Mountaineer bids to become oldest Irish person to summit highest peaks on seven continents

Derek Mahon hopes to be the oldest Irish person to summit the highest peaks of seven continents.

Crawling on all fours onto the summit of Mount Elbrus in Russia, winds whipping so viciously they would blow him to his death if he stood up, Derek Mahon caught the mountaineering bug.

“The conditions were horrendous. Once you got to cloud level it was a constant snowstorm with very high winds. You couldn’t see anything. And it was about -20c," he said.