I aim to raise £8848 for Cancer Research UK.
To do this I am asking for sponsorship to climb the equivalent height of Mount Everest at speed on an indoor climbing wall.
I have divided the height of Mount Everest by the height of my local climbing wall. This comes to 918 laps of the wall. I will simply be climbing to the top of the wall before being lowered down again; aiming for the pace of one lap each minute, constantly for approximately fifteen hours.
Why?
My name is Richard and I lost my mother to stomach cancer towards the end of last year. That is the "why" to my cause but what can I do about it?
The answer is not much... alone. But with the help of many, my hope is that together we can deliver a substantial blow in the battle to understand and subsequently treat this disease.
All too frequently we hear about the loved ones of friends and aquaintences being lost to one disease or another and I'm sure that most people reading this know of at least one person who has fallen to cancer. Having been recently affected, I find that I want to do something substantial in memory of my mother Debbie Bartlett so that perhaps future people with her condition may recover.
So I plan to climb the equivalent of the height of Mount Everest on an indoor climbing wall. Friends have already asked me why I don't just climb the actual thing. There are several reasons:
1) It costs tens of thousands of pounds to fund an expedition to Everest's summit. I don't want any money that could otherwise go to Cancer Research UK funding my permit to climb a mountain or hire porters.
2) I am not a high altitude mountaineer. I have a strong belief that I ought not to put myself into positions for which I have not trained myself. I am a rock climber and thus feel that lapping a climbing wall until I've achieved the height of a Everest is a suitable challenge.
3) It sounds easier on paper (or laptop)! At the time of writing this, I've had two training sessions, the second of which was the hardest thing I've ever done.. at just two ninths the distance!!
That being said, the actual climbing of Everest is still an enormous feat and I have utmost respect for the athletes who risk their lives to climb higher than all others against high altitude and extreme weather conditions.
How?
The posts to come will document my fundraising progress in addition to my progress training towards the distance. I had my first training sesison on Sunday the 15th January and climbed 100 laps of the wall in 95 minutes (1 hour 35 mins). This is the pace that I aim to be climbing at on the day but at the end of it I felt tired, dehydrated and my hands were torn to pieces. Bring on training session two!
