Disabled
mountaineer Gary
Guller will attempt to summit Mt. Everest,
the highest mountain in the world at 8,850m,
in Spring 2001. While any attempt at Everest
is one of the greatest challenges one could
undertake, Gary's attempt will be especially
personal. In 1986, Gary suffered a spinal cord
injury in a climbing accident. His neck was
broken and the nerve roots going to his left
arm were pulled out of the spinal cord.
Despite experimental surgery, the paralysis
was irreparable and he made the decision to
have his left arm amputated.
May
10
From Mike: The weather is appalling. We must be
realistic while maintaining our positive
attitudes. You never conquer Everest - she lets
you climb when the mood allows. In the afternoon
we watched the clouds boil in the valley below.
Slowly but surely they moved up and enveloped us
in a small but angry storm. Even then we were
still confident that we could climb back up to
the mountain during the early hours of 11 May.
May
11
We went to bed with kit packed and wearing our
climbing clothes. In the dark and dismal moments
of pre-dawn it would be just a case of climbing
out of our sleeping bags and into our big
mountain boots. We all awoke about 02:00 to a
howling wind with snow battering the tents. Even
then optimism prevailed and we hoped that in the
next two hours life would get more comfortable -
how wrong we were. By 05:00 we accepted the
inevitable, pulled our sleeping bags tight
around us, we fell back to sleep. When we
surfaced at 08:00 it was more like an Arctic
scene than spring in the Himalayas. Wind blown
snow lay on the ground and the wind-chill factor
must have been below -30°C (-30°F) - very,
very cold for Base Camp. At Camp 2 almost a
metre (~3 feet) of snow had fallen and the trend
was for those Sherpas and climbers already
waiting there to retreat down to Base Camp. In
the afternoon the weather continued to dust us
with snow and insult us with the wind's cold icy
touch.
Future
Plans: We are still hoping to climb this
mountain, and everyone remains positive. But
below the veneer we must look at the possibility
that this year the mountain is not amenable to
our plans. We forget with the successes of
recent seasons that there are years when Everest
is not climbed - and this may be one of those
years. We still have some two weeks before the
season ends, and all we can do is make wishes
for the opportunity to reach the summit. At
least we will have tried - to quote Kipling
"If you can fill the unforgiving minute
with sixty seconds worth of distance run; yours
is the earth.........."
