Protecting against sun damage (protecting your lips)

Every mountaineer will be exposed to extremely high sunlight/UV at some stage.  When this happens over multiple weeks on an expedition it results with significant sunburn and very bad lip damage.

I'm going to focus on looking after your lips here.  Bad lips = no kissing...but given the ratio of males to females on an expedition, kissing is probably not a good idea for a heterosexual male :-P

It is difficult to cover your mouth from the sun (and reflected sunlight from glaciers) when you are moving as you need to breath efficiently when climbing a mountain.  When you cover your mouth, the covering will eventually become wet from the breath, and thus hamper breathing.

Some people think that using high UV lip protection/balm is enough (similar to sunscreen for skin), but the reality is that constant exposure goes through that protection like it is not even there.  In a week or so your lips may become ulcerated...very painful and hampers drinking and eating.  You need to protect and repair.

SM33 is good for cleaning the damaged lips but surprisingly does not help with the healing.

My experience with having my lower lip entirely ulcerated caused me great concern on Manaslu.  Then my friend Victor Rimac handed me two silver aluminium satchels which contained a white buttery paste.  He told me that it was 100% cacao and that it would do wonders in repairing my ulcerated lip...in 3 days!  I thought he was talking rubbish as it would have been a magical cure.

I gave it a try by liberally covering my entire lip with the paste.  The paste smelt like chocolate (intoxicating...I want chocolate please) and melted upon contacting my warm lips.  I continued to apply it over 3 days to make sure there was always good coverage.  I was shocked that within 3 days most of the ulcerated lip had healed!  On the 4th day it had completely healed!

Victor was a lifesaver.

I learnt that cacao is very good for looking after your lips and good for repairing them when ulcerated.  The problem now is to find more of that 'magic stuff' as I cannot find that 'medical grade' cacao in Australia.  Since it was 100% cacao, I am going to try some 100% cacao butter to see if it would have the same effect.  I suspect so as it is the same ingredient.  Now...I just have to deliberately cause an ulcer to test it out :-(