Mother-of-three Kay White tells Zoe Chamberlain about her world of adventures.
Many of the stars stumbled at each hurdle of the trek up Kilimanjaro for Comic Relief.
But a Midland mother-of-three has managed it twice – having gone straight back up as soon as she came down!
Kay White, from Halesowen, was an ordinary mum who enjoyed package holidays and ran her own beauty salon.
Then she had an early mid-life crisis in her 30s when her father died and she got divorced.
She decided it was time to fulfil a childhood dream and went to see the northern lights in the Arctic.
It was an adventure that would change her life forever, turning her from an average woman into the female equivalent of Indiana Jones.
“I felt like my whole world came crashing down but instead of feeling sorry for myself I decided I wanted to fulfil a childhood dream,” says Kay, 45, who has three children, Lee, 25, Nina, 20 and Lara, 18.
“I’d always wanted to see the northern lights, so I joined a group of strangers on a husky run in the Arctic.
“I started going to a gym to get fit and really enjoyed fund-raising for my chosen charity for the trip. I organised karaoke and bingo nights.
“It was an incredible experience. I felt so privileged to have been able to go to places and see things people don’t normally get to do.”
Kay came back a new woman, ready to take on more challenges to keep herself fit, push her to the limit and raise money for charity.
A trip to the Great Wall of China soon followed.
And so it was that the nine-stone mum ended up skiing to the North Pole with her friend Jason – and dragging 15 stone of equipment behind her. “It was the most exciting and dangerous trip I’ve done,” she said. “We did find ourselves in some really bad situations.
“Every time I went to the toilet I had to take a flare and a rifle with me in case I ran into a polar bear.
“We knew there were 17 of them in the area and, although we never saw any, we were told they would know we were there.
“In our tent at night, I would listen to all the noises around us, listen to the sound of the ice-cracking. It’s a sound you have to adjust to as the ice is constantly moving.
“You’d walk across a bit of ice and seconds later, it would open up and there would be the sea.
“The ice collapsed once under Jason and I had to get him out, put up the tent and get him dried really quickly.”
Kay trained by running around Cannon Hill Park and the Clent Hills, dragging tyres behind her.
She says: “Whilst it was -4C at home, it was more than -40C in the North Pole. It’s completely different to the cold here – you never take your gloves off.”
Sadly, the charity Kay raises money for – Cure Leukaemia – is close to her heart as her best friend Julian, 44, has been living with leukaemia for the past 21 years. Her ex-husband also has leukaemia.
“Julian is in remission and is only alive thanks to the new drugs that have come out of the amazing research carried out at the newly established Centre for Clinical Haematology at the University Hospital, Birmingham. Having no brothers or sisters meant it was difficult for him to find a bone marrow match so the doctors actually took bone marrow from his own blood, grew the cells and he became his own transplantee.
‘‘Some of the things they are doing a the centre are remarkable. There is no cure for leukaemia, they can only say you’re in remission. Fortunately, the chances of survival and of leading a normal life are a lot better than they were 10 years ago.”
Realising many more people would like to experience similar adventures and that she could raise money for charity, Kay set up a not-for-profit organisation called Redventure Charity Treks last year.
Since then, more than 300 people of every age have taken part – the oldest being a 72-year-old who went on a trip to the Sahara desert. Kay has raised £250,000 for Cure Leukaemia in the past four years by going on many more adventures.
She says: “In Namibia I was sleeping in a very thin mud hut when something woke me up.
“I suddenly realised a lion had decided to lie right next to me on the other side of the hut. I could hear him breathing and at one point he let out a roar that went straight through me.
“I just lay there trembling until he wandered away, thinking, I’m a girl from Birmingham, how can this be happening to me?”
When it came to the celeb trek up Kilimanjaro, Take That’s Gary Barlow collapsed with back pain on the first day of the expedition and singer Alesha Dixon suffered a fall whilst taking a toilet break on her way up to the summit.
Kay can sympathise, having made the trek with her son Lee in June 2006.
She says: “Kilimanjaro is one of those places you want to reach the summit, take a picture and tick off your list because actually getting there is excruciating. But I did it twice because I’d agreed to take a group up there straight after I’d done my own trip. I had to motivate them without letting on just how bad I’d felt when I reached the top due to the altitude.”
Kay laughs when she thinks how her life has changed over the past decade.
“If someone had said to me in my early 30s, I’d end up doing these kind of adventures, I’d never have believed them.
“But I think if a 40-something mum-of-three from Birmingham can do it anyone can!”
* Kay is planning another trek to Kilimanjaro in June through Redventure.
