Going Up Down Under

I can’t believe it, less than a week to go till we hit Australia and begin summitting Mount Kosciuszko. There have been some major and exciting developments to the 7 Summit Challenge team and some pretty hair-raising ones as well. Like errr, the worry of visas not being granted in time, small stuff, you know? Like we don’t have enough to worry about! But I know, as with everything, God will come through and that everything will happen in its own good time and in time!

But now for the AWESOME news! Kabelo Mabalane, frontman of TKZEE, co-founder of the SHOUT campaign, musician, songwriter, TV host, actor and sportsman extraordinaire has joined the 7 Summits Challenge team and will be joining Alex Harris, the production team and myself on all of our climbing adventures. There are two reasons I am really stoked about this; firstly, like myself, Kabelo is a recovered addict and another shining example of hope that drug addiction can be overcome and shouldn’t hold you back from being everything you were meant to be. The second reason is that through Kabelo’s , the 7 Summits Challenge campaign will be able to amplify its message of awareness thereby encouraging people to engage with the initiative and raise more funds for Mountain Heights which aims to actively reduce the number of addicts in South Africa.

We tried to scare Kabelo off, but it wasn’t working, he is determined all right! Because he is already an exceedingly accomplished sportsman (climbing mountains and running the Comrades Marathon next month is no challenge for him) he is fit and fighting for our first climb which will see us heading to the land down under next week. NEXT WEEK!? Yikes!

The interesting thing to note about Mount Kosciuszko is not the highest mountain by any means  but it is the highest in Australia and therefore qualifies as one of the world’s 7 summits if climbed. Mount Kosciuszko is the high point of the Great Dividing Range, a long mountain range that runs along the entire eastern part of Australia from Queensland to Victoria and at a climb of 7316 feet, we’ll be easing Kabs into his challenge gently!

Climbing Kosciuszko means that we have bagged an extra peak. Now ‘peak-bagging’ which is an official mountaineering term is used when you want to add a summit to your belt in the event that one of the more difficult climbs is not achieved. This could be due to reasons such as political conflict or unrest which means that it is unsafe for climbers to enter into the territory of a specific mountain, bad weather conditions or one of your team members falling ill, so it’s a ‘bonus mountain, if you like. This by no means makes it less of a challenge in case you were wondering. So essentially we are ‘peak-bagging’ Mount Kosciuszko.

It’s not long now till I leave my wife and boys behind for this next adventure but thankfully it’s not a long one. We leave on the 26^th of April, we summit on the 28 8and we are back on home soil on the ^3rd. This however does not mean that we will take 7 days to climb but as Alex-the Machine-Harris is in charge of training we will also be rock climbing some of the awe inspiring routes in the Blue Mountains and just for fun, a couple 100km sessions on the mountain bike.

Quick work! And as mentioned in the previous blog post, we will be keeping you abreast of all our anecdotes and challenges as we embark on every climb. So stick around because the next post will be coming to you from the land that brought you Vegemite, didgeridoos and Steve Irwin.