Cumbria’s mountain whiz kid is getting ready to take on another epic trek – but this time, he’s climbing in memory of his grandad.
Frankie McMillan, eight, of Gosforth, is getting ready to travel to Morocco at the end of October with his mum, Basia, to complete the three peaks of the Atlas Mountains.
If he’s successful, Frankie will become the youngest person to ever climb all three of north Africa’s highest mountains in a five-mountain traverse.
It’s a trek that will take five days to complete and will see them stay in mountain refuges and climb over 13,671 feet, but it’s not the first time Frankie has taken on an intense hiking challenge.
Over the summer, the pair also walked all five of the UK’s highest peaks, including Scafell Pike, Ben Nevis, Snowdon and Carrauntoohil Slieve Donard.
As part of his adventures, Frankie has always made an effort to fundraise for different causes and charities along the way including Wasdale Mountain Rescue team and the Make A Wish foundation.
But this time around Frankie will be fundraising for blood cancer charity the Anthony Nolan Trust in memory of his grandad, making it that bit more special.
Basia said: “We’ve been planning to do Toubkal for a while and we were thinking about fundraising ideas, but we weren’t sure if people would donate so quickly after Everest.
“But Frankie being Frankie, he said we had to do a fundraiser if we were going to do something big and I thought even if we reach £500 it would help make a difference.
“The choice was obvious this time because in November this year it will be two years since Frankie’s grandad died of myeloma, a form of blood cancer.
“My husband is from Northern Ireland, so when Frankie’s grandad passed away it was in Belfast, so me and Frankie were not there the day he passed.
“It was difficult for Frankie to understand what had happened and why grandad wasn’t here anymore, so went up a mountain to wave goodbye to grandad because I said well let’s go and be close to him in heaven.
“We thought climbing Toubkal we will be even closer to grandad on his second anniversary of passing and a chance to raise awareness of blood cancer and hopefully raise money to help save some lives.”
The pair are now aiming to raise £2,000 to represent the two years since Frankie’s grandad passed away.
The fundraiser also won’t be the first time Frankie and Basia have supported the Anthony Nolan Trust – as when Frankie was born, his umbilical cord was donated to the charity for life-saving stem cell transplants.
Basia said: “Before I even held him, we donated his cord, and at this point we had no idea it would be something that ended up coming so close to home.
“So the story has come around and has made a full circle and we’re back to helping the Anthony Nolan Trust, just in a different way.”
To prepare for the trek – Basia and Frankie will be keeping up their walking and continuing on with Frankie’s second round of Wainwrights.
Morocco’s three peaks are high altitude treks – which means both Frankie and Basia will have to acclimatise slowly to make sure they can keep going.
The peaks include Ras Quanoukrim, Toubkal West and Toubkal – which is nearly five times higher than Scafell Pike.
She added: “There will be some scrambles and the whole traverse takes place over five mountains and includes the three highest peaks of Morocco.
“While two other children have done Toubkal before, we haven’t found any other children who’ve done the five mountain traverse, so it will be challenging.
“I spoke to our guides taking us and they spoke to their guides and while they don’t keep a register of people going up, they said they’d never heard of a child doing it.
“But we’ere not doing it for the record anyway, it’s more for the challenge of it, it’s just a cherry on the top to highlight that it won’t just be another walk in the park.
“But we’re very excited for it. I think because of Everest, it’s helped me knowing we’ve been higher up, of course you never know how you’re going to react and you have to be cautious, but it does calm my nerves a bit.”
The pair will set off on their challenge on October 26 and return five days later.
You can donate to Frankie and Basia’s fundraiser for the Anthony Nolan Trust here.
