Catherine, Princess of Wales, is the first member of the royal family to complete the National Three Peaks Challenge, climbing the highest points in Scotland, England and Wales inside a single day. She took on the trek to raise money for the Royal Marsden, the hospital in Chelsea that treated her for cancer.
Catherine, 44, climbed Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon within 24 hours, starting on a Saturday evening in June. She walked the route solo, supported en route by Mountain Rescue, and climbed more than 3,000 metres in total, driving 462 miles between the three peaks. At the finish, Prince William and their three children, George, Charlotte and Louis, were waiting, along with Catherine’s parents and her brother James.
She was diagnosed with an undisclosed cancer in early 2024, underwent chemotherapy, and announced her remission in January 2025. On social media she said the climb served as an opportunity “to explore life beyond diagnosis and to give something back.” She said the hospital “is a place that holds great meaning for me,” and asked anyone facing serious illness to know they are “not alone.”
A title that outlived its last holder
Catherine became Princess of Wales in September 2022, when William was made Prince of Wales by his father, King Charles III. Before her, the last woman to carry the title was Diana, whose life and death made it, in the BBC’s words, “a tough act to follow.” When Camilla married the then Prince of Wales in 2005, she took the lesser title Duchess of Cornwall rather than the one Diana had made her own.
Catherine had years to grow into the role before it reached her. During the decade between meeting William at university in 2001 and their 2010 engagement, tabloids nicknamed her “waity Katie.” By their engagement the couple had moved to Anglesey, where William worked as an RAF search and rescue pilot, and where Catherine quietly helped a local Scout troop and had meals cooked for her by a chef in the nearby village of Aberffraw. Sue Hesketh, a Cub leader there, recalled that Catherine helped out around a dozen times, once teaching the children knotting skills her own father had taught her while sailing.
The image she cannot fully control
Not every part of her public image has landed as well. A 2024 portrait of Catherine by the artist Hannah Uzor, commissioned by Tatler for its July cover, drew mixed reviews when it appeared that spring. The Telegraph’s Alastair Sooke wrote that the painting had “as much charisma as a naff figurine atop a wedding cake.” Uzor never sat Catherine for the work and pieced the likeness together from photographs instead. The princess was then undergoing cancer treatment and had stayed away from public events since the previous Christmas.
That contrast is part of what makes the Three Peaks climb notable. A commissioned portrait interprets Catherine from a distance, filtered through someone else’s eye. Twenty-three miles across three mountains, tracked on her own social media and in her own words, is a story she got to tell herself.
