Neil Pitts - About
I am an amateur adventurer and budding writer. I juggle my love of the great outdoors with my work as a learning & development consultant.
Most adventures involve my wife, Amanda, a campervan called Gandalf and mountains. I write a blog and occasionally shoot videos to accompany my trips.
Already a big fan of hiking and scrambling, I came to climbing relatively late in life, at the ripe old age of 29, having taken up the hobby as a way to overcome my fear of heights and enjoy the more inaccessible mountains.
18 months of independent travel in Asia, including numerous trips to Nepal, led to an invitation to work as a trekking guide in Pakistan in 2001. This in turn led to the opportunity to work as an assistant climbing guide on Spantik, a 7,023m (23,048ft) peak in the Pakistan Karakorum in 2005.
It was on this trip that I met my wife-to-be, Amanda. A shared love of the mountains and adventurous travel has taken us on such journeys as a 3 week traverse of the Tyrolese Alps in 2006 (in the footsteps of Frank Smythe’s 1939 journey), an unsupported 7 day kayak adventure around the Exumas in the Bahamas in 2015 and a 4 month climbing trip across Western Europe in 2018.
Unfortunately I contracted Covid 19 in April 2020 and it took me 16-months to recover from Long Covid. I aim to prove that it wass possible to fully recover from this debilitating illness culminated in the challenge to ski the length of Norway in 2022.
We didn’t quite make the full trip due to a particularly ugly weather and other set backs, but we still skied more than 1,700km and finally reached the northern most point at Nordkapp on the Thursday 7th April 2022. I have been busy since then writting the book about the challenges I faced with both Long Covid and the 4 months skiing in Norway.
You can find out more about the journey and the ongoing preparations on the blog page.