An Irish climber has smashed the world record for the fastest ascent of the seven highest mountains on all seven continents by a full month. Ian McKeever reached the summit of Mount McKinley in Alaska at 11.10pm (8.10am Irish time) on Saturday, slicing 31 days off the previous seven summits record of 187 days set by Canadian Daniel Griffith in November of last year.
"What an ordeal," McKeever said in a phone call back to Ireland yesterday after the descent to Camp II on McKinley. "It was horrendous; the weather was horrific and it took us three attempts. I thought the others were tough, but that was the toughest of them all. But I feel incredible now and very proud to be Irish."
McKeever and his British climbing partner Dave Pritt had made a bid for the 6,104m summit on Thursday night, but dangerously high winds had forced them to turn back at 5,550m. A second attempt also had to be abandoned when a German expedition member was hit by cerebral oedema, a potentially fatal brain swelling caused by altitude, but the summit was finally reached at the third attempt, almost a week later than planned.
McKeever's Ulster Bank Seven Summits Challenge kicked off on January 25th when he reached the summit of the 4,897m Antarctic peak Mount Vinson. By February 11th he had climbed Aconcagua (6,959m) in South America, followed on March 3rd by Kilimanjaro (5,895m) in Africa and Carstensz Pyramid (4,884m) in Australasia/Oceania on March 16th.
An attempt on the highest European peak, Mount Elbrus in Russia, had to be abandoned just over 200 vertical metres from the summit in mid-April when temperatures plummeted to minus 40, but McKeever successfully climbed Everest via the northeast ridge just over a month later on May 16th. Despite suffering from snow blindness on the Everest descent, McKeever returned to Russia less than a fortnight afterwards and this time reached the 5,642m summit of Elbrus.
That left just McKinley to conquer, but it is notoriously treacherous. Two climbers were killed in a fall there in May.