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To the top of the world and back

Everest climbers have a whole different perspective

John Furneaux has been up Mount Everest three times and after his most recent expedition his life altered forever. His first child, a son, was born soon after he returned from Everest last year.

It was the high-altitude guide's third trip to the Himalayan giant, after reaching the summit in 2008 and 2010.

"It is hard to describe," says Squamish resident Furneaux when he was asked what it was like for him at the summit.

He's driving in his car on the way to an out-of-town business meeting as he recalls his Everest expeditions. With hours of highway ahead, he pauses, reaches into his memories and considers his answers carefully.

"The first time I was up there I hit some amazing weather so I got to enjoy the summit," he says. "It was light winds and blue skies and fairly warm, so it was definitely not what I expected in terms of the weather, but absolutely spectacular."

He describes how, from the top of Everest, the curvature of the earth is visible and he could see all the other tall Himalayan peaks in the area.

"I just had a baby ten months ago and it was close on par with that, but obviously our baby was better," says the proud new father with a laugh.

Furneaux's 2011 attempt to scale Everest would have been his third summit if in fact the guide placed his crampons into the three metres of snow at the top of the highest peak in the world.

All of his three trips to Nepal to tackle Everest were done in conjunction with the Canada West Mountain School and his first priority each time was to get his clients to the roof of the world.

In 2008, Furneaux was able to spend some time at the top and enjoy the experience, but the second time in 2010 was a different story, as he put the experience and safety of his clients ahead of his own experience at the summit.

In 2010, his four clients split up with two making to the summit and two staying at the last stop — a result of the arduous nature of the ascent. Once those clients were set up with Sherpas just below the summit, he headed to the top just long enough to snap a few photos before he rejoined his summitting clients for the trip down.

"I stood on top of the true summit twice and then I didn't summit in 2011 but that's details in my world, I don't care," says the climber his voice almost a mumble.

Furneaux, a heli-ski operations manager, makes it clear that getting up to 8,848 metres above sea level isn't easy.

It only happens for those who truly want it.

"The entire way you are looking for an excuse to turn around," he says. "I don't care what people say of how hard core people think they are, you always have that little voice in the back of your head saying, 'Turn around and go home, nobody is going to think anything of it.' And trying to push through all of that makes the experience special for those who reach the summit."

But it is not just a challenge for the guides and climbers — the trips, often fraught with danger and logistical demands, are also hard on those left behind.

The amount of time it takes to train is astronomical says Furneaux. The preparation includes expeditions on other high altitude mountains like Mount Aconcagua in South America, the North American giants Mount McKinley and Mount Logan, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and Mount Elbrus in Europe or Vinson Massif in Antarctica.

During each of his three trips to Everest he realized how much support he had in his life and how much the people in his life love and care for him through the extended periods he has spent away from home.

"You miss an awful lot," he says. "You miss birthdays. I don't think I was around for my wife's birthdays for the first six years of our relationship."

There's also the stress for those back home when they know the expedition has hit a point when the danger level is high.

When the phone rings at an unusual time the first thoughts are fear generated.

"Every night when they go to bed (they wonder if they) are they going to get a phone call that you're not coming home..." says Furneaux with genuine compassion.

The notion of getting that call is always on the mind of Furneaux's wife Lesley Weeks.

"It is hard just to have him away," she says.

"We get to talk a lot and email so that helps. I definitely worry about him but usually not until they get closer to the summit."

Despite his concern for the feelings of his friends and family back home, Furneaux says it was clear for him from the age of 12-years-old in his home province of Newfoundland that he was going to climb Mount Everest – when he learned about Everest he just knew he needed to get to the top of it.

It takes a team

The dream of the 12-year-old in Furneaux was realized thanks to help from a team led by Brian Jones, the owner of Canada West Mountain School.

Jones was the expedition leader in 2008.

"Well, here we are, May 25 on the summit of Everest with the Canada West Mountain School," says Jones struggling for air in a video posted to YouTube from 2008. "Here's Seb (Sasseville), the first Canadian Type One Diabetic to the summit. Congratulations Seb, hell of a job. Amazing effort – 13 hours long. Hopefully a little shorter on the way back down."

In addition to reaching the top of the world Sasseville raised more than $100,000 for diabetes research.

Jones is currently in the Yukon preparing to climb Mount Logan with fellow Squamish resident Darrel Ainscough.

Both have been to the summit of Everest and both have scaled the highest peaks on seven continents. Jones and Ainscough are two members of an elite group of fewer than 300 people around the world who have climbed the highest peaks on seven continents.

Ainscough, a Vancouver postal worker, reached the summit of Everest on May 24, 2010 after an unsuccessful bid in 2008.

Whistler resident Dwayne Congdon insists in a conversation from Thompson Rivers University that his successful summit in 1986 with Sharon Wood, the first Canadian woman to reach the summit of Everest, was a total team effort.

"It was a lot of hard work and it wouldn't have been doable without the support of our climbing team," says Congdon. "It was very much a team effort."

Congdon's team was much different from the teams put together by Jones, Furneaux and Ainscough. The Canada West Mountain School expeditions made use of hired Sherpas.

Congdon and Wood achieved their summit push without the help of Sherpas.

"We just had two other friends that helped us carry up the camp," Congdon says of his expedition 26 years ago.

Congdon and Wood travelled on a route that hasn't been used since their expedition. The very demanding route consists of a long traverse at 7,500 metres (25,000 feet) with very little elevation gain. The long traverse was very demanding with heavy loads being carried by Congdon and the rest of his team.

Congdon and Wood started their 1986 push to the summit at about 8:30 a.m. Both climbers were tired from the previous day of lugging gear up the mountain. He says they were awake at 5 a.m., but the morning got off to a slow start due to fatigue.

He recalls being on the summit for about 20 minutes after a long day of climbing to reach it. They took some photos, enjoyed the scenery then started back down.

"Maybe 20 minutes is even a stretch because we were quite concerned about our situation," Congdon says. "We knew we had to get back down before it got dark.

"We started the descent as the sun was setting so it got dark pretty quickly.

"Just using headlamps we were able to make our way back down to our hike camp."

Congdon, a mountain guide for much of his life, now works as a program coordinator for the Canadian Mountain Ski Guide program at Thompson Rivers University. He guided before he reached the summit of Everest and continued to guide after visiting the top of the world.

The mountain isn't going anywhere

Congdon has no plans to go back to Everest. In fact, he doesn't even have any desire to return to that part of the world. He's happy with his summit experience and glad that he made it off the mountain in one piece.

"That was enough for me," he says in a confident tone.

That trip, while difficult ended safely, but an expedition he was part of in 1982 encountered tragedy, when the expedition cameraman died in an avalanche along with three Sherpas.

Six people pulled out of the mission. Congdon pressed on and climbed to the South Col mountain pass of Everest at 7,000 metres with Calgary-born Laurie Skreslet, who made it to the summit and became the first Canadian to set foot on the summit of Everest on Oct. 5, 1982. Two days later, Pat Morrow became the second Canadian to climb to the summit.

While Congdon is certain he won't return, Furneaux is leaving the door open to a fourth summit.

Furneaux's first summit happened when he was just 27.

He says he plans to take the next few years off to focus on family and pursue some different opportunities, but adds that he absolutely plans to go back. Future trips will be done to guide small groups of people who are willing to do the training required to make it to the summit.

"The biggest thing about Nepal is when I go there I feel like I'm home," says Furneaux without pretense.

Canada West Mountain School's web site advertises that it will take the adventurous to Mount Everest. The cost? It isn't listed, but according to Furneaux it gets close to "the six-figure range per person."

Close counts

There's another Sea to Sky resident who got to know Everest intimately.

Peter Austen led an Everest climbing expedition in 1991. The Squamish resident assembled a significant team that created a video narrated by Leslie Neilson and aired on television in 1995.

Austen's adventure, titled The Climb For Hope, was the first charitable expedition up Everest and was dedicated to finding a cure for Rett Syndrome, a nervous system disorder.

"The weather was awful," says Austen from his home in Squamish.

Austen's Everest entourage was made up of climbers from all across Canada and since his return he has transformed his experience into a training program called the Everest Experience.

He delivers keynote addresses, offers team-building seminars and facilitates leadership games based on his Everest experience.

"Three climbers reached 26,000 feet but were beaten back by jet stream winds," Austen says of the efforts his team made to reach the summit of Everest. "They were lucky to return alive."

The tough weather near the summit wasn't the only obstacle for Austen's team. They were also challenged by a lack of funds and landslides. The whole drama is detailed in his 1992 book called Everest Canada: The Climb for Hope. The entourage was forced to abandon their busses 20 kilometres from the Tibet border because a slide covered the highway. Further along the route, the group ran through an active slide area and one team member was hit by a falling rock while the very next day a tourist from France was killed in the same spot. Dozens of slides on the route through Tibet forced the group to use Sherpas to transport nine tonnes of gear over rough terrain.

Along with his Everest Experience business, Austen and his wife run and bed and breakfast operation.

A driven entrepreneur, Austen has also published six books.

Here and now

The Everest weather window traditionally opens in May. It is one of the best months to climb the mountain. June brings monsoon season and the weather just doesn't allow for successful climbing of the imposing rock structure.

This started as a lean year. A National Geographic funded expedition with climbers Conrad Anker, Cory Richards and Mark Jenkins blogged about how completing their mission was being prevented due to the weather. Mid-May reports from the mountain indicated there was a lack of snow on the mountain. The snow scarcity forced the National Geographic team to abandon its original route-plan because it didn't want to risk travelling on bare rock and ancient ice.

When the weather conditions allowed for summit pushes, climbers started scrambling for the top.

So far this season at least four people have died on Everest.

Nepal-born Canadian Shriya Shah, German doctor Eberhard Schaaf and South Korean mountaineer Song Won-bin died Saturday, May 19. A Chinese climber 55-year-old Ha Wenyi also died. It is believed exhaustion and altitude sickness played a role in all the deaths. One person is still missing. The tragedies struck the same day, in a period when 150 people tried to reach the summit after weeks of waiting for the weather to permit summit attempts.

"There was a traffic jam on the mountain on Saturday," Nepali mountaineering official Gyanendra Shrestha told news wire services.

"Climbers were still heading to the summit as late as 2:30 p.m., which is quite dangerous."

In April a Sherpa lost his life after falling into a crevasse while crossing a ladder bridge. He didn't clip himself to safety ropes on either side of the ladder. Another died of altitude sickness.

The Sherpas are hired to do the heavy lifting for Everest adventure seekers. Their genetics are better suited for the task as they live their lives at 4,000 metres above sea level.

It takes more than three weeks for most people to acclimatize to high altitude. Teams trek back and forth between Everest Base Camp and the smaller tent camps that are built along the route to the summit.

Along the way the dangers include wind, exposure, exhaustion, altitude sickness, equipment failure, falling rocks, frostbite, hypothermia, snow blindness, acute mountain sickness and more.

For Furneaux, Jones, Ainscough, Congdon and Austen the tallest peak in the world is a long way off from a geographic perspective.

But the mountain is close to their hearts, and from time-to-time they can't help but find themselves thinking about what the climbers on the mountain right now are going through in their quest to stand at the top of the world.

Everest by the numbers

2 – Main climbing routes up the mountain

3 – Countries visible from the summit

4 – People killed in 1982 Canadian expedition

5 – Glaciers on the mountain

7 – Countries along the Himalayas

11 – Minutes to paraglide from the summit

13 – Youngest summit visitor (Jordan Romero)

14 – Mountains around the world over 8,000 metres

15 – Deaths in one day in 1996

16 – Nepal's minimum age to climb

18 – Total routes to the peak

21 – Apa Sherpa's summits

30 – Summit atmospheric pressure percentage

40 – Largest number to summit in one day (May 10, 1993)

60 – Mountain age in millions of years

76 – Age of oldest climber (Min Bahadur Sherchan)

234 – Lives lost (at least)

6,065 – Camp 1 elevation in metres

8,840 – Original incorrect elevation in metres

8,848 – Elevation in metres

19,900 – Camp 1 elevation in feet

29,002 – Original incorrect elevation in feet

29,029 – Elevation in feet

Everest's Personalities

George Mallory - Some believe he may have been the first to summit Everest in 1924 with the help of his partner Andrew Irvine. Both died on the mountain a few hundred metres below the summit.

Edmund Hillary - New Zealander commonly credited as being the first person to reach the summit. At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953 he reached the summit and took some photographs before descending.

Tenzing Norgay - Nepalese Sherpa who accompanied Hillary to the summit in 1953.

Jim Whittaker - First American to reach the summit in 1963.

Nawang Gombu - Accompanied Jim Whittaker to the summit then became the first person to summit twice when he went back up in 1965.

Yuichiro Miura - Skied from the South Col of Everest in 1970 and documented the adventure in an Academy Award winning documentary called The Man Who Skied Down Everest.

Junko Tabei - The first woman to reach the summit in 1975.

Laurie Skreslet - The first Canadian to reach the summit in 1982. His expedition took three years to plan, cost $3 million and four lives. A cameraman and three Sherpas were caught in an avalanche.

Pat Morrow - Reached the summit of Everest two days after Laurie Skreslet. He is an accomplised photographer, who became the first person in the world to climb the highest peaks on all seven continents.

Sharon Wood - The first Canadian woman to summit in 1986 with Dwayne Congdon.

Peter Hillary -- Son of Edmund Hillary and reached the summit in 1990.

Rob Hall and Scott Fisher - Experienced American guides who died during a storm in 1996 while leading a paid expedition.

Jon Krakauer - Journalist who wrote about his 1996 experience on the mountain in a book called Into Thin Air.

Anatoli Boukreev - Guide and co-author of the book called The Climb, a rebuttal to Krakauer's book.

David Braeshears - Filmmaker who led a team to the summit and captured the experience with a specially designed IMAX camera. Production of Everest was put on hold May 10 to help climbers caught in the storm that led to the deaths of Hall, Fisher and 13 others in the deadliest storm ever on the mountain.

Apa Sherpa - Record holder with 21 summits of Everest.



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