Every week, I have been putting out an e-mail note to the wonderful group that is supporting me.  Here is the text of my latest note.

There are now 23 days until our group leaves for Africa!

We have all our gear and the training continues to go well.  This past Sunday I climbed ten sets (31 floors) in a new time – 1 hour and 51 minutes.  This may not seem all that interesting, but for us this is huge.  The only way to prepare for this climb is to get in the best physical shape possible.  There is no way to prepare for the lack of oxygen at the higher altitudes, you just have to work on what you can control.

We all continue to fundraise, which to me is the truly unique feature of this experience.  We are now over $165,000 for this year and over one million raised since 2011.

Many of you have contributed to this total and I thank-you for being active participants in this wonderful venture.

Together, we have raised $8695.00 for Rec Link and the Sens Foundation.  Well over the new goal set at $8000.00,  thanks to some really generous recent donations.

All this money goes to kids, so if you haven’t donated yet please consider making a contribution on my fundraising page.  You will automatically receive a tax receipt from Canada Helps for 2017.

Recently, I have been working on learning Adobe Premier Pro and have a new video out that shows some of the training we have done this year.  I will keep working on my film-making skills over the next few weeks.  You can see our latest video, Trekking to Kilimanjaro here.

For teachers who are part of this list, I hope you will have a chance to follow us through the Story Map starting March 30th.  I will be posting photos, video, text and our route to the Story Map whenever possible.

Thanks to my technical assistant, Liam McGuire for helping to make this possible and interesting for your students.

Currently, the page looks like this.

When a student clicks on one of the waypoints on the map, they will receive information on elevation, latitude, longitude and bearing.

I am really looking forward to sharing all this with you.  This is a venture we all will take part in.