'It was always on the bucket list': Leitrim man climbs Mount Everest
Leitrim Village native, Damian Whitney, made the tough climb to Mount Everest base camp to celebrate his fiftieth birthday
Damian Whitney from Leitrim Village made the gruelling climb to Everest Base Camp earlier this month to celebrate his fifteenth birthday.
“It was always on the bucket list,” according to the Leitirm Village native, who dedicated the climb to his parents and siblings.
“I always said I'd like to do it for my 50th,” says Damian, who had gotten into hiking during lockdown, and when his birthday was in sight, his Wife, Mary, pushed him to do Everest.
“I was having nightmares about it at the start,” he says, though he came around to the idea and spent a few months training before heading over.
The climb was organised through a travel company, and at the end of March, he joined a group of 14 others who would be making the climb in Nepal. The next day, they made the long journey from Kathmandu to Lukla to begin the journey.
“My wife would have come with me, only that we've a, we've an 11-year-old daughter, like, and the flight into Lukla is very dangerous, like, so we said, we said one of us better, better stay back.”
Everest is the tallest mountain in the world above sea level, with its peak reaching 8000 Metres above sea level. The journey to base camp, which was Damian’s destination, sits below that at about 5000 Metres of elevation and takes almost two weeks of climbing to reach.
The climb itself to base camp is not dangerous, according to Damian, but it is a challenging feat with early morning starts in freezing cold weather, with people dropping out along the way due to the effects of altitude sickness.
“It is challenging, but I just had a desire to do it, and I think you need a bit of luck and to stay healthy for as long as possible.”
The first day was light with a three-hour hike, largely down to find a path to go back up the mountain on the second day, which proved more difficult as three of the five people who fell away due to altitude sickness were on that day.
They stopped for the evening when they arrived in the village of Namche Bazar. Damian found the climb strenuous and was sick that evening. After ringing Mary and checking home, he settled in for the evening “I was lucky to recover.”
That was the last place medications could be gotten on the trek, so they stocked up on antibiotics, cough bottles, and everything that they would need for the rest of the journey. From there, the temperature dropped, and they were heading into the thick of it.
“That's the real start of it from there, like, you want to be in good shape when you get to Namche Bazar.”
The group found good camaraderie as they wound their way along to find a way up the mountain. On the way, they stopped in little communities where they could rest and eat.
The mountains, though, were busy with rescue helicopters flying overhead and people making the climb going through the little villages on the way.
“It's a buzzing little place,” he says, and the villages were something from a different time. “It reminds me of Ireland, what Ireland would have been like in the 50s, 40s and 50s, because you have small little holdings on land”
He criss-crossed along the way, Padraig O’Hoara, the Mayo footballer who is climbing the mountain for charity.
Things become quite basic along the way, with food becoming largely just the essentials, but the scenery becomes beautiful, too.
“I loved the mountains. I loved the whole Himalayas,” he says, recalling looking out at one point and seeing four of the highest six mountains in the world.
By the last days of the climb, it was a real challenge to keep going, but he says, especially with the thought of going back in mind, but he was determined to get there.
By the time they arrived at base camp, he was so exhausted that he had the tricolour held up the wrong way in the photo, he recalls.
“I just got phone credits, got something to eat, just, just phone Mary, hot water bottles straight to bed.”
Back in Ireland now, Damian is happy to be home and getting over a cough he picked up on the climb and is still dreaming about climbing the mountains.
He says he wouldn’t do the climb again, but is planning another adventure, this time with his wife, Mary. Though this one won't be as strenuous, he says.