The Snowdon 5985m 20kg Challenge

The Team: Owen Hender, Alex Vincent, Pete Frost, Nick Smith, Keith Ketchley, Dave Durham, Andy Hopewell and Craig Hellinger

Technically, this is not our story. It’s of our family - James, Kelly, Poppy, Olly, Theo, and most importantly my nephew George’s story. George contracted Meningitis last December, it was bacterial and he was fully vaccinated. The Doctors said it was a 1 in 200,000 chance, after the darkest hours of their life, time in intensive care, George pulled through, and they dared to dream of him making a full recovery. Sadly after a suspected seizure, George was readmitted to hospital a few days before Christmas unable to hear and has now been left permanently deaf.

"I knew nothing about Meningitis, I knew something about a rash and a glass and that was it, symptoms that George did not have - and herein lies the problem. Thousands of people die each year, often because the symptoms are not understood, in George’s case his only symptom was lethargy but there are so many more." - James Vincent

James has taken it upon himself to climb Kilimanjaro, carrying the weight of George on his back (the 20kg). Here is a link, if you would like to support his challenge. This is where we interject into the story. See for us (Owen, Alex, Pete, Nick, Keith, Dave, Andy, and many more) - Jay is the glue that holds our friendship together, the reason we are all friends. Jay is also one of those people who will do anything for his mates and the ones he loves, like climb a mountain on the other side of the world. Although we can’t be there to walk those steps with him, we wanted to do something to show our support, to show he wasn’t quite in this alone.

So we’ve decided, as a team, to try and match Jay stride for stride. This small group of friends will break into two teams and each team will climb Snowdon three times in three days. Between the two teams, we will have climbed Snowdon a combined 6 times - a number that roughly matches the height of Kilimanjaro (Kilimanjaro = 5895m. x6 Snowdon's = 6510) AND each team will also carry the 20kg weight, similar to the weight Jay is carrying on his challenge.

Our training starts now and we’d be extremely grateful for any support you could show us, to George, and to the Meningitis Research Foundation.

Thank you one and all.