“Getting to the top is optional,
getting down is mandatory”
~ Ed Viesturs, high altitude mountaineer
I came across this awesome article yesterday about Ed Viesturs, a high altitude mountaineer, who was the first to summit Everest without oxygen. *Gulp* yes, without oxygen! I can’t even begin to get my head around that. Now bear in mind that altitudes above 8,000 meters (26 000ft) is classed as the “death zone”, where no human body can acclimatize and he did it without oxygen! My biggest concern for Kilimanjaro is altitude sickness, which is caused from lack of oxygen and I’m not even climbing Everest! Wow, this guy has just become my new mentor!
To read the article, click here:
How Mountaineer Ed Viesturs First Summited Everest Without Oxygen.
Reading articles like this just get my excitement levels up again. Which reminders me, I am still looking for a new measurement of scale!
I love how in this article Ed goes on to explain how one day on the mountain he left earlier than the rest of the team and reached the summit alone with no one to take his picture. So he did the next best thing, he took it himself. Auto-timers on camera’s are great things and it’s something Donna and I do all the time. That way no one in your group is ever left out, everyone who was there is in the pic! I know while the two of us make our way to the top of Kilimanjaro there are going to be plenty of auto-timer pics of the two of us. It’s what we do best!
This is a picture we took with auto-timer on our recent Otter Trail hike in February this year. We do it on every long hike, each morning we set up our camera’s and get ready to take a pic documenting what number day of the hike we are on.
This pic was taken on Day 5 and we were all in the pic. Gotta love auto-timers!
To give you some idea of the heights, I’ve added the Seven Summits, which are the highest mountains of each of the seven continents. We are doing the one in the smack-bang in the middle of the list!
| Continent | Mountain | Country and/or location | Height | |
| Feet | Meters | |||
| Asia | Mt. Everest | Tibet-Nepal |
29,035 |
8,850 |
| South America | Mt. Aconcagua | Argentina |
22,834 |
6,960 |
| North America | Mt. McKinley (Denali) | United States, Alaska |
20,320 |
6,194 |
| Africa | Mt. Kilimanjaro | Tanzania |
19,340 |
5,995 |
| Europe | Elbrus | Russia/Georgia |
18,510 |
5,642 |
| Antarctica | Vinson Massif | Ellsworth Mts. |
16,066 |
4,897 |
| Australia | Kosciusko | Australia |
7,310 |
2,228 |
If he can do this on Everest, I can do it too! (Well, maybe not Everest, not yet anyway, but Kilimanjaro is a good place to start!)
Is it time to pack yet?
Walking4Air 