Mountain Climb with a Difference!

By Peter Milburn, Big Brother to Adam Lee Milburn (2.1.07)

A few months ago myself and the other young men from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints decided to raise some money for charity. We came up with the idea to climb a mountain but as loads of people do this for charity, we wanted to tweak the idea and make it something new and more challenging. So we decided to climb the mountain…. in Onezies! I suggested the charity Sands. My mum, Cathy, came in and gave a presentation on Sands and why you should support it.

When the day finally came, we got in our Onezies, took a 2 hour drive to Pen Y Fan in Wales, took some pictures at the bottom, and then we were on our way! After 5 mins of walking I thought this climb was going to be super easy, I still thought this for another 15 mins, until we made it to some sort of peak, I thought that was it, I was tired and couldn’t wait to head back, but then I was told, that we were only like 1/8 of the way there, which sucked, but I knew it was for a good cause. It was even more important to me than anyone else to be doing this for Sands, because my little brother Adam died, and the charity is about baby loss. So inside, I was doing this for Adam.

The rain and wind was getting very heavy and very fast. And at one point, the wind was blowing us so hard and we were right next to a HUGE drop, we had to climb up, but when we got up after being blown around for ages, it turned out we were going the wrong way!! So we headed back down the path right next to the sheer drop and tried to fight back the wind, luckily no one was hurt. So we made it to the top after all the hard work! It took us about 1 hour and a half, but it felt like that didn’t matter anyway. We made it and that’s all that matters, no one was hurt and we got a picture at the top so people who donated know we did it! But then what we thought was the easy part had come… getting down! We had a map and followed a path.

We had been walking in a straight line for about 40 mins, and realized we were getting nowhere, so we headed back to the top. On the way back we noticed an arrow made of rocks pointing down a path, but for some reason, ignored it. We got back to the top, and then realized that we were meant to go down the path we saw 20 mins ago!

So we finally made it back to the path and headed back down, there was loads of snow to slide on so we had something to do when we were bored! After about another 40mins of walking, we could see the bottom! And we made it down… I was so happy! My Onezie was soaking wet and muddy, and I couldn’t wait to get home and get cleaned up! We raised more than £1600, which made all the team really happy and glad we did this for the charity!