Author: Jonathon Poyner (Owner of Sea Wolf Serial SW-2023-062)
Pictures by: Craig Fawkes Track and Trails
‘Where to next year, ‘Bois’’? ‘We’ve just done TMB (Tour Du Mont Blanc), we’ve had a great time together, so where to next’? So went the conversation in the summer of 2022 at the airport, on arrival back in the UK after our trip to the Alps. ‘I know, says Darian’, the youngest and consequently the most delightfully and positively ambitious member of the team, ‘Everest’! Pause for thought.
Through a series of multi-channel miscommunications and panic-buying (you may recall that post-pandemic flight-prices were rising fast, very fast), we ended up booking our nearly three-week trip to the Himalaya. We were committed, we had 9 months to think about it. Reality had set in.
The next phase was ‘we’re gonna need better kit’! As part of that, I concluded that I needed a self-contained and reliable watch that didn’t require batteries, would work at altitude and in all (likely extreme) weather conditions. That would include temperatures of down to minus 20 at night, and whilst trekking through snow, sleet, rain and searing sun, the sun burning its way through the thin mountain air. The watch would need to be top quality, very reliable, and most importantly, achieve all of that whilst not making me a target.
The matt-black Sea Wolf. Essentially, the quality and reliability of a high grade Swiss sports watch, but hidden inside an appropriately unique, bespoke, discrete, and robust case. The ultimate undercover understatement – the essence of the true James Bond literary character. The issue was that the Sea Wolf is limited in supply, made to order, bespoke, and only available when Richard chooses to make them! Would he, could he, make me one in time?! After some panicked and pleading comms, Richard came up trumps, my Major Sea Wolf was acquired, assembled, tested and dispatched. Just for me. Unique to me. I was set for a short walk in the Himalaya.
Several time zones later, covering some 10,000 miles, and at a hiking altitude of over 4,000 meters, my Sea Wolf and I had enjoyed (or was it endured?!) temperatures between plus 30 and minus 20 degrees Celsius, nights in start-of-season damp-beds and rooms, flushed toilets with buckets of water taken from barrels of icy water, visited temples and famous locations used by the 1953 (and since) expeditions to Everest and others, seen two yeti-scalps (yes, there are two monasteries with yeti-scalps, not one), the Hillary School, the Sherpa Everest Museum, and been flown by an evidently crazy helicopter pilot, just scraping the ridges, before descending to levels below the cloud-base to an otherwise inaccessible Lukla.
We had had tummy bugs, chest infections, bleeding noses, and had lain awake cold and short of breath at night. We had also seen some of the most amazing and beautiful scenery in the world, visited some very emotional and inspiring historic sites, eaten some interesting food (from porridge to ‘Dal Bhat power 24 hour’, the essential mountain staples), and had the pleasure of meeting and working with some of the world’s nicest and happiest people, the Nepali people, and in particular the Sherpa and Gurkha peoples. Thanks to all, you were amazing.
So, Darian, was it a good call? Was it ‘the trip of a lifetime’? A resounding ‘yes’! Would I have taken anything other than my Major Sea Wolf? No, absolutely not. That, along with my trusted Suunto Core in my pocket, so as to keep the battery warm, (it’s nice to know your ABC – altimeter, barometer, compass), was the perfect combination – understated, reliable, and discrete – the ultimate in confidence and style.
Thank you Richard for delivering in-time and on-time, diolch yn fawr, very much appreciated!
Jonathon Poyner (Adventurer and Owner of Sea Wolf Serial SW-2023-062)
Team member, ‘Bois’, would-be / wanna-be (though now tempered) explorers!