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Climbing Mount Everest, the odds to be able to say you\u2019ve stood on top of the highest mountain in the world, the percentage of people is even lower. To be able to say \u2018I\u2019ve done Everest\u2019\u2026 I wouldn\u2019t say it\u2019s selfish but it is ego-driven.\u201d<\/p>\n
Henderson\u2019s mountain-climbing journey has seemed quick. It was just over four years ago that he was at the top of Snowdon and had the idea of climbing the world\u2019s tallest peak.<\/p>\n
He recalls his journey since: \u201cI did a winter skills course in Scotland, which was brilliant. The weather was absolutely brutal. It\u2019s more technical stuff, like ice axe arrest, sliding down a cliff face on your back upside down, walking up an elevation with crampons. Just the extreme weathers, the survival mode that puts you into. I absolutely loved it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen my first high-altitude mountain would have been Mount Elbrus in Russia but, only a month before we were supposed to go, the war broke out. I changed that to a trip to Cotopaxi in Ecuador, which people no longer summit because it\u2019s now a live volcano! It was then Gran Paradiso, Mont Blanc and over to Argentina for Aconcagua, one of the seven summits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Henderson – who retired in 2017 and admits to having struggled with the lows of post-football life – remarkably insists he is \u201cnot actually that great with heights\u201d. He says that the most \u2018vulnerable\u2019 he has felt is when one tumble could result in death.<\/p>\n
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DON’T MISS… <\/strong> \u201cYou drop one side, you\u2019re gone. You drop the other side, you\u2019re gone. In terms of your pathway, where you are climbing you\u2019ve got crampons on and, for anyone that\u2019s worn crampons, you are prone to tripping,\u201d he continued. \u201cBecause, if you catch your other foot with your crampon, you are going over.<\/p>\n \u201cAt this moment in time, this is probably the most vulnerable I\u2019ve felt. I\u2019ll never forget the guide turning to us and saying, with a very serious tone, \u2018we have to stay as close as possible and make sure there\u2019s no tripping, one foot in front of the other\u2019. That\u2019s while we can hardly breathe and your legs are burning. Literally one slip away from\u2026 that\u2019s it, life\u2019s over.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Henderson admits he thrives in the environment where survival is the ultimate goal, just as he did as a bustling centre-forward in a 15-year career spent largely in the Championship.<\/p>\n Henderson concludes: \u201cI enjoy being in an environment where I can\u2019t help but be in survival mode, in a tent, 6,000m in the air, freezing cold, minus 20, waiting to summit. You can\u2019t sleep very well but it all adds to the theatre of being able to say you\u2019ve done this.\u201d<\/p>\n
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