Before taking on Mt Kilimanjaro, a father-and-son duo hope to climb East Peak eight times and raise money for charity.
Andrew Tripp said he and his son Josh would do the 12-hour challenge this Saturday, which would have them walk a total of 43km.
‘‘That would be 3680m elevation gain, the height that we would be climbing Kilimanjaro.’’
The pair would climb the mountain when they travelled to Africa at the end of next month, he said.
While over there they would visit Judith Lamaro, an 8-year-old Ugandan they were sponsoring through World Vision.
‘‘It’ll be an exciting adventure for Josh and me and we can do some fundraising at the same time.’’
They had opened up a Givealittle page called ‘‘Climb a Mountain for Orphans Aid International and World Vision’’ and had raised more than $1300 for the two charities so far.
Mr Tripp and Josh were completing different challenges to raise the profile of their fundraiser before the ‘‘ultimate challenge’’ of climbing Mt Kilimanjaro.
Having already run 50km on a treadmill as their first challenge, East Peak was next, Mr Tripp said.
They were both ‘‘pretty fit’’ and the goal was to achieve at least eight summits.
‘‘The body may fall apart before 12 hours is up, but at least we will give it a crack,’’ he said.
‘‘We’ll start off at 7 in the morning so it will be dark when we start and we’ll finish at 7 at night so that last lap will be dark too.’’
They planned on doing each of the four different tracks up to East Peak.
‘‘Both Josh and I do Crossfit in Gore and our coach . . . she thought we were crazy.’’
People were welcome to come along and support them, he said.
‘‘We’re going to set up a marquee at Grant’s Carpark. The more people we can get out there to cheer us on the better.’’
Weather was always a factor however, he said.
If it was too bad, he and Josh would do the challenge on Sunday instead.
