Ep 9: Annie Doyle - Pushing the Limits

Meet Annie Doyle, a Sydney-based, 56 year old dedicated old mother of two. Working hard as a Chief Financial Officer for a large disability organisation she somehow finds the time to also be a mountaineering machine who is on a mission to become the first Maori woman to climb the Seven Summits (The highest mountain on every continent and well regarded of as the Holy Grail of mountaineering) She’s 6/7ths of the way there. Her transcontinental summit quest started when she reached the top of our very own Mt. Kosciuszko in 2005 and then Tanzania’s Mt. Kilimanjaro the same year, followed by Mt. Elbrus in Russia in 2006, Mt. Aconcagua in Argentina in 2007 and both Mt. McKinley in Alaska in 2009and Vinson Massif in Antarctica in 2013. Only Everest awaits her. Unfortunately luck hasn’t been on her side…yet. In 2012 she positioned for her first attempt but bad weather made the Khumbu Icefall too dangerous, again she made another attempt in 2014 but the mountain closed following a tragic icefall avalanche that killed 16 Sherpas. In April this year, she was readying for her 3rd attempt, this time from the Tibetan side, but the sheer devastation of the catastrophic Nepalese Earthquake once again closed the mountain and rocked the climbing community to its core with the loss of so many lives. Annie’s 7th summit awaits another season.