Seb - 2 Poles and 7 Summits

 Explorer's Grand Slam

Welcome

What

The Explorer's Grand Slam is the combination of climbing the 7 Summits as well as skiing to the North and South Poles. The 7 Summits is the term for climbing the highest mountain on each of the seven continents. There is debate about the technical aspect of these and you can see more on this in the Wikipedia links on the right hand side of the page. I have set them out below in the order that I did them:

1. 1. Kilimanjaro - Africa
2. 2. Aconcagua - South America
3. 3. North Pole
4. 4. Denali - North America
5. 5. Elbrus - Europe
6. 6. Carstenz Pyramid - Australasia
7. 7. Vinson - Antarctica
8. 8. South Pole
9. 9. Everest - Asia

Who

Before starting this, I had no real mountaineering experience although I have spent a lot of time hiking, biking and camping in mountains but never at any real altitude. I did have reasonable cold experience from my years living in Mongolia - walking to work in -40c wearing a suit with a jacket and scarf is quite an experience!

I have always been pretty fit and strong, possibly a bit more than the ideal build for a mountaineer, and have always coped well with the cold.

Prior to this I had a desk job for about 13 years with a few breaks to travel the world until I combined the two working in Kazakhstan and then Mongolia over a 4 year period.

Why

A very good question and one that I have dealt with unsatisfactorily on many occasions. To be honest I am not sure that there is even consistency in my answers.

There were a number of factors:

• Challenge. I have found a lot of what I have done in mountains fairly easy and looked on with envy at those going further or higher, this would be my chance to find out what was there and whether I could cope with it.
• I had come to a bit of a crossroads in my professional career and wanted to take some time out and do something significant before it became too late - neither companies nor families are too pleased with you taking time out to do a series of such dangerous expeditions. It turns out that  doing these expeditions gives you so much time to think that they are of questionable use in answering questions as you end up just asking yourself so many more!
• Lastly, I have never been particularly impressed by phobias in others despite the fact that I have two myself. The first is needles which cause me to squirm if I see them or faint if they are used on me. At least the latter has improved via various hospitalisations over the years. My second phobia is vertigo - the modern trend for glass buildings can make even days in an office problematic - and I thought it would be fairly interestingto do something where I was facing this head on.