The Girl Who Climbed Everest

by Sue Williams

  Alyssa didn’t tell him she’d heard, but threw herself even harder into training for Kilimanjaro. Besides, she was looking for all the distraction she could find, as school wasn’t going any better now that she was back in Toowoomba. She was trying to settle in at her new school, St Ursula’s College, but it wasn’t a great fit. Her teachers worried that she wasn’t taking part in any of the school activities; that all she seemed to do was attend her lessons and then go straight off to the gym. They’d have preferred her to become involved more in school life, to spend more time with her classmates and to have a much more balanced life.

  Alyssa simply didn’t see the point. ‘They were always complaining, but I just didn’t have the time to fit anything else into my life,’ she says. ‘I was too busy with my training and getting my homework done in the gaps between it. I didn’t want to be doing stuff around the school. My mind was on training for another climb, hopefully Kilimanjaro this time. By the time I got to school, I was often tired and had to try to focus. That automatically drove me away from what everyone else was doing, which they didn’t like.

  ‘They weren’t used to someone like me, who didn’t want to socialise and didn’t want to do all that stuff. I don’t think they really knew how to handle it.’

  Her parents were called frequently to the school to discuss their problem child, and while Therese tried to smooth everything over, Glenn was outraged. He understood the teachers believed they were doing their best by Alyssa, but he knew his daughter and defended her, protesting that she was making all the right choices for herself.

  Although she again became a target for bullying over the internet by others at the school, this time she tried not to let it affect her and vowed to help others also struggling. Just as she and Glenn had collected money for the local hospital with Kokoda, they decided to try to raise funds with their Kilimanjaro trip towards Kids Helpline, a phone counselling service that helps youngsters with their problems, including bullying. Alyssa did some publicity for the upcoming trip to increase its profile and raise some money through sponsorship for the trip and extra for the charity, and the personal bullying grew worse. She received a volley of texts and barbs on social media from people saying they hoped she’d fall off the mountain and die.

  ‘I cut off a lot of social media I looked at so I just wouldn’t see it,’ she says. ‘I didn’t see the point in having it if it was going to be negative. Instead, I just used my energy to focus harder on the trip. It was hard for me to understand why that kind of thing would happen, but I guess some people just didn’t like me or what I was doing. By the end, though, I just thought I’d use it to make me stronger, and sharpen my focus, and harden my resolve, and I found that worked.’

  Watching on, her aunt Tanya Azar was highly impressed by how she was coping. ‘She said at times she didn’t know if she could cope with it,’ she says, ‘but she showed incredible strength. She said that helped her move forward. She’s very young, but she’s an old soul inside, and very wise for her age.’

  But the bullying and the difficulties with teachers did make Alyssa start thinking about alternative ways of going about her schooling. She researched home-schooling and distance education, which would allow her to do lessons over the internet instead. She reasoned that would be a good way to escape the bullying, and would allow her to finish her school years in peace, spending more time on her favourite subjects, English and history. At the back of her mind, though, there was an even more compelling reason.

  ‘I loved these adventures so much, but I was impatient to do more and try to get to Everest more quickly,’ she says. ‘It was great doing a trip every two years, but I knew if I was serious about climbing Everest, I’d have to increase my training and do more climbing and trekking more often. It was taking time out from school but I kept thinking that if I could organise my own schoolwork, I’d be more free to travel when I had the opportunity.

  ‘Even though I was still just thirteen, soon turning fourteen, I was on my way to Kilimanjaro, knowing that it would put me at a higher altitude than I’d ever been before. It was going to be a big challenge, and I’d then be able to see how I might react to higher and higher climbs in the Himalaya. I was keen to see Africa, I was eager to climb its biggest mountain, but everything was already geared towards that ultimate dream of Everest.’

  She simply had no idea how hard Kilimanjaro would prove.

  CHAPTER 12

  Everest’s World Record-holder:

  Dave Hahn

  Is Mount Everest any place for a teenage girl? According to Everest veteran Dave Hahn, the American who holds the world record for the greatest number of successful climbs to the top for a non-Sherpa, the answer to that is: Maybe . . .

  If she’s mature for her age, physically strong and mentally tough, then it could be the mountain on which she can learn a great deal about both herself, and life in general. But if she’s not up to the challenge?

  ‘You don’t want the mountain to have the tone of death and destruction for its climbers, but anyone who goes there has to keep in mind what the full consequences can be for any mistakes or bad decisions,’ he says. ‘A girl of that age might be physically able, but it’s a lot to expect of a young girl to be able to size up all the risks and still be okay.’

  It’s impossible to dismiss Hahn’s scepticism out of hand. After all, he is one of the most experienced Everest climbers who’s still alive to tell the tales. With fifteen successful Everest summit ascents to his name, some heroic rescues and three Mallory and Irvine search expeditions, including being part of the 1999 team that found Mallory’s body, he now works as one of the world’s most revered high-altitude mountain guides.

  However, even he failed to make it to the top on his first attempt in 1991. On a climb of the north side without oxygen, he was forced by bad weather to turn back just 310 metres from the summit. Three years later, he made it all the way – but it very nearly cost him his life.

  ‘I knew I’d go back to Everest as it was such a profound experience the first time,’ Hahn says from his home in New Mexico. ‘But that climb in 1994 was probably one of the more difficult things I’ve ever done and was my closest brush with death. That was the biggest hole I’ve ever dug for myself.

  ‘I ended up climbing continuously for sixty hours. I summitted by myself at ten minutes to five in the afternoon in a cloud, then I spent the night trying to get down. Eventually, I ran out of oxygen in a snowstorm and I reached a point coming down at night where I couldn’t find my way any more. I was climbing by my headlight in the storm and I couldn’t figure out how this ledge connected to the next.

  ‘So I told my teammates on the radio that I would hunker down and wait till daylight, which was just a few hours off. But all the time I waited there, I knew if I fell asleep, I would die or wake up without feet or hands. So the real challenge was to stay awake and keep moving my hands and feet all the time to save them. I remember surviving that and then remembering, Oh, yeah, I went to the summit too!’

  Yet it wasn’t a triumph he could savour for long. When he reached Base Camp safely, he discovered that others from his expedition were close to the summit and one, Australian Mike Rheinberger, who was on his eighth attempt to get to the top, was in terrible trouble. He’d persevered up the north ridge despite the late hour and had reached the summit just before dark, but was too exhausted to make his way back down. He spent the night there and by the time the sun rose the next morning, he was too weak to descend.

  Everyone tried to help, but in vain. ‘He died, and watching that drama play out through the telescope and listening to it on the radio profoundly changed my perception of that climb,’ says Hahn. ‘It made me realise how lucky I had been at so many junctures.’

  That wasn’t the only disaster Hahn saw played out over his years on Everest, either. In 2001, he was part of a party who gave up their bid to reach the top to rescue five climbers – three Russians, an American and a Guatemalan – who’d been stranded overnight at
an altitude where no one expected them to survive. Hahn and his fellow expedition members gave the near-comatose climbers oxygen, drugs, water and food in a rescue carried out higher than anyone had ever considered possible, even as others clawed their way past to reach the summit. For that, Hahn, with two others, received a medal for heroism from the American Alpine Club for selfless devotion at personal risk or sacrifice of a major objective.

  The next year, he was guiding an expedition that had turned back 90 metres from the summit down through the Khumbu Icefall. He and four others were standing on a tricky ledge waiting to descend the next stage when they heard a noise ‘like a 90-mile-per-hour subway train, like a dragon getting ready to blow fire at you’.

  It was an avalanche of tonnes and tonnes of frozen ice coming from somewhere around 1800 metres above them. Everything began to shake and quiver. ‘I guess I thought we were dead, so I was calmer than I should have been,’ Hahn says. But all at once the ice slopes above the little group disintegrated, collapsed and finally, happily, disappeared into a void below them.

  Later that year, he cheated death again when he was dispatched to help an injured climber on a mountain in Washington, D.C. and the helicopter in which he was travelling crashed. He survived unscathed, so rescued the pilot and then went off and saved the climber. For that, he received yet another award.

  In 2007, he was part of another dramatic Everest rescue. Hahn and Sherpa Phinjo Dorje stumbled on a female Nepalese climber who’d been left for dead on a steep slope about 550 metres from the summit. She was semi-conscious, suffering severe cerebral oedema, had run out of oxygen and was too weak to move. The pair risked their own lives to push and drag her back down to Camp IV at 7920 metres, and then carry her down on a sled and lower her by ropes to Camp III at 7300 metres.

  ‘Everest is dangerous, but it’s an incredible mountain,’ says Hahn. ‘It means a lot to me as it’s the highest, it has a shape that pulls you in and it’s always challenging, as well as having an enthrallingly rich history.

  ‘It’s never a given that you’re going to be able to summit; I can’t ever count on summitting it again. You have to be strong enough and lucky enough, and everything has to come together. Over the years, there’ve been times when an Everest expedition is like a meat grinder, and you come away from it shattered mentally and physically. I’ve watched people die up there and tried to save people. It’s a place of epic experiences.’

  In the past, Hahn has taken two young people up Everest, a seventeen-year-old American girl in 2009, and a sixteen-year-old American girl in 2011. Neither made the summit, both deciding to turn back despite being achingly close.

  ‘I think Everest is a lot tougher for a young girl or boy than anyone else,’ says Hahn. ‘I couldn’t even tie my shoelaces at Alyssa’s age! It’s okay for someone of that age to go to an event or a big contest for a day, but it’s something else when it takes two months to complete. It’s a lot of money and time away from your home and your family, you have to sit out bad weather and cope with false starts and it’s tough to hear on the radio about people dying and people rescuing others in trouble. That’s hard for any climber, but even more so for a teenager.

  ‘At that stage, they have fewer life experiences to draw on and there’s a lot of pressure on them to succeed. Someone that young will be climbing on a big stage, everyone knows about it, there’ll be a lot of publicity, and you Facebook and blog your progress and you get a lot of people following you to urge you on. In those circumstances, it’s difficult to keep perspective.

  ‘It’s hard to summit Everest, but it’s still harder to decide not to summit when the circumstances aren’t favourable. That’s hard personally, and even harder to explain to others. You need the ability to turn around short of the summit if necessary, and if that’s not possible, then Everest isn’t a good place for a girl her age . . . or even a fifty-year-old!’

  PART THREE

  The Road to Mount Everest

  CHAPTER 13

  Climbing Kilimanjaro

  ‘If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?’

  – T.S. ELIOT

  On 20 June 2011, fourteen-year-old Alyssa Azar steps onto a plane to Nairobi, Kenya, her heart beating fast. Glenn is already in Tanzania, completing an earlier climb of Kilimanjaro with a couple of clients, and she’s travelling with a member of the eight-strong group ready to take part in his second trip.

  She tries to sleep before the plane stops in Dubai to refuel, but she’s far too excited. For the tenth time, she goes over her list of equipment: sleeping bag, climbing gear, sunscreen, insect repellent, lip balm, handwash, wipes, tissues, energy bars, snack packs, micro-waveable packs of roast beef and gravy, and tins of beans, spaghetti, tuna and diced peaches.

  She checks her itinerary again. This is going to be an eight-day round trek, and on the seventh day they will hopefully reach the summit of Kilimanjaro, the dormant volcano that’s the highest freestanding mountain in the world at 5895 metres above sea level. She’s nervous about how well she’ll handle that kind of altitude too; it’s 531 metres higher than she’s ever been before, on Everest Base Camp. In addition, she knows that you ascend much more quickly with Kilimanjaro than with the trek to Base Camp, so that will impact the body harder too. And then there’s all the ice and snow close to the top, probably far more than she’s seen on the Aussie 10.

  But she’s been training hard, and feels ready. She’s taking nothing for granted, she knows she’s been getting stronger and stronger, and she’s determined to get out there and enjoy every moment of what she’s doing.

  Alyssa is the youngest person taking part in the trip, and her travel companion is, at fifty-six, the oldest. Cath Beutel has never been on a trip like this before, and she’s just as nervous as Alyssa. It’s always been an ambition of hers to climb Kilimanjaro, and she has far less experience of heights than Alyssa does. The pair have met a couple of times previously on walks Glenn arranged for training but, as they chat on the plane, Beutel is taken aback at how clearly, and forcefully, Alyssa can articulate her goals in life and how determined she is to achieve them. She’s also struck at how young Alyssa is – only a couple of years older than her grandchildren – and thinks silently that most parents would be delighted if their children had just a tenth of that kind of drive.

  By the time the plane finally arrives in Africa and the pair board the connecting flight to Kilimanjaro airport in neighbouring Tanzania, Alyssa is exhausted. She’s beginning now to feel sleepy, but she won’t let her eyes close. She’s concentrating on the view out of the plane’s window, hoping that she’ll see the snow-streaked cone of Kilimanjaro rising out of the flat Tanzanian savannah that, up to Mount Meru 80 km to its west, has always been traditional Maasai country. The plane goes round the volcano as it’s too high to fly over, and she’s heard it often gives passengers a once-in-a-lifetime look at the summit and into the crater from the air. In the event, though, she’s disappointed. The summit remains resolutely hidden by clouds.

  The plane lands and Glenn’s there to greet the pair. He hugs his daughter. He looks tired. The trek up the mountain is much harder than many people credit – 40 per cent of people who attempt it don’t make the top, and the climb routinely takes lives each year through altitude sickness, heart attacks, slips and rock falls, killing tourists and guides alike. ‘But it’s very beautiful up there,’ he tells his daughter. ‘It’s well worth it!’ He drives them to join the others at their lodge in the middle of a coffee plantation in Arusha, the nearest town to Kilimanjaro. There, he delivers the official briefing to the trip and then they all relax, most going off to bed for an early night.

  The next morning, Alyssa’s up before dawn, too excited to sleep in. Kilimanjaro is going to be her second of the world’s Seven Summits. She’s already climbed Mount Kosciuszko, the highest peak in Australasia; this is the highest peak in Africa, and then there’ll be only five left on the most common list of the seven: Mount McKinley in Alaska,
the highest in North America; Aconcagua in Argentina, the highest in South America; Mount Elbrus in Russia, the highest in Europe; Mount Vinson, the highest in Antarctica; and, of course, Everest, the highest in Asia, and the world.

  The group have breakfast at the lodge, then drive to the Lemosho Glades, the starting point of their climb, to meet their guides-cumporters over morning tea. Glenn’s chosen the Lemosho route over the five other routes up the mountain, mostly because of its beauty, remoteness and the great views it offers of Kilimanjaro. There are other much easier routes, but this group is fit, happy to test themselves and eager to ascend by a way that makes it unlikely they’ll meet other trekkers. As they arrive, their local African porters sing them a beautiful song of welcome that touches everyone. Alyssa is moved. She now finally feels she’s in Africa, and part of another culture.

  It’s a slow pace at the start, with everyone looking around at the scenery and trying to spot the buffalo, elephants and monkeys that the porters say have been seen along this stretch. It’s through lush, fertile rainforest, with towering trees, ferns and thick bush, and occasional clearings for views. After an hour and a half they stop for lunch, then move off again along the narrow, undulating earth track that juts upwards for a steep climb every now and again, then flattens out. Sections through jungle, shaded by a canopy of trees, remind Alyssa of Kokoda, but then she remembers where she really is and feels excited all over again at being in Africa and walking up the side of its highest mountain.

  One of the trekkers is businesswoman Sonia Taylor. She’s intrigued that such a young girl is taking part, and asks Alyssa about her school, her sisters, her brother and what kind of training she does. She’s a little surprised at how Alyssa politely answers but doesn’t give too much away, and that she never starts any conversations. But she can see the young girl does listen, and takes in everyone else’s conversations.