It’s shaping up to be yet another busy spring climbing season on Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain. Right now Johnny Strange, a 17-year-old lad who hopes to become the youngest person to ascend the Seven Summits, the seven highest points on the seven continents, is at 17,600-foot Everest Base Camp. He, along with his father Brian and guide Scott Woolums, are acclimating to the altitude for a summit bid later in May. Strange has already climbed five of the seven, with only Everest and either Mount Kosciuszko or Carstensz Pyramid to complete his quest.
Another possible first at Mount Everest this May is the completion of the Seven Summits by a person with multiple sclerosis (MS). Wendy Booker, a 55-year-old mountaineer and runner (just turned “double nickels” at Everest Basecamp!), was diagnosed with MS in 1998 after experiencing numbness on her left side, problems with balance, and blurred vision—all classic symptoms of MS.
After that she devoted herself to proving that MS is not necessarily a limitation to achieving life goals, and one of her goals became climbing the Seven Summits. Now Booker has climbed the bottom six and is currently attempting to reach the top of the world for her grand finale. Her first summit was Denali, North America’s high point, in 2004 after a failed attempt in 2002 with a crew of other MS patients.
On her website, Wendy says, “I use mountains as metaphors for the obstacles we all encounter in life. And, I want to inspire others—especially young people—not to see obstacles as mountains in their way, but more as challenges to ‘climb’ over and around. We all have such ‘mountains’ in our lives and we cannot let them stop us!”
It’s good to have goals and to try to achieve great things, to overcome life’s curve balls—the handicaps and inertia of fear, lethargy, and disease. It’s difficult to be a climber if you have MS since balance and equilibrium are so important. Matt, one of myclimbing friends in New Hampshire, has battled MS for a long time, but he still gets out rock climbing. It sometimes takes him awhile but he still leads moderate routes on Cathedral and Whitehorse Ledges.
For this reason, I’m psyched to hear about Wendy’s mission to climb the Seven Summits, to prove that she achieves despite her disease, that she chooses to live to the fullest. That’s a great thing. I applaud her efforts. Over the next few weeks, I will follow Wendy’s progress up Mount Everest. I’ll be chatting with her next week by satellite phone. Stay tuned here for my follow-up reports. Good luck Wendy!
Photograph top: Wendy Booker works up steep snow slopes on Denali. Photograph bottom: Wendy enjoys a rock climbing on New Hampshire granite. Photographs courtesy Wendy Booker
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