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Everest 2003: Ellis Stewart
"LIVING
THE DREAM 2003"
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From Dreams to
Reality
EverestNews.com-
Dispatch One
Over a week ago we
has an extreme cold spell in the UK and a huge
drop of snow. I took advantage of this freeze, by
zooming up to Scotland from my home in the North
East of England. A lot of winter routes were in
immaculate condition and I spent a week tramping
round Glencoe soloing some sustained gully routes,
while bearing out the freeze in my Mountain
Hardwear Trango 2 tent at night.
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I came home feeling
rejuvenated and replenished after the excesses of the
Christmas Holiday period. It was also at this point
that I resigned from my job in order to commit full
time to fundraising in the final run up to departure
for Everest. Trying to secure any kind of funding for
this trip has been extremely difficult and even now
there is so much uncertainty over the next few weeks.
These next few weeks are my crunch time and I know
that I will have to face up to the reality of missing
out on Everest this time if I do not receive any
financial help.
I am very much a
realist and I knew that I am not going to attract a
major corporate sponsor. That wasnt and hasnt been
my aim. What I have been doing though is promoting
this climb through my local community. I am using my
expedition to Everest to raise money for a Hospice in
my town, which looks after the sick and terminally
ill. In the part of England where I live, Cancers and
Cancer related deaths are at the highest rate in the
whole country. There is not one person in my town that
has not been touched or affected by the death of a
close friend or relative through Cancer or Heart
Disease. Most of these people end up in the Hospice
being cared for during their final days. The aim of
the funding is to increase the quality of life
remaining for the patients.
With my expedition to
the North Side of Everest I will climb with the
Hospice patients in my mind. They will not be so lucky
to experience life on such a scale as an Everest
expedition, but I know that they will feel part of my
dream, and together we can share the experience. I am
half way towards meeting my costs for the trip now. In
the nest few weeks I should hopefully secure the rest.
I have put every spare penny I have into this venture.
I am not a full time
climber, I am not rich and things dont just happen
for me, I have to work hard for everything I get in my
life. I come from a very working class lifestyle and I
am attempting to break the mould by achieving
something quite extraordinary. There are lots of
things in life I do not have, such as the window of
opportunity. But the one thing I do have is
self-belief and an overriding passion to see this
through. The great Everest Writer, Walt Unsworth,
writes a great description of the characters of the
men and woman who pit there all on the mountain. I
think it is accurate: "But there are men for whom the
unattainable has a special attraction. Usually they
are not experts: their ambitions and fantasies are
strong enough to brush aside the doubts, which more
cautious men might have. Determination and faith are
their strongest weapons. At best such men are regarded
as eccentric; at worst, mad
three things these men
have in common: faith in themselves, great
determination and endurance."
I think that these
are the three characteristics which everyone who has
ever stepped foot on this mountain possess in
abundance.
The past seven years
have been a whirl of emotions, from the jubilation at
having reached the summit of Aconcagua through to the
despair at having to turn back on Cho Oyu. The endless
rejection letters, the bills piling up, the constant
lack of help in everything I have ever done towards
this dream. The skepticism, the criticisms, the why
nots and the should nots; this is a dream that has
taken me to the very brink of despair and my
sanity. But it is a dream that is also going to take
me to the summit of Mount Everest.
The past several
years have been a massive journey of self-discovery
for me. When everyone else around me told me that this
was a dream way beyond my reach, I didn't give in, I
didn't listen to anybody. So strong was my belief and
desire to achieve this. I started out climbing as a
complete novice in the North Yorkshire Hills and
quickly learnt the tricks and skills of the trade.
Although No comparison to the mighty Himalayas, it was
still a very useful stomping ground during my early
climbing days and even now there are things that I
learnt back then that I still apply to this day.
I have since placed
everything in my life on hold. In 2001 I gave up my
career in the corporate world in order to commit full
time to my dream and begin to work towards making it
happen. And so it came to pass that in January of 2001
I took out an extensive bank loan and traveled to
Argentina to attempt to climb Aconcagua, the highest
summit in the western Hemisphere. I traveled alone and
reached the summit with Guy Cotter of Adventure
Consultants, New Zealand on February 12th under a
clear blue sky after a three-week climb via a variant
of the Polish Glacier.
In September of that
very same year I again cashed in some stocks and took
out a loan and went off on another escapade. This time
the goal was Mount Cho Oyu in the Tibet Himalayas,
70km west of Everest. One of the worlds great
mountains at 8,201 meters high, this was to prove a
formidable challenge as the weather that autumn season
put an end to many teams aspirations. I still
climbed to well over 7,000 meters before deciding that
to continue in the worsening winds and unstable snow
would certainly of risked frostbite or exposure.
I returned home to a
world of debt and much skepticism from loved ones at
why I had wanted to place myself in such a financial
mess. Such is the pull of Everest on me that I feel I
would never be able to do an explanation any justice.
I have climbed
extensively this winter and I am now feeling primed
and ready for the experiences that Everest has to
offer. If I reach the roof of the world then great,
but if not then that too is also ok, as long as I take
the experience that I live on the mountain and allow
it always be part of me. I dont think you can go and
climb Everest and not be fundamentally a different
person. Everest is a life changing catalyst, and I
dont expect to come back in the same frame of mind.
The Mountain will always stay with me, as Im sure it
does for all who have tread her slopes.
Here is to the next
few weeks in the final preparation before departure
for Everest.
Ellis Stewart
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