Not content with successfully climbing the corporate ladder in Hong Kong, Rob Hart is spending this month and next attempting to climb the world's highest peak - Mount Everest - as part of his Seven Summits goal of climbing the highest mountain on each continent.
Hart, 33, is taking a two-month leave from his position as an executive director with Morgan Stanley. He flew to Kathmandu, Nepal yesterday and if all goes well he should be on the 8,850-metre summit of Mt Everest towards the end of May. It can take up to nine weeks due to the weather and the time required to adapt to the high altitude at each stage of the climb.
When he arrived in Hong Kong from South Africa in February, 1996, Hart was armed with a finance degree, a lot of determination and not much experience. He ended up being a cook at The Jump for three months before joining Morgan Stanley, one of the world's largest investment banks, and Hart's career began to take off.
Suddenly, it was the end of 2003 and something was troubling him. 'I looked back on the year and asked myself what I had accomplished,' he said. Nothing specific came to mind.
It was during this period of reflection that he settled on climbing the Seven Summits in order to have an annual highlight to remember. So far, he has climbed Kilimanjaro (5,895m) in Tanzania and Aconcagua in Argentina, which is 6,962m and the highest peak outside of the Himalayas.
'So much of your life you can't remember, but I can remember every day spent climbing on Aconcagua,' he said of his December adventure. In February last year, he climbed Kilimanjaro with his father. Hart has also been to the top of Mont Blanc in France with his wife, Anna. They were married in October.