Schoolboy conquers another peak

Friday 14 November 2014

A 12-year-old schoolboy who climbs some of the world's biggest mountains has broken another record - this time for the speed he got to the top of one in the Himalayas.

Oisin McDevitt climbed 6,200 metres to the top of Island Peak on the flanks of Everest in just four and a half days - something very few adults have managed to achieve.

Last year the intrepid Victoria College student became the youngest Brit to climb Kilimanjaro and then scaled Mt Elbrus - making him the youngest European to stand on the top of two continents.

But the Himalayan hike was the highest he'd ever attempted and the conditions were a lot tougher for Oisin and his climbing buddy and dad Fergus. They had trained on the Island's cliffpaths weighed down with heavy bags but nothing could prepare them for the 20 hour non-stop climb they had to do to avoid some cyclonic winds heading their way or the near vertical ice face they had to tackle to reach the summit.

Oisin said: "It’s never going to be great at that altitude but it was better than it was going to be. It was windy, cold, and minus 15 degrees.

"The hardest thing was waking up at 12 o’clock and having to have the strength of mind to get to the summit."

Oisin's dad Fergus is an experienced mountaineer but is really impressed with his son's achievement at such a young age.

He said: "My style is alpine style - fast and furious and we maybe did it a bit fast but to go for 20 hours, for a 12 year-old - he's got amazing stamina, he never moans. He has a great ability to cope with altitude."

Oisin said this trip was a good head start for the more technical mountaineering he plans to do in the future. In the next couple of years he wants to tackle another of the Seven Summits - Argentina's Aconcagua and that will be no mean feat. At 6980 metres high - it's the highest mountain in South America. He also hopes to scale Ama Dablam in the Himalaya range of eastern Nepal with a main peak that is almost as high and only for competent climbers.

Fergus said: "I’ll have to keep going until he can go out on his own, but he’ll be leaving me behind soon. He keeps me going and young at heart.”