Everest was my first love.

Successfully summitted in May 2007.

I first stepped onto a mountain in the summer of 2006. I was a climbing novice, on an introductory climbing course, with a passion for the Edmund Hillary story and a deep desire to climb Everest. It was an ambition which seemed laughable to many, but they underestimated my determination. Just one year later, on May 21st 2007 I stood on the summit of Mount Everest and proved to the world you should never give up on your dreams.

OVer before it began

My journey to Everest involved a year of total dedication to the cause following that first climbing course, a deeply frustrating quest for corporate funding and worst of all an abscess on my tooth at Everest base camp which put my whole climb at risk.

But the determination to not give up kicked in again and the tooth was removed with a Swiss Army knife and a screw driver in a tent at Everest Base camp. This was all captured on video, which you can watch here if you are brave enough….. click here.

But once ‘tooth gate’ was done, then for the next 10 weeks my only thoughts were on summitting Everest and then my safe return to base camp.

I took it step by step, day by day being mentally and physically challenged. And in the end, I did it, I got to the top and stood in that same spot that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing. How did I feel? I felt ‘on top of the world’!

And did the dream end there? NO, quite the opposite. Once the Everest dream was fulfilled I got a new dream, to climb the seven summits, the tallest mountain on each continent. And that is where you find me now. On my way to achieving summit number # five of seven, Vinson Massif in Antarctica.

What a Journey