The Girl Who Climbed Everest

by Sue Williams

  ‘That wasn’t my time,’ he says now. ‘Coming back down and seeing Rob on the ground was an experience that’s very hard to describe. I decided to take a break from Everest. So I went to climb Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world. But as I was going to the summit from Camp Two, I felt terrible. At first I thought it was the altitude, but then I realised it was a panic attack. I thought, What if I can’t go on? But thank goodness I had someone with me who was able to boil me some warm water and make warm chocolate and who calmed me down. But I still barely made it!

  ‘Then I went back to Everest in 2007 and got to a quiet, humble spot on the mountain and I let go of my fears, and had the most amazing expedition. It was so smooth.’

  Parfet says Alyssa’s doing everything right to prepare for her own assault on Everest. He finds someone like her, who has big dreams and the courage to follow them, nothing short of inspirational. And if he can offer her any guidance, it would be to be humble when she trains, humble when she climbs, and humble when she comes home again. Humility is key, as is blocking out any negativity people try to direct towards you.

  ‘And remember when you’re up there on that mountain: the other side of fear is freedom!’ says Parfet, who now divides his time between mountains and his real estate business. ‘You’re going to need every ounce of strength and energy to get up these big hills. It’s about ignoring what other people think and blocking everything else out. Just remember who you are, and refuse to get caught up in ego and the fuss that surrounds Everest.

  ‘Follow your dreams, and without question. If I were to stop following my dreams, a key part of me would die. It’s inspirational to see what Alyssa’s doing, and wonderful to have such dynamism and positivity in life.’

  PART FOUR

  The Final Countdown

  CHAPTER 21

  Icefall on Manaslu

  ‘You won’t find reasonable men on the tops of tall mountains.’

  – HUNTER S. THOMPSON

  At 8156 metres, Manaslu, in Nepal’s northern Himalaya range, is the eighth highest mountain in the world. A series of long ridges and glacial valleys, it’s been described as a jagged wall of ice and snow hanging in the sky, and was only conquered comparatively recently, in 1956, by two Japanese climbers.

  The latest published statistics show that from May 1971 to May 2011, sixty-five climbers lost their lives on the mountainside, through avalanches, falls, altitude sickness, exhaustion and even lightning strikes. The following year, in 2012, in one single avalanche alone, eleven climbers were killed and dozens more seriously injured. It’s considered the fourth most dangerous mountain on the planet, out of the fourteen main peaks over 8000 metres.

  It’s probably best known in Australia as the peak that killed our most accomplished female Himalayan climber ever, Sue Fear. In 1997, she’d led the first successful ascent by an Australian team on Makalu II, 15 km from Everest, and then reached the summits of four 8000ers, including Everest in 2003 from the Tibetan side – only the second Australian woman, after Brigitte Muir, to conquer the peak. In 2006, she climbed her fifth 8000er, Manaslu, and got to the top. But on the way back she plummeted down a crevasse to her death.

  As extreme high-mountain skier Mike Marolt once said, ‘After climbing and skiing on some forty of the world’s major 6000-, 7000- and 8000-metre peaks, this is the only mountain I could not recommend to anyone: it is avalanche central . . . an avalanche chute.’

  Sixteen-year-old Alyssa Azar wants to climb Manaslu as it’s so widely regarded a good training run for an assault on Everest. Naturally, she’s nervous about the climb in September–October 2013, but she feels everything is on track with her training and mental attitude. ‘It’s been said that fear and limits are just illusions,’ she says. ‘That’s something I believe. Some of the most memorable and rewarding moments of my life so far are those where I was pushing my limits beyond what I once thought they were.

  ‘We all have things that scare us, but in order to grow and become a better person we have to confront them. That makes our ability to deal with hardship even greater.’

  Her training cranks up even further, and now she walks and runs with weights strapped around her ankles to simulate wearing heavy mountain boots and crampons. She’s now in the gym at least three times a day, dressed in singlet and shorts, doing weights or boxing or various endurance exercises. Every so often, she goes to the whiteboard to write down her times. Above it is a huge banner: ‘Strong People Are Harder To Kill.’

  She and Glenn also buy a second-hand altitude machine, a portable hypoxic generator, which replaces some of the oxygen with nitrogen, simulating the drop in oxygen levels in the air high in the mountains. She often runs on the treadmill or cycles on an exercise bike with a mask over her face attached to the generator. At night, most of the space in her small bedroom is taken up by a clear plastic-walled tent erected over her bed. A similar mix of oxygen and nitrogen is pumped into it, which means she’ll be able to get her lungs used to working much harder to breathe, even when she’s asleep. Now, before she goes to bed each night, she decides at what altitude she’d like to sleep, and adjusts the gauge accordingly.

  ‘Usually, I change it every night in order, as if I’m slowly ascending a mountain, then moving down, then going back up,’ says Alyssa. ‘I’m using the machine for exercise but also for rest and recovery, to get my body used to high altitude. The highest altitude it can simulate is 4000 metres but I’m hoping it will make a big difference to me.’

  Glenn laughs. ‘Worth $7500 new, I think that’s now the most valuable thing in our house!’ he says. ‘But I thought we needed to buy it now, before Manaslu, to give her the best possible chance of succeeding – and coming back down in one piece. We can work out how to afford it later . . . The only one of us who’s not so keen is Christian. It sounds like a respirator all night, and he gets a little disturbed by the sound.’

  Father and daughter also decide to undertake a CrossFit challenge to raise funds for climbing equipment. The trip to Manaslu is costing a total of around $21 000 for Alyssa and someone to go with her, as well as paying the expedition company Asian Trekking for a high-altitude Sherpa guide, a cook and a camp worker. The fundraising plan involves completing twenty-four Workouts of the Day, or WODs, within twenty-four hours, with the idea of emulating, as with the Aussie 10, that tough 24-hour push to the summit of Everest from Camp IV.

  It feels like such a good idea, they decide to brand it the ‘Everest Challenge’ and open it up to anyone else who wants to do it too. One enthusiastic backer is Jo Brooker-Clark, who owns CrossFit Toowoomba, and who first met Glenn through a mutual friend in 2010. Since then, Alyssa has done a lot of training with her. Brooker-Clark takes it upon herself to design the WODs in line with various statistics she’s unearthed about climbing Everest.

  These include seventeen minutes of as many rounds as possible of six burpees, four pull-ups and fourteen box jumps – in honour of Alyssa being seventeen when she’s set to climb Everest, with the first day of her climb due to happen on 6 April 2014; and four minutes for eight kettle bell swings, nine pull-downs and then fourteen minutes for six weight lifts and nine squats – since the atmospheric pressure at Everest’s peak is 4.89psi and at sea-level is 14.69psi. ‘It was pure genius!’ says Alyssa.

  With such a strong sense of community among those who practise CrossFit, they put the challenge online and soon they’re inundated with over 300 eager participants from around Australia, with two more from the US and one from Malaysia.

  ‘I was surprised how many people we got, especially over different time zones,’ Alyssa says. ‘But everyone seemed to love it, and even now they’re keen to make it an annual event. Some people camped out or brought fold-out beds to gyms, and I went to Dad’s gym and slept there in between all the workouts. We all posted what we were doing on the website and when, and it was a lot of fun, and raised a fair bit of money towards my costs. I was pretty tired by the end, but very grateful!’

 
Brooker-Clark is happy to help. ‘The thing about Alyssa is that she is a doer,’ she says. ‘She gets shit done. She’s a stayer and finishes what she starts. I always think how lucky she is to know what she wanted at such a young age and that there was a direct path to achieving that goal right in her home. Most people don’t have a clue until much later in life, but with Alyssa it always seemed as if she was born to be an adventurer and she had Glenn in her corner, helping her make it happen. Most dads, if their child said they wanted to be the youngest person in Australia to climb Mount Everest, might say, We’ll see, or, One day. But he actually said, Sounds great, let’s make it happen. And every day from then on, he’s been there, keeping her on track, helping her.

  ‘We are all living vicariously through her. Not in a jealous or negative way, but a You-Go-Girl! way. It truly is exciting to watch her achieve things. There’s no tall poppy syndrome with Alyssa – I and everyone I know is excited for her, and will be cheering her on every step of the way. It makes you realise the possibilities are endless for us all.’

  Alyssa appears on the Channel 10 TV show The Project, and both she and the station receive a tidal wave of correspondence wishing her well afterwards. Some of it is unexpected: a boy from Western Australia writes to ask her out on a date. She declines. All her energy, she explains politely, is being taken up with her Everest quest. But most are from people saying they’ve been blown away by her mission, and find her incredibly inspirational.

  Trying to inspire other people in that way, particularly young people, has always been high on Alyssa’s list of priorities. She feels strongly that everyone has their own Everest to climb, whether it’s a physical goal they want to reach or a personal challenge in their lives to overcome. It’s one of her dearest ambitions after Everest to be able to use her own experiences to spur on others to achieve their dreams.

  ‘It sounds a cliché, but it couldn’t be more true,’ says Alyssa. ‘I’m no superhuman. I’m no more special than anyone else. I just had a dream and made a conscious decision to put in an insane level of commitment to make it come true. I’ve also been given support and the opportunity to help make that crazy notion inside my head come to fruition. I have failures like anyone else, critics, struggles, moments of weakness, periods of darkness, doubts, and I fear failure sometimes, but I’ve worked hard and have a lot more hard work to put in. I want to tell people, particularly young people: Dare to dream, be unique and different, don’t be put off by fear of failure and do everything you can to make your dreams come true.

  ‘If I can inspire even one person to do something great, then I’ll have succeeded. If I can share the lessons I’ve learnt, empower people and convince them to aim high, then I’ll be happy. Besides the actual climbing, that is easily the biggest highlight of what I do.’

  Alyssa knows that Manaslu, her first peak over 8000 metres, is going to be by far the most dangerous and difficult climb she’s ever attempted. The route to the top is quite short compared to most 8000ers but the temperatures on its slopes are much warmer, and parts routinely accumulate vast quantities of deep snow. Avalanches are a constant danger, as well as the seracs, or great blocks of ice, breaking off and thundering down the mountain face, while the crevasses along the glacier are deep, frequent and often totally camouflaged by snow.

  As a result, Manaslu has a death rate among climbers of just over 35 per cent, relative to those who make it to the top – more than fifteen times that of the world’s sixth highest mountain, Cho Oyu.

  Sonia Taylor, the trekker who was on Kilimanjaro with Alyssa, is flying over with her to act as her guardian up until Manaslu Base Camp. At that point, she’ll go off on a trek, while Alyssa will climb in the company of a Sherpa, Gyuliak. Taylor feels distinctly uneasy.

  ‘I really don’t know if Alyssa is ready for this,’ she says. ‘She has been trekking and works hard at her fitness. But climbing mountains technically is not something that she has been doing for years. Manaslu is a big mountain to do for your first hardcore climb. Climbing in New Zealand has nothing on this.’

  Alyssa receives a text from Keith Fennell, wishing her luck. It reassures her. On the plane to Bangkok, where she and Taylor have a nine-hour stopover before the flight to Nepal, she reads his Warrior Training for what she estimates could be the hundredth time, to keep herself buoyed.

  When she and Taylor finally arrive in Kathmandu, they’re phoned by Elizabeth Hawley, the ninety-year-old American former journalist who has lived in Nepal since 1960, chronicling all the records of Himalayan expeditions. Well known for her no-nonsense, blunt manner, she wants to come over to their hotel to interview Alyssa. As soon as she arrives, however, she’s quick to make her opinion felt.

  ‘Sixteen is too young,’ she immediately says. ‘You are too young. You’re not mentally or physically ready. You’re too inexperienced to take on your first 8000-metre climb.’ Hawley is unimpressed by the other training climbs Alyssa has done. ‘Kilimanjaro?’ she says. ‘That’s a joke!’

  Alyssa takes offence instantly, and becomes even more uncommunicative than normal. She is sullen and withdrawn and sits and reads a magazine article Taylor has given her, ignoring her interviewer. In the end, Hawley leaves, saying she’ll be back to talk to Alyssa when she returns from her climb. Her parting words to Alyssa: ‘Don’t push yourself. Back out if you need; the mountains will always be there.’

  Taylor just isn’t sure what to make of Alyssa’s reaction to Hawley. She knows the youngster puts great store in surrounding herself with positivity, and likes to shut out negativity. But at the same time, she thinks Alyssa should have shown the elderly woman more respect. ‘Alyssa completely shut down,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t sure if she was just trying to shut her opinion out, like she didn’t care what the woman thought and didn’t want her in her life, or if she was being a bit arrogant.

  ‘But then she is still young. You forget sometimes how young she is. She didn’t give anything away. I didn’t know what she was thinking. Was she nervous? Would she really like to have backed out? Or was it more: Bring it on! It’s impossible to tell, sometimes, with Alyssa.’

  Another day in the hotel, a male guest approaches Alyssa, saying he’s heard she plans to climb Manaslu and, what’s more, it will be the first 8000-metre mountain she’s tried. ‘You’re insane!’ he tells her. She smiles sweetly back. ‘But believe me,’ Taylor says later, ‘he wasn’t alone in his opinion!’

  In truth, Alyssa is trying very hard to stay as positive as possible. She knows people have their doubts, but she doesn’t want to let anyone or anything undermine her confidence. When she gets home, she decides, she’ll take a course in Buddhist meditation to strengthen her mind still further, so others can’t get in. She’s grateful to Taylor for coming with her, but wishes she’d understand more her need to keep focused.

  After a few nights in Kathmandu, Alyssa and Taylor are driven north-west along a rough, unsealed road towards the little market town of Arughat Bazar, the start of the six-day trek to Manaslu Base Camp. They make a couple of stops to look at the snow-slathered Manaslu towering over the horizon, as they sweat in the heat below, and finally arrive at their destination six hours later. After a night at a small tea house, with beds as hard as rocks, they meet their two Sherpa guides, Gyuliak and Buan, as well as two porters to carry their gear, and the little troupe set off along a dirt road past rice fields and waterfalls to the tiny village of Soti Khola. From there, it’s up and down the narrow rocky trail to Lapubeshi, a settlement dotted over several hills.

  At the guesthouse where the pair is staying, the owner expresses surprise that such a young girl is planning to climb Manaslu.

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘Too young. Too young.’

  Alyssa notices a rash spreading across her neck. She can’t tell if it’s from the heat, the bugs or the stress of so many people saying they doubt her ability.

  The next day, Alyssa and Taylor are up early for honey on toast and hot chocolate, then they finally head for Manas
lu. The trail quickly becomes slippery and waterlogged, and, in parts, there’s the risk of landslides. There are yaks along the route and the trek winds upwards, downhill and then up again, through pretty villages and lonely windswept fields, over ridges and valleys and across a couple of dilapidated suspension bridges. It feels a lot more remote than the trek to Everest Base Camp, and there are fewer people. The guesthouses vary from comfortable and fairly new to old and rundown. Alyssa doesn’t mind. She’s intent on their destination.

  For the first few days, they’re walking at a low altitude, less than 1000 metres above sea level. It’s sticky, humid and sweaty, which takes Alyssa by surprise. At times, she almost feels like she’s back on Kokoda. She’s trying not to think much about the summit. She’s trying to concentrate, instead, on taking it easy, not going too hard, conserving her strength.

  All the time, Alyssa’s looking out for another view of Manaslu, but it remains resolutely hidden behind the rest of the giant massif. On day five, however, arriving at Samagaon, the closest village to Manaslu Base Camp, it suddenly comes dramatically back into view. Alyssa feels her excitement rising, and she gets up early the next day to watch the sunrise and see Manaslu glow in the soft pink of dawn.

  The clothes she unpacks from her big bag that morning are all soaking wet. Someone must have dropped it in the water at one of the river crossings. She hopes they’ll have a chance to dry before Base Camp. But while she doesn’t have any dry clothes to change into, she does like not having too much gear with her. She loves the simplicity of such adventures. She’s enjoying the company of nature, the mountains and the books she has with her – this time, as well as Fennell’s Warrior Training and Warrior Brothers, other inspiring stories of heroic SAS members, they include Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums, the semi-fictional 1950s story looking at the relationship between the outdoors, trekking, mountaineering, Buddhism and city life, which she finds perfect for reading in this environment.