Farewell to the Himalayas

VIRTUAL EVEREST CONQUERED FOR COVID RELIEF

Yes, we did it!  Last Friday our President David Hayes, stood on the summit of Everest in the culmination of the Club’s virtual expedition to the highest mountain in the world to raise money for our Covid Relief Fund. An appropriate triumph in the centenary year of Everest exploration. Yes, it all started in 1920 when the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical persuaded the Dalai Lama to allow them access to the mountain. 

Our objective 100 years later was to raise some £5000 for the Fund by this initiative and to date, with more gifts still coming in, the total stands at just over £3,500.

Our virtual expedition with 20 members accompanied by guides and porters left Lukla on 28 August and trekked to Everest Base Camp. From there an assault party of six again accompanied by guides climbed the mountain to Camp 3 from where four set out for the summit. Full details of the 22 days to the top are still available here.

Reporting from the summit David Hayes paid tribute to the unsung heroes who had got him to the top of the world. “I am only standing here” he said “because of the enormous efforts of club members over the last few weeks. Daily they have walked, climbed, cycled and rowed to build up the real distance and height that were needed to get me here. They’re all in their 70s but they’ve put their bodies through a gruelling regime to get us to our goal.” 

To put our President on the top of Everest Club members have actually covered 3,900 miles (which is further than walking, were it possible, from York to New York!) and climbed 106,000 feet (that’s 24 times the height of Ben Nevis). Using a formula devised in advance to translate Yorkshire effort into Himalayan achievement, this equates to 1525 expedition miles trekked and 1,056,000 feet climbed against a requirement of 1500 miles and 1,000,000 feet. That target requirement was set way above the actual numbers required to climb Everest to take account of the enormously more difficult conditions, steeper gradients and increasingly significant lack of oxygen at altitude that a real expedition would encounter.  

So, if you think all that effort by the “oldest expedition ever to scale Everest” deserves a reward why not help us meet our £5000 target by clicking on the button below.