Less than 20 women in the world have climbed Earth’s seven highest peaks. Lei Wang is an American citizen now living in Boston but born in China who is currently training for a 2010 expedition to Mt. Everest. If she successfully summits Everest, she’ll become the first Asian-American woman who has until now climbed six of the seven summits (Kilimanjaro, Denali, Elbrus, Aconcagua, Carstensz Pyramid, Vinson and Everest) and skied to both North Pole and South Pole. Once Lei has climbed Everest, she’ll be one of only 10 people to have completed what’s referred to as the “7 + 2” (Seven Summits and the Two Poles). She hopes that her example will especially inspire Chinese People, American immigrants and women around the world to challenge themselves to do something they once considered impossible.Tvi - Tvi - Good - Luck - Lei.

PS: Support Lei, Inspire Others

I still can’t believe that we didn’t get a chance to cycle many thousands kilometres in Norway this year. I am really angry, but I know that as time goes by angriness will start to ease. In the meantime, we are trying to watch documentaries and read as much as possible about others’ bike adventures to compensate our hungriness for adventures. Some days ago we saw the documentary about Mark Beaumont’s quest to break the World Record for cycling around the world. His achievement and cycling was remarkable, but his documentary was just terrible. We never got a sense of who he was nor did he gave any indication of what his soul was made of or why he did this. Nowdays he’ll start cycling 15 thousand miles of road from Anchorage, Alaska to Ushuaia in Southern Argentina. He’ll also climb the two highest peaks on the continent, McKinley and Aconcagua, and we can follow him online on his ‘Cycling the Americas’ blog. I hope that his reports this time will include more of worldly drama than just  internal struggle and moaning.  

“I can’t believe the news today, oh, I can’t close my eyes and make it go away.” I could probably start to sing this U2’s song right away because I spent whole day reading following titles: American climber dead on Aconcagua, Losing a New Friend on Aconcagua’s Polish Direct, Climber Dies in “Serious” Mount Hood Fall, Three Climbers Die on Aconcagua, Rob Gauntlett died in a climbing accident in the Mont Blanc mountain etc. I recalled Robert MacFarlan’s words from ‘Mountains of Mind’: “People who regulary take big risks in the mountains must be considered either profoundly selfish or incapable of sympathy for those who love them”.  On the one hand, I understand what he is writing, but I am not sure I agree. To express it with Wanda’s words: ”I’d rather don’t waste my life. I prefer to risk it.” On the other hand, when Goran last year went to Denali and I read about two Japanese climber missing on Denali, I was catching my breath for the first time. I knew much more about risks and dangers on Denali than about Aconcagua or Mt. Hood, two mountains that Goran climbed some years before. Still, without risk - within the lines, we’ll stagnate.

Goran on the summit of Mt. Hood. For the gallery, click on the picture.