Team Hatch is back with its highest altitude adventure challenge to date - Mont Blanc: the Climb, Run, Bike Challenge.

In aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital Charity (www.gosh.org) in the UK and Le Rire Medecin (www.leriremedecin.org) in France.

For this challenge we have swapped the usual endurance "Swim Bike Run" for "Climb Run Bike" with three individual events spread over 2024 and 2025 and all based around Western Europe's highest peak, the mighty and majestic Mont Blanc.

Hatch is in charge as usual and attempting all three events. To date we have had:

THE CLIMB - Hatch and Alex Dinsdale attempted to scale the mighty Mont Blanc, all 4809 meters of it via the Italian Route, in June 2024, supported by the excellent and all professional team at Jagged Globe (the world's best expedition company according to Hatch). It was quite an adventure and they made it to within 400m of the summit before having to turn back due to high winds. It was really quite extreme and an amazing 5 days on the mountain (see pics)

RUN - then in August 2024, Hatch and Vicky Solly finished two individual events at the Ultra Trail Mont Blanc festival in Chamonix. Hatch ran the ultimate challenge for middle distance ultra runners the OCC, a 50km race with 3425 meters of elevation and Vicky took on the ultra endurance CCC the 100km race with 6125 meters of elevation. A cool 9550 meters of elevation between them.... that's more than Everest! They both smashed (again see the pictures)

So that little set of adventures managed to raise £10k for Great Ormond Street with an equivalent amount to Le Rire Medecin in France (not through this page but through a direct transfer)

So now we have the ........

BIKE - to round off the trio of Mont Blanc challenges, Hatch, Oscar Skabar, Robert Foster, Simon Whitehead and Leah Walland, Zach Cooper and others (a complete team of 7) are attempting Le Tour du Mont Blanc on 12th July 2025. Le Tour du Mont Blanc is a cycling route which circumnavigates the Mont Blanc massif and is a tasty 330km of cycling and 8300m of elevation - all to be done in under 20ish hours. This is often referred to as one of, if not the, toughest one day challenges you can do on a bike! Hatch, Oscar, Simon and Zack all have form here having "Everested" before together but this is a tough one especially in the summer heat.

The team is also supported in a major way by the wonderful team at the Altitude Centre in London which is just the most amazing training venue for those with outrageous goals :-)

This is no mean selection of challenges but in keeping with the madness that has gone before with this team and all in memory of Emma Rose who sadly died 10 years ago - she remains very much in our hearts and thoughts everyday.

We are fundraising for the GOSH Children's Charity, a cause we love and have been supporting now for many years, with a focus on life enhancing research in the area of Rheumatology and to help to provide up-to-date modern infrastructure in which the Hospital can provide its leading state of the art treatments for children with some of the rarest conditions in the world.

We are also fundraising for the wonderful team at Le Rire Medecin which is a life enhancing charity famous in France for providing professionally trained Clowns to help children continue to be children whilst they deal with hospitalisation and anxiety, and enhancing recovery. Their work has been the subject of much clinical research and proven to be extremely effective - the healing power of laughter being described as universal medicine by the philosopher Bertrand Russell. It operates in 76 medical wards in 20 hospitals across France and was set up, and continues to be led, by the wonderful and inspirational Caroline Simonds.

The fundraising plan is to raise £25k over the course of 2024 and 2025 as it relates to these challenges through this Just Giving page - which links directly to GOSH - a matching donation will be made to Le Rire Medecin as we go - this matching commitment has already been secured - so, as if by magic, £25k will become £50k and each £1 given will translate to £1 to GOSH and £1 to Le Rire Medecin.

Thank you for getting this far down the page and for supporting this effort #foremma and all the other children who need support.