Rod Baber, 36, earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for ascending the 47 European summits in the shortest time, beating the old world record by four and a half years. Inspiration for "The Highest Challenge" struck him in November 1995, when Baber was on course for a financial career but was climbing in his time off. One night, relaxing in a bar with friends, he was asked which mountain he would climb next. "All of them," he said, through a tequila haze. And, thus, the course of his life changed forever.

"I want to be the first person to climb to the highest point in every country in the world," says Baber. "I've already climbed to the highest point in every country in Europe, so it was a natural progression to want to climb to the highest point on all the other continents."

In between summits, Baber runs a climbing centre in the west of England, where he and his colleagues teach anyone from corporate business teams to young offenders how to deal with heights and fear, instilling interpersonal skills in their charges along the way.

Rod portrays himself as an accidental mountaineer, someone who just fell into it. He is also quite a party animal but says he's calmed down a bit since he had children. He is planning to make the first ever cell phone call from Everest's summit, which will be to Sacha, his 3-year-old daughter, who hates climbing, loves her dad, and has only just learned to say the word "Everest."

Rod co-leads a tour of Base Camp

Rod kills time by trying to stuff Darius into a Barrel