Great news direct from Nepal where Alan Hinkes has summited Kangchenjunga making him the first Briton ever to climb all 14 of the world's 8,000-metre peaks. Including live comments from Alan at base camp.
Yay, it's official, Alan Hinkes has summited Kangchenjunga
becoming the first Briton to climb all 14 of the world's 8,000-metre
peaks and only the 13th climber ever to complete the feat.
Hinkes reached the top of Kangchenjunga, the world's third highest
mountain at 8587 metres in company with his friend and climbing
partner Pasang Gelu at 7pm on Monday. His summit push had been
delayed by high winds, snow and poor conditions that led to other
expeditions on the mountain abandoning their attempts, but a window
of better weather allowed him to go for the summit earlier this
week.
As ever, on the summit, Hinkes took out a photo of his daughter
Fiona and his grandson Jay to have his summit photos taken -
something he's done on every one of his successful summit
expeditions.
"The Hardest Climb Of My
Life..."
Speaking live from base camp at 6,000 metres, Alan described what
turned out to be an extremely arduous climb:
"The final summit push was without a doubt the hardest climb of my
life. We left base camp on Thursday 26 May and began to push up
the mountain. The weather had not been good which meant there was an
awful lot of fresh snow to break through. Risk of avalanche was
incredibly high and every step of the way was a matter of physical
and mental endurance.
"The snow was so deep that we were unable to make camp three and
had to bivvy on the hillside at around 7400m. We tried for a
summit attempt on the 29 May but we were beaten back by the weather.
"A second summit attempt saw us leave at about 1am on the 30 May.
More snow had fallen but we made good time. My climbing
partner Pasang had to stop around 15 minutes short of the summit due
to exhaustion. I reached the summit on the 30 May at around 7pm in
driving snow and wind. It was the worst summit conditions I can
remember. I took the obligatory photo spent around 10 minutes
on the summit and then began my descent.
"It was about 9pm when I caught up with Pasang but with no head
torch it was difficult to locate him and I honestly thought he was
dead. It was with great elation that I found him and we got
back to the bivvy site around 27 hours after setting off on 31 May.
"The next couple of days saw us descending back to base camp
through fresh snow with high risk of avalanche. Getting back to
base camp was one of the best feelings of my life. I sat down
in my tent and thought I've finally done it!"
We'd like to congratulate Alan and long time sponsors Berghaus, on an incredible feat of
mountaineering endurance. We'll buy you a pint once you're back in
the UK mate. Nice one :-)
