How many times do you think you could tackle the same water slide? It’s probably not as many as members of the armed forces managed to do in Blackpool last weekend.

A team of 10 armed forces members headed to the Sandcastle Waterpark on Saturday (January 31st) in an attempt to use a single 80 m water slide to slide the height of Mount Everest – which stands at a towering 8,848 m high.

The team managed to use the slide over 900 times to complete the challenge – and then some. They slid the height of the mountain more than eight times over, raising money for the veterans’ mental health charity Combat Stress in the process.

The challenge was undertaken to support Maj Kirsty Watson, an army reservist medical officer and C Squadron team member, who will actually climb Mount Everest as part of a British Army expedition later this year.

Capt Martin Ellison of C Squadron 208 Field Hospital told the Blackpool Gazette that it was an exhausting challenge.

“The idea was to slide down the equivalent height of Mount Everest. We managed to achieve it eight-fold. We had a two-hour window and to be honest we did not think we would make 10 slides let alone a few hundred – we managed to use our speed and agility and ended up completing 900 slides,” he said.

Maj Watson added: “The idea of the climb is to reach the summit and shout out that help is out there for those with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health issues for military veterans.”

On March 6th, members of the 2nd Battalion Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment will also travel to the Sandcastle Waterpark in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the longest distance travelled on a water slide in 24 hours.

The team will have to beat the current record of 843 miles – which is equivalent to more than 1.3 million m or 153 times the height of Everest. Good luck to them!ADNFCR-2867-ID-801774425-ADNFCR

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