Background

My name is Wim Smets. I was born on 21st December, 1968 in Reet and I lived there until 1990. Then I moved to Leuven and since 2002, I live in the heart of the old city of Antwerp.
Since 1995, I have been working as a project/program manager in the IT sector. This job allows me to travel quite a bit and that is a perfect match for my interests. In the mean time, I have lived in Spain, Ireland, Germany and England and I have worked in many other countries, in- and outside of Europe.

During my vacations, I have always traveled to some far out destination as well. And because I like physical challenges, part of these vacations on other continents were spent on trekking. In 1996, I completed a trekking in Nepal that brought me up to 5400 m. As of that moment, high mountains became a fixed ingredient of my vacations.

In 1998, I climbed the first major peaks in Ecuador and since then most of my vacations are spent at high altitude. The highlight, up until now, was the summit of Everest on 17th May, 2007. Since 1998, I have also managed to climb all of the “7 Summits”, the highest mountain on each of the 7 continents. In 2009, I became the first Belgian that tried to climb K2.

Unfortunately, I had to turn back at 7600 meter because of the weather.

On this website, you will find more information about my expeditions, my plans for the future and other interesting topics for those that want to stay up to date about my adventures.

Enjoy !