Introducing Grace Kelly, our newest ambassador to the Ascendancy Apparel team. Relatively new to hiking, Grace is attempting to climb a mountain a month for 2020! We’ll let her tell you all about it…

Hi! I’m Grace Kelly (@graces__adventures). I’m 29 and from Alcester in Warwickshire.

I still consider myself quite a newbie to the hiking world... I didn’t grow up in a very active family - our yearly trips were abroad to the beach rather than camping or walking – and so I didn’t step foot on my first mountain until I was 26. It was The Old Man of Coniston and a partner at the time took me during my first visit to The Lake District. Safe to say, I didn’t reach the summit. I couldn’t really appreciate the full experience due to my fitness (or lack-of) being so severely tested, but the views and the feeling of being in such a peaceful, remote part of nature struck a chord with me. However, living in arguably one of the flattest parts of the UK, hiking wasn’t the norm for me and I didn’t get to experience another mountain until over a year later. Diving in completely at the deep end, my first summit was Snowdon in the height of winter with insane winds, more snow and ice than I’d ever encountered, zero visibility and only cotton gloves to protect my frozen fingers. Somehow I completed it. It was the most physically and mentally demanding experience and yet as soon as I finished I couldn’t wait to do it again. I had the bug. In 2019 I ticked off a few more summits of Pen y Fan, Corn Du and Scafell Pike, as well as solo-hikes in California, Seattle, Oregon, Switzerland and Scotland.

Aside from my fitness, what really grew in 2019 was my confidence. We’re all products of our environment, and when your environment has never been mountains, the outdoors or pushing yourself through limits and discomfort, your default setting can be lack of belief and self-doubt. “I can’t climb a mountain” I thought. Until I did. And even though I didn’t know anyone who shared my new-found passion for the outdoors, I wanted to keep it up. I was used to travelling alone so I figured I could hike alone, and there were so many mountains I wanted to climb that I decided to set myself a challenge of climbing a Mountain a Month in 2020.

I kicked off January with Cadair Idris which was my first ever solo climb. It appealed to me because not only was it the closest, but the route was a loop and I thought it would limit my chances of getting lost. ...I was wrong. I was under-equipped and out of my depth, and due to my lack of navigational skills and poor visibility I ended up 10 miles from my car, getting a lift back from some friendly strangers. But I completed it and I learned some valuable lessons from my mistakes. In February, I convinced some friends to climb Pen y Fan with me and then in March I did my second solo-climb: Snowdon. I wanted to do it again, 18 months on from my first climb, to see how far I’d come and I was amazed at the improvement in my fitness, ability and confidence. I loved it.

Sadly now due to lockdown, I April and May’s, which only means I’ll have a summit-filled June or July to enjoy playing catch-up and so I plan to head to the Lake District to tick off the likes of Helvellyn, Great Gable, Skiddaw and finally summit the Old Man of Coniston. I’ve been filming all of my climbs and sharing them on my YouTube channel: Grace’s Adventures – for anyone who’d like to see.

I also recently completed the Yorkshire 3 Peaks which was my toughest challenge to date and although the time to complete it is 12 hours, we did it in 7 hours 57 minutes so I’m pretty proud of that and now getting planning on my next adventure.

Since starting my challenge, I’ve been on a few hiking meet-ups and met so many amazing people, as well as connecting through the powers of Instagram, even winning a place on a Hill Skills course and a hiking trip to the Dolomites in Italy! So I can’t wait for more outdoor adventures with great people and sharing my mistakes, my learnings and my experiences along the way, with others who are also new to hiking and looking for tips or motivation to get out there alone.