Adventure Peaks, Ambleside

Lovely store with everything available that you would need for a summer or winter hiking adventure in the Scottish Highlands. You can also rent equipment.

Currently booked on an expedition with Adventure Peaks. So far support and communication about equipment etc has been brilliant. These guys really know what they are talking about.

The trip I took with Adventure Peaks was an absolute disaster and I would highly recommend not booking with them. I took the August 2017 departure for Peak Lenin and things fell apart fast. Adventure Peaks (AP) absolutely disappeared. I'll explain. (Note, this is slightly modified due to the Google review character-limit.) On the trip, everything went well the first few days until we got to ABC. Our Western Leader developed pneumonia four days into the trip and ended up having to leave our group and return home. This exposed the absolute most critical aspect of the trip right at the start - having a qualified western guide. You pay a lot of money for this! While the guide was an outstanding guide and could have made the trip incredible, he had never traveled outside of Europe, let alone climbed something as high as Lenin, and lacked the experience to do such an undertaking. As a leader, we would have leaned on him to get us to the peak when we were struggling, thinking that he would be OK because he had the climbing resume to accomplish such a task. AP knowingly hired such an inexperienced guide just to state they had a 'Western leader' and just so they could take your money. Once again, this is not intended to be a criticism of the guide himself as I liked him and he could have been a great climbing teacher. This is a criticism of AP for advertising that they are sending an expert when they hired someone who had never done something like this before. Without the western guide, we were stuck alone with their local guide, who was incapable of leading us. He was terrible during the training session, getting impatient when we weren't understanding what he was trying to teach us in his broken English. The guy was being short with us and even was showing us how to use a belaying technique for which AP never told us to bring equipment. When the Western leader left the group and it was time to get up to Camp 2, we were woefully inadequately given food for the day. As people started struggling towards the end and the rope was slowing down, the assistant leader was yelling at us about stopping without even checking if the group could safely continue. This was an absolute danger as one member of the group was showing signs of getting sick. Rightfully, the assistant guide apologized to us later and explained why shouldn't stop, but this was still a safety issue with how much people were struggling and to be yelled at was inappropriate. After getting to camp 2, we were not given any food to eat for the climb to Camp 3 the very next day! No food for an entire day of hiking from 17kft to 20kft! The two who made it to Camp 3 brought their own energy food. NO FOOD! Before we left BC, we were able to see the AP group before us returning to BC (the middle of the three that AP ran last summer; we were the last) before we headed up the mountain and they didn't even have a Western guide for ANY of the trip! They told us this and you could see how disappointed they were with AP's services. How much did they pay and take time out of their lives to show up and not even have a Western guide that they paid for? Unreal. To give you more perspective, I climbed past 19kft once before and was told this trip would be levels harder. I did not expect any part of this to be easy. I had trouble adjusting to the altitude the very first day, but was OK perfectly fine after that. Getting to camp 2 was difficult, but i managed. I was too worn out from the lack of provisioning to continue further. At camp 2, we are left to cook food for ourselves, which my tentmate and I did. It would have helped having the guide come around and help us a bit more. When I contacted AP after leaving the trip, the company owner offered me a discount on another trip with AP during that season - how in the heck am I going to go to Kilimanjaro from Bishkek? After I said I couldn't make any other trip and didn't feel safe going with anything AP organized, they completely ignored my emails.

Did a trip to my Vinson with them. Had great support prior to trip and the gear shop had what I needed at great prices

I went in to get my foot size checked. All went well... I then asked them to order in the boots in my size, saying I'd pay a deposit if need be. He said it wouldn't be necessary. I waited almost a week before going in to check if they had arrived and he said 'no not yet we'll email you when they do'... Almost 2 weeks down the line I decided to contact them on their website. They said on the website that the boots weren't even available in that size and that no such boots had been ordered in for me. I then responded by telling them that I was angry and exactly what had really happened...My message was marked as spam and they then removed all of my messages! NEVER AGAIN - VERY ANGRY