Kate Middleton Secretly Climbed the Three Highest Peaks in the UK in 24 Hours, 18 Months After Finishing Cancer Treatment
In early 2024, Catherine, Princess of Wales, told the public she had been diagnosed with cancer. She went through treatment that year and announced she was in remission in early 2025.
About 18 months later, with no advance announcement, she climbed Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike, and Snowdon back to back. She started Saturday evening at Ben Nevis in Scotland and finished about 24 hours later at Snowdon in Wales, with Scafell Pike in England in between, 23 miles of walking, 10,000 feet of climbing, and more than 450 miles of driving. The National Three Peaks Challenge links the highest mountains in Scotland, England, and Wales, and the traditional format demands all three within 24 hours, including the long drives between them. She did the full timed version with solo climbs and Mountain Rescue support. She’s reported to be the first royal ever to complete it.
She climbed for the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, the hospital where she was treated, and a fundraising page went up alongside her announcement on Sunday.
In a written statement posted to her and Prince William’s Instagram, she described what a cancer diagnosis sets in motion: “a path that tests every part of who we are: physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually.” She wrote that the ripples touch “families, friendships, work and the quiet moments we spend alone with our thoughts.”
“Cancer doesn’t just affect the body,” she wrote. “It changes how you think and feel and profoundly affects every aspect of life. I know this personally, and that the journey through and beyond treatment requires more than medicine alone.”
The climb, she said, was a way “to explore life beyond diagnosis and to give something back.” The money raised will go toward holistic cancer care at the Royal Marsden, the kind of “whole person” support she argues should sit alongside clinical treatment. “Healing, whether personal or collective, is not just about fixing what is wrong,” she wrote. “It is about finding balance in how we live.”
Prince William and their three children, George, Charlotte, and Louis, along with her parents and brother, were waiting for her at the finish on Snowdon.
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