The Girl Who Climbed Everest

by Sue Williams

  The next morning, the team’s preparing to walk to Camp II at 6400 metres when someone shouts, and they look up to see a massive avalanche thundering down ahead of them. Happily, it’s far enough away not to be a threat, but it’s yet another reminder of what a treacherous environment they’re in. By 8 a.m., the avalanche is finished and they’re ready to take off. With Everest to the left, the Lhotse Face directly ahead, and great views of Pumori – which Alyssa saw shiver with an avalanche the year before during the earthquake – they start climbing.

  The main difficulty on this part of the mountain is that it’s simply so hot. The snow and ice of the valley reflect the sun’s rays and it heats up quickly after sunrise. It has been known to reach 38° C. On the other hand, if the cloud comes down or it starts to snow, it can be mind-searingly cold. Alyssa gradually peels off layers of clothing to cope.

  ‘It’s quite a long trek and a bit of a grind,’ says Alyssa. ‘You see tents and you think you’re there, but you actually have another hour to your camp. That’s the killer, but at the same time it is great. It feels like another milestone. I guess it’s about halfway up to the summit!’

  The little group finally arrive and spend a couple of hours at camp to help with acclimatisation. They wander around in the mess tent, chatting to other climbers and taking photos. Alyssa longs to continue upwards, but knows she can’t. She has to be patient. Instead, she gazes over to the Lhotse Face, a steep, rock-hard wall of ice and snow that’s the fourth highest peak in the world, at 8510 metres, which she’ll hopefully one day soon be climbing to reach Camp III. She can’t see the top of Lhotse from here, but suddenly she hears something: the wild roar of the jet stream, that ferocious westerly wind that can gust around the summit of Everest at up to 281 km an hour. All climbers try to time their final ascent for that narrow window of time when the jet stream isn’t raging at the peak, making climbing safely absolutely impossible.

  ‘It was then that, for the first time in my life, I actually heard the jet stream,’ she says. ‘It sounds like an incredible wind. I found it quite exciting to listen to, but at the same time, you’re desperately hoping that you’ll be able to find that window to summit when it won’t be there . . .’

  On that thought, she starts to descend to Camp I for the night, then back to Base Camp.

  Over the next three days, Alyssa eats, sleeps and relaxes. It’s important to give her body recovery time, she knows, and she tries to just think about the next rotation. On the third day, the aim is to make it to Camp II in a single push, stay the night, then up the Lhotse Face part-way to Camp III, at 7162 metres.

  But the day they’re meant to be starting the ascent, they arrive at the base of the icefall just as a section on the right suddenly peels away and comes crashing down. Luckily, no one is in its path, and no one gets hurt. While everyone’s still keen to continue, the Sherpas say it’s too dangerous and put the climb off for a day. No one argues.

  The next day, they start again and Alyssa watches the little trail of head torches in front of her gradually rise up the icefall. She crunches her way up, feeling more and more confident now with every step. Her acclimatisation seems to be going well, and she feels strong and fit and ready. It’s still a long day to Camp II, however, with that last stretch to the camp extremely tiring, both physically and mentally. By the time she dives into her tent, she has a slight headache. But she’s happy at how well she’s coping; all the mindtraining and hours in the gym are standing her in excellent stead. She sleeps soundly and by the morning her body has adapted and her headache is gone.

  She sets out up Lhotse, clipping onto the ropes going up the face, and digging her crampon points into the ice to gain firm purchase. It’s enormously tiring, but she feels exhilarated. This is everything she imagined climbing on Everest would be. Almost up at Camp III, she then turns back down. The next time she’s back at this height will be during her fourth – and last – rotation when, conditions and God willing, she’ll be able finally to make that push to the summit. She feels a stir of excitement at the thought. She climbs down the Lhotse Face with a grin, ready to return to Camp II for the night, and then back to Base Camp for the last few days.

  Five days later, it’s finally time. This is going to be the last climb up, with an overnight at Camp II, another night at Camp III, a quick rest at Camp VI and then on to the summit itself.

  ‘I was so excited,’ Alyssa says. ‘I was also a bit nervous. I felt I knew the section from Base Camp up to Camp III pretty well now, and knew I was capable of it, but there’s always that little bit of fear of the unknown. As well, the season’s getting warmer and warmer and it brings with it the danger of more avalanches as the snow and ice start to melt, especially on the Khumbu Icefall.’

  The start of the climb up the icefall goes well but she freezes as she hears the telltale rumble of an avalanche somewhere near. It’s still pitch black, however, and there’s no real way of telling whether it’s directly above or off to one side. She simply has to stay still, try to cover her head against falling rocks and wait it out.

  ‘We’re just starting out when we hear the noise of one, maybe two, going off,’ she says. ‘It sounds really close but we have no idea where it is. Nobody is hurt though, so it can’t be that close. But it’s near enough for three of our climbers. They decide to turn back. Maybe it’s the avalanche that freaked them, but I know some of them are homesick too. I never get the chance to ask them why they don’t continue, but if they don’t want to be there, then it’s not the right place for them. But for me, there’s never any question of not going on.’

  Alyssa reaches Camp II comfortably, but it’s there that things suddenly start looking ominous. The weather’s taken a turn for the worse, the wind’s picking up and there are even warnings of a cyclone approaching from India. Alyssa’s summit had been planned for 19 May, but now that date seems impossible. It’s put back to 20 May, then 21 May.

  Alyssa tries to stay calm. Everything has been going so well, it’s almost inconceivable that she could be robbed so close to her goal. ‘I definitely start to fear it might not happen,’ she says. ‘We’re concerned.’ She tries to banish the possibility from her mind. The weather may well improve just as quickly as it deteriorated. She can’t afford to spend precious energy worrying.

  In the end, she spends just two nights at Camp II, and then her guide, Nanga Dorje Sherpa, says it’s safe to press on. Her hopes rise. Three other climbers from Asian Trekking turn up at camp, having just summitted in their allocated window. She’s cheered even more. If some people are getting to the top, then there’s hope for the rest. She sets out one last time up the Lhotse Face towards Camp III. Some of the other expedition climbers ask to use oxygen from Camp II, but she says she doesn’t need it. She’s feeling stronger than she ever has in her life.

  It’s only at Camp III that Alyssa agrees to start on oxygen overnight and for the rest of the climb. She’s still feeling good when they set out the next morning at sunrise to Camp VI, sitting at an altitude of 7950 metres, just on the lip of the start of the Death Zone.

  The route is steep at first, and is usually bitterly cold from the beginning before very quickly becoming uncomfortably hot. After two hours, Alyssa reaches the Yellow Band, a strip of limestone that’s around 50 metres of smooth rock, angled sharply upwards. She clips onto the ropes for help. When that band ends, the terrain becomes flatter snow and ice until the next landmark, the Geneva Spur, with its 80 metres of uneven rock, snow and ice at a 40-degree angle upwards. Alyssa chooses her footholds carefully, willing herself to move steadily through despite wanting to hurry.

  ‘I feel really strong,’ she says. ‘You do all this training but you still never know how you’ll do; you don’t know how your body is going to react. But being up there is such a beautiful feeling. It’s just how I’d imagined for so many years. I’d created a little picture in my head of what it would be like, and it’s just like that. I’m thrilled.’

  After about six hours of c
limbing, Alyssa finally steps onto the South Col, which serves as the platform for Camp VI’s tents. She catches sight of Everest’s summit close up for the first time. It’s so beautiful, it takes her breath away. It looks so near, too – but she knows that, at that height and in the midst of all that blindingly white scenery, distances are deceptive. She wills herself to stay focused as she huddles into a tent with two other climbers for a quick two-hour sleep. She closes her eyes, but sleep fails to come. She simply has too much running through her mind.

  At 8 p.m., she rises in the darkness of evening, quickly packs her gear and sets off by the light of her head torch once more. It’s only 1.72 km to the summit, but it’s a climb that could take up to nine hours. First is a steep slope up directly out of the camp along the south side of Everest, and it takes three hours before she’s on the next defined stage, the Balcony. There, in the pale moonlight, she changes oxygen bottles and has a quick drink and snack before continuing. Now she can see down into Nepal on one side and Tibet on the other.

  She soon hits the ridge that leads towards the summit. She and Nanga Dorje Sherpa are the first people to be there that morning, breaking ground between them. The snow here is knee-deep and their progress is painfully slow as they trudge through, having to lift their feet high with every step. Finally, they hit more rock and while it’s steeper still, the climbing feels much easier.

  Three hours on, they reach the South Summit, the point of the climb where you can see the path to the real summit and the so-called Hillary Step, a narrow piece of jutting rock. Alyssa can hardly believe her eyes.

  ‘I’m surprised how quickly we reach the South Summit and there I put on a fresh oxygen bottle,’ she says. ‘Then we start climbing the ridge. I’m, “Oh my God! I’m almost there!”

  ‘Then you see some prayer flags fluttering in the wind and . . . you’re there. I step on the summit and feel overcome with emotion. It’s a moment I’ve imagined so many times, over so many years. I feel disbelief.

  ‘I take some photos, take out the photo of my brother Christian and show him. I just like having him there with me. That’s so cool. It’s all just as wonderful as I thought it would be.’

  Standing on top of the world at 8850 metres, at 3.45 a.m. on 21 May 2016, Alyssa feels a maelstrom of emotions. The nineteen-year-old is immensely proud to be Australia’s youngest Everest summitter, but she knows that was never her real motivation. It was always about setting her goal early in life and then throwing everything she possibly could at it to achieve it.

  ‘I take a moment to reflect on my whole journey, on how hard I’ve worked to get there, on all the hopes and disappointments and sacrifices that have gone before,’ Alyssa says. ‘It’s just so special. It’s maybe the best moment of my life. It’s everything I’ve ever imagined.’

  CHAPTER 31

  Triumph and Tragedy

  ‘I’ll always wonder, Could I have done anything?’

  – ALYSSA AZAR, MOUNTAINEER AND EVEREST SUMMITTER

  As Alyssa makes her way carefully down the mountain, she passes two other Australian climbers. The couple, a man and a woman, engage one of her fellow climbers in conversation. They were on their way up to Camp VI when they started feeling ill, they say. They eventually decided to abandon their climb and are now heading back.

  They seem disappointed but resigned, and even cheerful at the prospect of being back down at Base Camp in a couple of days. They continue chatting with the person on Alyssa’s expedition until they all say farewell. They seem bright and healthy and don’t ask for any help at all.

  It’s only the next day, after one night at Camp II, and then finally arriving back in Base Camp, that Alyssa hears an Australian woman has died on the mountain. She realises that must have been the woman they passed.

  It was Monash University finance lecturer Dr Maria Strydom, aged thirty-four, who fell ill with altitude sickness after turning back from the summit, and died with her partner holding her hand. Her husband, vet Dr Rob Gropel was also sick, suffering from fluid in the lungs and swelling of the brain, and had to be helicoptered off the mountain. Another man in the same expedition, Dutch climber Eric Arnold, also died during the descent, while three other deaths occurred in another team of Indian climbers, Subhash Pal, Paresh Chandra Nath and Goutam Ghosh. One Nepalese, Ang Furba Sherpa, fell to his death while fixing ropes for climbers on Lhotse.

  ‘The Australian woman’s death is something I’ve thought about a lot since,’ Alyssa says. ‘We had no way of knowing how serious her altitude sickness was. If we’d known, maybe I could have put my oxygen mask on her and helped her get down to Camp II, at a much lower altitude. Maybe it would have made a difference? We’ll never know, and have no way of ever knowing. But it does make you realise how dangerous Everest can be. Even when things look all right, they’re not necessarily anything like they seem. I think I’ll always wonder, Could I have done anything?’

  It’s a sobering thought, but it’s also hard not to feel elation at what she’s personally achieved. Stepping off the summit, Alyssa tried to phone her dad on the satellite phone and, although it went through all the way to Glenn’s remote location on the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea, he missed the call. She tried again, and couldn’t get through. Finally, on her third attempt, they connected.

  ‘That was the one call in your life you never want to miss!’ says Glenn. ‘When I realised I missed a call, I didn’t know whether it would be good news or bad. Of course, I always worry about her, and I wondered if anything had gone wrong. But I had no way of finding out until I got to the next camp – four hours away – so I just kept on hoping it was good news. It seemed a bit early to me for her to have summitted, but I just didn’t know. Then on the third try, I got the message that she’d done it. I was so pumped. I was so excited. I couldn’t sleep that night for thinking about it. It was so hard to fully comprehend.’

  Back in Toowoomba, there are some excited people too. Samantha has been interrupted in class by her principal coming in to break the news that her sister has made it to the top of Everest. The whole class celebrate. Therese is also thrilled. ‘Despite her young age, I knew no one was better prepared or as fiercely determined to summit Mount Everest,’ she says. ‘I was also certain that Alyssa would stay on the mountain until she did.’

  Everest experts are also generous in their praise. Renowned Everest chronicler and 2011 summitter Alan Arnette is quick to congratulate her. ‘To summit Everest requires skills, confidence, luck and unbridled determination,’ he says. ‘Alyssa had all of these, rarely found in a nineteen-year-old. Climbers twice her age gave up after the tragic events of 2014 and 2015, but Alyssa showed unusual perseverance and resilience to become the youngest Australian to stand on top of the world in 2016.’

  The keeper of the official records, Billi Bierling, is also very happy for her. ‘Amazing feat that she did it!!’ she says.

  But Alyssa has to wait another ten days to celebrate herself. She has the long trek from Base Camp back to Lukla to think about it, then has to wait for a flight back to Kathmandu. She spends a few days there before flying out to Singapore to rendezvous with her dad on his way back from his fifty-fifth Kokoda, stop overnight, and then fly on to Brisbane. Glenn and Alyssa are picked up by helicopter from Brisbane airport and taken to Toowoomba for a reunion with the rest of the family. They receive a hero’s welcome. In addition, Alyssa visits Samantha’s school and is the star guest at an impromptu Q&A for the eight- and nine-year-olds, with her little sister proudly presiding over the whole event. Christian, not sure what all the fuss is about, is just happy to have her back home again.

  ‘I think the hardest thing over the past few years was that no one was really sure this would ever happen,’ says Alyssa. ‘But happily, it has. I always said I was never motivated by the idea of being the youngest Australian to climb Everest but I now definitely feel very proud of that title. I’m just very happy and grateful to everyone who’s helped on the long, long journey.’

  If
anyone thought that Alyssa’s success on Everest would cure her of her ambition to climb mountains, they were wrong. Her next goal is to climb the rest of the Seven Summits – the highest peaks of the seven continents. With Everest, Mount Kosciuszko and Kilimanjaro already summitted, that leaves just Aconcagua, Mount Elbrus, Mount Vinson and Mount McKinley, and she has until the age of twenty-three to break another record as the youngest Australian to do that. She’d also like to reach the top of all the fourteen mountains on earth that are over 8000 metres, particularly Manaslu, which beat her back in 2013.

  In the meantime, she plans to work with her dad in his Adventure Professionals business, helping lead his expeditions in between taking off on her own. She’s also considering going back to distance learning and maybe taking a degree in business administration in order to become even better equipped for helping grow the family firm.

  ‘But first, I want to take some time out to reflect on the fact that this Everest dream is now over,’ she says. ‘All my life I’ve had that one goal and now I’ve achieved it, I need to take some time out to come to terms with that.’

  Yet Glenn sees his daughter as unlikely to take much time off. After all the years of people doubting her ability and saying she shouldn’t – or couldn’t – get to the top of Everest, he sees her as being on the verge of much greater things.

  ‘To think she’s done something like this when she’s just nineteen, and plenty of others far older and more experienced have failed, is pretty amazing,’ says Glenn, who’s now developing an adventure fitness app with Alyssa that will help users prepare physically and mentally for expeditions as varied as Kokoda, Kilimanjaro, the Kimberley and Everest itself. ‘She’s remained so positive throughout all the negatives and I think she’s now in a position to really inspire lots of young Australians. They see her and learn from her example that they too can achieve anything, if they’re determined enough and ready to work hard and put everything into it.