Adelaide mountaineer Katie Sarah prepares for trek to Manaslu, then South and North poles
IF she succeeds, Katie Sarah will become the first woman in the world to conquer the seven highest mountains, seven highest volcanoes, and the North and South poles.
WITH a car tyre tied to her waist and her West Highland terrier Jock on her back, Adelaide mountaineer Katie Sarah puts in some last-minute training for a challenge that will literally take her to the ends of the earth.
The 49-year-old mother-of-three, who recently completed the last leg of the seven-seven (climbing the highest mountain and highest volcanoes on every continent) will tomorrow leave for Nepal for an attempt on the summit of Manaslu.
All going to plan she will celebrate her 50th birthday on the mountain, which has claimed 52 lives and at 8163m is well within what mountaineers refer to as the “death zone”.
But it’s what she’ll do when she gets back that’s truly amazing – skiing to the South and North Poles.
If she makes it she’ll be one of only four people – and the only woman – to have conquered the seven-seven and both poles, a feat known in mountaineering as the Grand Slam.
Sarah, who runs her own adventure travel company, leaves for Antarctica from South America on December 5 and plans to tackle the ice of the northern climes next April.
She said she was looking to challenging herself on flat ground for a change.
“There are some similarities between mountain climbing and reaching the poles,” Sarah said. “You have to be very fit because you’re pulling a sled behind you. Mentally I think it will be at least as hard as climbing a mountain, if not harder.”
And while the South Pole sits firmly on solid land, the North Pole throws up an added challenge of being located on floating ice.
“There are stories of people skiing for a whole day only to look at their GPS to find they’re actually further away,” Sarah said.