Overcoming alcoholism or coping with grief over the death of a mother... by climbing Everests

Barcelona"Nothing in my life can be harder than the sadness I felt, and that comforts me in the midst of chaos," Mark Bruce, a Scotsman who has been working as a music teacher at a Glasgow secondary school for 34 years, tells ARA. "I was a very overweight person. I weighed up to 105 kilos, I was unhappy with an addiction problem," he recalls. "In September 2022 I thought I would lose my life to alcohol and depression. But at that moment I made the decision to fight for myself."

Mark's first step out of the darkness was to try to get sober and, when he succeeded, he started pedaling on a bicycle. Little by little, his physical and mental health improved and during 2023 he set himself a great challenge for 2024: to climb Everest. But in a rather peculiar way. I had discovered a project born in Australia called Everesting, which consists of climbing any slope, usually on foot or by bicycle, as many times as necessary to complete the altitude of Everest, which is 8,848 meters.

"The harder I trained and the fitter I felt, the more I wanted to increase the difficulty of the challenge." So he went from setting out to do one Everesting in 2024 to doing 12 during 2024. One per month. And he has done it. Mark completed his twelfth Everesting of 2024 on his bike on the weekend of December 15. In total, he has completed more than 300,000 meters of elevation gain. "The most difficult of the 12 was the one at the Lecht ski resort in Aberdeenshire (Scotland). Its gradient averages 20% and the steepest one is 100%." easy

Mark says that this project has taken him "to a place that I thought didn't exist" and that, with each pedal stroke he makes, he feels that he is "coming out of the darkness a little further." "Cycling has taught me discipline, to push the body and mind through pain and that you can do anything if you are really willing to commit to it," he reflects.

Climbing Tibidabo 31 times after the death of his mother

Joan Losantos, a 51-year-old Catalan publicist, had been preparing to take part in the Serra de Tramuntana race in Mallorca at the beginning of November, which is 146 kilometres long and has a gradient of 6,000 metres. However, a few days before flying to the island from Barcelona, his mother had a health crisis and died within hours. "Before she died, she told me that it hurt her that I had not been able to do the Serra de Tramuntana [it ended up being cancelled due to the DANA] and that I should dedicate the next crossing I did to her," Joan explains to this newspaper.

One race seemed like too little to him. He wanted to dedicate a more gigantic challenge to his mother. He had heard about the Everesting project and thought that it would be a good option to do it on Tibidabo. Joan calculated how many times he would have to climb it on foot to overcome the height of Everest and found that it was 31. He would leave the car parked near the monastery of Sant Maties (which would also be his supply place) and, from there, he would overcome 31 times a positive gradient of 286 meters in 1.8 kilometers (an average gradient of 15.4% with sections of trails) to the expiatory temple of the Sacred Heart of Tibidabo.

He began his Everesting at 12 noon on November 25 and finished it just before 7 pm on the 26th. Some 30 hours of effort. 31 climbs. 31 descents. On many of these climbs and descents he was accompanied by friends, acquaintances and family members. Like Josep Valent, his nephew with autism, and Jordi Vilà, the chef of the Alkimia restaurant, who brought him a Spanish omelette at one in the morning.

The worst moment came three hours later, at four o'clock. "I was alone, it was very windy and the screen was wet with sweat. I got to the refreshment station and my whole body started to shake," Joan remembers. "It all came together: the cold, the wind, the accumulated fatigue and constantly thinking about my mother." From climb number 21 to 24 everything was much harder. "I thought a lot about my mother. This surely contributed to my getting a puncture, but at the same time it gave me the strength to finish. At certain moments of the route I felt her very close. For me it was a way of closing the first phase of mourning. This did not end with the farewell ceremony;

A spring date in Andorra

Unlike Mark and Joan, there are other amateur athletes who prefer to take on sporting challenges in company. In this regard, Everesting has devised an event between May 29 and June 1 in Andorra. The challenge will consist of completing, in a maximum time of 48 hours, 19 times on foot the three-kilometre climb with 480 metres of positive gradient to the Mirador de Tristaina, located at 2,700 metres above sea level in the Ordino-Arcalís ski resort.