It’s perhaps not surprising that he doesn’t feel the need to shout about it from the rooftops – climbing is something that’s always been there for Pete. “I first got taken climbing when I was maybe about five, I started with my dad, [who’s] been climbing since he was about 15. He’s done a lot in the Lake District [where Pete was born] and in the Alps.” At one stage, Pete’s dad ran a climbing shop, and he grew up in a house full of mountaineering books.

Yet if climbing was in the Graham blood, it took a little while to manifest itself in young Peter. “I didn’t really get interested in climbing until I was a teenager. [That was when] I started getting something out of it.

“I first got taken climbing when I was maybe about five, I started with my dad”

“I was into hill-walking at quite a young age, I’d always been into the outdoors. but when I initially got taken out climbing as a child I used to find it scary and not really like it. But then I started to gain something out of it. I started to enjoy the movement and the being outside.”

Teenage years spent bouldering and trad climbing round the Lake District helped fuel his passion, but it was when he moved to Sheffield as a student that things really began to escalate. “I didn’t really start doing stuff with ice axes until I was maybe about 19 or 20, and I got into that myself. I started climbing more with mates and stuff, and then when I went to uni.”

Big nights out helped forge Pete and Ben’s friendship, but it was climbing together that really cemented it. Because if there’s one thing that’s going to make you feel closer to someone, it’s going on an expedition with them. Not only are you putting your life in their hands (quite literally) as your belayer, you’re also spending a lot of time together in very close quarters. “When we went to the Revelations [a range in Alaska] we had about a week stuck in the tent together because of a storm. And we did get pretty cabin feverish by the end.”

What do you do to pass the time in those situations, I ask? How do you avoid being at each other’s throats? “Play chess? Read?” says Pete chuckling. “But I guess we’ve climbed together a lot and we’re just really good mates. You build up a relationship with someone.”

The intensity level is definitely upped by Pete and Ben’s preferred choices of location. The Revelations are pretty much the definition of remote. Searching for it on Google Maps I think my internet must be broken at first. There’s a pin dropped in the middle of a blank space, and I have to zoom out to the point where 2cm is 20km before I can see a road or a settlement of any kind.

“In Alaska we had about a week stuck in the tent together because of a storm.”

“You fly to Anchorage and then drive for about three or four hours and then get a seaplane from there which takes about an hour. You’re 100 miles from any other people really.”

“The feeling of isolation makes the climbing feel a lot different. It’s a lot lonelier than climbing somewhere like the Alps.”

If his technique is a good as a Grandmaster’s, Pete doesn’t take himself too seriously however. He and Ben decided to name the new route ‘The Hoar of Babylon’, after the prostitute from the book of Revelation. They wanted “to keep in line with the area’s biblical chapter theme and with the British tradition of mixed climbing puns,” he explains on his blog.

The sheer technicality meant the feat attracted a fair bit of attention among the British climbing community, despite the amusing name. But Pete is typically self-effacing about the scale of the achievement. “We gave the crux a grade Water Ice 6 [meaning “highly technical”]. But it’s always hard to say, I’m not really very good at grading.”

He laughs when I suggest that, like a good surfer in big waves, he’s probably underestimating it considerably, and it strikes me again how little Pete is interested in fame or fortune.

Since climbing The Hoar, he and Ben have gone on to notch up several other notable firsts, including the first British ascent of another highly technical Alaskan route known as the Infinite Spur, on Mount Foraker.

These days he’s lucky enough to be sponsored by Fjallraven – the Swedish brand supports his expeditions and he’s helping with the design of their forthcoming Bergtagen high alpine range. But when he’s not on expeditions, Pete is more than happy returning to work as an engineer on building sites, a profession which no doubt appeals to his meticulous mindset. He certainly has zero interest in plugging his exploits on the after-dinner speaking circuit, or turning climbing into a full-time career.