“I was on oxygen from 9,000 feet onwards” said the pilot who had hoped to break the men’s record of 22,00 feet but the weather was too warm.

She holds the most female ballooning world records of 9 and has made a career out of this hobby as she is now Operations Manager of Irish Balloon Flights. Isn’t that just the ultimate dream of any adventurer, to do what you love for a living?

-Aisling-

Qoute is from Evening Herald, Image from my flickr set.

DUBLIN, IRELAND(Geared Up Blog) - This seems like one of the more crazy races to me. I noticed the existence of the race when i was looking on Mounteverest.net and i couldn’t quite believe it. The calibre of people entering the race is unreal. The race was originally set up as a training programme for soviet expedition teams going to the Himalayas in the 80’s. But the race was restarted again in 2005. The standard of competition is crazy! Denis Urubko won last years race in 3 hours and 55mins. He has also climbed 12 of the 8000′ers with O2. Check out the videos below of the race. They are well made and show you just how tough this race is. Visit the race website here

During the Soviet period, speed ascent competitions on Elbrus (5642 meters) were part of the training program for members of the first Soviet Himalaya expeditions (1982 -1989). The strongest USSR climbers made Elbrus races very prestigious events to attend. Bringing back the old glory, in 2005 the annual International Elbrus Race was set up.

Taking place each mid September, the race is now open to all climbers. You will climb against world-class rock stars such as Nickolay Tomjanin (Everest and Jannu north wall), Denis Urubko, Andrey Puchinin, Sergey Surmonin, Svetlana Sharipova and others.

-Eoinod-