Oli France: Wild Expeditions & Death Valley To Denali (Ultimate 7 Project)

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In this opening episode of season 3, we embark on a journey with Oli France, an adventurer whose expeditions span some of the most inhospitable places on Earth. Born in a quiet town in England, Oli’s curiosity about the world and the love for the outdoors has seem him to pursue a life of adventure, experiences and exploration that few can match. From the cycling the lowest point in Death Valley to the climbing the summit of Denali, he seeks out the planet’s extremes, driven by a desire to push human limits and connect with the world’s remote landscapes.

Oli’s adventures have taken him to places most of us only read about—cycling solo through bear country, navigating glaciers riddled with crevasses, and being detained in authoritarian Uzbekistan. His ambition is to complete the Ultimate 7, a global expedition traversing the lowest to highest points on every continent.

In this candid conversation, Oli shares not just the details of his treks, but the deeper truths of what it means to explore, endure, and thrive in the wilderness.

What You'll Learn in this Episode:

• How a childhood fascination with world maps laid the foundation for a life of adventure.
• The tale of Oli’s arrest in Uzbekistan & his escape from one of the world’s strictest regimes.
• The physical and mental toll of cycling over 3,000 miles from Death Valley to Denali.
• Close encounters with grizzly bears in the wilds of North America and how Oli faced those fears.
• Navigating the glaciers of Alaska, where one wrong step could mean a deadly fall into a crevasse.
• The psychological and physical challenges of summiting Denali, North America's tallest and coldest peak.
• How teamwork, leadership, and risk management are crucial for survival in extreme environments.
• The next phases of the Ultimate 7 project, including Everest and Antarctica.

Memorable Quotes:

• “There’s something about the wilderness that calls to me—it’s where I feel most alive.”
• “Being detained as a drug trafficker in Uzbekistan was the last thing I expected on my expedition.”
• “Denali doesn’t just test your physical strength, it wears you down mentally, day by day.”
• “Cycling through bear country was nerve-wracking—I knew they were out there, watching.”
• “The Ultimate 7 has been a decade in the making, and I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface.”

Call to Adventure: Take a page from Oli’s Ultimate 7 project: Challenge yourself to discover the highest and lowest points in your own region. Whether by bike, on foot, or any other means, find a way to traverse the distance and reconnect with the wild places close to home. 

Pay It Forward: Oli encourages all adventurers to think carefully about where they spend their money when traveling. Supporting local guides, small

Chapters

• 0:00 A Terrifying Encounter in the Wilderness
• 0:31 Welcome to the Adventure Diaries Podcast
• 0:53 Introducing Oli France The Ultimate Adventurer
• 2:34 Oli's Formative Years and Early Adventures
• 4:06 First Solo Expedition: Trekking Through Morocco
• 5:40 From Corporate Life to Big Expeditions
• 7:30 The Hong Kong to Istanbul Journey
• 8:13 Setting Up Wild Edge Adventure Company
• 9:32 The Uzbekistan Ordeal: Detained as a Drug Trafficker
• 13:21 Surviving Meningitis and Preparing for Lake Baikal
• 16:26 The Solo Expedition Across Lake Baikal
• 20:19 Guiding in Somalia: A Unique Experience
• 22:47 The Ultimate 7 Project: A Decade in the Making
• 26:01 Leadership and Composure in Extreme Situations
• 29:46 Phase 1 of the Ultimate 7: Cycling Across Africa
• 36:39 Journey Through Death Valley
• 37:07 Preparation and Planning for the Expedition
• 37:27 Challenges and Realizations on the Road
• 38:35 Surviving the Wilderness
• 43:27 Encounters with Wildlife
• 47:59 Reaching Alaska and Meeting the Team
• 48:53 The Ski to Base Camp
• 53:25 Climbing Denali: The Final Push
• 59:15 Summit Day and Reflections
• 1:03:08 Future Expeditions and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Chris Watson (00:00.633)
That's u live now so Oli France welcome to the adventure diaries how are you yeah no I'm delighted that I've managed to secure your time today hot off the back of Death Valley to Denali which is really exciting stuff so to frame up today Ollie I can want to obviously touch on the ultimate seven your two phases into that but

Oli France (00:05.423)
Thank you, Chris. Yeah, I'm really well, thank you. Thanks for the invitation.

Chris Watson (00:29.305)
For people that may not know Ollie France, I just want to kind of roll it back a little bit and maybe frame up some, you know, your formative experience of who Ollie France is and how we kind of stepped into this, your life of adventure. So is it Wigan that you're from?

Oli France (00:45.101)
Yeah, so I'm from Wigan, Wigan Lancashire, which is sort of a northern town. It's not particularly known for adventure as such. So I grew up playing football, rugby league. We had a very good rugby league team at school, but I was kind of outdoors at every opportunity, whether that was playing sports or messing about in the woods and fields with mates. And so there was definitely that spark of wanting to be outside.

if you know even if I didn't understand the concept of adventure at a young age and certainly always had a fascination with the world had world maps on my wall you know would study them would learn about countries and cities and sort of almost dream I think from a young age of being able to go out and explore but yeah the first real introduction to the outdoors was only when I was about 17 went rock climbing with friends in the Lake District for the first time absolutely loved the adrenaline rush

And that was kind of the first formative experience really. And actually off the back of that, I signed up to a three year university course in outdoor leadership. And so yeah, I just absolutely rolled with it. It caught me at the right time, right place. And it felt like this itch, which I'd always wanted to scratch. And yeah, just leapt head first into this world of adventure.

Chris Watson (02:05.145)
Yeah, and I think you led your, did you go on your first solo expedition at 19, so not long after, was that Morocco? I think.

Oli France (02:12.301)
Yeah, that's right. So at the age of 19, I was one year into university degree of outdoor leadership. I managed to get a bit of funding from the uni to put this trip together. Went out to Morocco, spent a couple of weeks trekking through the Atlas Mountains with local Berbers staying in mud huts. I'd learned a bit of Arabic, so I was putting that to use and finished up on the highest mountain, Tupacal in that region.

So that was awesome, you know, and it was before, I feel kind of old, although I'm not particularly old saying this, but it was before the time of phones or communication. So, you know, for two weeks I was just out there, you know, we would chat by the fire. I would, you know, learn about their lives, learn about the culture, immersed in this mountain landscape, first bit of sort of altitude experience. And it was just awesome. And so that, yeah, that really gave me the bug for adventure.

Chris Watson (02:47.481)
You

Oli France (03:08.429)
And I kind of followed that path then throughout university. Every year that went by, I'd spend a lot of my time planning the summer's expedition or adventure. And yeah, so the following year I was off to Beirut in Lebanon, which was a completely different experience. There was all kinds of wild things happening. And as a young guy at university, being in a city where there are explosions happening.

all kinds of wild things. For me, it was just really exciting. And I just instantly got this real adrenaline buzz from being out there in these unpredictable places, you know, taking on these wilder and wilder challenges each year. And yeah, it did turn into an addiction, but that was kind of the early years.

Chris Watson (03:59.985)
Fantastic. So, because I know you went into a bit of the corporate world to an extent, didn't you? Was that after your course? How did you fall into that and then realise that wasn't for you, you needed to get back out into the world?

Oli France (04:19.341)
Yeah, so after finishing university, I'd done these travels and set off and had a year overseas working and traveling in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, you know, the typical kind of backpackers route. Absolutely loved it. You know, reluctantly came home after a year. Couple of catch -ups with family and then, you know, on the Monday, found myself in the job center.

you know, barely a penny to my name. And it was quite a grim, grim reawakening into reality, but I needed to get a bit of work. I fell into this job for a kitchen manufacturer, first designing kitchens and then selling kitchens. And you know, needless to say, I was absolutely miserable in that job. You know, really didn't enjoy it. For sure on paper, it looks like a good job, the car, the laptop, the bonus scheme and all that.

Chris Watson (04:43.545)
Hmm.

Oli France (05:12.237)
But yeah, I had absolutely no passion for it. And so two years I did in that job actually, which is probably my greatest feat of endurance. And so eventually, you know, decided to quit that job. I remember the phone call very distinctly, you know, called up and quit the job. And my plan, this was back in 2015, was to really get back on track with this world of adventure. And I really felt that in order to do that, I needed to go big and to

Chris Watson (05:21.401)
girl.

Chris Watson (05:33.241)
Thank you.

Oli France (05:42.125)
go for a big expedition so I left behind the job, you know, timing was terrible, there was no pot of money, there were no sponsors, I had to really rally hard, really fight hard, I was doing this house renovation at the time due to get married to my wife, we did get married further down the line but you know, there was all these things going on which were saying, you know, the timing is terrible but anyway, made this thing happen and the project was travelling from Hong Kong to Istanbul.

four month journey across the mountain of Spine of Asia on my own in winter climbing mountains in every country. And it was just this absolutely transformative experience. You know, I'm 25 at that point. I've had a few travels and things, but this was the first real big one where I was traveling 8 ,000 miles, you know, by any means, but with that challenge of climbing mountains in every country and staying with mountain communities, going through, you know, countries.

which had, you know, all kinds of different issues going on, dictatorships and things, which, you know, maybe we'll get into, but yeah, that was the big turning point, but certainly the corporate life wasn't for me.

Chris Watson (06:52.729)
Yeah, so what point did you set up? Because you run your own wild edge, don't you? You're kind of an adventure company. Did that come later on into the time or was that part of your kind of journey when you'd done that four month thing across Asia?

Oli France (07:11.085)
Yeah, so that came later. It was always something in my mind for probably since university that, you know, one day I'd love to have my own expedition company. But I felt that I needed to, you know, first of all, go and have lots of my own experiences, you know, completely solo, just, you know, learning to look after myself, I suppose, in wild, remote, hostile places. And then I came back after...

After this trip did lots of guiding on a freelance basis, leading expeditions all over the world, you know, sometimes up to 10, 12 expeditions a year, really, really busy. And then it was about two years, two and a half years ago that I set up Wild Edge.

Chris Watson (07:52.057)
Yeah, fantastic. I think for anyone that hasn't visited that site and hasn't watched your Shoryu, I think that's two minutes of adventure right there. I think some of the places you've been to, you know, Syria, the Congo, Yemen, and obviously the Uzbekistan story. So you want to go back and probably told us a hundred times, Ollie, but it would be remiss if I didn't ask about how you got yourself into trouble with your first aid kit.

Oli France (08:15.533)
Yeah. Yeah.

Oli France (08:22.029)
Yeah, that's right. So yeah, this was Uzbekistan on this big journey across Asia. And I was traveling from Tajikistan into Uzbekistan. And to set the scene, Uzbekistan is, or was at that time in 2016, a total dictatorship, authoritarian regime, police state, no freedoms for its people. And so I'd had lots of warnings about going into Uzbekistan. I knew full well that I might encounter issues there.

So I crossed the border late at night, you know, this remote sort of dusty border between the two countries. I'm the only person crossing the border at that time. As I arrived in Uzbekistan, first impressions were great. I got stamped through, you know, very friendly welcome. And then I entered this room and the atmosphere changed and it was, you know, people dressed in military clothing, you know, just me and them instantly said to me, we want your phone, your camera, your laptop, all of your...

electronics and they started looking through the files they did a full bag search full body search and I'm racking my brains thinking have I got anything to hide is there anything they might find and I thought no like I'll just I'll just go through this and I'm sure it'll be fine but eventually they found in my first aid kit some cocodermol tablets which are and you know normal painkiller here in the UK but over there because they contain opium they're classed as an illegal narcotic

And so from that moment forward, once they found those, I was then detained as an illegal drug trafficker in one of the world's strictest police states. So that was, yeah, a very wild experience. I spent five days then being interrogated, being held under house arrest. I was taken for blood and urine samples. I was driven down to the Afghan border to a city called Termez.

All the while I had no contact with home. I had one phone call with the embassy but I didn't even get through because it was Good Friday and they were closed until the following Tuesday so that was no use. Eventually had to organize a Western Union transfer to get hold of some cash after they gave me the ultimatum of either 30 days in jail or pay my way out and so opted to pay my way out.

Chris Watson (10:27.929)
my god.

Oli France (10:46.702)
which is $500 and once that was converted to Uzbek currency, that was literally a bag full of cash. I was then driven out to what was, what turned out to be an XKGB compound on the outskirts of Tirmes to pay my way out of prison with a bag full of cash. And so it was just this crazy experience. I mean, the whole story, it would take the entire show to tell it, but yeah.

Chris Watson (10:53.401)
Bye!

Chris Watson (11:09.209)
Yeah.

Oli France (11:13.87)
They wanted to deport me. I carried on my journey. I had police spying on me. I was racing across the city, changing taxis in every town. I got some help, made it on a sleeper train into Kazakhstan. They didn't want to let me in because they thought I was traveling on a fake passport. it was mental. It was madness. But that's an overview anyway.

Chris Watson (11:21.753)
Thanks.

Wow.

Chris Watson (11:30.073)
jeez.

I reckon you've got a cracking video on your YouTube channel that I think describes it in a lot more granular detail which I'd recommend people go and have a look at. And in fact, doing a bit of research for this on Uzbekistan, I was just keen to see what the political state was like at the minute. The UK government do class it as politically stable but as recent as I think two weeks ago they have locked up a couple of bloggers in that country for like three years.

and actually committing them to psychiatric wards because they have spoken out. I shouldn't mean to laugh at that, but I just think it's completely absurd. So whilst it's classed as politically stable, I think there's still some crazy stuff going on in that country. So yeah, fortunate you've got out. So touching on, so you've had a few other wild scenarios as well. Lake Baikal, you know,

Oli France (12:10.156)
Yeah.

Oli France (12:19.566)
Yeah, 100%.

Chris Watson (12:32.121)
in Siberia, you're doing a bit of training for that. Is that when you fell ill though, in preparation for that, what was that on the back? I read something about you got meningitis, was that from eating a camel burger or something?

Oli France (12:39.629)
Yeah.

Oli France (12:44.077)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know that I know this sounds ridiculous, but so this is kind of fast forwarding a few years and I'd spent the I'd spent the years since this big trip building out this career of guiding groups through wilder, more remote hostile places. So I was guiding teams in Iraq and Yemen and Somalia, in Congo, places like this, you know, really on the edge of what

Chris Watson (12:53.849)
Yeah.

Oli France (13:11.693)
what is possible in a sense and there were lots of hairy situations over the years. I found myself in Somalia leading a team there for the second time and yeah as I was finishing up the trip you know in all truth I don't know 100 % if it was this camel burger but a couple of days later as I arrived back in the UK I fell very very ill you know very very quickly.

First with something called shigella, which is like a food -borne, I think it's food -borne, I could be wrong, but anyway, you end up with dysentery, fever, you know, you're basically, you've got everything coming out of all ends and you're completely wiped out, not just like a fever, you know, I had to go to hospital, really awful.

I thought I was getting better from that after getting out of hospital and then this headache came in which just did not go away and I was taking stronger and stronger painkillers and this thing was getting so bad to the point where I went down to the hospital again and was, by the time I was seen I was almost like comatose, I could barely move. I was just in, it was the worst pain I've ever experienced, excruciating pain in my head to such a point that if somebody had said to me,

Chris Watson (14:21.625)
No.

Oli France (14:29.869)
you know, we'll drill a hole in your skull to relieve the pressure. I would have said yes in an instant. That's how bad it was. And it turned out to be meningitis, which is, you know, it's a very serious disease. And I think it's one in seven or one in eight do actually, you know, it's fatal for, so it's, your odds aren't exactly great. And so it is the, you know, the most ill I've ever been in my life. I spent a week in hospital then in isolation, you know, because it can potentially be transmitted.

And yeah, and lost a lot of body weight, had bad headaches for quite a long time, lost pretty much all my fitness it felt like in that week. But that was a critical time where it was three months away from setting off on this Lake Baikal expedition, which would be my biggest physical challenge to date. And so, yeah, the timing again wasn't ideal because I was coming out of this and trying to rebuild my fitness.

my expedition partner who I was going to do this Lake Baikal expedition with had dropped out. So now I had to face, you know, potentially doing it on my own. But if anything, it gave me a reason to get back to full fitness and to start training and to focus my mind on something. And so that was, yeah, 2020. I set out and completed this big solo expedition across Lake Baikal, which is the world's largest freshwater lake. It is about 400

400 miles long and a mile deep so big that it contains around a quarter of the world's fresh water, which is just a phenomenal stat. So it's absolutely vast up in Siberia, freezes every winter. And so I went out there fully self, you know, fully unsupported carrying all my gear in a sled. 16 days did about a marathon distance each day hauling this 60 kilo sled in temperatures down to minus 20, minus 25.

And so yeah, that was a big challenge and certainly the hardest thing I've done up until then.

Chris Watson (16:36.408)
Were you struggling physically or mentally on the back of being ill out there? How did that impact your time and your fitness or your experience even? Did that wear a weight on you at all?

Oli France (16:50.348)
Definitely my fitness, you know, something like this, you want to go in absolutely peak physical condition. But yeah, I did, you know, I certainly wasn't up to my maximum fitness. I've maybe, it'd taken me about six to eight weeks to really fully recover, I would say, from meningitis, which only left me with about a month to kind of train a bit more hard, which is not really enough time. And then, yeah, weirdly, I think just...

Chris Watson (17:09.209)
you

Oli France (17:19.276)
Up until then, I'd never really had major illnesses. You know, I'd had bits of food poisoning, things like that, but to be completely wiped out and then to be going into a very, very remote area where your days from help, you're completely on your own, it does... I remember for that trip, it did plant a slight seed of doubt as to, you know, what if this happens again? What if I pick up some illness while I'm out on the lake? So, yeah, but I think having got through that and just kind of...

face down that fear a little bit, then yeah, it's not something I've really worried about since.

Chris Watson (17:51.897)
Yeah. Did you have an evacuation plan on Lake Baikal, just in case? Yeah.

Oli France (17:58.412)
Yeah, yeah, I would never, I had never planned so much for an expedition because I was out there on my own. So I considered every single detail and that, and I think actually that expedition has been a really good foundation for really elevating the planning that I put into expeditions and attention to detail. So, you know, I had extensive communications. I had a satellite tracking device, a satellite phone, two mobile phones, one with a Russian SIM.

Chris Watson (18:02.553)
Yeah.

Chris Watson (18:17.241)
Yeah.

Oli France (18:27.372)
I had various contacts up and down the lake in different locations. I had contacts with evacuation, helicopter evacuation, which are based locally. I even went to find out how I would pay for those, and I learned that they wouldn't come to you unless you had cash. This is Russia, that's how they operate. And so I thought, okay, so I needed to have like a thousand pounds worth of Russian rubles in my sled.

Chris Watson (18:36.153)
Yeah.

Chris Watson (18:46.809)
Fuck.

Chris Watson (18:53.529)
Yeah.

Oli France (18:55.756)
otherwise they wouldn't come to your rescue. So yeah, I really had considered every detail with that one, just in case the worst happened.

Chris Watson (19:05.945)
Is that part of the carry bags are cash now if you're going into these, these kind of, I don't want to say Russian or Far Eastern countries, but some of these less stable countries, should I say? Yeah.

Oli France (19:18.028)
I have done over the years. Yeah, and I mean one of the one of the things is Without wanting to make myself a target next time I go but you know sometimes Yeah, no, you're right. But sometimes if you are operating in places like Iran and Syria which have sanctions against them Actually, you know as soon as you start trying to transfer money you're gonna get flagged up and you're gonna get into all sorts of trouble so it's a case of like

Chris Watson (19:25.849)
Yeah, we'll edit this out. We'll edit this bit out.

Oli France (19:46.284)
Yeah, taking a bit of cash out there. Which does feel a bit dodgy, but yeah, it kind of needs must.

Chris Watson (19:53.497)
Well, that's part of your first aid kit to an extent, I suppose, isn't it? So rolling back a little bit, Bolly, Somalia has got a host of negative connotations with it, that country, just because of the elements of it are quite lawless. What was Somalia like as an experience? What type of guiding and expedition were you doing there?

Oli France (19:55.788)
Yeah.

Oli France (20:13.324)
Yeah, so Somalia actually, it was a really interesting country. I was guiding a group there. I basically ran the same trip over two years and we were first in northern parts of Ethiopia, traveling through Ethiopia, bit of trekking. There was a volcano up there, sleeping out next to the volcano, all this, feeding hyenas in this Ethiopian town. Did have a couple of issues in Ethiopia with armed mobs, but that's another story.

But then we crossed into Somalia and actually, you know, we didn't have any major issues. This was Northern Somalia. One of the important things to note is that Somalia is a very, very tribal country and you've got different areas. So this northern part of Somalia is called Somaliland and it's kind of fighting for independence. And so as far as Somalia goes, it is safer. For sure there are still potential risks and issues. And so we were traveling with an armed guard.

Although it must be said, everybody, our local guide, our driver, our armed guard, they were all completely off their heads. They were all high on this stuff called cat or chat, which is like a leaf that they chew all day. And it basically makes them like giddy as little school kids. And so I don't think if something have happened that it'd been much use to be honest.

Chris Watson (21:17.789)
So.

Chris Watson (21:26.777)
Catch you!

Oli France (21:40.012)
But yeah, I mean, one of the things is in these countries, it's very, very hard to find local fixers, guides, trustworthy people. If you can find someone really solid in a place like that, they're absolute gold dust because they understand the level and they understand where you can and can't go. They've got local contacts. They'll be the first to hear about any issues that are going down. So that is super useful. We didn't really have that in Somalia to that level.

but we didn't experience any problems. Really interesting country. You know, we actually went on this, it's quite funny, we went on this speed boat out into the Red Sea, which is really cool, around all these abandoned vessels. So we're probably one of the few people to have led tourists through, you know, the pirate infested waters of Somalia. So that was quite cool.

Chris Watson (22:21.561)
Yeah

Chris Watson (22:25.977)
Wow. So what was it like, just like, like say abandoned ships then, when the hijack just kind of in the water? Wow.

Oli France (22:36.108)
Yeah, yeah, I just sat there kind of burnt out and torched and yeah, and debris.

Chris Watson (22:41.273)
Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, it's not fantastic, sorry I didn't mean that way, but that's a fantastic experience. Wonderful. So, kind of, it's guiding us nicely towards your Ultimate 7. So when did this idea, because I think I've read that it's been 10 years in the making, your Ultimate 7 project. So when did you get that idea and how did it come about?

Oli France (22:45.996)
Yeah, for sure.

Oli France (23:01.42)
Hmm.

Oli France (23:08.844)
Yeah, so the more I got into this world of adventure, you know, you're always thinking of projects, you know, expeditions, what could you do next? And this was an idea which I had about a decade ago now. And, you know, at the time I didn't have the same level of skills and experience and, you know, opportunities to try and make it happen basically. And so it just sat there, you know, it sat there on a list, it sat there in my head.

for years and years and I was thinking about it. Sometimes I'd research little bits and pieces and to give context what the project is, it is my world first, what would be a world first goal to journey from the lowest point in each continent to the highest entirely by human power. And I think one of the things that appealed to me about this project is it would take me to all seven continents. It would be seven big kind of epic expeditions crossing

you know, crossing continents, all kinds of different landscapes, human powered, but in different ways, bike, ski, on foot, boat. And it just, you know, the more I thought about it, the more of these expeditions became really tantalizing. And you're also tying together these major geographical points, the low point and the high point in the continent in quite a unique way. And I've always enjoyed that kind of long distance overland travel, but I'd never done it.

so much on a human powered level. I've done lots of bits and pieces and expeditions, but to do a really long human powered expedition, that really appealed to me. And of course it was something that nobody has done before. A couple of the continents have been done, but as a whole, most of them haven't been done and as a whole, certainly nobody's come close. So it's a huge project, but about 18, probably about 18 months, two years ago, I kind of mentally...

made the commitment to go for it. In fact, one of the the moment, you know, or the trip when I made that kind of commitment, I was in Syria actually and I was guiding a team in Syria. Again, like we were the first tourists to visit Aleppo, allegedly according to locals and you know that that in itself was a crazy trip. But I remember thinking to myself in some ways I felt more comfortable there in Syria than I had done during a stressful

Oli France (25:36.172)
few weeks at home, just previous. And I thought, you know what, if I feel so relaxed here, then maybe I'm not pushing things hard enough. And you know, I really want to, I really enjoy pushing things to the limit and seeing, you know, what you can do, what's possible. So I decided to really take that big leap and to go for the Ultimate 7 project. And since then, I've devoted a lot of my time to making it happen.

Chris Watson (25:36.985)
and

Chris Watson (25:58.489)
Hmm.

Chris Watson (26:02.649)
I mean in your two phases in which we'll come on to in a minute, it's phenomenal. Just to pick up on something you said there, so that about being in a lepul and really wanting to push yourself. Because I think as an outsider looking in, Ollie, you seem to have real leadership skills, you really compose, you seem to have the right mental fortitude to get through this.

How have you cultivated those skills and what kind of, you know, as a person, have you studied a lot of leadership? I mean, is this just experience of being out in the field? Because you do seem very, you know, in terms of like your risk management, I've heard you talk a little bit as well, you seem to have that really locked down and taken it really seriously.

Oli France (26:50.187)
Yeah, well, I appreciate that. And yeah, it's something I've spent dedicated a lot of time thinking about. I think if I think back to my childhood, you know, I did enjoy being the one who would come up with these schemes and kind of be a bit of a leader and, you know, captain the sports teams and things like that. So, you know, maybe there was something there in my childhood. But I think with regards to these expeditions, probably the most important

foundation. It wasn't the degree, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't sort of those, those easier adventures and the training and things. It was actually going out completely on my own to wild remote places at a young age and encountering, you know, lots of difficult situations and just finding a way through it. So, you know, going back to that Lebanon episode at, you know, the age of 1920 out there with bombs going off and encountering.

Chris Watson (27:45.369)
Hmm.

Oli France (27:48.107)
you know, getting questioned and seeing snipers on rooftops and walking down back alleys with people with handguns and you know, all kinds of things happening. And I'm there on my own in a foreign land where you, you know, you didn't see any tourists for a month. And so it was, you, you've got to figure out how to navigate those situations very quickly, or you're going to get yourself into trouble. And that was just one, you know, one particular trip. I think having

Chris Watson (27:52.345)
Peace.

Oli France (28:14.86)
I've spent so much time on my own in these places navigating all kinds of different situations. It just becomes normal and you feel relaxed. And I think one of the things you mentioned there was kind of composure. And for me, that is one of the absolute, you know, the golden rules of leading an expedition in place like this. It is a lot of, you know, showing that composure and calmness. The way I relate it to something is, you know, imagine if you're on a plane, there's a bit of turbulence.

And you know, who's everybody looking at? Looking at the flight attendants because the flight attendants reaction tells you how serious it is, doesn't it? You know, if the flight attendant is relaxed and calm, everybody else relaxes and think, okay, it's not a problem. You know, imagine if the flight attendant was running up and down the corridor screaming, you know, the whole airplane's gonna go into a frenzy.

Chris Watson (29:05.305)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Oli France (29:10.092)
And so I think as a leader, you've got to set the tone for the atmosphere within the team. And so if you're facing some wild situation, everybody's gonna look at you, you can guarantee it. And if you show that you're composed, like this happens every day, that is gonna transmit through the team. So I think that's really important. And also when it comes to being out in remote and hostile places, I've found...

Chris Watson (29:22.109)
Yeah.

Oli France (29:38.123)
or it's my sort of opinion that the best way to get through tricky encounters or people who might be trying to intimidate you or trying to extort you and things like that is to sort of face that down with calmness, with kind of diplomacy, to try and lower the temperature of that encounter. If you start to fight back, start to argue, you know, you're gonna find yourself in all kinds of trouble, you know, guaranteed, so.

Yeah, that has been a useful thing, I think, which has helped through many, many situations.

Chris Watson (30:14.933)
You've been in a lot of really dicey situations, so I think honing your craft, setting you up well for the ultimate seven. Fantastic. Moving on, so let's dive into that then. So phase one completed, I think last year, Q3, Q4, whatever, so in Africa, which was about 14 days, I think 1 ,600 miles. Is that right? Was it 18?

Oli France (30:33.355)
Yes.

Oli France (30:40.286)
Yeah, I think the ride was 18 days and then a bit of a break between the mountains a few days and then maybe finish the whole project in about 25 -26 days.

Chris Watson (30:48.937)
Yeah, so what was, because I'm keen to spend a bit more time on Death Valley to Denali, but it'd be remiss to overlook that. So what was that like then in terms of your experience? Because it's much shorter than phase two as well, isn't it? And it's a very different climate, very different terrain. How was the Africa experience?

Oli France (30:56.651)
Yeah.

Oli France (31:12.811)
Yeah, it was wild really and very, very, you know, completely different to the North America leg as you probably imagine. And so, yeah, Africa is a continent where I've spent, you know, many, many months of my life over the years. And so I really love the continent. But also it does come with certain dangers and risks. So I had to be very, very prepared for that. It's a very dynamic, very changeable.

continent on the whole. And so yeah, I put a lot of planning in. And so the journey itself was going from Djibouti down through Ethiopia, all the way through Kenya into Northern Tanzania. And then I met with a team, one of my wild edge teams, we climbed summit of Kilimanjaro to finish off. But, you know, right from day one, and I had a funny, because Djibouti is one of the poorest countries in Africa as well. It's, it's

But I had this, just by chance really, this contact with a guy who's known as Mr. Djibouti, very suave French guy actually, and he hosted me in his 12 bed mansion in Djibouti city next door to the President's house, which was this mental thing. Yeah, and he had all kinds of stories. He was being, yeah, I'm not sure what I can say, but he had all kinds of stories. But anyway, yeah, but.

Chris Watson (32:24.633)
You

Chris Watson (32:34.329)
I can't imagine.

Oli France (32:38.38)
and it was straight into the furnace in Djibouti because it was about 45 degrees on day one. You know, 45 degrees Celsius cycling from Lack Asal all the way uphill to the Ethiopian border on day one, dry, dusty roads, extreme heat, you know, and the human body temperature is around 37 degrees. So if you're cycling, really putting out hard effort in a temperature of 45 degrees just to regulate your body temperature is really difficult.

So I must have gone through like seven, eight liters of water, pouring water on myself, I'm covered in salt that I've sweated out, you know, banging headaches. So it was like, and then you finish the day, you've done 65 miles, I think on day one, and you're thinking, well, I've still got 1500 left. So yeah, it was tough. And then going into Ethiopia, one of the decisions I made was to get a support driver through Ethiopia because of the security risks.

Chris Watson (33:14.201)
Thank you.

Chris Watson (33:24.281)
Thank you.

Oli France (33:35.883)
Just as I was going in, there was, what do they call it? Like, yeah, some major incidents going down in Ethiopia. So there were lots of military buzzing around. It's a very, very tribal country. Every time I've been to Ethiopia, I've had some issues or encounters or one another. And you read any blog about someone cycling through Ethiopia, they'll all say the same thing about hostility, stone throwing, Canadian attacks.

Chris Watson (34:01.145)
Yeah.

Really? When you're cycling? Yeah. Wow.

Oli France (34:05.132)
yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had loads of rocks thrown at me. I had people chasing me with machetes. I had people chasing me on motorbikes. So yeah, and I kind of got lucky, I think. So yeah, I'm sorry to put anyone off who's thinking of going to Ethiopia. My advice would be, yeah, probably consider having a support driver because again, he gave me pointers as to where we could avoid.

Chris Watson (34:09.625)
cheese.

Wow! Christ!

Chris Watson (34:21.913)
That's it.

Chris Watson (34:29.465)
Yeah.

Oli France (34:35.647)
to an extent and which areas to travel through at certain times of day and he could be a little bit of a bodyguard in a sense, not that he was armed or anything, but he could just help to scare away locals. And sometimes they're just trying to chance it, you know, they're just trying to have a bit of fun. They're kind of bored, unemployed often, locals just trying to intimidate the white guy cycling past, you know, to show off in front of their mates kind of thing. But yeah.

Chris Watson (34:51.609)
Yeah.

Chris Watson (35:00.569)
yeah.

Oli France (35:04.875)
Then then cycle through Kenya where you had you know, I had a bit of concern about lions and Did have you know, there were other wild animals I came across ostriches and giraffes and hyenas and things like that, which is very cool Yeah

Chris Watson (35:15.065)
Yeah. Wow.

ostriches because what was that like? It wasn't chasing you or anything was it?

Oli France (35:26.027)
No, no, none of these animals were chasing me fortunately. But no, I got to see quite a few. They were running along the roadside. Very, very fast animals. But yeah, that's just really special to see wildlife like that from a bike. But yeah, it was an incredible journey. Lots of great interactions. You know, so many funny just encounters and a couple of scary moments. But and also, you know, you've got to be very, very aware of your surroundings cycling on a road in Africa.

Chris Watson (35:34.681)
Yeah.

Oli France (35:55.499)
because you've got trucks, you've got donkeys, you've got dogs, you've got people crossing the roads, you know, it is just chaos, total chaos. So yeah, you kind of need to develop 360 degree vision, but yeah, it was such a cool adventure. Loved it.

Chris Watson (36:11.545)
Where were you staying all the way? Was it like the North America leg? Were you camping and stuff as you went along?

Oli France (36:18.667)
So Africa, no, I wasn't. And there were a few different reasons for that. One, in Ethiopia, it is so densely populated, and that was kind of the biggest leg of the journey because of its size, but it's so densely populated. I don't think I went like 100 yards on the whole journey without seeing somebody. You stop anywhere and you get surrounded. Even if you think you're away from villages, you can bet you stop the bike and...

Chris Watson (36:20.857)
No.

Chris Watson (36:27.897)
No.

Chris Watson (36:37.497)
alright, okay yeah

Oli France (36:46.155)
people just emerge, you know, kids just emerge and you're surrounded and they're really curious. So it's quite funny. So I was staying in just little shacks and little, I can't even call them hotels, little B &Bs kind of homestays, but it was fascinating. I don't think they see many tourists in some of those places.

Chris Watson (36:46.393)
This is the worst.

Yeah, it can be.

Chris Watson (36:57.817)
Yeah.

Chris Watson (37:03.993)
Yeah. Yeah. So when you got to Kilimanjaro then had you climbed anything as high as Kilimanjaro up until that point or not?

Oli France (37:20.203)
So with Kilimanjaro actually, that was my fourth time climbing the mountain. So I had been up it three times previously. So, you know, for that particular leg, and that's the only mountain of the seven that I have climbed or had to climb previously, but I was familiar with the mountain. And so it felt, you know, nice to be getting towards that point where it was familiar. I knew the guys, I knew the mountain. And so, yeah, I was, yeah, that felt.

a bit easier I think than what is to come.

Chris Watson (37:51.961)
Yeah, excellent. Right, so let's, because I'm buzzing to get into this Death Valley to Denali. I mean, firstly, I mean the name itself, Death Valley to Denali, it's fantastic, incredible. So, lowest geo... Yeah, lowest geog... Yeah, so it's the lowest geographical point in the continent to the highest, which is Denali, Alaska, arguably one of the coldest places outside Alaska, outside of...

Oli France (37:57.675)
Hmm.

Oli France (38:05.51)
I think that's why it's stuck actually. I always love the name.

Chris Watson (38:21.625)
Antarctica, sorry, on the planet. So, how hot was the desert when you started? Was it March you commenced that journey?

Oli France (38:32.78)
Yeah, yeah it was March so it was about 30, 32 degrees something like that but yeah I mean Death Valley in the summer is extremely hot you know 50 degrees plus the hottest place in North America and of course a total contrast to what was to come later in the journey.

Chris Watson (38:51.033)
Yeah, so in terms of like the cycle route, because what was that 64 days end to end, but 39 of those were on your bike getting through the US into British Columbia and then back into Alaska. So in terms of how you prepared for that, you know, your bike, you had your tent, your sleeping bags and all that kind of stuff. So how did the preparation and planning go? Because that must have been, I mean, it's a much longer leg, much more.

diverse to an extent. How did your planning go and did it work out well? Were there any things that you over planned or under planned for?

Oli France (39:29.611)
Yeah, so good question because it is such a long journey in total extremes from, you know, the heat all the way up to freezing Alaska and Yukon. And I think the more I looked into it, the more I began to realize just how remote it gets. You know, I think there's a maybe a misconception or maybe I had a misconception of how populated it might be, you know, how many amenities generally you might find.

you know, maybe there'd be like a McDonald's on every corner. This is kind of, I think, the image a lot of us have of North America. Because for me, actually, as well, one thing, it's my first kind of big expedition in the Western world. So most of my expeditions, you know, they've been in kind of poorer countries, less developed countries. So I thought, this is gonna be, you know, a bit of a walk in the park in a way, you know, but that was absolutely not the case because...

Chris Watson (40:02.393)
Yeah.

Oli France (40:27.467)
Once you're up in Yukon in British Columbia, there was one section in British Columbia, it was 330 miles between towns. All you had between those two towns were like two dusty gas stations. So that's like London to Edinburgh with nothing, literally nothing at all. So I knew that I had to be self -sufficient. I didn't have any support vehicle. I was fully self -supported. I was carrying all my own gear for the bike ride. One of the...

Chris Watson (40:39.129)
Please. Yeah.

Oli France (40:57.259)
main sort of planning considerations was really understanding where I could get supplies, particularly in those remoter parts. That's actually surprisingly hard to find out some of the details, because although you've got in some of the remoter sections, you've got these little gas stations and things, a lot of them close in the winter. And I was just there, just on the margins of winter. And so a lot of them, you know, you turn up

close to running out of food and sure enough they'd be closed. So I had to do a lot of calling ahead. I was doing lots of research, speaking to a couple of people who'd done that route before. I always put a lot of research in. But eventually I settled on a route. I actually took a longer route than what would have been a bit more direct. You've got something called the Cassier Highway and then the Alaska Highway. Alaska Highway was slightly longer for me, but it had a...

Chris Watson (41:29.145)
Peace.

Oli France (41:50.923)
couple more amenities in towns, so I thought it'd be a better option, particularly in those winter months. And that paid off. But yeah, another factor was how doable would it be in those potentially wintery conditions still? And I was really setting myself quite a high bar in terms of the distance I needed to cover each day. So I gave myself six weeks to cover almost three and a half thousand miles. So I needed to average almost 90 miles a day.

Chris Watson (41:56.121)
Thank you.

Oli France (42:21.411)
And the when I needed to finish was a set date. My mountain team were flying out for a set date. We then had a very tight schedule to get onto the mountain before the season changed and climb Denali. And so I couldn't afford to hang around. So yeah, I had to be very, very well organized, very disciplined and 90 miles a day on hilly terrain with a heavy 50 kilogram bike is what it weighed in total, very heavy.

So it was a real stretch and I remember, sorry to go a bit off topic here, but I remember a couple of days in, or two or three days in, I was falling behind, my body was in bits, I'm taking painkillers to sleep at night because of how sore my body is. I'm already thinking I probably need more like seven weeks to, seven or seven and a half weeks to actually do this. I'm really wondering if it was possible. And so I really, those first couple of weeks were a massive battle.

Chris Watson (42:54.329)
No, no.

Chris Watson (43:10.521)
Yeah.

Oli France (43:20.107)
going through that pain barrier of really pushing hard, trying to get through those niggles, those injuries, get used to the weight on the bike. And I simply couldn't afford rest days, couldn't afford a day off. I just had to push through it. So that was hard. And it was only about three weeks in that I began to think maybe I can make up the ground and get there in time.

Chris Watson (43:44.089)
Yeah, I mean that must have been getting in your head as well, the distances between your amenities, you know, and then, you know, cycling through that kind of, those kind of injuries and stuff. So, yeah, because I mean, I was following along the journey the whole time on Instagram and LinkedIn and stuff, which was fantastic footage, I think, along the way. And sometimes you don't get to see obviously what's going on inside your head and what's going on in the background. And that's why, because there was some expansive distances that you were covering.

Oli France (43:50.347)
Hmm.

Oli France (44:06.699)
Mmm.

Chris Watson (44:13.113)
Which is why I was asking the question. So actually, the question I've got about the bike, was it your own bike that you took over or did you pick something up in North America?

Oli France (44:21.035)
Mm. Mm.

Yeah, so this was my own bike and you know, it wasn't like a sponsored item. It was literally a secondhand bike that I bought, but it's a Genesis Tour de Fer, which is actually a steel bike. So it's quite a heavy one, but it's purpose built for long distance overland kind of expedition style travel, which can hold a lot of weight. It's designed to be very, very robust.

relatively easy to repair compared to like a carbon bike for example of course I could have gone a bit faster on a lighter bike with a lighter setup but in those very remote areas you know if you break if you if you snap something on a carbon bike you're gonna be out of action for a week potentially waiting for a spare part getting it shipped to a town all the rest of it I had to just make do with a heavier bike which was very very resilient I'd used the same bike in Africa actually and now I've done

crossed those two expeditions over 15, over 5 ,000, sorry, miles of cycling and had only a couple of punctures. You know, that's the only issue I've had. So yeah, you know, I think it was worth it. It was worth taking the extra weight for something extremely reliable. Yeah.

Chris Watson (45:28.953)
fantastic, yeah.

Chris Watson (45:35.481)
Yeah. Is there anything in terms of your prepping or packing that you missed, that you wish you had taken? Was there any, well, shit moments like along the way at all?

Oli France (45:50.61)
For this, I don't think so. No, I mean, no. I really had gone very, very deep in the planning and I think, you know, having done the Africa leg, I'd really got to grips with what I needed. So, no, and also I had it in my mind that being in North America, generally speaking, you could get hold of things a little bit easier should I need them.

Chris Watson (45:59.833)
Yeah.

Oli France (46:15.499)
But no, I'd say I got the kit just about right for the ride.

Chris Watson (46:19.705)
Yeah, excellent. So, touching on the landscapes, the scenery, some of your videos on the highway approaching Alaska and stuff like that, it's just wonderful. You had a few bear encounters as well, didn't you? How did that sit with you? Did that get in your head at all?

Oli France (46:28.619)
Hmm.

Oli France (46:33.738)
Yeah, yeah, it definitely was in my head. Yeah, I mean, right from before starting this expedition, knowing that I'd be cycling alone through bear country. Of course, we don't need to worry about bears here in the UK. You know, we've got foxes and badgers and things. So it's quite something, a bit new. I've never really traveled in bear country extensively. And so...

Yeah, that was definitely on my mind and particularly being on a bike which is relatively quiet. You know, one of the things they always say is make plenty of noise, but yeah, traveling by bike is a pretty quiet mode of transport. I'm on my own in very remote areas. And yeah, as I was traveling through particularly the further north up into British Columbia, Yukon, Alaska, I started to see lots, lots more wildlife. So bison, lots of moose, elk.

I saw a dead mountain lion actually on the roadside, which although it was dead, it was quite cool to see. And bald eagle, you know, all of these incredible animals heard wolves from the tent one night overnight. But of course, the big one on my mind was bears. And so what I had, you know, all I had with me to protect myself with was bear spray.

Chris Watson (47:31.737)
and

Oli France (47:52.298)
which, you know, for anyone who doesn't know, you spray that at a bear's face and it kind of temporarily blinds and disorientates it while, you know, hopefully scaring it off as well. But it's only effective for about three or four meters. So, you know, if the bear is charging at you, you've got to be pretty lucky to actually stop it. And so, yeah, traveling up through that area. And then I was in a place where you got your cycling alone. You got really dense forest either side.

Chris Watson (48:08.153)
Please.

Oli France (48:22.026)
You know, you're constantly looking around thinking that the bears could be coming out, particularly having heard lots of stories of, okay, the bears are out of hibernation now. You know, people telling me that they've seen them. And then eventually up in the Yukon, not far from the Canadian border, I did have two bear encounters. So one was a grizzly bear that was just about 50, 70 meters off to my left hand side off on this ice lake, kind of wandering about with a fish in its mouth.

huge animal and you know it was instantly aware of me it was kind of watching me following me a little bit took a few steps in my direction I got behind a line of trees and kind of cycled off but that yeah it was pretty cool and a little bit scary but then that's in your mind you know you're thinking about these bears and and you know you don't need to look far to read all kinds of horrific stories about bear attacks and things and then a little further on down the road on the same day came across a black bear which was

Chris Watson (49:09.177)
Yeah.

Oli France (49:21.29)
just on the roadside, I cycled within about four meters of this huge black bear, absolutely massive, and stopped just down the road, took a couple of snaps and a couple of videos. And yeah, again, that was aware of me, but fortunately didn't take too much interest than I could cycle on. But yeah, that was definitely a concern throughout, and it is hard to shake that out of your head.

Chris Watson (49:25.017)
you

Chris Watson (49:46.553)
Yeah, well I mean it must have been difficult putting your head down at night in a tent when you're having these experiences. Where were you camping and stuff then on that? Did you have to, you know, did you have specific spots planned out or were you just, you know, making a decision on the day?

Oli France (49:50.314)
Mm.

Oli France (49:53.898)
Yeah, definitely.

Oli France (50:06.154)
Yeah, so I would see where I was up to. You know, I'd always like to have a plan ahead. I remember one stretch where somebody had been telling me about bear sightings and so I was planning ahead and what I actually found was in some sort of a waterfall, like tourist area, although completely covered in four feet of snow still, there was this kind of cabin or a shelter with benches in it and I thought, that'd make a perfect shelter just about where I need to stop. So I stayed there for the night.

And as I'd set my tent, I kind of barricaded the doors with these picnic benches there. And just as I was going to sleep, I heard this crunch, crunch, crunch just outside the tent. Huge animal, clearly, from the sound of these footsteps. And I'm thinking, no, grab the bear spray. Completely on my own, about 80 miles from any town at this particular spot. Opened up the zip.

Chris Watson (50:40.377)
you

Oli France (51:02.41)
Just outside there's a great big moose staring back at me So the moose was about yeah, it's 20 meters away. Very very close Unfortunately before I was able to get a picture of it It turned around but you know, it stared at me for a couple of seconds and then went back into the forest But it was a little nerve -racking and then there were I mean there were certainly spots where I would because of the the level of bears in the area, you know, I'd stay in motels and

Chris Watson (51:05.145)
mom.

Chris Watson (51:17.401)
Yeah.

Oli France (51:31.754)
if I could find them and also just get a good night's sleep, dry out kit, all the rest of it.

Chris Watson (51:34.5)
Yeah. Well, yeah, because you had a huge ski and then a huge climb ahead of you. So arriving in Alaska then, you know, meeting your team, what was that like meeting your team after like 30 plus days in isolation to an extent on your own? What was that like?

Oli France (51:43.018)
Hmm.

Oli France (51:55.194)
Yeah. It was great, you know, it was so good. And yeah, you mentioned the isolation, which is absolutely true actually. And each day because of the remoteness, you know, although it's yes, it's an English speaking region, et cetera, actually I was only having one or two interactions each day typically. And so it was a long, lonely journey. Very, very different to Africa where I have probably a hundred interactions a day.

So I was very ready for some company, you know, and to get out of my own head. And so I'd assembled this absolutely crack team, really experienced team. And so we'd spent many, many months planning towards this expedition. So yeah, it was awesome to have the company again. And yeah, I was really excited for the mountain phase.

Chris Watson (52:41.369)
Did you have much rest before you got into the... Well, in fact, sorry, let me ask that again. You had to ski to base camp, didn't you, which was, was that a couple hundred kilometres or something? It was quite a distance, wasn't it?

Oli France (52:47.114)
Hmm. Yeah.

Oli France (52:52.65)
Yeah, it was 122 kilometers, yeah, and that was to achieve this human -powered journey rather than flying in to Basecamp, which, you know, generally all climbers would do that for Denali.

Chris Watson (52:55.737)
this year.

Chris Watson (53:06.937)
Yeah, fantastic. And then the climb then 6192 metres, no mean feet, extreme temperatures. You know, we spoke earlier about your leadership, risk management and stuff. In fact, I think there was a couple of deaths or at least a death on the mountain when you were there. How was the climb and then what was the summit push like?

Oli France (53:23.434)
Mm.

Oli France (53:32.97)
Yeah, so in fact, I think coming back briefly to that initial approach, that in my mind was always gonna be one of the big cruxes, if not the crux of the expedition, because it is so seldom done. My best source of information was somebody who'd completed that section 20 years ago. And other than that, it's really hard to find information about it. And so, yeah.

Chris Watson (53:58.393)
20 years is a long time, the landscape would have changed dramatically between then and now, jeez.

Oli France (54:03.37)
Absolutely and you know the way we would travel carrying all of our gear carrying all of our kit hauling it in sleds and heavy packs then we had to go up over foothills crash through you know dense dense forest cross rivers that we did have bear prints grizzly prints about 20 meters from our tent you know this is total Alaskan wilderness and so and then climb up onto the glacier navigate crevasse fields

Chris Watson (54:31.705)
you

Oli France (54:31.946)
just to make it to base camp. So that was an eight day journey. We saw nobody else. We saw no humans on that journey. Incredibly wild, you know, just about possible really given the snow melts. I think if we were one week later, it probably wouldn't have been possible to make it because we... Yeah.

Chris Watson (54:48.985)
How do you deal with the dangers of, sorry to cut in all of it, how do you, because that's only just occurred to me then, so the dangers of crevasses on that, largely unmapped, even if it was 20 years ago, it's going to have changed materially, very different landscape. How did you navigate that? That must have been heavily weighted on your mind, because that's game over really, isn't it, if you get down one of them potentially.

Oli France (55:03.946)
Hmm.

Oli France (55:12.618)
Yeah, for sure. You do not want to end up in a crevasse. And so, and to set the context, this particular glacier called the Kahelna Glacier, this is 75 kilometers long. It is the longest glacier in the Alaska range. So it's a huge glacier. It's almost two miles wide at certain points. And yeah, so many sections have got enormous crevasses in it. You know, huge ice falls, great big bits of ice rubble.

Chris Watson (55:15.833)
Yeah.

Oli France (55:42.25)
And so, you know, and there are no maps simply and even if there were, you know, that the glacies is going to look different pretty much every month and certainly every year. And so we just had to be prepared for it. One of the great advantages and one of the reasons I wanted to build a team of four people was it really gives you a good safety buffer. So if you're all on a rope and generally, so we would travel on a rope when we were in the heavily crevassed areas, we made the judgment call.

on the areas which weren't noticeably crevassed to travel unroped, which to some, some people would never ever do that. Some people, you know, a lot of people would never step foot on a glacier without a rope, but we felt that the risk was low enough that we could travel unroped and therefore move much more quickly. When we were in those densely crevassed areas, we had to travel as a team of four on one rope. And that means if one of you goes into a crevasse, then you know, you've got three people to help haul them out.

Certainly if you were to go into a crevasse without a rope, you could be in some real trouble because this is the scale of this crevasse. You could fall 100 meters, 200 meters potentially. So we just had to navigate that with very, very careful navigation, with good decision making. There was one moment when we were roped actually, skiing along, and I put my left pole in.

Chris Watson (56:48.537)
me.

Chris Watson (56:53.497)
Yeah.

Oli France (57:07.434)
and it went straight through the crust of snow to reveal this black hole down there to my left hand side so there's huge crevasse then put my right pole in, exact same thing happened that went through and then I'm just kind of teetering on my two skis looking at these two holes in the side of me and you know you've just got to kind of scoot off there as quickly as possible but you know the heart is going for sure. So yeah that was the journey to base camp.

Chris Watson (57:29.401)
yeah.

you

Oli France (57:34.602)
But yeah, definitely crevasses were one of the huge concerns in that area.

Chris Watson (57:39.257)
Wow, I mean that alone seems like an expedition, an adventure, let alone what you'd done before and what was about to come. How hard was Denali in terms of what you thought it was going to be?

Oli France (57:45.098)
Hmm.

Oli France (57:55.85)
It is a very hard mountain. It demands a lot of you. It's very, very remote. As I've just described, it took eight days to ski there. It's very, very cold. It's known sometimes as the coldest mountain on earth. I think it's possibly, well, certainly outside of Antarctica, but I think it's got the coldest recorded temperature up there.

And very very windy so you could eat and you could easily get one week two week storms which come in It is unlike, you know Some some Himalayan peaks for example, there is no support. So you're fully self -supported. I eat there's no porters Sherpas things like that. You're carrying all of your own gear You've got to be able to put up with those very cold temperatures down to minus 30 is what we experienced with wind chill of about minus 38

on the summit. So, and it just, it's a mountain because you're carrying these really heavy loads at high altitude without, generally without like fixed ropes and things and you're managing your own safety, you're managing every step in a sense on exposed terrain. It kind of gradually, slowly wears you down. It's very dry atmosphere. So like all your hands and your skin starts to crack, you know, your face gets absolutely hammered by the wind and the sun.

Of course you're spending a lot of time in tents, you're building snow walls to stop the wind. So yeah, it gradually grinds people down. And I mean for context, last year, last season, generally about 900 climbers go and try and climb Denali each year. Each one of those is experienced to a certain level that they've had to, you know, they've had to have their experience checked by the park rangers, make sure they're up to it.

And last year only 30 % actually made it to the summit of these already, you know, highly experienced people. And so, you know, we knew that one of the things that was always on my mind with this expedition was I could get within, you know, a couple hundred meters of the summit, having traveled there for over two months and still not make it. So that, you know, it was, it was the danger every day was escalating. The risk was escalating every day. The cold was getting worse every day.

Chris Watson (01:00:04.249)
Yeah.

Chris Watson (01:00:11.065)
Yeah.

Oli France (01:00:12.746)
the altitude is getting higher, the mountain is grinding you down. You've got to make really good decisions. And, you know, a lot of people are out there with guides and things like that. As an independent team, we really had to make really solid decisions between us and just make sure we weren't being complacent, that we were really using all of our bits of skills and experience to navigate the mountain successfully.

Chris Watson (01:00:39.252)
That's a really interesting point there because if you didn't summit, you know, you could potentially have done undone all that work that you done to get there or having to at least retrace some of that. So that's a phenomenal achievement. What was the dynamic like of your team? Had you guys climbed or worked together before?

Oli France (01:00:59.018)
Yeah, good question. So actually it was the first time we'd operated together as a team. Yeah, yeah, it was, which, you know, admittedly is not ideal, but I had to have, yeah, I had to have absolute conviction in every member of the team. And so, you know, I spoke with a lot of people. It took a long time to assemble this team because you want somebody who, first of all, you get along with is a good person. You want someone who's a real

Chris Watson (01:01:04.537)
Really? Jesus! Wow!

Chris Watson (01:01:17.241)
you

Oli France (01:01:29.002)
grafter who really gets stuck in, who works hard for the team, all the rest of it. You want someone who has the skills and experience, is used to cold weather, is used to mountain environments, can contribute knowledge to the team. And also just on a practical level, somebody who's got like a month to go and climb a mountain, a month spare in whatever they're doing to go and climb a mountain in Alaska. So that reduces it down to a really small potential pool of people.

Chris Watson (01:01:49.241)
Yeah.

Oli France (01:01:58.282)
And so I had to reach out to various different people I knew. I had lots of conversations with great people, but they were unavailable or various things meant they couldn't make it work. And eventually assembled this team who I was extremely happy with. One of whom, good friend Ryan, very, very extensive experience in cold weather, mountain environments, highly trained, very, very capable, highly trustworthy. Another guy, Mike, who is a cold weather.

specialist and done lots of stuff in Mongolia, Siberia, Sweden, Norway and lots of ultramarathons, holds a couple of Guinness World Records and then another guy, Aaron, who is a pro skier, great photographer as well, super fit, you know, has taken on loads of big challenges, loads of big mountains and so it was a real crack team, everyone had their own bits of skills, everyone was super fit, they all had their own motivations as well to be there.

And yeah, we've done, you know, of course we've done lots of group calls. We've done lots of planning sessions. And so I felt, although we hadn't operated as a team on a mountain together, I felt as confident as possible. And yeah, once we were on the team, we established really good routines. It takes a couple of days to, I think, find good routines. But eventually you figure out, you know, you have a bit of a rotor for the stoves. You figure out who's better at what task, you know.

you would sort of allocate different questions to different people. So, you know, Ryan is great, great, taking us through the crevasse fields, had really good knowledge of rope work and things like that. Aaron, because he's a pro skier, spends a lot of time on steep terrain. His avalanche knowledge and avalanche risk awareness was exceptionally good. Mike is super efficient, you know, really well drilled with tent life, camp life, getting stove, broken stoves going, repairs, all that stuff. So.

Chris Watson (01:03:48.889)
Yeah.

Oli France (01:03:52.394)
He was really good at making us slick. And then, you know, I was there as well doing my bits and pieces. So yeah, everyone finds their own task, but we were, I would say, an exceptional team and, you know, we work really, really well together.

Chris Watson (01:03:58.201)
You

Chris Watson (01:04:07.769)
Yeah, and I think it came across, there was a couple of clips that you posted, I think, round about your tents. You built the snowballs and you were all sitting in camp, you were kind of moseying around and stuff like that, and it just looked great. But albeit you're probably up about 4 or 5 ,000 metres, so fantastic. So what was it like then, summit day, when you got there and how long were you up on the summit?

Oli France (01:04:17.798)
Hmm. it was awesome.

Yeah.

Oli France (01:04:26.506)
Hmm.

So yeah, summit day, eventually we made it to base camp in eight days. We then made it up to camp four or four and a half thousand meters, which is kind of the last safe haven, I suppose, on the mountain. You've covered some technical terrain slightly to get there. And then you're in this sort of safe haven. We waited out a storm for six days there, just sitting, waiting, going up and down a little bit with climatized, drop gear. And then, and that is unfortunately when...

one person has fallen to their death on a section called the Autobahn. Unfortunately, we saw their body being flown off the mountain, which, you know, that morning I've been speaking to my three -year -old girl on my satellite device and it just gets in your head a little bit. So I had to refocus. Then we had a push up to the high camp, which is at 5 ,250 meters. You know, again, you've got these really heavy loads, these heavy packs.

we're on steep ridges to get there, set the tent, you know, and then we waited out a day just to help with the climatization and really maximize our possibility to climb and also wait out for the very best weather day. Seemed like the other few teams were doing that as well. The weather day came around, we got up at 5 a Unlike certain mountains, you don't really need to do a super early alpine start because you've got

almost 20 hours of daylight in Alaska. And you know, you get up so early and you're just gonna absolutely freeze because it is so, so cold up there. So we got up at 5 a hit the trail just after seven. Then you've got a steep, steep section called the Autobahn, which is a sort of a notorious 50 degree ice slope, which you traverse clipping into fixed protection. This is where the climber a few days before had sadly fallen to his death.

Oli France (01:06:24.394)
He was climbing on his own, which meant he wouldn't have been able to protect himself. Also, it was sort of blue ice when he was there. So, you know, one slip and he's gonna be pretty much impossible to stop yourself. A bit of snow had come down, so it meant we could make good steps. Then you'd climb up through a series of ridges, a couple of flatter areas, a few crevasse, small crevasse crossings. And then you've got this final summit ridge. By that point, you're up over 6 ,000 meters.

It's now minus 30. We'd been going for about 10 hours by that point. And yeah, and then eventually the summit was within 100 meters. The sun is kind of bouncing off it. And that was the very first time that I'd allowed myself to truly believe that we would actually make it to the summit. Until then, I couldn't allow myself to relax into that.

And then, yeah, we completed the final section of the summit ridge, made it up there and the clouds sort of cleared and it was crystal clear up there. The wind wasn't too bad. It was very, very cold. You know, you take your glove off at your peril. And so we spent, we actually spent about an hour up there in the end, just taking the views, yeah, and really making the most of it. The weather was stable, so we felt confident in it and we just really wanted to enjoy that.

Chris Watson (01:07:38.265)
really? Wow.

Oli France (01:07:48.873)
We'd actually befriended a bunch of Navy SEALs on the mountain and they were up there as well. So we were, you know, kind of celebrating with them on the summit. And then, yeah, I came down off the mountain and it was a really awesome feeling. It was a mixture of relief, of sort of a deeper, deep satisfaction. You know, I wouldn't say kind of total euphoria because I still knew that we had to get ourselves down safely. That came later actually, but yeah, it was an incredible feeling.

Chris Watson (01:07:52.377)
really?

Yeah.

Oli France (01:08:18.729)
Yeah, it was remarkable.

Chris Watson (01:08:21.593)
And congratulations, it's phenomenal feats. And I didn't realize that the dynamic of the team, so that makes it even more compelling. And I think you touched there, I think you posted some clips the other day there about when you were skiing, when you had actually, you completed the descent and you can see the happiness and the kind of euphoria in your faces, you're kind of, you're skiing out enjoying it, it's fantastic. Excellent. this has been brilliant.

Oli France (01:08:25.193)
Thank you.

Oli France (01:08:39.913)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was special.

Chris Watson (01:08:50.905)
conscious of time, we're almost coming up on time, it's phenomenal. So when phases three through to seven then, so what can we look forward to with that?

Oli France (01:08:57.001)
Thank you.

Oli France (01:09:03.913)
Yeah, so this is, as you say, this is two phases complete, which feels a bit ridiculous because of how kind of challenging they've both been. But yeah, certainly North America feels like a big tick off the list. Could prove to be one of the hardest, certainly. So there's still five legs remaining, of course, so five of the continents. Next up, I'm looking at the South America leg for kind of the coming winter.

Chris Watson (01:09:09.273)
Yeah.

Oli France (01:09:31.177)
And that that will be slightly shorter than the North America leg, but the mountain is actually higher although less technical so Yeah, the mountain is certainly not another one that you can just take for granted Aconcagua One of the big ones that will be coming up will be the Dead Sea to Everest leg Which is all the way across Asia over 4 ,000 mile journey many many countries actually one of the

Chris Watson (01:09:52.633)
actually.

Oli France (01:09:58.761)
the great challenges logistically is finding a route through Asia and some tricky countries in terms of security risk and things like that. So that's something I'm currently working through speaking with various contacts and trying to work out the best route. So that's on the horizon too. Then of course you've got Antarctica, you've got Europe. So Europe is actually Russia. The highest point is in Russia and so.

Chris Watson (01:10:24.153)
Okay.

Oli France (01:10:25.513)
because of a security issue there at the moment, that's kind of on the back burner and the political issue. Antarctica as well, if I mentioned that, and Oceania. So yeah, there's still a long, long way to go. You know, one of the big challenges will be actually getting the funding needed. That's always one of the huge challenges and, you know, spend a lot of time trying to do that. That's very, very hard work, you know, sometimes harder than the expedition itself.

Chris Watson (01:10:34.297)
Yeah.

Chris Watson (01:10:43.833)
Hmm.

Oli France (01:10:52.041)
But it's a long project, it's probably the hardest thing I'll ever do. So I'm also happy to take my time to really enjoy the journey. And yeah, I've got to say I am loving it.

Chris Watson (01:10:57.081)
Yeah.

Chris Watson (01:11:01.337)
Yeah, enjoy the process. It's fantastic. Hopefully we can do this again and talk about some of these other achievements. Antarctica, that, I mean, that just, it's mind blowing even to attempt that. So has anybody climbed? What is the highest peak in Antarctica?

Oli France (01:11:12.713)
Yeah.

Oli France (01:11:18.473)
Yeah, so it's called Mount Vinson. So it is climbed. It's climbed generally every year. People go down and climb it. There's a short weather window. Again, very, very cold temperatures. It's about 4 ,500 meters. But yeah, Antarctica's, that's gonna be down the line because that is a mega, mega project.

Chris Watson (01:11:20.601)
Yeah, okay.

Chris Watson (01:11:32.185)
Chris Watson (01:11:35.673)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd imagine immense amounts of cold weather training required for that one. Excellent. So two closing traditions that I've got on the show, Ollie. So one of which is a call to adventure and the other is a paid forward suggestion. So an opportunity to raise awareness for any worthy projects or causes or something that may be important to you.

Oli France (01:11:41.097)
Hmm.

Yeah, for sure.

Chris Watson (01:12:02.617)
Starting with the call to adventure, what would you suggest or recommend as a call to adventure for listeners or viewers?

Oli France (01:12:10.441)
Yeah, well, I had to think about this and I thought I could relate it to my challenge, which is going from the lowest point to the highest. So I thought maybe if people, you know, if you want a challenge, something a little bit different in the town you're in or in the county you're in, find the lowest point and the highest point and, you know, come up with your own journey. If you actually do that, let me know because I think there's, you know, there's endless opportunities there, but it could be an interesting way to just go and explore your own backyard.

Chris Watson (01:12:30.841)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Oli France (01:12:38.569)
You know, it might be on bike, it might be on foot, you know, whatever works. But yeah, I think there's something in that. So if you actually do it, let me know. I'd love to hear about it.

Chris Watson (01:12:39.065)
Yeah

Chris Watson (01:12:45.305)
Yeah, I thought yeah, if anyone does that, I'll seek that out myself. Do that and then tag Ollie on Instagram. Fantastic. And then finally a paid forward suggestion.

Oli France (01:12:52.969)
Please do.

Oli France (01:12:58.876)
Yeah, so again, I was having to think about this and over the years I've worked with lots of different charities and all kinds of different groups. I think one of the big themes in my own travels, which I'm always keen to push for is to really think about when you are traveling, if you're going off on expeditions and things like that, really think about where you're putting your funds. And one of the great things for me,

you know, guiding lots of groups is, is being getting to meet lots of great local communities, you know, supporting small local businesses, small guides, fixers, little hotels and things like that. And so, yeah, it's just, I think if you can, and if you go into places where there's, you know, there's a small tourist industry or you're going off the beaten track, just have a real think about trying to put, put those funds into, you know, local communities, local projects.

because it is in desperate need and yeah, it's immensely great experience to really put some cash into much needed communities wherever that might be. And I would always advocate, yeah, yeah, just use great local guides and there are always links and things out there rather than, you know, booking everything just on Google. Do a bit of extra research and make sure the cash is going to the right people.

Chris Watson (01:14:11.673)
me.

Yeah.

Yeah, fantastic. Keep it local and support the local adventure guides and expedition leaders and such and companies. Fantastic. Brilliant. Oli thoroughly enjoyed this. It's been really engaging insight for me. Brilliant mate. So where can everybody follow along in Oli France and everything that you're doing adventure wise?

Oli France (01:14:31.705)
Yeah, likewise Chris.

Thank you.

Oli France (01:14:43.113)
Yeah, and also say thanks a lot Chris for the invitation. You know, it's been a great conversation I've loved the the level of research and actually I've shared a few stories on here, which I've not talked about for a long time So it's been nice to get into those if people would like to follow along it's at Oli underscore France on Instagram I'm also on LinkedIn or doing bits and pieces on YouTube and my company is wild edge If you if you want to join me on an adventure somewhere

Chris Watson (01:14:53.369)
Thank you.

Chris Watson (01:15:07.961)
Excellent, we'll get all that listed and publicised. Excellent, thank you, Ollie. I'll bring it to him.

Oli France (01:15:12.777)
Awesome. Thanks very much Chris. I loved it.