I’m ​Eighty And Still Counting Vertical Feet

On my fiftieth birthday, a buddy gave me a watch that counted ski runs and vertical toes of descent. My spouse Vivian has by no means forgiven him. From that day on, at any time when she would say “Let’s name it a day” after a protracted morning on the slopes, I used to be greater than prone to reply, “Let’s make it an Everest Day – twenty-nine thousand toes!” She would sigh, decide up her poles, and observe me again to the carry. What an exquisite spouse.

I inform that story as a result of it captures one thing important about how I’ve approached bodily exercise for the previous 5 a long time: not as a health routine, not as a programme with targets and deadlines, however as a approach of being on this planet. I by no means got down to turn out to be an athlete. I’m a chartered amount surveyor from Birmingham who constructed a profession throughout the Caribbean. However someplace alongside the best way, motion grew to become the thread that held every thing collectively – the work, the journey, the relationships, and the sense that life is one thing to be lived along with your boots on.

I realized to water ski in Jamaica in my twenties. I picked up snow snowboarding in my mid-thirties, when a buddy invited me to Boyne Highlands in Michigan over Christmas. I used to be instantly hooked and sought out an teacher in Colorado named Rob Tiernan, a mountain man from Montana who was a park ranger when he wasn’t instructing snowboarding. We skied collectively for a lot of, a few years, to the purpose that the opposite instructors mentioned we had been clones of one another coming down the mountain. Over the a long time, Vivian and I skied throughout Colorado, Montana, Switzerland, France, and British Columbia. Throughout one eight-day journey to Aspen, we logged 100 and fifty thousand vertical toes. Throughout one other week in Méribel, we coated 100 and forty-two thousand. That pesky watch once more.

Nevertheless it was by no means nearly snowboarding. In our fifties, Vivian and I trekked the Jomolhari route in Bhutan, crossing passes at sixteen thousand toes within the Himalayas. In our sixties, we climbed Blue Mountain peak in Jamaica… twice. In Kauai, we hiked sixteen hundred toes down a path after which climbed all the best way again up, Vivian nursing a damaged toe your entire approach. Again within the resort that night, she mentioned, “For a sixty-seven and sixty-eight-year-old couple, we’re not doing too badly!” I couldn’t have agreed extra.

In our seventies, we hiked two thousand vertical toes within the Tramuntana mountains of Mallorca, trekked to a frozen waterfall inside a collapse Azerbaijan, and I scrambled up Camelback Mountain in Phoenix – a path that rises fourteen hundred toes in simply over a mile and is thought domestically as a “actual leg burner.” I made it again to my automobile in good condition.

None of this required distinctive genetics or a private coach. What it required was consistency and a refusal to let age turn out to be an excuse. Vivian and I’ve all the time carried our personal ski gear – no porters, no transfers. We eat effectively once we journey, usually spectacularly effectively, however we earn it. We began doing Tai Chi at Camana Bay on Sunday mornings. We hike wherever we go, whether or not it’s the mountains of Georgia or the Previous City of Baku. Now we have by no means belonged to a gymnasium with a month-to-month membership and a locker. Our gymnasium has all the time been the world.

I’ve all the time believed that in life there are gamers and spectators. Theodore Roosevelt mentioned it way more eloquently, however the core thought is identical. You don’t construct an important, wholesome life by watching from the sidelines and ready for excellent circumstances. You construct it by getting out the door, putting one foot in front of the other, and doing it once more tomorrow. At seventy-nine, I can inform you that the view from up right here (actually and figuratively) has been value each step.

For anybody trying to keep lively and engaged because the years add up, right here are some things I’ve realized alongside the best way:

1. Make motion a part of how you reside, not one thing you schedule.

I by no means had a health programme. I had a life that concerned strolling, mountain climbing, snowboarding, swimming, and carrying my very own baggage. One of the best train is the sort you don’t consider as train, it’s merely how you progress via your day.

2. Discover a accomplice who will preserve you trustworthy.

Vivian has been beside me on each mountain, each path, and each ski slope for many years, together with those she’d reasonably have skipped. Having somebody who shares the dedication makes it sustainable. You encourage one another on the times when the couch seems extra interesting than the summit.

3. Don’t let the quantity in your birthday cake set the agenda.

No one instructed us we had been too outdated to trek in Bhutan at fifty-five, or too outdated to hike in Azerbaijan at seventy-eight. We merely went. Age is a truth, not a limitation, and the one individual deciding what you’re able to is you.

4. Earn your meals.

A few of the best meals of my life have come after the toughest days on a path – home-cooked lamb soup after a mountain hike in Azerbaijan, paella after a cliff stroll in Mallorca, stew and crimson wine eaten sitting on our skis within the snow. Meals tastes higher when your physique has labored for it. That’s not a food plan tip. It’s a life tip.

Writer Bio

​Martyn Bould is a extremely profitable entrepreneur primarily based within the Cayman Islands. He’s a founding member for the Cayman Nationwide Cultural Basis and the Nationwide Gallery of the Cayman Islands. He was honored by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012 for companies in preserving and creating Caymanian tradition, and by the Cayman Islands Authorities within the 2025 Hero’s Day Awards as a Legacy Builder for laying the groundwork for future financial improvement since 1970. His memoir, More than Just the Climb – Life’s Lessons Well Learned (Unicorn, Nov. 24, 2025), weaves his private journey alongside the transformation of the Cayman Islands. Study extra here.