I have never been caught in gun battle before, or an avalanche, but then, I suppose there is a first time for everything. Twice last week as I ran for my life, the first time with bullets whizzing past me and the second with thundering snow threatening to engulf me, I wondered how I had contrived so many ways to test my mortality within such a short space of time.

This was meant to be after all just another week at the office.

Three months ago my friend, Mark Lewis the co-founder of expedition company World Summits, invited me to come with him to Pakistan to climb Broad Peak and K2. At the time I dismissed the idea as too remote a possibility, too dangerous, too incredible. How could I possibly take two months away from my business? But the seed began to grow. What if I could go but still work? Wild Day.com's main office and warehousing is in Inverness but my office is based in Glasgow. I work remotely by phone and email every day. So if I can work "remotely" from Glasgow why couldn't I from K2 base camp? And so it began.

Now here I am working away at 4,100m on the side of Nanga Parbat. We have just escaped an avalanche that nearly killed us we descended from camp one at 5,800m. It is amazing really how easy it is, once you stop running for your life, to switch into work mode. I seem to be so conditioned by the sound of my laptop booting up, that the minute I hear it whirring my mind gets down to business, regardless of whether I am on a glacier, in a mountain village, or by the side of the river Indus. And I do have a lot of work to do.

My business partner has just told me enthusiastically over the satellite phone that we have just had a record week in sales. Sales and traffic had levelled over the last five months and despite various marketing initiatives, the figures stayed steady. However, in May traffic and sales more than doubled and have continued to rise since then.

It can be very difficult to predict when the response to different marketing initiatives will occur. As a result my business partner and I have been dealing with the classic problems of rapid growth, server and bandwidth capacity, staff shortages and training issues which has the resulting knock-on effect on customer service and order fulfillment.

Despite my attempts at diligence there are distractions. On Wednesday we arrived at the town of Gilgit, the capital of northern Pakistan. It was unusually quiet but as we approached the centre we saw that a large crowd of people had gathered in front of a municipal building. My instincts were screaming that something was wrong.

Suddenly we heard the sound of machine gun fire. The town erupted, people started scattering everywhere. The gunfire intensified and bullets sprayed the wall of the cafe we were in. Then the explosions started. We managed to escape by racing back along the street, diving into shops until we reached our jeep. By this time the army were swarming past us. As we tore out of town we could still hear sporadic gunfire behind us.

We found out later that the local government had recently arrested the spiritual leader of the Sunni Muslims and were holding him in jail. Believe it or not I was chatting to my lawyer on the sat phone when the shooting began.

As I log on to Actinic Business, the e-commerce software we use, the sales log confirms the figures my business partner quoted. I have done this a thousand times before but this time a semi-circle of amazed faces surrounds me. Fifteen pairs of eyes are staring at me in wonder. The porters' fascination was quite distracting at first but I quickly got used to it. They live in villages with no electricity, never mind satellite phones and computers. They are the toughest people I have ever met in my life. Men that would be drawing a pension in Britain leap over glacial rivers carrying 30kg packs on their backs like gazelles. Surrounded by solar panels, sat phones and laptops I feel as I've just been beamed in from space. But despite the technological wonders we are often made to feel helpless.

Last Friday as we were breaking camp, the porters brought a 16-year-old boy over to us. He raised his arm and we saw a long deep black gash on his wrist. It transpired that he had cut it on a rock and, in an attempt to stem the profuse bleeding he had clogged it up with dirt! Luckily Mark is a trained medic, but after cleaning and dressing the wound Mark was still very concerned and told him that he would need to come back in four hours.

But the boy returned to his village and we did not see him until two days later. By this time the wound had become septic and would soon turn gangrenous.

We knew he would not go by himself, and if it were not treated properly the poison would continue to spread. So we stopped our trek to take him on a two-day journey to the nearest military hospital. I felt that was more important than finishing my sales analysis.

We have just returned and been told he will probably lose his hand. I don't feel like working right now. This has been a rather stressful week at work and I feel very tired but I know I won't sleep tonight. I'll just lie awake gazing at the mountains and watch the satellites shooting past the stars.

• Michael Jackson will be writing further updates from the Himalayas. Find out more about his trip at www.wildday.co.uk.