The Ascend to Cure project was born from a simple conviction: mountains can become a vehicle for hope, awareness, and change in support of cancer research.

It brings together two people from different backgrounds — Kate, from the Seychelles, and Julien, from France — each of whom has been touched by cancer through a member of their family: multiple myeloma and pancreatic cancer for Kate, and testicular cancer for Julien.

Kate is a renowned climber, already well known in the Seychelles and Eastern Africa as the first woman from her country to summit high peaks, with a solid audience on social media. Julien, originally from France (Savoie province), has been passionate about mountaineering all his life and has already climbed Mont Blanc and Kilimanjaro. It is this shared passion, combined with a common determination to turn a family ordeal into concrete action, that brought them together around this project. Rather than living through this ordeal in silence, we wanted to turn it into a concrete way of supporting research.

We are calling on the public to come together and support this mission. The 2027 expeditions include four climbs that will anchor an international campaign for cancer awareness and fundraising. Our upcoming multi-peak itinerary on different continents begins with Gran Paradiso (Italy), followed by Mount Toubkal (Morocco) and Mount Fuji (Japan), concluding with Mount Aconcagua (Argentina) in late 2027. Specific expedition dates will be announced before the end of 2026.

Each climb will serve as an opportunity to raise awareness, share our message, and mobilise support for the fight against cancer. Through this project, we aim to build a bridge between the physical and symbolic effort of mountaineering and the daily scientific work of your teams, mobilising an international audience across borders, languages, and cultures around a shared goal: advancing the fight against cancer.