Irish climber recovering after Everest setback

A CLIMBER on the Irish Mount Everest expedition is recovering in hospital after a near-death experience.

George Shorten, a 41-year-old anaesthetist with Cork University Hospital spent seven hours crossing the Kumbu glacier with the team, suffering from double vision and fainting spells.

The deep crevasses and moving ice in the Kumbu glacier make it the most dangerous part of Mount Everest and it has already claimed the lives of nine climbers.

Team leader Pat Falvey said Mr Shorten, an experienced climber who has climbed four of the highest mountains in the world, had shown great courage. “On this occasion, George pushed himself to the limit so that he would put no one else in danger to get out of the dangerous situation he was in. We’re playing around in an area called death zone and it’s not called death zone for no reason,” he said via satellite phone on the Pat Kenny show yesterday.

The Irish Everest Expedition is aiming for the first successful ascent of Everest by a woman and to complete the first Irish ascent on the southern route from Nepal.

Mr Shorten had found it difficult to sleep after a 12-hour ascent to the team Camp 3, and his energy levels were severely depleted. After his ordeal on the descent, he collapsed on the floor of the Himalayan Rescue Clinic at Base Camp and was diagnosed with high altitude cerebral oedema. This mountain sickness arrives when the body can no longer cope with the high altitude and can be fatal, but Mr Shorten was recovering well yesterday and, on the expedition website, thanked the other team members and the medical staff.

The team is led by Pat Falvey, a professional Cork mountaineer who climbed Everest in 1995, two years after Dawson Stelfox became the first Irish man to reach the summit.

The two women on the team are Clare O’Leary (31), a doctor at Cork University Hospital, and Hannah Shields (37), a Derry dentist. Also in the group are Gerard McDonnell, originally from Kilcornan, Co Limerick, and Mick Murphy, owner of an outdoor pursuit centre in West Cork.

At present the climbers have dropped back to stage one on the climb to prepare for the final assault on the summit.

“It was a lot of slogging and it’s been fairly mundane and boring for them,” said team co-ordinator Liavon Flattery, “but after the rest period is over, it’ll be all go.”

More than 120 corpses still lie on Everest, including nine of Pat Falvey’s climbing friends. Why, some may ask, are the team willing to pay 40,000 each and risk their lives to climb Everest?

When George Mallory, the British climber who died on the slopes of Everest, was asked the same question, he replied simply: “Because it is there.”