Everest, Lhotse and K2 summits all within 100 days!
Johnston Quarry Group supports Jon Gupta and Rebecca Ferry on their unprecedented achievement
Our group owner, Nicholas Johnston, has been friends with professional climbing guide Jon Gupta for many years, including when they both climbed and skied off the summit of Elbrus in Russia in 2016.
Now Jon and his client, Rebecca Ferry, have broken several records by summitting Everest (on 13th May 2021) and K2 (on the 29th July 2021) in the same climbing season, not least with Rebecca becoming the first UK female to summit K2 and return to base camp safely. She is also only the second British woman to have climbed Everest and adjacent Lhotse as a combined double ascent. These are incredibly serious and impressive achievements and as a group, we are thrilled to have been able to play a very small part in this unique UK mountaineering undertaking.
In a press release on the K2 summit achievement titled ‘Better to live one day as a tiger, than a lifetime as a sheep’, Jon writes, ‘K2’s reputation as a dangerous and unforgiving mountain is wholly deserved. K2 is big, elegant, unforgiving maybe and powerful. It demands absolute concentration, respect, skill and experience’. He continues, ‘I will never forget the final steps onto the summit, a memory etched onto my timeline of life – emotion rushing through my body, almost unable to see as my eyes filled up with tears of joy and disbelief. We did it and did it really well’.
Johnston Quarry Group and its sister companies Bath Stone Group and Building Stone are incredibly proud of our association with Jon and of the standing he holds within the very elite high mountain climbing community. The standards he sets, the ethics through which he takes on these great challenges and the modesty and integrity he presents to all who know him reflect many of the similar business philosophies that our group aspires to represent.
For further information on Jon and his achievements or of how our business might help you achieve some of your own, possibly more modest aspirations with rock and stone, please get in touch here.
