Katrina Jacks

Jacks was born in Monmouth, the second child and first daughter to General Practitioners Alasdair and Susanna. She had an older brother and a younger sister.^[1]

Jacks went to Haberdashers' Monmouth School for Girls and attended Imperial College, London, graduating with a first class degree in chemical engineering.^[2]

Jacks won a number of gold medals at the National Schools Championships, and represented Great Britain at under-16 level for two consecutive years.^[1] She was part of the Welsh eight at the 2006 Commonwealth Rowing Championships at Strathclyde Park in Motherwell, Scotland, winning silver with the Welsh team.^[3]

Due to start a job with an engineering consultancy company in summer 2010, Jacks took a gap year in South America from 2009 to improve her Spanish. First volunteering at an orphanage in Ecuador,^[4] she then trekked along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu,^[1] before travelling to Lake Titicaca in Peru, the world's highest navigable lake at a height of 3,827 metres (12,556 ft). Jacks died of an apparent case of altitude sickness, which affects human beings above 2,400 metres (7,900 ft),^[5] on 16 May 2010. Her body was returned to Wales for burial in late May 2010.^[1]