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Peak fitness – Navy adventurers take on Alpine glacier challenge
20 June 2025
A team of sailors and marines took on one of the world’s most challenging mountain races – in slow time – on one of the hardest but rewarding adventurous training expeditions.
The Patrouille des Glaciers is an historic biannual race across the mountains from Zermatt to Verbier, spanning 57 kilometres (35 miles) of forbidding Alpine terrain.
Exercise Demo Haute 25 followed the same route but while those who take part in the race are expected to complete it inside 24 hours, the RN team – including David Eke, a Royal Navy Commando Medic from Devon - spread the challenge over a more leisurely five days.
As David says, “this was no ordinary ski tour: climbing, descending and coping with high altitude.”
Participants will climb 4,386 metres (14,390ft) and descend 4,519 metres (14,826ft) over the course of the route. Organisers reckon it adds the equivalent of more than 50 kilometres (31 miles) on flat terrain.
It began deceptively easily – the first nine kilometres was not too demanding… until the team ran into a 300-metre ascent which required participants to rely not on skis but ice axes and crampons to reach their overnight refuge (mountain huts offering shelter from the elements).
As well as allowing the team to warm up and dry their clothes, it also gave them the chance to prepare for strenuous activity at altitude by downing a lot of water… which had predictable results.
“The toilet sat 100 metres from the hut,” David said. “All night, a reluctant procession of head torches bobbed through the cold as blokes tried — and failed — to reason with their bladders. Still, it boasted the most spectacular toilet view I’ve ever seen.”
More pressing than altitude initially was first crossing crevasses in glaciers, a mountain descent “which instantly turned into a slapstick showreel”. It only took one skier to stumble to bring the rest of his colleagues tumbling down.
While that proved amusing, crossing Lac des Dix – a 30 to 40-degree slope with the upper layers of snow increasingly melted by the sun – created not just a stunning vista, says David: “A cathedral of white silence which looked cinematic: beautiful. Immaculate”, but also “textbook avalanche terrain”.
The skiers crossed with avalanche airbags at the ready – and were told if those failed, to try the backstroke to extricate themselves if overwhelmed by snow.
Thankfully it held firm and the climbers continued to their final peak, Rosablanche, rising 3,336m (10,945ft).
“Rosablanche felt like a fitting achievement for the final day,” says David. “And then, just like that, we were down, the familiar pussers white vans waiting at the bottom.
“We piled in, and the conversation soon turned to reflections on the trip, spinning dits that wove together the beauty, the suffering, and the raw, unforgettable moments that define the Swiss Alps.”