THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO EVERESTING

Impassioned Melbourne radio host Red Symons’ show had become a lament over the death of the English language. How could the world’s most revered peak be butchered into a verb? Everest had become Everesting.

Andy van Bergen grinned. If he hadn’t realised already, it was the moment he knew he’d help create a monster. An 8,848m monster to be precise. It was 2014, and while we were far from peak Everesting, there were plenty gearing up from base camp.

“Cycling went nuts for it,” Andy explains. “At the start, I thought we’d maybe get 100 people doing it. Right now, we’re a handful away from hitting 15,000 activities in the hall of fame. Last year was massive for us.”

Andy is talking about the exercise phenomenon that sees cyclists and runners try to attain the elevation of the world’s highest mountain in one lung-busting activity. If that wasn’t already enough to grease the chains of endurance junkies, a pandemic sealed the appeal…

FIND CHALLENGES

Andy is also a founding member of Hells 500, the light-touch curators of the Everesting website that helps puts some structure around the challenge. An increasing labour of love, it now takes him a couple of hours a day to verify attempts.

“It goes back 12 years,” he explains from his home in Melbourne. “As a small