Inspire, Motivate and Believe
In July 2012, British mountaineers Jon Gupta & Nick Valentine, will attempt to complete one of the world’s hardest mountaineering challenges:
“
The Snow Leopard Award – five x 7000m peaks, back to back in Alpine Style!!
This will be a BRITISH FIRST completion of the award and should they achieve this in their time of just 40 days frame… a WORLD FASTEST - which currently belongs to legendary climber Denis Urubko.
“Nick and I are both incredibly passionate about the outdoors, we live and breath climbing and mountaineering for fun and work. In the future we both aspire to become IMG Guides. This expedition is so exciting and will give us the chance to climb together to our full potential and hopefully achieve something great for British Mountaineering and inspire young mountaineers to get out there and do it!”
About the challenge
The Snow Leopard award was a Soviet mountaineering award given to very experienced climbers and in the modern era, it is still recognised in the Commonwealth of Independent States. To receive this award, a climber must summit all 5 peaks of 7000m and above located in the former Soviet Union.
In Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains there are 3 Snow Leopard peaks:
- Ismail Samani Peak (formerly Communism Peak) 7,495 m (24,590 ft);
- Peak Korzhenevskaya 7,105 m (23,310 ft); and
- Ibn Sina Peak (formerly Lenin Peak) 7,134 m (23,406 ft) on the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border
In the Tian Shan there are 2 Snow Leopard peaks:
- Jengish Chokusu (formerly Peak Pobeda) 7,439 metres (24,406 ft) in Kyrgyzstan (divided by the border with China); and
- Khan Tengri 7,010 m (22,998 ft) on the Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan border
In order of difficulty, Peak Pobeda is by far the most difficult and dangerous, followed by Khan Tengri, Ismail Samani Peak, Peak Korzhenevskaya, and Lenin (Ibn Sina) Peak