Emergency physician and expert in high-altitude medicine, he has accompanied mountaineer Carlos Soria on his expeditions to the Fourteen Eight-Thousanders, safeguarding the team’s health in extreme conditions. He has worked aboard helicopters and mobile intensive care units, trained mountaineers in first aid, and collaborated on studies about human adaptation at altitude. A true benchmark in medicine for hostile environments.
Passionate about exploration travel, she shares her journeys in an educational and adventurous way through Allende los Mares. She showcases the sea and life aboard the sailboat in her day-to-day, inspiring many who were unaware of this world to explore it, get trained, and enjoy it. She is an architect, captain, and speaker, with over 55,000 nautical miles sailed, including 3 Atlantic crossings, 2 Pacific crossings, and 3 expeditions to Antarctica. She is the founder of the astronomical journey Stella Oceani and the nautical event Encuentro de navegantes.
Rocío Monteoliva is from Granada, has a degree in Translation and Interpreting (English and German) from the University of Granada and is a High and Medium Mountain sports technician. Additionally, he is a snow science and self-rescue technician (CAG2), an official instructor in snow science for ACNA, a guide for the Sierra Nevada National Park (CENEAM), an official tour guide, an extreme conditions guide (WGA), a lifeguard, and a trainer of trainers in SVB and CPR. He has been an alpine ski instructor since 1999, a faculty member of the EAAM-FAM teaching staff since 2019, and was responsible for the Mountain Ski Committee of the FAM for three seasons (2017 and 2019). Among her achievements, she was the first woman to descend the North Face of Mulhacén on alpine skis and holds the title of High-Performance Athlete in Mountaineering (for ski mountaineering and climbing).
A physiotherapist with 22 years of practice at the La Paz Hospital in Madrid, Carlos III and Cantoblanco. Manager of sports facilities and events since 2012. A lifetime linked to sport and its challenges: 7 Ironman, more than 20 Half Ironman, 7 marathons with personal best of 2:38, one of the 15 people in the world to complete an Ultraman Non Stop in 36 hours (10 km swimming, 420 km biking, 84 km running) and the most recent Finisher on Kilometrocero, Madrid-Finisterre on a bike and self-sufficiently in 100 hours. He was also deputy head of the Pelayo Vida Annapurna Bike 2017 Challenge.
A deep-sea skipper, with a degree in Chemistry and a technical degree in Naval Mechanics, she has been the manager of Bigboy Náutica since 2009. It provides nautical, rigging and charter qualifications. As a sailor, she has participated in major projects such as the ‘Estrella Galicia’, Admiral’s Cup, Commodores Cup, Middle Sea Race, 200 Miglia di Lignano… “For me, it is an honor to have been chosen as the director of the Reto Pelayo Vida and to lead these five brave women to the Arctic Circle. Just seeing the vitality they have is already an example for everyone”
says Pilar.
Olympic champion at the London 2012 Olympic Games, teaming up with Tamara Echegoyen and Sofía Toro, in the Match Race modality, with Elliot 6 class boats. In the 21st Olympiad, she was part of the Olympic Sailing Team, in the 470 class, but she did not manage to be the Spanish representative at the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games. She is currently competing alongside Sofía Toro to qualify for the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games. In 2017, she won the Spanish championship in the women’s 470 class. In 2013, she was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Sports Merit.
A Spanish climber born in Asturias in 1960. She has summited 6 of the 14 eight-thousanders, including Mount Everest. To date, she is the only Spanish woman to complete the 7 Summits Project, climbing the highest mountains on all continents (Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, South America, Oceania and Antarctica). The mountain ranges of the Andes, Himalayas, Pyrenees, Caucasus, Alps and the Karakoram have been the setting of this mountaineer’s expeditions for two decades. In 2015, she was an expedition member in the first edition of the Pelayo Vida Challenge, with Kilimanjaro as its destination.
“My work and life go hand in hand. The bicycle has taken me around the world. I have participated in mountain bike races all over the world: Mongolia, South Africa, Morocco, New Zealand, Canada, United States, Chile …”
All in all, he has lived six years in the Arctic and speaks some Inuit language fluently. He is undoubtedly the Spaniard who knows the Arctic best, especially Greenland, where he owns a house. In addition to his expeditions, Ramón is passionate about knowledge and dissemination about the polar regions and boasts the best library in Spain on the subject, compiled over more than twenty years and made available to the public through the Polar Information Centre, which he founded in 1993.
He has always been linked to Olympic sailing, mainly in the Finn and Star classes. He sailed alongside the Olympic champion José María Van der Ploeg, hence becoming European runners-up in 2002. He participated on board Team Telefónica in the Volvo Ocean Race (2011-2012). He paraded at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games as national coach in the Finn class. He has coached the Olympic teams of China, Brazil, Switzerland and Mexico. In 2016, he headed the Trasatlántica, the 2nd edition of the Pelayo Vida Challenge, in which five women cancer survivors crossed the Atlantic.
A former Real Madrid basketball player, his first contact with the mountains took place in the Dolomites in 2001, when he was still a professional basketball player. It was love at first sight, and he knew from that moment on that his life would be linked to them forever. He felt like they were hiding something different and special and he wanted to find out what it was.
