Dave Roskelley is a Utahn, originally from Chicago. He completed the Volcanic Seven Summits in January 2020 on Mount Sidley in Antarctica. Whilst on his trip, he and another team member were kind enough to send me photos from Mount Sidley itself. We also had a brief chat when he was at the Sidley base camp after the climb before he and the rest of the team flew from the mountain. David has also completed the Seven Summits. So I was extremely interested in watching the recent Alan Arnette interview with Dave about his Volcanic Seven Summit experiences when a friend alerted me to it.
Alan is an extremely well-known and respected blogger on all things Everest and K2. His blog is one of the top 10 mountaineering blogs in the world in terms of hits.
So when I settled down to watch it, imagine my surprise therefore when only a few minutes into the interview my name came up.
I had not been aware in advance of the interview. Alan Arnette’s blog normally sticks to the goings-on on Everest and other 8000m peaks during the Spring and Autumn seasons. Occasionally he will also focus on K2. So a discussion about the Volcanic Seven Summits is a little off beam for him. Recently Alan has been interviewing various mountaineers about Himalayan experiences.
It is quite a fun, light-hearted discussion. So I’ll forgive them both for getting Crina Popescu’s sex wrong, and for misunderstanding the formation of volcanoes generally. For the record, Crina Popescu is the youngest person to have climbed all of the Volcanic Seven Summits. Satyarup Siddhanta is the youngest person to have climbed both the Seven Summits and the Volcanic Seven Summits. Theodore (Ted) Fairhurst is the oldest person to have climbed the Volcanic Seven Summits. He is also the oldest to have climbed the Seven Summits/Volcanic Seven Summits combination. Not that any of that matters of course 😁
Here’s the interview as posted on Alan Arnette’s YouTube channel. The Alan Arnette interview with Dave Roskelley is also accessible via Alan’s blog.
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