Swedes find a way to climb Mount Everest without leaving their hometowns

The successful challenge that lets people discover a new purpose for local hills is back

Mitt Everest means My Everest in Swedish - a non-competitive challenge organized by the Swedish Excercise Sports Association (Korpen). The challenge has the aim of encouraging people to tackle hills and heights located in their vicinity and climb them as many times as the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest would be.

The world’s highest peak (8,849 metres tall) located in the Himalayas is distant and inaccessible for most of us. Yet, we can feel almost the same accomplishment of conquering it as long as we do the footwork done. It’s a bit tongue in cheek but in Sweden, the challenge has proven successful and is not a traditional activity promoted in the non-skiing months.

Repurposing ski slopes in summer

Korpen has created a list of the participating hills in different cities and towns across Sweden where residents can sign up and log in their personal results.

For example, there is Flottsbro, a ski slope located on the southern outskirts of Stockholm. It’s the highest ski slope in the country rising at 100 metres altitude. That means that anyone who manages to go up and down 88 times has theoretically climbed Mount Everest, according to the organizers. It is also a nice way to use the same site in the months when there is no snow.

As a participant, you walk your meters and register the turns in Korpen’s app. There’s also a ranking. Meanwhile, if you climb Flottsbro “you would also pass a total of 14 milestones and get both awards and information about various mountains in the world, including Ukraine's highest mountain peak Hoverla”, according to Annelie Hollén from Korpen’s branch in Huddinge Botkyrka.

The latter is the name of the municipality where the ski resort is located. This year they are also featuring a smaller hill (Lida) – naturally, you’d have to climb it more times to get to your own personal Everest, though.

“’Mount Everest’ is the ultimate goal of the challenge, but for us in Korpen we see it as encouraging outdoor movement,” explains project manager Sara Alfredsson. “We want to attract even more people to find out and learn more about outdoor life and Swedish nature.”