The Aussie 8 team is closing in on their highly coveted speed record and if all goes as planned they should claim it tonight. As you no doubt recall, the team of Ben Southall, Luke Edwards and Patrick Kinsella set out last week to attempt to climb the tallest peak in each of the eight Australian states in just ten days. It has been a busy, hectic and demanding expedition covering many miles of travel and trekking up and down some difficult trails, but now the end goal is in sight and the boys are poised to complete their quest in a little over eight days.
Heading into today the trio had knocked off the highest mountains in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. That leaves just one peak left to go, the Queensland’s Bartle Frere, which stands 1622 meters (5321 ft) in height.
As I write this, Ben, Luke and Patrick are en route to Cairns in Queensland where they’ll set off for Bartle Frere as quickly as possible. If everything goes as planned, they should complete that climb and descent sometime Friday evening. At the moment they are estimating that they will complete the expedition with a time of approximately 8 days, 14 hours – well ahead of the ten days that they had scheduled. That time will also crush the previous record for reaching the eight high points, which was took over three months to complete.
If you’ve been following along with the expedition, you probably already know that you can track the team’s progress either on the live tracking page of their website or get updates via the Aussie 8 Facebook page.
Good luck to the guys as they head toward the finish line.
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Great work lads – keep it up – I can't believe you're going to get it done in 8 days after all!!
Agreed! It's unbelievable. I know they wanted to hit 8 days, but 10 seemed more likely. Well done all around.