Kiwis Aiming To Dine High

A group of six Kiwi climbers are aiming to break the record for the world's highest dinner party by having a full, three-course black-tie meal on top of Aconcagua on the Chile / Argentina border.

The New Zealanders are targeting the record set by a troup of deranged Brits and Australians based on the Dangerous Sports Club, who dined on top of 6768 metre Huascaran in the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca, a pointless feat documented in the eccentric book 'The Social Climbers'.

Aconcagua - pronounced A-con-ca-wa as the 'G' is soft - is the highest mountain in South America at 6959 metres, but not a particularly tough peak by the normal route. Many extreme dining experts will question whether eating on Aconcagua is really tougher than on Huascaran, even if the summit is a couple of hundred metres higher.

The expedition will involve hauling tables, chairs, bottles of wine, tuxedos and a size 20 dress to the summit before a sit-down meal of freeze-dried food. We'd say it was a pretty daft idea, but then climbing itself doesn't really make much sense.