Mont Blanc: A mountain to climb before I even get there...

Even by my standards, this is very last minute. I'm at Liverpool Airport, and had my flight not been delayed and all of us disembarked due to a technical fault with the plane's wheel, I would have been on my way to Geneva now. I'm a nervous flyer, so this is particularly stressful for me.  My suitcase is so full of gear that it could explode at any moment. When I checked in, I only had one spare kg of weight... phew.  If it wasn't for my super light Scarpa Omega boots and Grivel crampons I wouldn't be so lucky! 3 hours later than planned, I was finally airborne. I was more anxious than last time to say the least! With thanks to the Foo Fighters for making the journey more bearable and my copy of Runners World magazine. Now I'm in Chamonix, in an apartment, about to go and explore the town. With thanks  to Julie Rogers for the accommodation. This evening I will be meeting up at 6pm with my guides and the other 7 clients. But what have I been doing since I last posted? A lot!                          I am delighted to announce that I have smashed my fundraising target by £700- it now stands at an unofficial £5500. Fantastic! It's took a lot of pressure off me in the recent months, with so much going on with the Olympic torch and not forgetting the actual organisation of the climb. However I only really made real progress when my charity night went ahead- before then I was just teetering around the £1500 mark. Organising that took months, and it got pretty stressful. But what a success! It was on the 29th of June, held at the Lord Binning in Kelsall. I had issues with getting raffle prizes, with many companies never bothering to get back to me. Then I realised it didn't really matter how much I had. Lots of kind people did donate things however, especially Nadia Fortune Photography who kindly donated a prize after reading this blog! There are too many businesses and people to thank them all, but they know who they are. Auction prizes came flowing in, with the thanks of my mum, stepdad, Karl Rosedale, Rob Tudor, 'Geezer' and Paul from Smartmoney, Tarvin. On the night I had a signed Liverpool shirt, signed Ed Sheeran CD, Bruno Mars CD, signed Man Utd pennant, signed Marco Pierre White book, Nick Knowles t-shirt, night at the Chester Grosvenor and a signed Steve Williams photo. As time approached, I started to stress. I am a natural worrier. I was worried there was going to be a cancellation or I wasn't going to sell many tickets. That anxiety stayed until last minute- when I actually sold out of tickets! Raffle tickets and entry tickets took a lot of work to shift. Thanks to the help of some friends- Chris, Debbie, Pam and Annie, I managed to sell over 2000! There were changes to the itinerary and plans and it took a lot of organisation, we decided not to have food, simply to maximise profits for the charities. Soon came the 29th of June, a Friday evening, and stress levels were through the roof. It was all very last minute. I was running around the pub, literally, but everything went quite smoothly. The band arrived and began to set up, Fifty Fingers from Delamere. They had kindly agreed to play free of charge. As the tables and prizes were laid out, people poured in. The room was soon full when I made a speech and got the night going. The atmosphere was great and the band did a good job. The raffle was successful and we then went onto the auction, this was exciting to watch, I was thrilled and surprised at how much everything was going for. The Liverpool shirt was an intensely competitive auction and it sold for £375! Fantastic! Geoff Dutton, our auctioneer, was auctioned for an impressive £235. Overall the night raised an impressive £3000!! I was absolutely made up. I want to thank everyone who came, donated raffle and auction prizes, the Lord Binning Pub for providing a room free of charge and for the hospitality, and our band for playing a great show for free. Huge success.     The next day I went to the Kelsall Primary school fair with some plants and the torch and took a measly £50. Then I went to the Ashton Hayes summer fair, simply as a 'torch gig'. From here I went straight to Birmingham, to the Coca Cola celebration concert, and met lots of my fellow torchbearer buddies, most of them for the first time, as mentioned in my previous blog.      Going back to early June, I spent the bank holiday weekend at Kelsall Folk Festival. The weather was awful, but with a combination of torch pictures and plants I made £260. Good fun too, despite the 60 year old hippies everywhere in stripy mirrored latex... In terms of preparing for the climb, I spent most of early May trying to contact press and got some good web articles and magazines, including the Epilepsy Action magazine and British Stammering Association magazine 'Speak Out', if I didn't mention that before.              The past month has been the busiest, it really has. A week before my charity night, school informed me they'd awarded me a percentage of the Sixth Form charity pot. I was even more made up when I learnt it was £645! I got more than any other student, and I'm very grateful and privileged to get it, it's a great help. I have been sponsored with kit by the Mountain Boot Company www.mountainboot.co.uk who have supplied me with heavily discounted gear for the climb. I received this a week before I flew out and it's brilliant. I got some nice Scarpa Omega boots and my new Grivel New-matic Crampons fit nicely on them, I'm amazed at how light yet robust it all is. The Grivel G1 ice axe and karabiners are light too, but look cool and feel very robust yet again, the karabiners are pretty easy to use with my gloves. The Outdoor research gaiters fit snug against my Mountain Eqpt schoeller trousers. Last week I tried on all my gear at home and it all felt great, albeit I broke into a sweat pretty quickly! I went on several dog walks in the boots, without the crampons of course, to try and wear them in. I feel like a pro! I've been practicing so I'm familiar with it all on the mountain when the conditions aren't so pleasant. There was a few bits I hadn't got so a quick trip to Snow and Rock and I was sorted, with some indestructible Nalgene wide neck water bottles! I was now fully equipped. Oh and huge thanks also to Matt Heason from www.heason.net who has kindly supplied me with some North Face Patrol gloves free of charge, they're great and fit... like a glove! Should be plenty warm enough for the Alps. It started to get real and when I'd got all of my stuff, but I couldn't believe how fast it'd come. I was really really busy. The last week was simply a case of confirming and compiling travel arrangements and info- then on Thursday we packed the case, it was absolutely jam packed. It's here intact thankfully.              As well as fundraising for REACT, I became their official ambassador 2 weeks ago, after discussing a contract with the director Guillaume. This is a really exciting opportunity for me. My role is to promote REACT, by bringing their name into the public eye with my fundraising projects, like Mont Blanc. I am ultimately representing them so it is a responsibility but one I will no doubt thrive in. This will lead to more experiences for me and I'm looking forward to it, I want to help increase REACT's fundraising.                        One of my many motto's is 'Draw the line on deforestation', which is shared by the charity too. It is vital that we stop deforestation before we reach tipping point. Therefore I have had a banner printed with this on and the REACT logo, along with the Mountain Boot logo and the Cancer Research logo. As for the Orangutan costume, we've had to borrow one from Greenpeace. It looks pretty good, but it's sadly not that easy to get on and off. I'm still determined to do it, I just need to liaise with my guides from Dream Guides, about how. I don't want to be pulling gear off on the summit. But if I get it, which I'm determined to, this could be a huge opportunity for REACT and me.                                      My other charity, Cancer Research UK, has been chosen in memory of my Aunty Julie who lost her battle with a brain tumour 4 days before I carried the flame. I've witnessed the heartbreak in my family and it will take a while to heal, I want to help prevent that happening to anyone else, even if I'm only helping in a small way. Cancer will be beaten one day.   With huge thanks to Chris Pownell, my website is finally up and running! Check out www.alexstaniforth.com. I have done this to act as a contact point for sponsors and media. Chris has done a great job in such a short space of time and I'm really pleased. It needs lots of content, and some fine tuning, but it went live on Thursday night very last minute. Chris has generously done this free of charge. It will help get my story out there. I will still be updating this blog, and it will be linked from the website. It's sort of like a hub, and there's going to be lots of pics up on there soon. I've got a really busy Summer ahead.                             I've brought my camera but it's unreliable and I tried hard to borrow a camera for the climb, but I failed. Nevertheless I'm going to be taking lots of pictures and videos on this trip, which is going to be a great experience for me. I can't believe it's here, I can't believe I've travelled here alone. It's surreal. 9 months after I booked it, here I am. I've had to overcome quite a few obstacles to get here but if I reach the summit then it will make it an even more monumentous achievement. It's all I think about, all I've thought about for months. And here I am. I'm feeling ill, weak and tired, and unfit. I've been out of training for 3 months. I decided to leave the Diamox but I've got painkillers, and I've got a load of Kendal Mint cake, Soreen loaf, glucose tablets and lots of other energy stuff. The altitude could prove to be a big test for me, we'll see. Mont Blanc isn't particularly tough, but for someone who's never climbed Alpine before it's a great starting point. There is plenty more to come that's for sure. In all honesty, if I leave Chamonix without a summit, I'll be gutted. I've spent £2000 on this climb, simply by saving up my wages and putting myself into debt 2 weeks before I leave. Money is the only thing holding me back in my adventures, believe me. Most 17 year olds may have cars, but I've got an Olympic torch and experiences of a lifetime... they're more priceless to me...But with some luck, the weather will be good and we can go for the summit, the roof of Western Europe, as the only thing that's going to stop me is bad weather. 'The measure between the impossible and the possible is simply a matter of a mans own determination'....