US climber celebrates the big 5.0 with 50
50 peak summits that is - nearly a peak a week for a whole year...
A female American climber who decided that she would mark her 50th birthday by climbing 50 peaks in 2004 is just one peak from reaching her goal, according to the illustrious publication The Great Falls Tribune.
Ronnie Laudati, 50 obviously, who has only been climbing for the last four years, said that her previous experience with weather had just been to notice whether it was raining or sunny. The former New Yorker began her 50-peak challenge in January, kicking off with Elk Calf in the the Northern Montana Rockies and aims to finish the challenge atop Mount Morgan in Glacier National Park.
Nearly a peak a week, it sounds like a slightly wacky thing to do, but Laudati isn't the only one in her climbing club, the Glacier Mountaineering Society, to take on the challenge. According to fellow Society member Bud Iszler, GMS members Jerry Lundgren and Don Scharfe were the first to come up with the idea of marking their fiftieth birthdays in this way. And as for Bud himself, he claims he's on his fourth straight year of 50 peaks-a-year.
'Do they not have jobs?' I hear you cry. Well it appears that most of them do, but Laudati reports that her other hobbies have had rather a dry year...
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