Everest2: Future Hope School, Kolkata, India

About 2 years ago I attended a presentation at the Royal Geographical Society in London by former banker, Tim Grandage. Through a moving and inspirational presentation, Tim introduced the Fellows of the RGS to Future Hope, a school set up in 1988 to provide a home, education, medical aid and opportunity to some of the children of Kolkata who found themselves living on the streets of the city. These children suffer extreme poverty and have little or no ability to change their lives and more than anything they need the love and security of a home. Future Hope now runs eight homes where more than 200 former street children live and enjoy life.

CBC.ca | The Bridge | Students at Ridgetown high school will be experiencing a Mount Everest climb through a former alumnus. Heather Geluk will tackle Mount Everest in a couple of weeks....but before that, she flew in from England to talk with students at her old high school.

CBC.ca | The Bridge | Students at Ridgetown high school will be experiencing a Mount Everest climb through a former alumnus. Heather Geluk will tackle Mount Everest in a couple of weeks....but before that, she flew in from England to talk with students at her old high school.

Everest2: Ridgetown District High School, Canada - Attempt 2.0

Ridgetown District High School

My mother always says, “If you’re going to do something, do it well”. A rather broad statement but one that drove me to book my 2nd flight from London, England to Canada in the span of 13 days. I was about to embark on my 2nd attempt at presenting the Everest2 programme at Ridgetown District High School. The first valiant attempt was thwarted by a snow storm that cancelled school and therefore impacted my presentation..! Instead of presenting, I ended up sitting in Pinnells Pastries in Ridgetown comfort-eating Ben’s world famous honey-dipped donuts while the snow piled up outside. Not content with accepting defeat, I decided to make another attempt (this seems to be a recurring theme of stubbornness?). Before booking my 2nd attempt, I did have a look at the forecast and whilst it wasn’t tropical, there was no snow in the forecast and the temperature was a balmy -5 degrees. Spring has arrived in Canada…

Everest NE Ridge 2011 Itinerary

GPS 'Spot' Tracker

In Challenge 5 of the Everest2 Programme that I am conducting as part of my fieldwork on behalf of the students of Ridgetown District High School (Canada), Sevenoaks School (UK) and Future Hope School (India), the students will use GPS technology mapped onto Google Earth to virtually follow me over the course of the 2011 Everest Expedition on an adventurous climb up the world's highest mountain via the North East Ridge to the 8848m summit. 

Oxygen 101

One of the most rewarding 'side effects' of my high altitude and Everest experiences has been the opportunity it has presented to better understand my own physiology and the changes that are taking place within the body over the course of an expedition. As the saying goes, "knowledge is power" -  the trick is to learn to 'manage' these changes and work with them rather than against them...

Everest2: Sevenoaks School - Kent, United Kingdom

Sevenoaks School, UK

“To London Bridge please…” I requested as I threw my 120 litre kit-bag into the back of the black taxi. The cab driver looked at me inquisitively and asked whether I had the “chopped up remains of my ex-boyfriend in the bag and was going to throw them off the bridge”. I suppose that it was rather odd to see a rather flustered Burberry-clad, high-heeled, thirty-something-year old carrying around a small, trendy Paul Smith laptop bag and an absolutely gargantuan monstrous red kit-bag at 7:30 in the morning…  I decided it was likely not the best strategy to let my cabbie think he was ‘aiding and abetting’ an escaping criminal so I shared with him the contents of the bag --- 1 down suit, 1 jumar, 1 abseil device, 1 harness, 1 pair big boots, 1 pair inner boots, 1 pair big mitts, 1 buff, 2 carabineers, and an RGS coffee table book about the history of Everest… all in, about 20 kilos of kit in preparation of my presentation for Sevenoaks School.

Everest2: Ridgetown District High School, Canada

One of the reasons why I love Canada is the weather. Spending my ‘formative years’ knee deep in snow during the winter and knee deep in lake water during summer are two of the key highlights of growing up in South Western Ontario. The weather is generally quite predictable and, being a farmers daughter, has always played a dominant role in dinner table conversations particularly during planting and harvest season. Given that my father has since retired and weather now only seems to determine what clothing I’ll pack for my regular visits back to Canada, it was a slight surprise that ‘weather’ dominated the dinner table conversation on Thursday evening and ultimately impacted the Canadian-portion of the Everest2 programme.