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 Annabelle Bond is back with Elbrus 2004 | ||||||
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AUGUST 7TH - LONDON -
MOSCOW INTRODUCTION AND DIARY
I cant actually believe that
I am on the flight to Russia with all my bags hopefully safely below. This
time last year when I was heading to Ecuador to meet the Chilean team, the
airline managed to loose one of my bags. It didn't look so organized on my
part showing up for a mountain climb with a bag full of bikinis and
shorts!
To say that the past few
weeks have been hectic is an understatement. Two weeks ago I was not
sponsored trying to organize a years worth of climbing - seven mountains
in total, with the help of the amazingly patient and supportive Guy Cotter
from Adventure Consultants.
Because of the limited time
between making my decision to try and be the fastest woman to complete the
seven summits and catching the correct season with which to start climbing
the first mountain ( Elbrus), sponsorship was extremely difficult to
obtain. It needed a quick decision from a very senior executive who could
waiver the corporate beaurocracy to give me the green light. As I fly to
Russia today to climb Mt Elbrus I have the support of three incredible
companies. From my asian roots and my hometown Hong Kong, I have the
support of Li and Fung Group, and from the USA I am backed by BlackRock
and Tudor Capital. I couldn't wish for higher quality sponsorship and I
pray I can fulfill my side of the deal by taking their flags to the
remaining seven highest peaks on each continent.
Generating media interest in
the UK about my proposed goal has been extremely hard, especially when ur
up against big brother!! My persistently hard work has paid off and im now
having some success with the press here. I want people to be able to see
what a hugely physical and mentally challenging task I have undertaken
that is 50% reliant on weather. I have handled everything myself from
organizing flights, hotels and liaising almost daily on logistics with Guy
Cotter, to doing interviews and trying to find representation.
I have unsuccessfully tried
to recruit my mother to act as my assistant!! I am an unfit wreck as I sit
here on the plane headed for Moscow.
I couldn't have done all
this without the help of Rob Montague at RKMPR who has been handling my
media here in the UK. He has patiently sat with me on interviews and been
a great friend and supporter of my climbing exploits since I met him a few
days prior to my Everest departure this spring!
Richard Lewis from Summit
Hotels has tied his appropriately named brand to my quest and is providing
accommodation for myself, Guy Cotter and Luis Benitez for the duration of
the Seven summit climb. It will be a great luxury for us whilst not
roughing it in tents and Summit Hotels are located in nearly all of my
scheduled destinations from Alaska to South America. I want to thank
Richard Lewis and the Summit Hotel group for their support and hope to do
justice to their name!
Whilst on Everest this
spring Dave from Discovery channel suggested I contact a "hot production"
guy in London to help me out with advice with the filming of my seven
summit speed challenge. James Brabazon has been extremely helpful to me.
When not filming in a war zone which is his specialty, he has taken the
time to give me some great advice, contacts and endured an inundation of
phone and text messages over the purchase of my camera equipment. My
camera with Mikes, headphones etc was purchased at 6.00pm before departing
the following morning at 9.00am - talk about cutting it fine!!
The North Face have provided
my equipment for the year ahead and are fully behind me and my goal and
have given me everything from down jackets, backpacks to duffel bags which
has been great.
I have been a ball of
nervous energy - having spent 10 years in real estate trying to start a
career in the outdoors entertainment industry has been almost as
challenging as climbing the mountains! The legal side of things,
sponsorship, agents promoting and organizing events for the Eve Appeal
have kept me chained to my computer until 2.00am most nights - im just
hoping ive maintained a level of fitness that will enable me to perform on
Elbrus.
I also have to make a
special mention to Guy Cotter of Adventure Consultants. They not only are
the top guiding company specializing in the Seven Summits but he was
extremely flexible in helping me pursue this opportunity. If you read my
Everest Diary you will have read that I did a "quality control" assessment
of all the groups at basecamp from their mess tent, tents and food to the
safety measures of their guides on the mountain and Adventure Consultants
came out far and away the most superior. Guy and Luis Benitez ( one of the
best guides out there) will between the two of them divide the arduous
task of guiding me on the seven mountains that I would like to climb
within a year. I want to thank Guy for all his help with my challenge.
As well as climbing on
behalf of the Eve Appeal, I have been busy promoting awareness for The Eve
Appeal in all interviews, TV appearances and radio talks that I have done
since being back in the UK. It has all paid off and between my family and
myself we have raised more than one million pounds to the cause. I hope to
raise the same again over the course of the next year. Thank you to
everyone who has supported me by making a donation to The Eve Appeal.
I couldn't have done all
this without the love and support of my family who are fully behind me on
this next challenge. My mother has carefully monitored my diet and health
and through which has enabled me to feel fit enough for this climb despite
the lack of exercise I have done.
Im sitting on the plane to
Russia and we a crew of people whom are all connected through living in
Hong Kong. I have my great friend Sean Diffley with me, he's trying to
climb the Seven Summits also. Its great that we are finally doing a
mountain together having been talking about it for 2 years since I went
and stayed with him when he was living in Rio de Janerio in Brazil.
Sissel Smaller is a new friend whom my sister knows from Hong Kong. She is
a pretty blonde Norwegian, amazing athlete and is climbing Everest
next Spring with Russ Brice, the king of the North side of Everest. We
also have the Benetars from South Africa, who used to spend a lot of time
in Hong Kong whilst owning a garment business. Tony and his wife Lisa and
Gregor. I haven't met them before although we all have a ton of mutual
friends. Luis Benitez is guiding all of us and we will meet him in
Moscow. Seanie has Moscow wired having spent a lot of time there through
his work and has arranged dinner for us in a hot new restaurant. I hadn't
planned on going out to dinner in Moscow wearing my trainers but I guess
that is what's going to happen!
We all met at my house in
London this morning at 10.30am. I was nervous that my luggage was going to
be overweight ( definitely the camera equipment) We had a great guy
checking us in and all our luggage was surprisingly enough not overweight
- nothing gets my blood boiling more than having to pay excess baggage on
boots, crampons etc...
We have a serious prima
donna sitting in front of us, she has told Sean to move his legs from
pushing her seat and has just told Sissel and I to keep our voices down.
She makes me look like an angel! We are now in a death stare war.. We are
just starting our descent into Moscow, ive never been before so im very
excited about visiting a new country and being exposed to their culture.
Im already nervous about our internal flight to Mineral Vody tomorrow. We
fly on a dodgy internal flight just over 2 hours to the South to the
mountainous borders of where Georgia and Armenia meet Russia near the
Black Sea ( hence the varied weather on Elbrus brought in by its proximity
to the coast)
I didn't really anticipate
being back in the snow and ice so soon after Everest but here I am on the
beginning of another climb and climbing without the Chilean team for the
first time in a year. Im always nervous prior to an expedition and I hope
I can perform to the best of my ability and do justice to the amazing
sponsors that have put their faith in me.
The first drama started when
poor Lisa Benetars bag didn't show up in Moscow. The Africans had all
collected luggage off their flight from South Africa in order to try and
prevent a situation like this. Our dinner plans were almost blown out the
window after a 2 hour wait at the airport but finally we tried to get the
bag sent directly to Mineral Vody ( seeing would be believing) and headed
to dinner at midnight. We had a great meal and got back to our hotel
around 2.00am. Sissel and I were sharing a room and it was suffocating
hot. We had 3 hours of sleep before we were dute to be up and ready for
the flight to Mineryl Vody.
8th AUGUST
I tried to ignore the sound
of Sissels alarm going off at 6.45 am. I was exhausted, the previous night
I had worked until 3.00am so this was my second consecutive night with a
serious lack of sleep. Not conjuicive to an imminent mountain climb where
sleep on a mountain generally eludes you. We did a fly by visit to Red
Square and the Kremlin which was amazing, I wish we could have spent
longer there to learn more about Russia's fascinating history.
The domestic airport was a
shambles, there were no trolleys anywhere so we had to carry our 14 huge
duffel bags from the carpark to the check in. I could feel my arms growing
under the weight of lugging numerous bags around. All of us sweating
profusely we had to sort our overweight fees as you are only allowed 23kg
per person ( practically my hand luggage!! The plane was positively
prehistoric I would estimate at least 50 years old. I almost started
crying when I went to the bathroom prior to take off and saw duck tape on
the walls. I haven't been on a plane this old since my ex fiance, kipp and
I were involved in a plane crash down in Fiji in 2001. I was terrified.
The take off had me shaking in a ball when part of the ceiling fell down
combined with the collapse of my tray, which Luis stuck back up with duck
tape to stop it falling onto me constantly.
Amazingly enough we landed
safely in Mineral Vody and once again had to drag our huge duffel bags to
the carpark - my only work out in about a week! We now have a 3 hour bus
journey to the valley where Elbrus is located. The weather looks pretty
ominous. Sure enough as we approach the valley where we are staying the
black clouds develop into rain, thunder and lightening not a good sign for
our climb I think to myself... especially with a target summit attempt on
Friday 13th!
Our hotel was a small pretty
hotel surrounded by pine trees and once again we lugged our 14 bags up to
our rooms. We are all in our own rooms tonight and its way more civilized
than our hotel in Moscow. We all headed down to the sauna where the boys
cranked it up to about 100degrees, it was unbearable. We had dinner, im
not overly impressed with the food here I have to confess - I was even
missing Nepals dahl baht!! I had the boniest most anorexic fish you could
wish for and almost killed myself choking on one of the bones!!
Luis gave us our briefing
for tomorrow and im now about to fall into a much needed sleep!!
10th AUGUST
We were woken again at 7.00am
and by 9.00am we were doing the duffel shuffle up the mountain.. we were
getting two cable cars and then one of the dodgy single seater chairlifts to
"barrel land" where we would be spending the next few nights. We formed a
daisy chain to pass the huge bags between us, I was trying to figure out the
part of the chain that required the least work but it was all pretty
strenuous! We arrived at the barrels by midday and they are exactly as they
are pronounced - old silver and red rusting barrels. Its a fairly panoramic
view from here, noticeably cooler and a distinct aroma of urine! The six of
us are settling into our barrel, all very cozy.
we had lunch in the mess
barrel, for every meal they add dill which is one of the few things I
completely hate! We sat next to Tom Milne and 2 of his clients at lunch,
they had just made the summit - I was most envious! The climbing community
is so small, Tom had met Andronico, Misail and co down in Antarctica in 2002
whilst at Patriot Hills.
After lunch we went on an
acclimatisation hike to 4,200 meters which is the highest Lisa Benetar has
been. The weather varies from sun to big black clouds bringing with them
small hail stones which were painfully pelting us in the face. Sissel is the
most organized in terms of gear and equipment - I have the heaviest bag and
am always the least prepared, ive received a lecture from Luis about what I
bring to Vinson already..
11th AUGUST
We all had a fairly sleepless
night, sean and Shoure ( my nickname for gregor) were like elephants as they
went past sissel and I to go to the loo in the middle of the night waking us
both up - we are in the front of the barrel so hear all traffic. We all
tossed and turned and felt awful when Luis woke us at 7.15am. We had
breakfast and I chatted to Tom and his crew before we set off for our next
acclimatisation hike. This was everyone's first time in crampons with the
exception of Myself and Sissel and they all did great. Everyone was strong
and we made a decision to go and touch Pastakova rocks today instead of
tomorrow as the weather forecast wasn't great. When we arrived at Pastokova
rocks the visibility was zero, it was really cold, windy and starting to
hail - nothing scenic at all. We went back to the barrels for a late lunch
and it started to pour with rain. Luis is trying to negotiate for us to stay
an extra couple of nights at the barrels opposed to heading up to a dingier
hut 1,000ft higher up the mountain. We are now all in the barrel taking a
siesta and reading books. we have a rest day planned for tomorrow. Our
summit day attempt is scheduled for Friday 13th luckily I believe in the
Chinese characters in terms of superstition whereby the number 4 is unlucky.
The rest of the afternoon was
spent playing cards. Sean, shoure, sissel and myself played cards, I lost
and was almost laughed out of the barrel when I offered the others some
tips. Dinner was at 8.00pm and we had the same soup we have had the past few
lunch and dinners. The ingredients don't really bode well with altitude -
kidney beans, onions and garlic and we are praying our barrel doesn't blow!
" what are we all doing in a barrel in the middle of Russia" asked Sean as
we all got ready for bed - u may well ask!
12TH AUGUST
We all slept really well
thanks to a homeopathic sleep aid that we all took. Luis woke us up
filming us all which was not a pretty sight - I hate getting filmed
unprepared!! The bad news this morning is poor Seanie twisted his ankle
falling off the barrel steps. His ankle looked hugely distorted as he
reluctantly showed it to us all at breakfast. Sean held it together pretty
well as Luis pointed out that unless it was better extremely soon ( like
that night) sean would not be able to go for the summit. Luis did not want
to divide the group with sean lagging behind on a bad ankle. Such bad luck
for Sean that u cant even try for the summit. The weather continued to be
awful, lots of snow alternating with rain and zero visibility - we were
all a little disheartened. For me, its a whole new ball game being
obligated to my sponsors, so the frustration when the weather is bad is
hard to contain. We are definitely all barreled out that is for sure! We
spent the morning packing for our summit attempt in the unlikely chance of
their being a break in the weather, and we are now back in the barrel
after another lunch of dill soup!
Greg, sissel and I spent the
afternoon out in the snow taking photos. all was going great until greg
got water on the lenses of the camera which wound up our photo shoot
rather imminently. Back into the barrel to wait for dinner.. we have phone
reception in barrel land and we have all been texting friends to find out
what the weather is going to do overnight... None of my friends responded
surprise surprise - they are all in either st tropez or ibiza millions of
miles away from a remote mountain in the middle of Russia! I spoke to my
Mum on the phone and she was surprised when I said that bad weather may
prevent us from making the summit - an indicator of the type of
expectation level people have of my ability to pull off the next 7
mountains. No one can imagine how much weather can prevent you from
climbing a mountain. We are all doing last minute preparations in the
unlikely event we depart for the summit at 3.00am tomorrow morning.
AUGUST FRIDAY 13TH
Luis came in to our barrel
at 3.00am and gave us 5 reasons why we would be not going for the summit
today - we have a little more time, seans ankle would be able to rest for
one more day, we wouldn't have to break trail etc etc. I have to confess
I didn't really listen beyond that. I feel a little more stressed out
about obligations to sponsors so I really have to bite my lip and be
patient when told good advice... patience is crucial in mountaineering and
I really have to work on this aspect as I'm completely impatient in my day
to day life, I expect everything to be done yesterday ( a trait that was
generally fulfilled when I lived in Hong Kong)
We all went back to sleep
having had to witness Gregor and Seanie do a mister universe, parading
through our barrell flexing their muscles en route to the loo! We woke up
again at a much more sociable hour of 7.30am and it was a bluebird day...
Its frustrating seeing other people going for the summit when u are
hanging out in barrel land not doing much! however Luis's decision not to
go for the summit today proved right when some really bad weather crept up
the valley and soon we were all in a white out again and it began snowing
heavily again. We packed up our barrel and prepared to move a thousand
feet higher up the mountain to a hut where the accommodation was
inevitably taking a sharp decline! A snow cat was meant to take our huge
duffel shuffle up the mountain - once we had ferried the bags at least a
little bit of the way - wouldn't be the same without lifting some of it
ourselves! Luis has busted my ploy of going to the bathroom as soon as the
bags need to be lifted, so I'm reluctantly fully involved in helping shift
the bags to the snow cat. The snow cat was broken and we watched a hugely
fat woman in a bikini posing around in front of the snow cat whilst her
boyfriend tinkered away underneath it. Eventually the snow cat started up
and we loaded all our gear and all the boys except Luis into the cat and
they headed off up the mountain to the hut. Luis then took the 3 girls up
to the hut, hopefully slow enough so all the bags would be all offloaded
by the time we arrived!! It was good to get some exercise as we made our
way up the mountain, the weather was still with very limited visibility.
We are now in two small
dormitories in the hut, sissel, Luis and I are crammed in with Vladimir
and Lena our cook in one room and the rest of the crew were across the
other side of the hut. We packed and organized all our gear again in case
we were going to go for the summit tonight which I'm really really hoping
we do.
We had our usual lunch
consisting of dill soup, stale bread and biscuits and Luis provided all
sorts of other stuff from the states which went down really well! We are
now taking a siesta, given that I didn't sleep a wink last night I am now
quite tired and anxious to rest prior to tomorrow when I hope we are going
to give it a go.
AUGUST 14TH - SUMMIT DAY!!
I was lucky if I slept an
hour last night. Lena, our cook arrived in at 10.00pm ( we were all in bed
at 8.30pm) with a candle in her hand that almost burnt down our whole
dormitory as she whizzed it past all our down jackets and the wooden
beams!! The hut above our hut had burnt down the previous year in about 5
mins flat, so sissel and I held our breath until Vladimir replaced the
candle with a headlamp! Sleep completely eluded me and I woke up at 1.30am
when Luis went and checked out the weather - we were on for it!! I was so
tired at this point it wa almost difficult to rustle up the energy yet
alone the excitement I normally feel prior to a summit attempt. I normally
rely on the familiar rush of adrenalin that kicks in at the antisocial
hours u leave for when u go for it! We all got up and were ready for our
3.00am breakfast. I'm always very unorganized getting ready to leave, but
somehow last minute it all falls into place. While Sissel and I were
waiting for the snow cat to take us to Pastakov rocks we saw 3 shooting
stars and the planet Saturn in the night sky - it was really amazing and
something I love to experience when I'm in the mountains. The snow cat
ride was pretty hair raising as we were all thrown against each other
trying to avoid falling out - u just knew the guy would probably keep
going if that happened!
We started climbing at 4.45
am and it was a long way up. Gregor, sean and i started singing at one
point and big mistake, suddenly we all fell into a big lull and each of us
had to take a gu shot to recover. We continued upwards, all silent and
collecting our own thoughts. Luis keeps a really great pace and is
vigilant about water/snack breaks which I think makes him such a good
guide. We all continued upwards, it seemed to go on forever and although
the conditions were perfect, there was an icy wind and I really felt the
cold. By the time we arrived at the traverse I was feeling lousy, no
energy in my legs resulting from 2 nights of non existent sleep and I was
freezing. We finally reached a sunny point on the saddle where we stopped
for a break of about 20 minutes. Elbrus is a volcano that split in two
pieces when it last erupted, hence the saddle where we were sitting was in
the middle of the two peaks.
The break here completely
revived me and I started to feel really good. Sean had taken so much
ibuprofen for his ankle that he was a little spaced out and not feeling so
great at this point although was not complaining at all! He really made so
little fuss about his ankle, he was really amazing and strong. We
continued steeply upwards from the saddle, all walking like ducks so that
our crampons were gripping firmly onto the sharp incline of the slope. We
took about 1hr and 15 minutes to reach the summit from the saddle.. It was
really exciting when we arrived, Tony ( Luis's main disciple!) went to the
summit first with his wife Lisa - it was Lisa's first mountain and was
seanie, greg and Tony's second of the seven summits. It was Sissel's first
of the Seven summits and my third. We were all ecstatic to be on the
summit and we spent ages hugging each other and taking photos. I'm afraid
I took the most time with the photos getting all the summit pictures for
all my sponsors and everyone was really patient with me!! Luis warned me
that all the flags need to be smaller and I need to do this a lot quicker
- his example was when he was on the summit of Vinson last year, he spent
a total of 60 seconds on the summit and it was - 60!!!
We came down slowly, seans
ankle hurt way more on the descent and he was really in pain now. The
weather was very warm and it really was the perfect day to go for the
summit. It took about 3 hours to come down and I was trying not to run to
the snow cat once I saw it at Pasakov rocks - I definitely didn't want it
to leave without us!
We got back to the hut, had
a quick dill soup and all crashed, I now think I'm so overtired that I
cant sleep - this is really not good. Its now after dinner and I'm taking
a homeopathic sleeping aid again to try and get some rest - I hope they
work! I'm so happy that we all reached the summit, it was such a perfect
day and it was great to do it all together especially with sean and his
twisted ankle. Sean and I have been talking about doing one of the seven
summits together for so long now , so its great to have done Elbrus with
him. Tomorrow we have the big duffel shuffle back down the mountain and
we are all looking forward to being back in the ozone hotel!!!
AUGUST 15TH
I still couldn't sleep, I
don't know what's going on! Poor Lena has a really bad cough and was
coughing during the night which kept me awake. Luis decided that our room
needed ventilating and opened the door of our dormitory. Every time a
flash light goes on I would wake up. Sissel and I eventually woke for
good at 6.30am and my shin was so painful due to being kicked in the
night. My boots have rubbed a big open wound on my shin which had been
made even worse by our summit day. sissel and Luis helped me bandage it up
and we were all very excited to be heading down valley! We had breakfast
and were all packed up and ready about an hour before the snow cat arrived
we were so keen to leave! We were all sitting on the porch in the sun
outside the hut and taking photos when suddenly what looked what we
thought was a flag flew past and landed between Luis and myself. We
all freaked out when we realized that due to the high winds all the used
toilet paper was being blown from the loos round to the front of the porch
and onto our photo session! Yuk, we were saved from the inundation of used
loo roll by the arrival of the snow cat and we were even more keen to
leave at this point! We were giving a guy with a broken ankle a lift down
to the barrels in our cat and we had soon loaded the huge mass of bags
onto the snow cat and were headed down the mountain. Fourteen big bags
onto the single seater chairlift, two cable car rides down to the valley
floor was exhausting work especially as it got progressively warmer as we
moved lower. If only you could feel the weight of some of these bags ( not
mine of course!!) then you would empathize with how arduous the duffel
shuffle is...
We grabbed some beers from
the local shop and headed back to our hotel for a much needed shower and
something different to eat than dill soup!
After lunch it was such a
nice day that I decided to go for a run alongside the river and through
the forest. It was truly beautiful looking at all the snowcapped peaks
from the forest as I ran. I headed back after an hour or so and then went
into the sauna with sissel and Luis. Not the best move for me as I think I
was already dehydrated from the climb, made worse by my run and then
finally the sauna! prune like I ran back up to my room feeling shaky!!
Dinner was at 7.00pm and it was very relaxed, a delicious steak ( we had
banned bony fish from our menu!) a few beers and seanies vodka..we then
went and watched some of the movie that Luis had filmed from the climb.
I'm trying to document all the climbs to show people what it takes to
climb 7 mountains on 6 different continents in a year and in some cases
with an eclectic bunch of people with me!
We went to bed at 11.00 as
the good news delivered to us at supper was that we were getting up at
3.00am in order to catch our internal flight from Mineral Vody back to
Moscow!!
AUGUST 16TH
I couldn't think where I was
when I heard a vague ringing in the darkness of my room. I really felt
like I had been drugged, 3 nights of nearly zero sleep and a shot or 2 of
vodka will really do the trick. I dragged myself out of bed and got ready
to leave the hotel by 4.00am. We had to settle our hotel bill which
included trivialities like a sachet of butter and 6 people in the sauna!!
It was a 3 hour bus ride to
the airport and I tried to fall back asleep but it was way too
uncomfortable. Sean had his black eye shades on and managed to sleep the
whole way - I was most envious.
The plane was the same
decrapped antique that flew us out to Mineral Vody, I was already nervous.
I was wedged between sissel and Luis on a seat that was permanently
reclined much to the annoyance of the fat overly made up woman sitting
behind me. She complained to 2 different air hostesses about my seat and
kept giving me death stares every time I looked up from my reclined
position and caught her eye. Sissel and I had the pleasant aroma of stale
puke wafting between our seats so we both wrapped scarves around our faces
and it just added to the horrific atmosphere and general careless demeanor
of this plane. Amazingly enough it was a fairly smooth flight and I
didn't dig my nails into sissel or Luis's arms too hard, and we arrived in
Moscow to find the weather was freezing. For the first time I was the only
person whom was prepared for this weather by still carrying my down jacket
- this was purely by default as I was planning to use it as a pillow to
sleep on, but all the others had packed theirs so I was nice and warm and
looking organized for a change!
We said good bye to Luis at
the airport, he was off back to the states from another airport. I next
see Luis in November when he is guiding me on Vinson and Aconcagua. That
is the plan weather permitting, and will be a very tough 5 weeks for me.
The rest of us decided that
we really needed to have pizza so sean got on his phone to make the
arrangements and an hour later we were all eating giant pizzas and
anything we could get our hands on after the dill soup diet! We stopped in
a market on our way back to the airport and all brought KGs of caviar.
Sean told me that it would last me about 2 weeks but iv just managed to
eat most of it with sissel on the flight back to London and im now feeling
very sick and extremely thirsty!!
We are now almost in London
and I really had the most amazing trip. This group has been really fun to
climb with and given the very strong personalities on the climb it was
amazing that it was argument free - often quite unusual when it comes to
mountain climbing!! Gregor, Tony and Lisa were so much fun to have with us
on the climb and it was exciting to be part of Lisa's first mountain
experience and hope she goes onto do many more!! Sean was such a
superstar, continuing onto make the summit on a twisted ankle and of
course organizing our social part of the trip in Moscow. Sissel was a
great partner in crime and an extremely accomplished climber and I wish
her all the best on her up and coming Everest trip next spring. It was a
great effort on Luis's part to get us all to the top and to choose a great
summit day!!
I am so happy that I
fulfilled my obligations to my sponsors and my own personal goal and im
now back to finalize the rest of my sponsorship before departing to climb
in Africa mid September. It was a truly great climb and a bonding
experience and Russia will always be a very happy memory for me.
This past Spring Annabelle Annabelle Bond Summited Everest!
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