Greek climbing legends Vanessa Archontidou and Christina Flambouri are one peak away from completing the ‘7 summits’ challenge at Everest. By doing so, they are showing that there is no mental or physical barrier when a woman sets her mind to it.
This is no small feat and one that more women are attempting. This year saw 605 female climbers ascend Everest, the highest yet, making the gender-gap of this male-dominated sport significantly smaller however they are still 12 per cent of total summiters.
Of the very few climbers who managed to reach the top in May – a month that took the lives of 18 climbers – seven were members of the Mingma team, that included Archontidou and Flambouri.
The expedition took months (in reality years) of training for the two brave Greek women, at a time when hiking officials attributed most of the deaths to weakness, exhaustion and delays on the crowded route to the 29,035 feet summit.
Even though the duo was planning to complete their ascent on 5 April, due to unexpected weather conditions and the “traffic” on the climbing routes due to the increased number of alpinists, they reached the top on Monday 20 May raising the Greek flag at 8,848 metres above ground.
“It was already the 20th of May and there has not been any good weather. As a result, all the climbers were stressing that the season would end without a ‘weather window’ having opened. The days that the weather was not bad were very limited meaning that all the climbers waiting to ascend had to move simultaneously. This doesn’t normally happen. In previous years there had been more good days and there were breaks in mountain ‘traffic’,” they said.
Their last remaining peak to complete the Seven Summits Challenge will be Vinson Massif in Antarctica, which stands 4,892 meters (16,049 feet) above sea level.