Charles Rickett, Mark Wood & Marcus (aka Mark) Trevor are attempting to ascend Mount Aconcagua in November 2010. Aconcagua is the highest mountain in South America, the highest peak outside the Himalayas and the second highest of the Seven Summits. It represents a really serious challenge to predominantly deskbound individuals like us and we’ve been training, slimming and abstaining like mad to make sure that we put ourselves in the sort of shape we need to be in to get to the top!
Aconcagua is in Argentina, it's 6,962 metres (22,841 ft) high and is a significantly bigger challenge than the one we faced when we climbed Kilimanjaro and that was certainly adequately hard!
As this is such a tough challenge we thought that a charity should benefit from our endeavours and thus, with your generosity, we have all committed to support Combat Stress. All costs associated with the climb such as kit and getting there etc are entirely borne by us and any donation you make will be 100% for the charity. Combat Stress is a particularly important charity in these times and you can find out more at http://www.combatstress.org.uk/ but briefly it was founded in 1919, specialising in the treatment of military service related mental illness. At the moment some 4,400 ex Service men and women including 102 Afghanistan and 400 Iraq Veterans are registered with the charity, many of them suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
Have a look at the video link - it's truly harrowing and very much brings PTSD into focus.
Thank you from all three of us and we promise that all of those of you who give a donation, however big or small, will be excused from the hours of looking through our photographs when we get back!!
