A huge thank you

I was going to make my second post the full story of how I came to be doing this extreme adventure, but that will have to wait while I say a huge thank-you to all those who have supported me so far. It's only been a week since I began fundraising in earnest and you have already helped me raise nearly £900.

And that generosity brings with it even more good news. My employer's charitable foundation will match my fundraising up to a limit of £750. Thanks to your help and deep pockets, I've submitted an application for the maximum matching grant.

The application has to go through an approval process, but I hope to have some great news to share in a couple of weeks' time.

In the meantime, a huge thank you to Jeff, both Andrews, Nick, all three Pauls, Lisa, Dimple, Ed, Donna, Darren, David, Catherine, Vikki, Karen, Jehan, Tim, As, Adrian, Alan, Kathy, Dani, Thomas and Peter for getting me this far.

But there is still further to go. As you know, I'm aiming to raise £1 for every metre I will be above sea level, assuming I make it to the summit. As you may also know, I am the sort of eccentric, statistics-obsessed Englishman who can't quite work out whether he aspires to be like Dave Gorman or is secretly relieved to be slightly less eccentric and statistics-obsessed [1] . So I thought it would be fun to translate the amounts we've raised into where I would be on the map if I were standing at that altitude. There are, of course, two ways we can do this:

(1) Where I would be on the ascent of Aconcagua
(2) Which alternative summit I could stand on if I chickened out and decided to climb that one instead.

Are you a glass-half-full or a glass-half-empty person? Or can't you decide? [2] Make up your mind, because it's important. If you're a half-full type, then the exciting news is that I'd already have flown from London to Buenos Aires to Mendoza (760m), collected my park permit (more on that later) and boarded a coach bound for Penitentes, our last hotel stop before the walk begins. Quite exciting.

But if you're half-empty, then that's peanuts compared to where we need to get to. In mountain terms, we're at the summit of Aonach Shasuinn, Creagan na Beinne or Sgurr Dhomhnuill. And no, I hadn't heard of them either. I had to look them up on Wikipedia. Heck, I've been up six mountains higher than that on a wet weekend in Snowdonia. Call that altitude? The Andes don't even dignify anything that low with a name, and neither do the Alps, unless it's an hotel or one of those Tyrolean villages they paint on chocolate boxes.

Frankly, it's not good enough. You shouldn't be sponsoring me to go and climb a British mountain we've never heard of and can't pronounce. Sponsorship demands something more, well, demanding. Like a South American mountain you've never heard of and can't pronounce! Much better. Dig deep, donate, get me off that bus and onto the trail. Penitentes is 2,580m above sea level, so we are over a third of the way to the point where I actually have to start walking for your money.

Thanks for all your support, now and in the future,

Jason

[1] Though I would perhaps be more relieved if I laughed at his jokes at the same time as the rest of the audience, instead of slightly ahead of them.
[2] Or are you, as Gary Larson so perfectly put it, someone who ordered a cheeseburger?