Steve Plain and Jon Gupta have broken the '7 Summits' speed record by completing their final peak, Mount Everest, after 117 days - a full 9 days ahead of the previous world record.
The '7 Summits' is challenge to summit the tallest peak on each continent. The previous world speed record for summiting all seven stood at 126 days by Polish mountaineer Janusz Kochanski in 2017.
The clock started once the pair reached the summit of the first and stopped at the top of the final mountain.
Steve and Jon completed each mountain on the following dates:
- Vinson (Antarctica, 4892m) 16.01.18
- Aconcagua (S. America, 6962m) 28.01.18
- Kilimanjaro (Africa, 5895m) 14.02.18
- Carstensz Pyramid (Australasia, 4884m) 24.02.18
- Elbrus (Europe, 5642m) 13.03.18
- Denali (N. America, 6190m) 03.04.18
- Everest (Asia, 8488m) 14.05.18
The pair were part of 'Project 7in4', supported by Montane. More details and reports of each summit expedition can be found on the Montane website.
Comments
Is that map sponsored by Pepsi or something? :-P
I'm sure they had great fun and pushed really hard at times but I just can't get excited about this sort of thing. Too much down to money and logistics.
I can see your point, but for me its a lack of any frame of reference (from the point of view of a non-mountaineer) in the reporting that makes the achievement sound a little hollow. I'm not saying that it isn't a very impressive achievement, but that it's hard to visualise and understand how impressive the achievement is.
117 days seems like quite a long time to someone with no knowledge of mountaineering. It's hard to visualise what such an undertaking involves and understand why 117 days is an impressive time do it in.
It would be very interesting to read a more in depth account of the expedition(s) to get a real sense of the challenges involved (both physical and logistical); how much time was spent on each climb, vs waiting for weather windows vs traveling between the various peaks; what went well/not so well etc.
Click on the link and you can read the guy's diary from each leg of the trip. There is a lot of sitting in camp waiting for weather to improve and long haul travel.
From a brief peruse of the website I'm mainly amazed at how much it must have all cost! It was quite some feat of fund raising. Supposedly the expedition has raised money for lifeguards in Australia, but it would be interesting to know - beyond the press releases - how much money went to the charity in comparison to how much the whole thing cost.
Didn't know there were fixed lines that you jumared on Carstenz Pyramid. Seems a bit sad.
Cool, this must mean they are the best mountaineers in the world, yeah?