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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Travel
Milo Boyd

Mum-of-seven goes for world record climbing world's deadliest mountains

A mum of seven is set to become the first woman in world history to climb the second highest summit on each continent.

Jenn Drummond has completed the remarkable feat just a few short years after taking up climbing in her 30s, having taken it on to inspire her kids and fellow women.

The Park City, Utah mum targeted seven ascents only completed by one person before her and widely considered to be harder than the more famous Seven Summits - the highest peaks from each continent.

While the Second Summits may be shorter, they are less popular with novice climbers, less commercialised and much less well trod, meaning the chances of assistance is much lower and the chance of unexpected danger much higher.

The most famous of the group is K2, located on the border of Pakistan and China, and widely considered to be one of the most ferocious and regularly deadly mountains in the world - killing 25% of people who attempt to climb it.

The rest are not household names, but rise more than 40km collectively and are dangerous enough that one of Jenn's climbing companions had to be airlifted off for emergency frostbite treatment.

"If you do the Seven Summits, you've paid your way up there," Jenn told the Mirror not long after coming down from her final climb, to the top of Mount Logan in Yukon, Canada.

"The second summits are harder than the first, and they've not been done by a female before. They are typically more intense, logistically harder to get to.

"There are 1,500 people that climb Denali (formerly Mount McKinley) in a the climbing season. But Mount Logan, just 15 people total will try it. If you have a problem, you don't have 1,500 people to help solve it."

Arguably even more so than the Seven Summits, climbers are at the mercy of the elements on the less well trod paths Jenn successfully clambered up, some of which tumbled to -50C.

"One day we were in a storm and we had to sleep with all our gear on, because if it ripped our tent our only hope of survival was being wrapped in the broken canvas. The storm went on for 14 hours," Jenn said.

"Three of us went up Logan together, but my friend Ryan got hurt from frostbite so he had to be airlifted off. Ryan is recovering now, but he has damage. It will take months to heel."

As well as the biting cold and fear of death, one of the many barriers stopping people from climbing these big mountains is money. To climb the Second Summits it costs close to £400,000. K2 alone takes around £60,000, once all the flights and guides are taken into account.

Once Jenn decided she was going to take them on, she set about plotting her path and convincing various organisations to help cover some of the cost.

In doing so they were taking a big punt on the 43-year-old, who only started climbing a few years back and almost lost her life in a car crash five years ago.

"I got into a car wreck in 2018 and it should have taken my life, but didn't," she continued.

"When I was turning 40 in 2020, I thought I'd climb a mountain, to knock this year out. I was training for a mountain in Nepal while being a home school mum during Covid.

"One of my kids asked me, 'Why are you not climbing Everest?'"

Jenn took the question seriously and looked into scaling the world's highest peak. While she reasoned she could do it, her personal trainer suggested an even more impressive challenge - becoming the first woman to climb the Seven Second Summits.

"I thought my kids would think I'm cool if I got a Guinness World Record as they learned to read from that book," Jenn said.

"I was supported by people who are very much into the idea of women empowerment, When I went to Africa I helped a charity deliver an ambulance and I helped deliver some period products."

The mum has completed the task in an impressive two and a half years. Some of the summits take just a day to climb, while others stretch to six weeks.

All the while she's been juggling her responsibilities as a parent to seven children aged between 10 and 16 - a child for each of the peaks she has conquered. A nanny and Jenn's mum help with the job of looking after then.

The mum has even managed to work some of her climbing into her kids' education, through tweaking their home-schooling lessons during the pandemic.

"When I went to climb Everest to train for K2, I got their school involved," she recalled. "I went to their school and talked to them about setting goals. The kids could track me. I also did some calls from base camp over Zoom.

"When you have a community saying your mum is doing cool things, the kids think it's cool. I don't know if they understand the risk involved."

For Jenn - who now has to wait around nine months for official confirmation of her record - the journey has been far more rewarding than the achievement in itself.

"I set a goal and I thought the win would be climbing the seven summits," she said.

"The actual win was meeting people along the way. The journey in general has been so much of a gift. You have to start with a pursuit, be open for what unfolds."

"When I climbed the Mount Tyree I became the second female who wasn't a guide to do it. I remember being on that mountain waving a flag. It was amazing to think how far we'd come. It's magic when you're on this brink of discovery."

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