Over the past few years I have lost many people to Cancer, I thought I was just very unlucky, but actually it is far more common than you might think.

-       My Dad died of Cancer in 2000, he is missed greatly

-       My Cousin Catherine, her fiancé  Martin was diagnosed with cancer shortly before they were 
         due to get married, he managed to hold on and marry Catherine but  died a few weeks after
         the wedding, a great man.

-       My best school friend Chris and his brother Mike, their mum is now fighting for her life
         in South Africa

-       My very close friend Lisa, her Dad died just last year

-       But just recently my cousin Alistair has been diagnosed with a brain tumour and unfortunately 
         it is aggressive and inoperable, they don't know how much time he has but it has motivated
         me to do this. 

I plan to walk, Hike or crawl up to over 3100m or 10,000 feet with snow shoes, my backpack and a snowboard in the Austrian Tirols. Now when most people think of Austrian or Swiss mountains, they think of nice cosy resorts with ski lifts and restaurants and raging apre-ski parties. That's not where I'm going. What people don't realise is that over 90% of the Alps are undeveloped wilderness, with the only way in (and out) being by foot (in summer) or on skis/snowshoes (in winter). The only life-support system up here is a few basic mountain refuges run by the Mountain Club, supplied with food and essentials by helicopter. My plan is to climb up to one of these huts, and use this as a base to climb one of the larger peaks.
While climbing these mountains in summer is mostly a moderate challenge, doing so in winter is a completely different story. It is physically far more demanding, even more so when having to forge your way through deep snow. Then there is the avalanche danger, orientation in often foggy conditions, and glaciers to negotiate. All in all quite a challenge, even for the Austrians who grew up in the mountains. But for a couple of South Africans who only saw snow for the first time in their twenties, well, some might say we're nuts! We hope to prove them wrong....

The area we have in our sights is known as the Silvretta, a section of the main Alpine Ridge shared by Austria and Switzerland, known for it's spectacular peaks and glaciers. Now while obviously the final decision what we climb has to be made based on the weather and avalanche situation, we are aiming to base ourselves at the Silvretta Hut (2341m) and climb either the Schneeglocke (3223m) or the Egghorn (3147m).

This is the plan (emphasis on „plan“, because I am sure there will be some surprises!):

Day One: we will arrive in Bregenz in the far west of Austria on the night train from Vienna, probably at exactly 8:08am (this is Austria after all!). We will drive to Monbiel (1291m) on the Swiss side of the Silvretta, the start of our ascent. We will want to get going quickly as we will have more than 1000m of vertical ahead of us. Also we need to get through the Verstancla Valley before the avalanches start in the early afternoon as the snow warms. It's a long slog up to the hut and will take about 5 – 6 hours. We'll spend what's left of the afternoon doing avalanche rescue and glacier crevasse self-rescue drills.

Day Two: we will ascend one of the smaller mountains to acclimatise and check out the avalanche conditions. We both live near sea level so will really be feeling the altitude, especially with the high level exertion of snow-shoeing with a snowboard and load of safety equipment on your back! Once you're at the summit the job is only half done, so we'll need to use the chance to iron some of the rustiness out of our snowboarding so we can get down in one piece as well!   This is called „earning your turns“ and every carve through that powder feels sweeter knowing you have earned it the hard way (although some might say we're just mad...)

Day Three: we will leave camp at stupid O’clock (something with a 5 and an AM in it) as we need to get the summit before the sun creates avalanche conditions in the afternoon. Along the way there will be glaciers to negotiate, we need to make sure we avoid the crevasse zones which is not so easy as they are often snowed over. But we will be roped up just in case one of us falls through, although it would be nice to avoid this! Once we reach the Summit, we'll take a few snaps to prove we made it,  then strap on the boards and spend the next 25 min screaming in terror all the way back past the base camp and back down, to then find showers and cold beers as quickly as possible.
We have a reserve day in case of weather or avalanche issues.

Thanks to technology, I will have a GPS tracker on me so you can follow my progress on the web

I will be sending links out to all those who donated

So no matter how small please donate to a worthy cause.

 

Many thanks

 

Dom

 

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now.