Pink Summits for LGBTIQ Visibility

Why this campaign?

We are a bunch of queer mountaineers attempting to conquer Seven Summits (the highest mountains of each continent) and to raise rainbow flags on top of them for the visibility of LGBTIQ+ as well as to organize climbing activist workshops with local LGBTIQ+ communities.

In the picture above: the Pink Summits team brought a rainbow flag for the first time in history to the top of Elbrus, the highest mountain of Europe and Russia, for the sake of LGBT+ visibility. Dastan and Steffen in the picture suffered not only the high-altitude sickness and snow storms but were also detained and interviewed at the border between Russia and Georgia by FSB, the secret services of Russia. Despite all the difficulties, they managed to ascend Mount Elbrus with the flag in the most conservative part of Russia, not far from Chechnya where people like them are tortured and killed by the Chechen police.

Turn hate into love!

After we conquered Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe, Kosciuszko in Australia, and Kilimanjaro, in Africa, we received a lot of comments and personal messages from Russia and Central Asia full of hate, intimidation, and even death threats!

We want to turn this hate into love: I want to fundraise 1-5 EUR for each hate comment. 50% of it I will spend on LGBTIQ+ initiatives in Central Asia and 50% towards Pink Summits. The more hate I will document, the more money I will fundraise for LGBTIQ+.

This campaign will fund some important work done in Central Asia for LGBTIQ+ communities as well as it will partially cover costs related to the expeditions. We plan to cover the rest with our personal funds and with potential sponsors.

Weapons of love

Our weapons against negative narratives are our voices and our actions. I found my own path to use my stories as a powerful weapon against prejudice and hatred. We plan to film a documentary about this particular trip and actively share our stories on our website here. Support us in our dream to show the world that badass mountaineers can be also queer and to turn all that hate directed towards us into an important action! In our dream to show that despite some of us falling victims to violence and hate, we fight, raise, and persevere!

Stay in touch

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