional. Some wandered away quietly for a few minutes. Some wrote messages in the visitors’ book that had been left inside the hut. You could see the pride on people’s faces. The disbelief, almost. We had all spent months preparing for this trip, but I don’t think any of us had really understood what it would feel like until that moment.

I wrote a line in the book:

“If you think you’ve arrived, you haven’t set the bar high enough.”

At the time, I meant it quite literally. We were proud of how far we had come, but Bella Tolla was still above us. Looking back, though, it probably says something about the whole experience.

The summit itself was a moment I don’t think I’ll ever forget. The conditions could hardly have been better. Clear skies. No wind. That strange stillness you only seem to get high in the mountains. One by one, everyone arrived at the top. And standing there, watching people hug, laugh, take photographs and quietly look out across the Alps, I felt far more emotional than I had expected.

As a coach, it is easy to underestimate just how much a goal can mean to someone until you see them physically achieve it. These were people who had spent months preparing. Training when they were tired. Turning up when motivation probably wasn’t there. Wondering if they were fit enough. Wondering if they would actually be able to do it. And now they had.

For some people, reaching that summit was a genuinely significant moment in their lives. Seeing that made the entire trip worthwhile for me. It also reminded me of something that can sometimes get lost in the gym. We spend a lot of time talking about getting stronger, fitter and healthier. We measure progress in kilos, reps, times, distances and heart rates. But every now and then you get to see what all of that work is actually for.

Fitness is not just about what you can do in a gym. It is about what being fit allows you to experience outside it.

Of course, mountains also have a way of bringing you back down to earth very quickly. The descent from Bella Tolla included a boulder field. Some people loved it. Others most definitely did not. At one point, one member of the group managed to fall backwards and wedge her rucksack between two rocks. She was completely stuck, laughing, arms and legs in the air, looking for all the world like a dead bug. Our international mountain guide, Tracey, came to the rescue!

Day two was also long. Very long. By the final climb to our hotel, fatigue had well and truly set in. One of my clients summed up her mood perfectly, “A solid two out of ten.” That phrase still makes me laugh.

What waited for us at the top was one of the strangest and most memorable hotels I have ever stayed in. Floorboards creaked seemingly by themselves. Stairs weren’t quite straight. Door frames leaned at angles they probably weren’t designed to lean at. It didn’t take long for a few people to become convinced the place was haunted.

Then there was Pierre. Pierre, our waiter that evening, became another character in the story of the trip. His confusion at being asked for English Breakfast tea in the evening was matched only by the group’s determination that this was a perfectly reasonable request. By the end of dinner, everyone loved him.

The evenings had their own stories too. Out came UNO and Monopoly Deal, and with them came several heated debates about rules that apparently “had always existed” but nobody seemed to remember until they were losing. There was proper belly laughter, increasingly competitive games, and at least one round of Monopoly Deal that came dangerously close to ending friendships.

It was silly, but those evenings mattered. After long days on the mountain, everyone would sit around together, tired and aching, and still find the energy to laugh until their sides hurt. Looking back, I think those moments did just as much to bring the group together as anything that happened on the trail. The trip wasn’t memorable just because of the mountains. It was the odd hotel. The in-jokes. The tired conversations. The strange dinners. The games. The laughter that seemed to appear when everyone was at their most exhausted.

By the final day, the cumulative effort of the previous days had begun to show. There were tired legs, sore feet and aching bodies.

Our second summit, La Toûno, was very different to Bella Tolla. The ascent was steeper, the temperature was colder and the wind was much stronger. Not everyone chose to make the final summit, and that was an important part of the experience too. There was never only one way to succeed on this trip. Everyone had their own challenge, their own pace and their own decisions to make.

One moment from that final day has stayed with me more than most. One member of the group found the descent particularly difficult and was worried that she was delaying everyone. When she eventually reached the bottom, everyone else was waiting. But they had not just waited. They had raised their walking poles to form an arch for her to walk under. And then, completely unplanned, the singing started. “She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes…” It was ridiculous, funny and genuinely lovely all at once.

For me, that moment summed up the MHR community perfectly. Nobody cared how quickly she had made it down. They just wanted to make sure that when she did, she knew everyone was pleased to see her. That sense of community had been there from the very beginning. On the first night, we had pulled more and more chairs into a circle as people arrived. By the final day, people were quite literally forming an arch to welcome someone back into the group. There is something quite special about that.

One thing the trip also left me with was an enormous amount of respect for the three mountain leaders: Tom, Tracey and Ffion. Watching them work up close gave me a new appreciation for what mountain leadership really involves. They were constantly reading the terrain, the weather, the pace of the group and the needs of the individuals within it. They knew when to encourage, when to slow things down, when to offer advice and when simply to let people find their own rhythm. Their experience and judgement allowed the rest of us to concentrate on the challenge in front of us, knowing that we were being guided safely through an environment that was unfamiliar to most of us.

As a coach myself, I found that fascinating to watch. There were similarities to what we do in the gym, but in a much more unpredictable environment. Knowing when to push. Knowing when to adapt. Knowing when someone needs reassurance rather than instruction. The trip was an incredible success, but there is no doubt that their knowledge, leadership and encouragement played a huge part in that.

And then came the final descent into Zinal. It was dusty, steep in places, and every now and then the trail seemed to have the audacity to start climbing again. After several long days, tired legs and increasingly vocal knees, it demanded one final effort. Eventually, the hotel came into view. There were hugs. There were tears. There was relief. But more than anything, there was pride.

Everyone had their own version of what they had overcome over those few days. Their own moments of doubt. Their own victories. Their own memories. And you could see the sense of achievement on their faces. There was also, it has to be said, considerable excitement about fresh clothes, hair straighteners and the prospect of an actual night’s sleep rather than simply “passing the night away.”

As I look back on the trip now, I think what stays with me most is not any single summit. It is watching people discover what they were capable of.

It is seeing friendships deepen.

It is seeing people support each other without being asked.

It is seeing confidence grow in real time. And it is being reminded that sometimes the best thing we can do as coaches is give people something worth training for.

The gym is where the work happens. But every so often, you need a mountain to show you what that work has made possible.

Mark