Community / Determined Anita sets sights on Everest in fundraising mission for Ability Shetland
WHAT DO Kilimanjaro, Ben Nevis and Everest all have in common?
By the end of November determined fundraiser Anita Georgeson will have scaled them all, after heading to Nepal next month to tackle Everest in aid of Ability Shetland.
Anita is set to climb to Everest’s base camp in November in aid of the charity, which has supported her youngest grandson – eight-year-old Vinnie – following his autism diagnosis.
Ability Shetland has also proved an invaluable outlet for Vinnie, who Anita says needs stability and routine, following the death of his dad, Stevie Coutts, last year.
For Anita, her Everest challenge has similarly helped her to recover and heal after the loss of her son.
“It does strengthen you,” she told Shetland News.
“It gives you that focus, to keep going forward. For me, it’s been my coping mechanism.
“I’ve got a few bucket list items left and base camp Everest was one of them.
“A lady that I know lost her husband last year, the same year that I lost my son, and she contacted me to ask if I would do this with her.
“I wanted to be by her side, and it’s good to have a purpose to do it for too.”
Already she has raised around £1,200 for Ability Shetland, but hopes to push that up to £3,000 by the time she completes the challenge in late November.
That roughly equates to the cost Anita has plunged in herself to the challenge, to pay for travel to Nepal and guides for getting to the base camp – over 17,000 feet up – and back.
Anita does not need to do much preparation for the epic quest, having tackled Kilimanjaro, the Dolomites in Italy and mountain ranges in Iceland on previous adventures.
But in order to acclimatise her to sleeping in a tent again, she has been rambling around Shetland and camping overnight – traversing and admiring the isles’ coast in the process.
“There’s that many people that come to Shetland, and spend a lot of money to come here, because it’s so beautiful,” she said.
“Meanwhile we spend a lot of money to get off the island. It just makes no sense.”
She will start her Everest trek on 13 November, expecting it to take around eight days to reach base camp.
“I think it’s going to be quite brutal,” she admitted.
“I don’t know what the weather’s going to be like. We’ve got the last slot of the year, so I think it’s going to be about -15°C at night.
“I’ve been trying to practise camping in Shetland wearing the clothes I’m taking with me, but it’s going to be a damn sight colder up there!”
Altitude sickness is another potential obstacle, and Anita has first-hand experience of that already.
“I was affected when I went up Kilimanjaro,” she explained.
“I mind sitting doon when it was snowing, because I’d just decided in my head I needed to sit doon.
“Our guide asked, ‘what are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m just going to have a little rest here, just a little sleep, and then I’ll go’.
“I told them I was waiting for the doctor, but there was no doctor.
“The guide told me, ‘if you don’t stand up and keep going I’m going to have to take you back down the mountain’.
“That seemed to snap me out of it and I carried on again.”
At the heart of her mountainous marathon is eight-year-old Vinnie, the reason why Anita is scaling Everest.
She said all of Stevie’s three children were affected by his death in different ways, but Vinnie, who finds it “hard to take things in”, had found it particularly difficult.
Ability Shetland was “really brilliant” during that time, Anita said.
“There was a noticeable difference in him with all their help,” she added.
“I never really realised how much work they do – they are amazing.
“Vinnie needs to have routine in his life and he loves school, so when the school holidays come then that’s really hard for him.
“But Ability Shetland do the holiday clubs, so there’s loads of things to do now in the holidays.”
With Kilimanjaro in the rearview mirror and Everest on the horizon, Anita is showing no signs of stopping her epic fundraising efforts.
She says that in 10 years time she will still be climbing mountains – and she wants to keep going well into her 80s.
Anita has encouraged anyone and everyone to follow in her footsteps.
“Anyone that’s suffering from any sadness, or is struggling with life, I can’t recommend enough getting out and walking,” she said.
“I found some days really hard, but I found there was nothing better for your head than getting out and doing something like that.
“You just feel pride that you’ve done it.”
You can donate to Anita’s Everest fundraiser for Ability Shetland here.
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