PEAK PERFORMERS – MEET THE SA WOMEN WHO HAVE STOOD AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD
News.com,au, Australia
April 4 2014
NICOLE Crawford’s holiday wasn’t quite going to plan. Snowed in by
a blizzard high on Mount Ararat, a bootless cook for a guide, a man
struck by lightning, a group of illegal Armenian climbers above them
and 10,000 Turkish troops below, Crawford was nervous.
“When we got to the last camp before summit everyone was feeling really
good,” she says. “We were saying ‘Let’s keep going, let’s keep going,’
because there was talk from a group coming back that the weather was
coming in really bad.
“I was anxious about getting up there before the weather came in,
but our guide was saying no, we needed to acclimatise. The next day
we woke up and we were snowed in.”
That was just the beginning of their problems. The group ahead of
Crawford’s were Armenians. Forbidden by Turkish authorities to climb
Ararat, they were on the mountain illegally when their guide was
struck by lightning. Crawford’s guide went ahead to rescue them.
“We were left with the cook as our guide,” she says. “He didn’t even
have walking boots, so between us we had to put together some clothes
for him. This was all a bit nerve-racking, but while we were waiting
in this hut, hemmed in, freezing cold, one of the Armenians staggered
in. He’d been with the man who’d been hit by lightning and become
separated and lost.”
Then they got word that the army had ordered everyone off the mountain.
It was around four in the afternoon, in blizzard conditions, so their
guide decided it was too dangerous to descend that day. Concerned
about ignoring the army’s directive as well as the prospect of being
discovered harbouring an illegal Armenian, Crawford spent a tense
night on the mountain.
In the morning, the weather had eased. They descended without incident,
but also without reaching their goal.
“We just had to pack up and go,” Crawford says. “In one way it was
good to get off the mountain, because it was so cold and frightening,
but it was disappointing. It was hard to take anything positive from
it, but a few days later my husband and I made a promise to come back
and do it again.”
Maybe that’s not surprising. Whether it’s the thrill of reaching a
summit, the mental test that comes with overcoming deep fatigue and
occasional fear, or the joy in the camaraderie of climbing in a team
to reach a lofty peak, mountain climbing can be highly addictive.
It’s been a male-dominated pursuit since adventurers and scientists
first started to climb alpine peaks in the eighteenth century.
But increasingly women such as Crawford and a handful of others from
South Australia, have also stepped up, and up, to conquer some of
the world’s most challenging climbs.
Crawford and her husband David kept their promise, reaching the 5137m
summit of Mount Ararat two years after that failed first attempt.
“It was interesting, because we obviously got further than we did on
the first climb and that’s where we got into the really difficult
terrain, the big, ice-covered rocks. It was just as well we didn’t
soldier on the first time because it would have been frightening
trying to climb those rocks in zero visibility.”
Crawford is hesitant to call herself a mountain climber, despite
reaching the peaks of Kilimanjaro (5875m), Macchu Picchu (2430m)
and South Australia’s highest peak, Mount Woodroffe (1435m).
The 49-year-old started running and going to the gym after her children
were born and branched into trekking, tackling local climbs such as
Mount Lofty and Chinaman’s Hill as training for taller peaks.
Her next target is Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas at
6,961 metres. “That would be the highest I would go, I can’t imagine
ever doing more than 7,000,” she says. “I don’t mind the idea of
learning to use ropes now that I’ve done a few mountains. If I’d been
told on Kilimanjaro that we needed to learn to use an ice pick and
ropes I might have baulked at that, but now I don’t mind the idea of
giving it a go.”
The Crawfords also have their eye on Iran’s tallest mountain,
Damavand. The Hyde Park couple travel regularly to the Middle East
on business and have sounded out some contacts in Tehran about the
5610m climb.
“Quite often I’m the only female,” Crawford says. “On Ararat, I was
the only woman and also by far the smallest in the group. I got the
impression that the men thought I was never going to summit; they
were waiting for me to pull out.
“But as we went up, some of these big guys didn’t cope with altitude
well. They probably weren’t as fit as they should have been. I’d
been at altitude before and I knew I was fit enough. I think then
I earned a bit of respect that I didn’t have at the start, not that
that’s what I was looking for.”
Women are not new to the peaks. There are records of a Miss Parminter
climbing the Alps in 1799 and France’s Marie Paradis topping Mont Blanc
(4810m) in 1808.
In the nineteenth century, Lucy Walker stood atop the Matterhorn
(4478m) in a white print dress. She also made four ascents of the 3970m
Eiger and was reputed to survive on a diet of sponge cake, champagne
and Asti Spumante while on the mountain. Some of her contemporaries
would wear socially acceptable skirts when leaving their hotel only to
remove them once on the mountain and climb in trousers. Noted alpinist
and filmmaker Mrs Aubrey Le Blond once traversed the Rothorn, at 2350m
the highest mountain in the Swiss Alps. Realising after descending
that she’d left her skirt on the summit she turned around, climbed
back up and returned, suitably dressed, to her starting point.
Wardrobe decisions are much simpler these days. “Two thermals, two
fleeces and a feather jacket,” Annie Fisher says of the outfit she
wore for her ascent of Nepal’s 6476-metre Mera Peak. It sounds a lot
warmer than a dress, but with temperatures on Mera dipping as low as
minus 20C overnight, even that many layers needed bolstering with a
fleece-lined down sleeping bag.
It sounds less than comfortable but for Fisher, who came to climbing
through a love of camping and trekking, it’s a pleasure.
“I really quite like wearing the same clothes every day, not washing
my hair, not doing domestic stuff, breaking the daily grind,” she says.
Fisher says training is vital before taking on a mountain. An
experienced cross-country skier, she completing three 100km treks
before her 6000m climbs and walked the full length of the Heysen Trail.
“We’d walk every weekend,” she says. “That could be a three-, four-
or six-hour walk. Then we would do at least two five-day trips. We
also did other treks, out of Perth and Alice Springs, but they weren’t
that hard. Actually, they were pleasant, but it’s about getting your
boots back on.”
Once in the mountains, the training paid off. Fisher’s journal account
of her ascent of Mera gives some of the flavour of the journey: “Up.
Down. Up. Down. Up. Down.
Landing at the precipitous Tenzing-Hillary Airport in Lukla, eastern
Nepal, Fisher’s group had to hike for eight days to reach the beginning
of the climb. Along the way, she suffered a hyper-extended knee,
grazed legs, injuries to her fingers and an eye, and a case of
cellulitis on her nose, none of which healed properly until after
she’d returned home.
Climbing is mentally arduous, too. “When it’s hard, you go into
yourself and you’ve just got to keep pushing,” Fisher says. “But then
you’ll have a day when you’re just singing to yourself all the way.
There was one time near the second summit where I said I didn’t think
I could do it, but my husband Pete said ‘Just keep walking’.”
Climbing Mera left Fisher, who just turned 56, exhausted for a month
after returning to her Adelaide Hills home, but she doesn’t regard
expeditions as hardships.
“It’s a holiday,” she says. “I didn’t cook for a month. With the
Sherpas and the porters all you have to do is look after yourself.
You’re there to absolutely thrive on this beautiful scenery.”
Mera, Ararat and Kilimanjaro are all physically demanding climbs,
but don’t require a lot of technical expertise. For some climbers
nothing beats the thrill of scaling a sheer rock wall.
Modern rock climbing emerged from Victorian-era alpinism as a distinct
sport in the late 1800s and surged in popularity as new equipment
and techniques became widespread in the mid-twentieth century. As
with mountaineering, it has been a male-dominated pursuit, but over
the past decade women have been much more prominent.
Climbing Club of South Australia president Adam Clay says that around
40 of the club’s 100 members are women.
“The number of women climbing has increased and appears to be
continuing,”
he says. “I remember 10 years ago there only being one female
climber at the gym. Now on any given night it’s around the 30-40 per
cent mark. Interestingly… climbing is a sport in which males and
females are relatively even in performance. It is a sport where men
and women can participate equally on expeditions and this seems to
be encouraging greater participation of women.”
Barossa winemaker Rebekah Richardson is a devotee. “It’s my Zen,” she
says. “You can’t think about anything else when you’re on a rock face.
There’s nothing else you can allow yourself to think about.”
A one-day course in the Blue Mountains triggered her obsession. “After
the first time I was hooked,” she says. “I’ve always been a tomboy.
There’s nothing more exciting than going out for a full day of
wrecking myself.”
Seven years working in California gave Richardson easy access to some
of the world’s best-known climbing destinations, such as Yosemite,
Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada. “Yosemite is just awe-inspiring,”
she says. “When you’re looking out over the valley, 200 metres up,
hanging off a rock face – it’s a view most people don’t get.”
Rock climbing is divided into two main categories, sport climbing
and traditional climbing. Sport climbers use pre-placed bolts to
clip their ropes into, while traditional climbing involves placing
your own safety gear. Climbers generally carry 50 or 60m of rope,
which they re-use in multi-pitch climbs. “You might climb the whole
length of that rope, anchor yourself in and your partner follows you
up. They anchor themselves in and you climb up past that for another
50m, then anchor yourself in again,” Richardson says. “When you get
to the top, you can invariably walk back down again.”
For Richardson, 42, risk is part of the appeal. “I’m a bit of a
risk-taker,” she says. “I ride a motorbike too. I don’t need crazy
speed and I don’t need to jump out of a plane, but I love that sort
of calculated risk-taking and I think it shows in all areas of my life.
I’ve always been happy to give up a job and move halfway around the
world – to try something completely different just because I can.
“I very rarely feel fear when I’m climbing,” she says. “I try not to
put myself in situations where I overextend. I don’t mind challenging
myself but I don’t go out and try something three grades above what
I can do.”
Richardson might not feel fear, but there have been moments of doubt.
“I was doing a multi-pitch climb in Tuolumne Meadows north of
Yosemite,” she says. “We were on the third pitch, about 100m up. It
was face climbing, so it was pretty sheer. It was early in my time
climbing in America and I remember thinking ‘have I overcommitted
myself here?’ But about 10m past that I got into the groove of it
and it’s possibly one of my best climbs.”
For the most part, Richardson sticks to traditional and sport climbing
with either a local guide or her partner Ed, but she recently went
ropeless, tackling some imposing rock pillars without safety gear.
“In Vietnam you can deep-water solo, which is basically climbing
with no rope, but you’re climbing over the ocean. You climb as high
as you like and drop into the water.”
Plummeting from a great height is generally something climbers avoid.
Katie Sarah is the first South Australian woman to climb the seven
summits – the highest peak on each continent – but her only serious
injury came from a rock-climbing accident at Morialta.
“Before my first Everest trip, I decided to try trad climbing. I
took a fall and smashed my ankle. It’s by far my worst injury, in
fact my only injury, and it happen here in the Adelaide Hills. It’s
a dangerous spot,” she laughs.
Sarah’s first taste of climbing came at the end of a trek in the
Flinders Ranges when she had to abseil down the imposing crag at
Moonarie, near Wilpena.
“I was scared shitless at the top,” she says. “As soon as I was
clipped in and started going down I decided it was really cool,
so I took up rock climbing.”
Two years on, Sarah stood atop Nevado Sajama, Bolivia’s highest peak
at 6542m.
“There were 15 in the group and two guides,” she says. “One of the
guides and I were the only ones to summit – it was a tougher peak than
everyone expected. I came out of that trip thinking ‘I can do this.'”
It seems to have been a case of ‘I must do this’ rather than ‘I can
do this’. When Sarah returned to Adelaide in 2007 she abandoned her
accounting career and started working for noted adventurer Duncan
Chessell at DCXP Mountain Journeys. She liked it so much she bought
the company – Chessell sold the business to Sarah three years ago.
In the seven years since, Sarah has conquered the seven summits,
but she says it was never really her aim. “It was really until last
year when I had two to go that I thought I might as well just do it,”
she says. “Probably the main reason for ticking off the seven summits
has been the people I climb with. Particularly on the high mountains
you want people you like spending six to eight weeks of your life with.
You don’t want to be stuck in the field with idiots.”
The dangers of altitude are multiplied by remoteness. More than 200
people have died on the 8848m flanks of Everest alone. Even relatively
minor injuries can lead to disastrous outcomes.
“Anything at extreme altitudes is dangerous. Above 8000m on Everest,
if you can’t walk off you’re dead,” Sarah says.
Antarctica also requires considerable physical stamina. Sarah, who
is 45, and her group had to haul their sleds across the Antarctic
ice for three weeks. “Pulling a 60kg sled in snow and ice is not
something you can really practice in Adelaide,” she says.
For Sarah, mountaineering is more
about the journey than its lofty destination.
“When I came back from my first Everest trip, I wasn’t devastated
that I didn’t summit,” she says. “I wasn’t ready to, I
didn’t deserve to. What it was about, what it’s still about, is
the journey. It’s the experience of the country, the team I’m with,
the local people I meet and work with.”
On occasions it’s not possible to reach the top, but even when it does
happen, the summit is not really the true goal. “It’s only halfway,”
Sarah says. “You have to accept that it’s not all about getting to
the top. All that way you’ve gone to get there, you have to turn
around and get back down again.
“The majority of deaths on Everest happen on the descent. People have
pushed themselves to the summit, pushed too hard and too long and
they don’t have enough to get back down. It’s knowing where you’re
limits are. After you turn 40, gravity isn’t your friend on any level,
but on a mountain…”
Once you get down, there’s the let-down. “I come back from a trip and
find myself in the supermarket that afternoon,” Sarah says. “Life gets
back to normal pretty quickly. Whether it’s a mountain or a marathon
or a triathlon, the post-event let-down is massive, but the way to
turn that around is to set a new goal. I train all the time anyway,
I just find it a lot more fun and effective if there’s a goal.”
Serious expeditions are off the agenda for the next two years as
Sarah’s two younger sons go through Year 12. Her next goal is to
complete the Ironman in Port Macquarie in May, but she already has
plans for when the boys have finished school.
“It’d be fun to do another 8000m peak,” she says. “I’ve already
put out feelers to some of my climbing friends. There are lots of
mountains out there.”
From: A. Papazian
http://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/peak-performers-meet-the-sa-women-who-have-stood-at-the-top-of-the-world/story-fnii5yv4-1226873448668