11:48am Wednesday 22nd August 2007
By Jo Glover
A MEMBER of Yeovil Mountaineering Club has completed Britain's ultimate climbing challenge- scaling 60 of the country's most challenging peaks.
Capt Mark Stevenson, from the Army's royal electrical and mechanical engineers, works on the Apache team at Westlands in Yeovil and completed the challenge last Friday, August 17, 35 days and four hours after the first climb.
Mark, who lives in Stoke Sun Hamden, took on the challenge with climbing partner, Richard Mayfield, to help raise money for Mountain Rescue.
The pair, both members of the Army Mountaineering Association, have raised over £5,000 and hope the total will keep going up.
Mark said: "There's an anthology of the 60 hardest rock climbs in Britain, Hard Rock, and only a handful of people have climbed them all in 30 years.
"So we decided we'd climb them all over the summer and help raise some money."
The challenge included 22,000ft of climbing, 180 miles of walking, four ferry crossings and over 3,000 miles of driving.
Climbs were scattered throughout Britain from The Old Man of Hoy in the Orkney Islands to Coronation Street in Chedder Gorge.
Mark added: "There were about three or four days where we didn't climb because of the weather, but most of the time we were driving to another location anyway.
"I'm relieved I've done it - due to the weather it was really quite stressful.
"It would take around three hours to do a simple climb, I couldn't relax because at any one stage you were just thinking - I could slip off."
Mark and Rich are still raising money for the charity, to read more about the climbs or to make a donation, click on the link with this story at www.yeovilexpress.co.uk.
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