Greek legends Vanessa Archontidou and Christina Flambour are proving there is no mental or physical barrier when a woman sets her mind to it.

This year saw the highest number of female climbers ascend Everest, making the gender-gap of this male-dominated sport significantly smaller. Still, even though the number 605 when it comes to the women that attempted the climb seems big for 2019, it is still only 12 per cent of total summitters.

Of the very few climbers who managed to reach the top in May – a month that took the lives of 18 climbers – seven were members of the Mingma team, amongst whom Archondidou and Flambouri.

The expedition took months (in reality years) of training for the two brave Greek women, at a time when hiking officials attributed most of the deaths to weakness, exhaustion and delays on the crowded route to the 29,035 feet summit.

Even though the duo was planning to complete their ascent on 5 April, due to unexpected weather conditions and the “traffic” on the climbing routes due to the increased number of alpinists, they reached the top on Monday 20 May raising the Greek flag at 8,848 metres above ground.

“It was already the 20th of May and there has not been any good weather. As a result, all the climbers were stressing that the season would end without a ‘weather window’ having opened. The days that the weather was not bad were very limited meaning that all the climbers waiting to ascend had to move simultaneously. This doesn’t normally happen. In previous years there had been more good days and there were breaks in mountain ‘traffic’,” they said.

Their last remaining peak to complete the Seven Summits Challenge will be Vinson Massif in Antarctica, which stands 4,892 meters (16,049 feet) above sea level.

Source: neoskosmos.com

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