Annie Conquers Everest

She conquered harsh weather conditions, steered her 21-year old Honda through unforgiving terrain, remained focussed when others were giving up, and did all this while recovering from the flu!

Yet against all the odds, Swedish adventure junkie Annie Seel has done it. In August she successfully rode up to the north base camp of the world’s tallest mountain and set a new world record by becoming the first woman to reach a height of 5305m on a motorbike. Officerlife speaks to Annie to find out more about the bizarre expedition and what attracts her to extreme biking.
If it isn’t fast, challenging, thrilling, demanding, exciting and highly dangerous, then Annie’s not interested.
At 5ft 3in and weighing just eight and a half stone her unlikely hobbies include snowboarding, skating and basically anything that can result in a broken bone. So it’s not really surprising that the 35-year-old Swede’s main fad is extreme motorbiking, taking part in famous bike challenges across the world including the notoriously dangerous Dakar rally where she earned the title of the ‘Rally Princess’.
Almost fifty years on from when Sir Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay conquered Everest, Annie upheld her respected nickname and proved Everest was not such a tall order for such a small biker.
“I called the Dakar Rally the Mount Everest of biking events and I’ve already taken part in that, so I thought it would be nice to do the real thing,” joked Annie. “It was never really my dream to go up Everest on a bike. But when I got invited to do this expedition I thought I’d try and beat the record while I’m there.”
Easier said than done, even for a biker of Annie’s standard. She had to cope with freezing temperatures, altitude sickness, lack of oxygen and a rugged mountain track and even with careful planning and preparation Annie admits the lack of mountains in Sweden meant that she didn’t really know what to expect.

“I trained for the expedition by motorcross but I didn’t really have a clue and had to overcome lots of problems. When I flew out from Sweden I was still on antibiotics from the flu, which was a setback. Once I was there getting used to the altitude was really hard as it gives you terrible headaches and makes it hard to stay focussed and the rented Nepalese bike was too old and not really cut out for this kind of expedition either. I’ve learnt so much so if I was to do it again, I’d definitely change lots of things.”
Although there were many difficult challenges to overcome, Seel describes the expedition as an amazing experience. She told us that sitting back and admiring the views on days where the weather was nice made it all seem worthwhile, and of course finally reaching the target altitude and becoming the first woman to do so was one of the best feelings in the world.
“I never let anything stop me and I’m very determined. Whether it’s work or racing I always take it to the finish line and make sure I succeed. I haven’t a clue what I’ll do next but I will give it my all whatever it is but I’m not the Rally Queen yet,” she joked. “In fact I don’t think I will ever be Rally Queen!”

Link to article on: www.officerlife.com