Mountaineering
Summits/Expeds
Caucuses (Mt Elbrus)
Mt Blanc
Alps (various)
Iceland
Scotland (various)
The mountains are where I feel happiest.
They have always fascinated me, from their sheer beauty and size to their unpredictable weather patterns, rock formations and history.
I grew up hearing of my dads climbing trips as a young adult, and stories of legendary alpinists and mountaineers such a Greg Lowe, Reinhold Messner and Yvon Chouinard. These inspired me to head out to the Alps as soon as I could drive, learning from old books and Youtube videos, how to build ice anchors, use crampons and more.
Two notable trips are described below.
Caucasus - Mount Elbrus
I travelled to south Russia to climb Mount Elbrus in the summer holiday of 2017. We had given ourselves a week long window to do the final 18 hour push to the summit at just over 5600m, however the weather was incredibly poor with gale-force winds and low visibility. On the last day of our window the weather became slightly better so we made a summit attempt, but by 5200m several team members were in the early stages of hypothermia so we abandoned the summit attempt. I plan to return in 2021.
Alps - Mont Blanc
In the summer of 2016, I organised and led a trip to Chamonix for just over 2 weeks of climbing. During the trip we taught ourselves more advanced mountaineering techniques, and then put them into practice, summiting multiple peaks on multi day expeditions out from our base camp. During this trip we also summited the highest peak in Europe, Mt Blanc.