Dear Family, Friends and Supporters,

Thanks so much for coming to my donation page!  We have completed the challenge but I am hoping that we can keep on fundraising for a few more months!   As most of you know I learnt to ski before I could walk by being fortunate enough to have been born at the foot of the Julian Alps.  Since then I have always tried to combine my love of the mountains with a charitable venture and Snow-Camp allows me to do that and more!

I have quickly recapped some of the main points that we have just achieved below:

WHAT HAS HAPPENED?

On 29 and 30 January 2010, 38 of Snow-Camp's supporters skied down over 20,000 metres in the Austrian Alps near Salzburg (www.snow-camp.co.uk/everestchallenge). As part of this mega challenge I joined them on my "two planks of wood".

In layman's terms, we skied the equivalent of more than twice the vertical slope of Mt Everest in just two days time by any means and in whatever weather conditions Mother Nature threw at us! The action was constant: We did not stop for anything or anyone during the two days - just hitting one peak after another from 7am every morning till darkness fell upon us.  It was an endurance challenge, testing us to the limit. In summary, we did 20,550 vertical metres, 24 peaks, 190km in distance and managed a top speed of 91km!

WHY?

As I mentioned in my email, Snow-Camp is a youth charity providing disadvantaged young people from London’s inner city areas with the chance to experience mountain sports.

As well as offering the opportunity to learn to ski or snowboard, during a week’s stay in the Alps, Snow-Camp includes a Life-Skills course designed to enable young people to reflect on the key issues that impact their lives.  So basically I am doing this for the kids we have and will work with at Snow Camp (check them out at www.snow-camp.co.uk). They're awesome young people and I am convinced that they will guide the world in the right direction when their time comes. For now though, they need our support ...

HOW MUCH?

We need your support to continue to offer the Snow-Camp experience to more inner-city young people. It costs around  £499 for every young person to attend a Snow-Camp week so y ou would be helping to make a real difference to disadvantaged young people and giving them an experience that will significantly impact their lives so I ask that you contribute what you can. 

You can give a little (eg £5 - £50) or give a lot (eg £500).  If you sponsor me for £500 or more, Snow-Camp will open up a bursary in your name. Click here for more detail on what that means.

As you can see I have set myself a challenging target but I do hope that with all your help we can together beat it by miles!

Justgiving will accept donations in £'s or $'s or €'s via Paypal.

Note that the Justgiving site adds the Gift Aid bonus automatically (if you pay UK tax). This saves the charity hours of admin.

Let me make it clear that your donation goes directly to raising money for the kids.  Our trip out there was self-financed.  Ok, enough said... Please give generously and I thank you in advance for your support.