Hi, and thanks for visiting my fundraising page. Please dig deep and sponsor me online.
If you are interested in what i'm doing then please read on, there's more about my plans for this year, and the mental and physical challenges i will face, below.
Donating through this site is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to sponsor me: St Ann's Hospice will receive your money faster and, if you are a UK taxpayer, an extra 28% in tax will be added to your gift at no cost to you.
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So what am i doing?
Well, I really want a challenge. I enjoy pushing boundaries. I love the mountains, travel and exploration, so it seems like the most obvious thing in the world to include these elements. But what sort of challenge?
There are a number of difficult tests in the UK's Mountains that seem to fit the bill perfectly; attempting the three peaks (the highest mountains of England, Wales and Scotland, and over 9000 feet of ascent and descent) all in one day! the "Welsh 3000'ers" (fifteen Welsh Mountains all over 3000 feet, which can be climbed in a day (total ascent and descent 12,000 feet); The Caledonian challenge, a 54 mile walk through the Scottish Mountains from Fort William and Ben Nevis to Loch Lomond.
But i really do want a challenge, so why not all of the above....seems like a great idea, so that's what i am doing, but there's more. Between now and mid October i will complete all of the above tests, as stages in a training programme for my ultimate goal, to climb Cho Oyu..... Cho what i hear you say.
Cho Oyu, meaning Turqoise Goddess in Tibetan, sits on the border of Nepal and Tibet, in the shadow of its more illustrious neighbour, Mount Everest, or "Chomolungma, Mother Goddess of the Sky" as the locals like to put it.
Her slopes knife through the air to an astonishing 8201metres (or 27,000feet in old money). In those realms clouds are left far below, wildlife dwindles... and dies, winds rip across battered slopes strewn with shattered rock. Snow flurries and ice storms, temperatures plunge to freeze flesh and form icicles from your breath. At its summit Oxygen is so rare that man cannot survive for long, a breath has to be wrung from the air whilst your body consumes itself and the sun blisters the skin.... There's no doubt, this can be one of the harshest places on earth..
But.....it is also beautiful in these mountains, the Himalaya, i have seen it. Looking down on the world around, crystal clear skies, snow sparkling all around, these mountains draw the soul...but why go there? i dont know; "because they are there" someone once said.
This is my chance to fulfil a longstanding ambition and dream, to climb one of the worlds highest mountains. So in September 2008 i will set off with a band of hardy brother, fools all you will say....to climb this behemoth, this white peaked goddess soaring above the clounds in th erealms where men in jet engines only recently started to roam.
more to follow shortly,,
