For over 20 years I played Camogie and Gaelic football (Ireland's national sports, look them up!) including many regional and All-Ireland winning seasons at county level. When I finished playing I got busy in the mountains, running, skiing, rockclimbing and working on my mountain leader qualification, things I'd wanted to do for a while but put on hold while Gaelic games were my priority. Since I got started, my mountaineering has taken me all over Ireland, Scotland and Wales, around the French, Italian and Swiss Alps, to many summits including Toubkal (the highest mountain in North Africa) and Elbrus (in Russia, the highest mountain in geographical Europe), up the Inca Trail and down the Amazon. My love of cold places took me to Finnish Lapland, skiing along Sweden’s King’s Trail, across Norway’s Hardangervidda, and through the Himalayan Zanskar Gorge in winter with Felicity Aston. And when I'm not busy adventuring, I'm planning, training and preparing for the next one.

At the moment I'm getting ready to be part of an all-female expedition to the North Pole lead by Felicity Aston. Not only will we be taking on the adventure and physical challenge of skiing across the Arctic Ocean, pulling 80kg sleds over cracks in the ice and pressure ridges in temperatures down to minus 40, but we'll also be doing some important science and enjoying the rhythm of expedition life out on the Arctic ice. It's a huge challenge, but I've been training hard in the gym, getting up the mountains and pulling tyres along the beaches close to home, skiing around the forests of Oslo and I'm just back from a training trip to Iceland where we worked on our polar travel and scientific techniques. I'm looking forward to putting all of that into action and you can see how it all comes together by following at Edel's Adventures on Facebook or checking the photos at Edel's Adventures on Instagram.

See you in the hils, or on the trails, or maybe on the ice!