24,000 Feet With No Trousers...

A scrawny Dutchman has reached 24,278 feet on Everest wearing just shorts and technical mountaineering equipment and is planning to return and summit the mountain in the future.

The Times of India quotes Wim Hof, nicknamed 'The Iceman' as saying: "Messner did it without oxygen, and now somebody is doing it in shorts. A bigger challenge you can't get. Next year I will try Everest again, and then with a paraglider with two French people we will fly down."

The Dutchman was halted in his tracks by a recurring foot injury but says the rest of his body was doing just fine in the sub-zero temperatures.

It all sounds vaguely insane, but Hof says that through training and controlling his body he can resist the extreme cold. Earlier this year he set a world record by running a half marathon in his shorts and bare feet north of the arctic circle with temperatures between minus 20 and minus 30 C.

Bonkers? You bet. More at www.timesofindia.com and at Hof's own site www.innerfire.nl.