This originally appeared in Driven Magazine a few years ago.
To read the British Press it would be easy to draw the conclusion Annabelle Bond, one of only a handful of people to climb the seven summits, is nothing more than a pretty face with a little bit of luck.Dead wrong.
“I’m fed up with the British Press making me out to be a ditzy blond who applies makeup while trekking up the side of mountains,” she says, referring to articles that insist she was applying lipstick while on the peak of Mount Everest. “First of all I had an oxygen mask on and secondly no one wants to stop the climb so I can reapply.”
Busting preconceived notions was as big of a part of the challenge as conquering the seven summits faster than any other woman has done.
“My friends would say to me ‘Why are you going to Everest?’ or ‘This isn’t just some trek you’re going on?’ it was difficult to hear that,” she says. “I remember the first time I told my father. He was sitting in the chair buried in the Financial Times and when I said to him ‘I’m going to climb Everest,’ he kind of flipped the page down said ‘Oh,
well have fun at base camp,’ and flipped the page back up.”
Bond has always been successful. At the age of 29 she was already a director at FPDSavills in Hong Kong. For four consecutive years she competed in a race along the MacLehose Trail in Hong Kong, a 64-mile mountain marathon run in 90F humidity.
However, growing up the daughter of Sir John Bond, the chairman of HSBC, always drove her to succeed but also left her feeling she had something to prove. Bond says it was always hard to live in the shadow of a very successful man.
“Even as a young girl I had the need to validate myself,” she says. “I needed to do something he wouldn’t be able to compete with me at.”
By the time she was ready to begin her trek up Everest, she says her father had realized how driven she was and was so excited about her journey he did enough research so he could take every step of the climb with her in his head while she was doing it.
Family has been a big part of what keeps Bond motivated. Her mother is instrumental in landing big ticket donors for the charity she supports, The Eve Foundation. Her brother is constantly promoting her Web site and she keeps herself grounded by
keeping a good sense of humour about her – particularly when it comes to family.
“I remember my brother and I set out on a bike ride in the mountains of Sun Valley, Idaho,” she says. “He just took off, I could keep up with him. By the time I got to the first hill, there he was lying on the ground because he wasn’t used to the altitude. As I stood there looking at him a ninety-year-old man pedaled past him. That was a good laugh.”
She turns serious for a moment: about humor. No one wants a crying damsel in distress at base camp, she says.
“There is money on the line and the mountain can take your life at any moment. If you can’t see the funny times in life you’re not going to make it.”
