Adele Pennington

One of the great things about Adele Pennington is that she’ll batter the living daylights out of her gear, then tell you what’s wrong with it. Why’s that so great? Well, if she tells us there’s something wrong, we have an opportunity to make it better. And if she tells us it works, we can be certain we’ve got it right!

Adele’s been a lover of climbing and adventure all her life. A serious accident in the Alps may have put her in a wheelchair for several months, but she got fit again and headed back to the mountains. After years of trying to fit climbing harder and higher around work, she realised that actually, it could be work, so she became an instructor and expedition leader.

As well as her day job in the Scottish mountains, Adele can boast the first ever winter ascent of Ama Dablam by a British woman, ticking off various Himalayan peaks (including Everest, twice)…and now she’s just returned home after summiting Dhaulagiri.

On her first attempt on Dhaulagiri back in 2014, she unfortunately didn’t make the summit. But, as she reflects, “climbing at altitude is a special kind of pleasure that requires hard work and resilience”. This time, having pushed through the homesickness, the fear and the rotten weather, she was able to experience the joy of a summit-day sunrise, of reaching the peak and safely descending, and of breaking the British Women’s record for 8000m ascents. And that record had been hers anyway!

So, when Adele tells us “My success and lack of frostbite is undoubtedly due to your high performance equipment”, well, it really means something.

Our congratulations go to Adele on her latest achievement, and our continuing thanks to her for really putting the gear through its paces: the real world is the best kit-testing lab there is.