Oxygen bottles, climbing ropes, tents…those are the things usually carried to the basecamp of Mt. Everest. But in true Canadian fashion, brothers Tom Schellenberg and Kyle Roberts recently did so with canoes, a first for the mighty mountain, to fundraise to build the Women’s Mental Health Centre in Kathmandu.
After strapping their canoes to a 4×4 jeep and driving from Kathmandu to the village of Salleri, they portaged the canoes on their backs to the Mount Everest Base Camp while symbolically raising an important connection between the weight we all carry when suffering from mental illness or poor mental health.
In all, the 120-mile portage lasted three weeks and finally landed them at the Everest basecamp at 18,000 feet — after which they faced another week getting back down. They raised $150,000 for the women’s health center, and hope a documentary being made by their brother, Seton Roberts, will raise additional funds.
“Everyone we passed on the trek was completely awestruck,” Roberts told FTW Outdoors, as reported by USA Today. “It was almost impossible to not have a conversation with everyone we passed about who we were and what we were doing.”
Read full story here: https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/01/why-two-men-carried-canoes-to-mt-everest
Info: www.theweightwecarry.