Brothers reach summit of two ‘unclimbed’ mountains on same day

By Douglas Whitbread via SWNS

A pair of intrepid brothers hope to get a volcanic mountain named after them - after reaching the summit of two previously unclimbed peaks in different countries on the same day.

Mike, 60, and Jim Solan, 57, made their historic ascent of the 17,000 ft mountains, located on either side of the Chilian and Argentinian border, in March this year.

The adventures had set out with two team members and three local guides to reach just one unmapped peak, which records showed had never been topped before.

They used off-road vehicles to make their way into the depths of the Atacama Desert, where their chosen ridge lay - reaching the base of the peak after four days’ travel.

But after they hit the top of the first “unclimbed” mountain in Chile, they then realized they had time to go up another, situated just over a mile away, in Argentina.

The pair have now applied to name one of the unclaimed mountains “Solan Peak” - and believe they are the first adventures to achieve the unlikely feat in a single day.

Mark said: “We are fairly sure no one has ever climbed two unclimbed mountains in the same day in different countries.

“In the end, it’s just pure luck and coincidence. We are now thinking of writing to the Guinness World Records to see if they’ll accept that.

He added: “I think I’ll probably be the oldest person to have a mountain named after me, at my age."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark, a retired electrical engineer from Warrington, England said Jim, an ex-aerospace engineer, came up with the idea of scaling the “unclimbed” peak to celebrate his 60th birthday.

He said: “I quite often do mountaineering expeditions, and I’ve done Mont Blank, the Matterhorn – and we’ve done Everest base camp.

“I was chatting to my brother, and he suggested an unclimbed mountain, and we decided to go for that straight away, and did quite a bit of research on the internet.”

Mark explained that there were rules determining if a mountain had been claimed by past explorers.

He said: “It needs to have been mapped and also when someone climbs any mountain for the first time, they have to do a little expedition report.

“Also, anyone that climbs a mountain for the first time would create a rock cairn to show they were the first people to climb up there.”

The brothers later settled on a ridge in South America, bordering Chile and Argentina, and agreed that local world-record-holding climber, Max Kausch, would lead their trip.

Mark said: “We learned there were some unclimbed mountains in Alaska, some in Canada, some in Kazakhstan and some in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

“But we chose Chile and Max, because Max had already identified unclimbed mountains himself during his own expeditions.”

They were joined by ex-company director JP Naylor, 52, and paramedic Lauren Hooper, 32, and set out for South America in the last two weeks of March (2022).

The mountain that they hoped to christen “Solan Peak” was in a remote part of the Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth, besides the North and South pole.

And after first flying into Copiapo, a small city on Chile’s East Coast, they spent four days driving in Toyota pickup trucks across the extremely rough, and beautiful, terrain.

Mike said: “Some of the terrain is so alien that NASA used it for Mars expedition simulations, for the Viking 1 and Viking 2 Mars landers, as well as various filmmakers.”

When they arrived close to the mountain and set up a camp, they learned from their guides that they might actually be able to summit two “unclimbed” peaks in one day.

Mike said: “The guides excitedly revealed that not only had they, tonight, successfully established potential foot approaches to, and routes up both summits.

“They were only 2km apart and they proposed that we try to climb them both tomorrow.”

Mike said he was thrilled when they reached the top of the first peak and found there were no signs of previous attempt to reach its summit by past climbers.

He said: “Everyone was pleased to see that there was no cairn, Inca ruins, or other imperfections, it was just utterly pristine and untrodden.

“Using our GPS devices, we identified the highest point on the small summit plateau and prepared with a screwdriver and small steel poo trowel.”

“We started digging a hole for the flagpole approx 18 inches deep. Once planted we built an 18-inch rocky cairn around the remainder of the flagpole.”

And following the first ascent, they made the short journey over to the next mountain, in Argentina, where they claimed it as “Lauren’s Peak," after JP’s daughter.

The adventurers have now logged evidence of their journey with the American Alpine Journal and are confident they will have the mountains named after them soon.

Mike said: “We were quite confident that they will do that, as we’ve got lots of evidence from Max and from GPS that we were the first.”