Climbing@alanarnette.com

With the holidays upon us, I wanted to send out a greeting along with a Road Back to Mount Everest: Memories are Everything update.

I leave for Aconcagua in a couple of weeks. This will be my second climb of the highest mountain outside the Himalayas. I summited back in 2005. I will be going with Ryan Waters and Dave Elmore of Mountain Professionals, the same team that I will go with to Orizaba and Everest. So it will be a great chance to get to know each other better, get some training in and practice some skills at high altitude.

I will try to post some dispatches but it is more difficult from South America than in Asia due to having to use the Iridium satellite system.

As I reflect on my Journey I want to share some more personal thoughts with you, my subscribers and as always, thank you for your continued support.

Before I leave for Aconcagua, I want to share with parents, teachers, educators and anyone else interested an idea I am working on.

I want to invite you to join a special opportunity in 2008 as I return to Mt. Everest. As you subscribers know, this is part of my Road Back to Mt. Everest: Memories are Everything - a year long effort to summit Everest and raise $100,000 for Alzheimer's research. The opportunity is for students to get personally involved and for educators to incorporate the climb into their curriculum.

As students follow my climb, I will call into the classroom a few times and do some Q&A via email. They will learn about the culture, geography and climbing. I will be climbing from Tibet (China) on the north side. The Chinese are taking the Olympic torch to the summit as part of their preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. This may be of interest to some.

On their side, the students could do some fund raising via events, car washes, etc. for Alzheimer's. The donations would go directly to Cure Alzheimer's Fund with 100% of the funds going to research - none to me, my climbing expenses or the CAF's overhead. In addition to raising money, the cascading impact of increased awareness through the students, their parents and other teachers should be high.

A PowerPoint presentation is available upon request that I created for CAF that may be useful in conversations with your School Board. I already have two schools who have "adopted" me. I can probably handle one or two more and would like one from outside the US. Please contact me with your questions or interest. I am leaving for Everest at the end of March.

Climb On!

Alan

The snow was blowing sideways as the temperature flirted with 10 F. The drifts were small but the ground was covered with a lite blanket of white. I stepped gingerly outside my protection to find it icy and dangerous. With that I scurried back into the garage and into the car for the drive to the airport. No I was not on the mountain but at home.

As Cathy and I navigated the slick roads of Colorado, I was concerned about making my flight but I was more worried about her driving back home in the worsening conditions. But everything turned out fine and I am on my way to Argentina. I am at stop 1 of 3 on my way to Mendoza.

I arrived around 10 PM on Friday night after a long journey from Colorado. My flight connections could have been better thus avoiding two 6 hour layovers in airports. But I arrived on schedule and with my bags so I am not complaining.

I met up with the team at the very nice Hotel Montanas Azules for breakfast. We have a 8 in total with quite the international flair: South Africa, France, Canada, Peru and Argentina. Oh and the tokens Yanks!