The Cumbrian adventurer hopes to help two local Amerindians to the summit of the 2,810m flat-topped tepui Mount Roraima. Joining his team next month will be fellow Cumbrian climber Anna Taylor, who will be taking part in her first major expedition.
The six-strong group hopes to post a first route on the 600m continually overhanging prow of the Guyanan mountain.
Trad climber Taylor, 21, is the latest to join outdoors brand Berghaus’s team of athletes, which includes Houlding. The company is sponsoring the expedition to the tepui, in the rainforest on the borders of Brazil, Venezuela and Guyana.
A Berghaus spokesperson said: “It is the location that inspired Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic work of fiction The Lost World and more recently the Disney animated movie Up.
“The main objective of the expedition is to free-climb a new route on the prow of Roraima, which lies in Guyana, a former British colony that gained independence in 1966. The country has one of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world and is 80 per cent covered in forest.
“It was first climbed with extensive aid in 1973, by a team of British climbing legends, including Hamish MacInnes, Don Whillans and Joe Brown, and in a BBC documentary.
“Access to Mount Roraima involves a 53km trek through pristine, untracked jungle from the closest airstrip in the Amerindian community of Philipi.”
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