Event Reviews – Marlburian Mondays – Jake Meyer
Monday 6th April marked the launch of Marlburian Monday, a new series of Zoom talks by OMs to be held at 8pm every other Monday evening.
The inaugural talk was given by Jake Meyer (C3 1997–2002) mountaineer, adventurer and inspirational speaker. Jake shared stories and photos from his early climbing days and the lessons learnt whilst at Marlborough and from his many adventures conquering the highest peaks in the world. In particular he spoke about his ascent of K2 in 2018 on his third and successful attempt to reach the summit. Known as the Savage Mountain it has claimed the lives of one in four of the climbers who have attempted this challenge. What came across clearly was the tenacity and determination of climbers; the eldest to have conquered K2 being aged 82! One of the images Jake showed was of a Sherpa aged 52 who had climbed K2 19 times.
Jake shared his most important rules when undertaking such a challenge with a team. Number one: honesty; with your team mates and yourself. If you are struggling you need to say, do not ignore what your body is telling you and try to push through, say if you need help. Second: ‘don’t be a jerk’; in such close quarters and under extreme pressure, tensions can rise and tempers can become short but always be aware that you are on the same team and work together. Two important rules that he thought could be useful to people in the current situation.
Many thanks to Jake for such an entertaining and inspirational talk. A recording can be found below.
Next Up…
Our next Marlburian Monday talk will be on 20th April by Richard Villar (PR 1966-71), an emergency response surgeon. Richard served as SAS Medical Officer, operating in the field on soldiers and civilians alike. He is now a leading orthopaedic surgeon and a member of the Disaster Emergency Response Team – responding to events like the earthquake in Haiti and civil war in Libya. Richard describes arriving in a stricken area with the infrastructure destroyed: “Without water, power or the rule of law, you take nothing for granted – the challenges go beyond what most of us can imagine.” An email with details of how to join this talk will be sent on 14th April.
