Timo Kemppainen aspires to conquer Mount Everest with first-ever completely Finnish expedition

Helsinki-based entrepreneur searches for new ideas from extreme adventure

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By Antti Nieminen
     
      For the next two and a half months Timo Kemppainen of Helsinki will be living his big dream.
      Kemppainen is a member of the nine-strong Airborne Ranger Club of Finland team that aims to conquer the highest peak in the world.
     
If the plans materialise, in May the first team that consists only of Finnish nationals will climb to the summit of Mount Everest at 8,848 metres above sea level.
      “A great task is ahead of us, but dreams are meant to be fulfilled. I also believe that this trip will give me a lot of ideas that I can start realising once I’m back to my everyday life in June”, says Kemppainen.
     
The unifying factor among the members of the Airborne Ranger Club is that every man has completed his military service as a paratrooper. Other than that, the group is a nice mix of professionals from different fields: a medical doctor, a fireman, a real estate agent, a training consultant.
      Kemppainen, 40, is an advertising agency entrepreneur, who has taken interest in mountain climbing.
      A resident of Helsinki, who now lives on Huvilakatu in the very desirable city district of Eira, Kemppainen spent 1993 in Switzerland, during which time the Alps left a lasting impression on him.
     
Since then most of his holiday destinations have been in mountainous regions.
      Towards the end of the 1990s Kemppainen joined the Ranger Club’s wilderness activities wing and completed a three-stage training course into moving on glaciers and in the mountains.
      Thus far Kemppainen has taken part in expeditions to the Andes and the Alps.
     
Hitherto the highest peak that Kemppainen has visited is Peru’s Artesonraju at 6,025 metres. Now significantly harsher conditions lie ahead of Kemppainen and his teammates.
      “Our aim is to get as many men as possible to the summit. We will not take unnecessary risks, however, and we will respect the environment”, promises Kemppainen.
     
Kemppainen is all too familiar with an incident from four years ago, where a Slovakian expedition was trying to reach the Everest summit at the same time as an Airborne Ranger Club of Finland team.
      “The rangers turned back 200 or so metres short of their objective because the conditions become too difficult. The Slovaks decided to continue. None of them came back alive.”
     
The nine-strong Finnish team that is about to set out on the mission this time has been together since 2006. The trust between the members has increased continuously.
      “We have known each other for about ten years, and for the last three years we have got together once every two months or so. From the expedition functioning point of view knowing one another well is crucial. If one is having a bad day, others will know how to react.”
     
The members of the team have looked after their physical condition on their own.
      Every morning Kemppainen goes for a run in the Ullanlinnanmäki district of town and does some circuit training after that. Some more varied exercises can also be included.
      “A couple of times a week I have completed a three-to-four-hour backpack carrying exercise to the top of the Martinlaakso landfill hill. At 91 metres it is the highest “peak” in Helsinki", Kemppainen laughs.
      The average age of the expedition is 40 years. There are both family men and single guys in the team. Kemppainen is married but does not have children.
     
"I promised my wife that I would marry her after I had conquered Mount Everest. The original journey got delayed, so I advanced my promise. We had an outdoor wedding in Lapland. I built an ice shrine for the ceremony.”
      And how does the wife cope with her husband staying away for so long?
      “She shares the dream in spirit. She is married to a mountain climber and is familiar with the hobby that has been part of the deal from the beginning.”
     
Details of the expedition can be found from the Airborne Rangers link below.
     
      The first Finn to climb Mt. Everest was Veikka Gustafsson in 1993. In the spring of 1997, he also became the first Finn to have scaled the summit without the use of bottled oxygen. Gustafsson is now within one peak of collecting the full set of all fourteen peaks over 8,000 metres without bottled oxygen. Two other Finns, Ari Piela and Antti Mankinen, also reached the summit of Everest in 1999.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 1.4.2009


See also:
  Veikka Gustafsson reaches summit of Broad Peak, at 8,051 metres (1.8.2008)

Links:
  Mount Everest.net
  Airborne Ranger Club of Finland Everest Expedition

ANTTI NIEMINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
antti.nieminen@hs.fi