Four South African climbers will attempt to break one of the country’s climbing records by ascending its nine highest peaks in under four days, 18 hours and 38 minutes.
That’s the record adventurer Adrian Saffy, amateur mountain climber Tian Liebenberg and professional mountaineers Sean Disney and Alex Harris hope to smash on what promises to be their pulsating, action-packed and daunting adventure.
Their whirlwind attempt will be in aid of getting the public’s support in helping raise R100000 for equipping 350 pupils from Zitikeni Secondary School in Tembisa with unique software development and IT skills, said expedition leader Liebenberg.
The climbers, aged between 38 and 45, start their climb, which forms part of their #CodeClimber campaign, on July 12. Their long-term goal is to impart IT skills to 300 000 pupils in 500 schools by 2020.
Liebenberg said breaking the record would entail them travelling by road-transport between the nine peaks to scale them.
“Basically, to beat the record, we will have to negotiate the 145km by running almost the equivalent of two Two Oceans Marathons in successive days, then rest for a day and then complete almost another Two Oceans marathon. That is how challenging this is.”
He said both Harris and Disney were mountaineering legends and have conquered the highest peaks in each of the continents, including reaching the peak of Everest and some peaks more than once.
Harris this year rode his mountain bike from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro to the coast in less than 24 hours - a world-record - and led mountain bike riders to the base camp of Mount Everest in May.
“We are raising R100000 to bring coding to three schools in Gauteng and impact 350 learners with a fun, basic coding course, while encouraging the start of new coding clubs in these schools,” said Code 4 Change founder Jonathan Novotny.
“But we need the public’s support on the crowd-funding platform Backabuddy in support of the world-class climbers’ quest and in financing the code course for these 350 learners,” he added.
If they break the SA record they would purchase code-programs from the organisation Code$Change to equip 125 pupils with the IT-development, software programs and technological advancement.
More information is on #codeclimber and www.fb.com/code4changeSA