The Lipstick Blondes

Весь текст не умещается, продолжение здесь: [bad word] /downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/people_and_places/pdfs/people_blondes_070927.pdf
Группа Learning English.

Amber: Hello, I’m Amber and you’re listening to [bad word] In People and Places today, we meet a ski mountaineer – and she defines the
term for us! And she takes us to an extremely high, cold and lonely place – the
Mustagata mountain in China.
SuzyMadge is the leader of a group of women who call themselves The
Lipstick Blondes – they admit it’s a silly name because they don’t all have
blonde hair and they never wear lipstick! But they did prepare very carefully -
with a strict physical training programme – before they set off to the climb
Mustagata mountain. Suzy talks about a difficult decision she had to make
alone on the mountain, and we hear from Nick Holton of the British
Mountaineering Council who comments on the expedition.
First though, Suzy explains what ski mountaineering is! And she says it’s
‘meditative’ (from the word ‘meditation’ – that’s concentrating your mind on
just one thing) as well as, ‘exhilarating’ – it makes you feel happy and alive!
Ski mountaineering is …
Suzy Madge
Where you climb up a mountain and then you ski down! It’s a really great combination of a
kind of meditative climb up and then an exhilarating ski down.
Amber: Now as it happens, The Lipstick Blondes didn’t make it to the top, the summit,
of Mustagata mountain which is at a demanding 7,500 metres. Suzy explains
what happened. As you listen, try to catch the expression she uses to describe
taking ‘an individual approach’, in other words, not operating as a team. 
Suzy Madge
When we started the climb from base camp, it became apparent that we were all going at very
different speeds. So we had to sit down and think about whether we were going to try and
stick together as a team and push everyone as far as they could go, or whether we were going
to take a more individualistic approach and everyone do their own thing. We decided to stay
together as a team.
On the summit day, we started late because there was quite a blizzard. One of us was quite a
long way ahead - it was me, I sat down and waited for the others and – as someone so
pertinently put it, as I told them the story – I watched my ego slide down the mountain as I
waited for the others, because basically, I wasn’t going to get to the summit because I was
waiting for the others just to see how high we could all get.
Amber: Did you catch it? Suzy says they decided to stay together as a team – ‘to stick
together as a team’, and not let ‘everyone do their own thing’. If you do your
own thing, you do something the way you want to do it. Suzy was ahead of the
others but she decided to wait so that the team could get as high as possible,
even though that meant she wouldn’t get to the top. friend told her that she
‘watched her ego slide down the mountain’! She decided to let go of her ‘ego’,
her idea of her own importance, and put the team first. Listen again.
Suzy Madge
When we started the climb from base camp, it became apparent that we were all going at very
different speeds. So we had to sit down and think about whether we were going to try and
stick together as a team and push everyone as far as they could go, or whether we were going
to take a more individualistic approach and everyone do their own thing. We decided to stay
together as a team.
On the summit day, we started late because there was quite a blizzard. One of us was quite a
long way ahead - it was me, I sat down and waited for the others and – as someone so
pertinently put it, as I told them the story – I watched my ego slide down the mountain as I
waited for the others, because basically, I wasn’t going to get to the summit because I was
waiting for the others just to see how high we could all get.
...