Sælskindsstøvler på Mount Everest

Grandparents in a Mount Everest drama

Harald and Tone Bergseth are a sturdy Norwegian couple.

They have been married to each other for years, have five children between them and two grandchildren.

They both have full-time jobs in the Norwegian postal service.

Like so many other Norwegians they love spending their weekends in the mountains.

Tone and Harald Bergseth happily spend several weeks at a time on Hardangervidda (a lovely Norwegian national park).

A few years ago they had a wild idea.

To carry out that plan they had to spend between 10 and 20 hours in the gym every week, on top of their long weekends in the mountains.

They have a shared passion, which has taken them up to some of the world’s highest peaks.

Together they have climbed Kilimanjaro (5,895 metres high) in Tanzania and Aconcagua in Argentina, which is 6,962 metres.

In 2015 they made an attempt to climb Mount Everest,

but that trip was not without drama and mortal fear.

Along the way Tone got a loose filling in one of her teeth and had to be flown down to the valley to be treated by the local dentist.

Inflammation in a tooth is nothing to joke about at altitude, because it is not very far from tooth to brain.

Her tooth was treated, and Tone came back to Harald. Together they could continue the trip up the mountain.

BUT:

A powerful earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale brought their trip to an abrupt halt.

They tell how, after eating breakfast, they saw snow, ice and fog come rolling down the mountainside towards their camp.

They thought their last hour had come.

Tone took shelter behind the tent, and Harald ran as fast as he could from the spot.

When the drama had settled, 19 people had died and many were badly injured.

Mount Everest was closed off and they had to give up reaching the top.

They went home, grateful to be alive and with a reminder that nature gives a great deal, but can take it all back in seconds.

In 2017 they made another attempt

to become the world’s oldest married couple to have reached the world’s highest point together,

and they succeeded.

And to top it all, those tough grandparents are again planning an expedition to the Great Mountain in 2025.

You can read more about their plans here – on their website

Their trip could of course not be done without sponsorships.

One of their sponsorship agreements was with the Norwegian company “Topaz“, which makes some of the sealskin boots Sikamut sells.

Topaz had equipped the couple with a pair of boots like these.

Støvler i grønlandsk sælskind. Fås i sort og natur sælskind

Tone and Harald were delighted with the boots and used them every day in base camp.

They collected quite a few envious glances from the sherpas, the people who help the climbers up and down Mount Everest, and from the other climbers on the mountain

“The sealskin boots were the “snakkis” of the whole trip“
the couple said when they came back to Norway

(“Snakkis” is a Norwegian expression for a hot topic of conversation).

Just think about it:

The people who cast longing glances at Tone and Harald’s sealskin boots are professional climbers.

They were impressed by their boots in Greenlandic sealskin and lambskin.

I take their envious glances and remarks as an enormous stamp of quality on a pair of lovely winter boots, because those people know better than anyone what good boots have to be able to do.

At Sikamut we are immensely proud to be able to sell boots of that kind

If you want, you can also get a pair of sealskin boots like that,

– and now at least you have a fun story about them.

The world’s oldest couple on Mount Everest ended in drama – wearing sealskin boots