Bond-girl 007 On World Speaking Tour

The Bond-girl 007: World record climber to go on world speaking tour after becoming fastest woman to reach the Seven Summits expedition reaches final days

Annabelle Bond, the fastest woman in the world to have climbed the Seven Summits, will spend the rest of the year motivating people to climb to greater heights in their life.

On May 11, Bond, 35, became the fastest woman to climb the highest peaks in the world’s seven continents when she reached the peak of 6194m Mt Denali (formerly Mt McKinley) in Alaska. The British climber is the highest achieving female climber in the world this year. Within 360 days, she had completed the odyssey of seven summits: Mt Everest (Asia), Carstensz Pyramid or Mt Kosciuscko (Australasian continent), Denali-Mt McKinley (North America) , Aconcagua (South America), Elbrus (Europe), Vinson Massif (Antarctica) and Kilimanjaro (Africa). Bond is the fourth fastest overall out of men and woman and she became the 12th woman and 100th person in the world to reach the peak of the highest summits in all seven continents. She is becoming known as Bond-007summits. ``It has been a tough year mentally and physically and I feel I have risen to another level in life.

``I will be giving motivational talks to corporate executives in the USA, the UK, Asia, New Zealand, Australia, Chile and Dubai in seeking to improve people’s business and life performance. ``Starting in July 2005, I will begin my talks on a worldwide tour which includes film footage of all the seven climbs, showing the highs and lows of what it is like trying to be the fastest woman in the world to climb all seven summits.

``My Everest climb was filmed by the Discovery channel which has and has already been released in Canada in a six-hour documentary so I decided to document all the other climbs too.’’

Singapore-born and Hong Kong-raised, Bond said she also wants to help children on her tour to become committed to making exercise a part of their lives.

She will continue raising money and awareness for the Eve ovarian cancer appeal.

For the record, Bond climbed Aconcagua (23,880 ft) in four days which is almost unheard of. She got frostbite on both her toes and was taken to hospital in Argentina right after the climb. ``Two people in a group alongside us died after our summit day on Mt Denali. My rope team were probably one of the last people to speak to one of them.

``It was my first close proximity with death in that our guides were dealing with the bodies. It was a very sad ending to an amazing year and a very poignant reminder how fragile life is in the mountains.’’

Bond comes from an adventurous family. Her grandmother was a pioneer of adventure travel. In 1929 she was up at 22,000ft in Nepal in crampons and plus fours working as a nurse to the famous British climber Hugh Ruttledge. She was there before Mallory and Irvine!! pictures of her on my website ( under Everest 2004 and training section - at the bottom of the page)

``I am passionate about raising money for the Eve appeal that specialises in ovarian cancer research. I had a tumour removed one month before climbing Everest last year.

``I made two decisions, one to go ahead with climbing Everest irrespective of the results and two to highlight for other woman how important screening is so any cancer can be detected early.

``My results were benign. I was one of the lucky ones and I have raised about $1.5 million for the cause.

``Apart from being the first natural blonde to complete the seven summits I survived in temperatures on Denali and Vinson in Antarctica of almost minus 30CDeg – to the point where my PDA froze!’’

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