Evening Folks
Once again sorry its been a while since I last wrote it’s been a hectic couple of months at work. Just thought I’d put this short post up about my future plans and in doing so, it should give me a little kick to get me started.
Most of you will remember reading about my climbing partner Owen who died in the Cairngorms in February. We planned on starting our bid at the Seven Summits and in doing so prove that anything is possible if you give it enough time and dedication without having to pay out of our life savings for guides and to be helped up, the dream being that we could do all of them as much as possible under our own steam.
Well I’m pleased to announce that even with Owens untimely loss myself and the small team we had assembled still plan on doing this, at the moment there is only 2 of us we are looking at either adding on another few people to complement us on all of our climbs or adding on people for the individual mountains.
Now first I guess I should go into some detail about the seven summits, what they are, the order we plan to do them and the techniques and strategies we will be employing to climb them. First in this article I will go into some details about the mountains themselves and give some brief details of the plan.
As all of you I hope would know there are seven continents, as most of you would have realised by now the seven summits are the tallest mountains on each of these continents, in no particular order these are Mount Elbrus, Mount McKinley, Mount Vincent, Mount Everest, Anconcagua, Mount Kosciusko and Mount Killimanjaro.
The order me and alex plan on doing them is as follows. Elbrus, Killimanjaro, Anconcagua, McKinley, Vincent, Everest and finally Kosciusko, the reason for this is we will do the 2 that are easiest to get to and some of the least technically challenging first, followed by the expensive and technical ones and finally ending with a nice easy one which although it is in Australia (on the other side of the world) is the easiest of them all and when we drag our battered and bruised bodies over the summit ridge we can have our families, friends and loved ones there at the end of it all to celebrate with us.
Following this, and I will do my best to make it about once a week there will be regular updates on the mountains, the routes, the equipment, the techniques etc. As both a way of keeping our, hopefully, growing fan base up to date on the plans and also as a way of centrally keeping all our research and planning in one easily accessible place.
One final thing from me before I go. I know that some of you must think I ‘m mad and why would I want to do this? Well first there is the fact that me and Owen put ages into both planning and dreaming about climbing to the highest places in the world. Also to go with this it is going to be done partly in honour of the way Owen used to believe in people and believe that with the right effort and in the right way with the right experience, that mountains were open to everyone. This last point is a key reason for me putting all our planning in one place open to the public.
cheers guys!
Burf
Matts Mountaineering 