Carmine's no stranger to our store. Along with being a Scarpa Athlete, a Beta Outdoor Sports ambassador and all round nice person, Carmine goes way back with us - a friend of Steve and Ruth (and a Best Man a long time ago). We've known him for over 25 years. These days Carmine is a veteran of many, many ultra events, a key person in trail clubs and events, not to mention the captain of the Scarpa UK trail running team.
In 2024 Carmine set himself a challenge to combine two of his passions - mountain time and music (accordion playing). He completed the National Three Peaks Challenge (Ben Nevis, Scarfell Pike and Yr Wyddfa) in March 2024 raising over £2,000 for Climbers against Cancel. He did it with a couple of points of difference. He took an accordion to play on the way (and on the trails) and he undertook to travel by a combination of bike and public transport - he set himself a target of 36 hours (in true Ultra Runner style - probably without much sleep). Specifically he got trains between the peaks and biked to the trailheads from the nearest stations.
Carmine completed the challenge and raised a lot of cash for Climbers Against Cancer - in Memory of his Dad. It set the seed for him to continue the work bringing music to the trails and mountains and raising money. He's dedicating much more time to bringing music to the hills (see us on Helvelyn for Christmas Carols this year - TBD)
What can we do? We were chatting to our favourite supplier Beta Outdoor Sports (https://www.betaoutdoorsports.com/), they were doing us a massive favour (as they always do - they are lovely people first and foremost). We wanted to pay this forward and Carmine had approached them at the same time about widening his activities to raise money for this vital charity. Lee at Beta suggested we tie this together and so in conjunction with Beta Outdoors we are running the following offer - proceeds as per below going to Climbers Against Cancer:
This is the last availability of these excellent trail running specific packs. We're selling it at 36% off it's RRP of £155 - it's a bargain at £99 and £25 of every sale will go to Climbers Against Cancer.
More details of the UD Mountain Vest & Vesta 6 are here - you can buy it here too
If you want the latest news of Carmine's ongoing challenges and fundraising totals and you want to donate direct - his Just Giving page is here.
You can find out more about Climbers Against Cancer here too
Finally, as per above, a big thanks to all the guys at Beta Outdoor Sports who are helping us out and without whom we couldn't do this