David Stonehouse News

Does Everest matter anymore?

The Everest conquest has officially come full circle, writes David Stonehouse. Records have been broken and set, countless books and films made. Been there, done that, let's move on.

It was a day of records at the top of the world, so much so that conquering Everest seems just no big deal anymore.

Fifty-four crowded at the top, among them a grandson of Tenzing Norgay, a man who made history nearly half a century ago by reaching the world's highest peak.

A married couple from Washington State were there on Thursday, too, celebrating their new status as the first husband- and-wife team to climb the highest peaks on all seven continents.

A Sherpa who goes by the name of Appa smashed his own record by making the summit a dozen times. And a woman from North Carolina became the first of her gender to scale both the north and south face of Everest.

And guess who was on his way up? Peter Hillary. He's retracing the steps taken by his father, Sir Edmund Hillary -- the man famous for making the successful first conquest with Tenzing Norgay in 1953.

The Everest conquest has come full circle now. It just seems so darn achievable. Records have been broken and set, countless books and films made. Been there, done that, let's move on.

Peggy Foster thinks differently.

The former special education worker turned adventurer sees Mount Everest as next year's conquest. She's already scaled the highest peaks on three continents since 1999: Aconcagua in South America, Elbrus in Europe, and Kilimanjaro in Africa.

She attempted Denali last year but whipping winds and unimaginable temperatures forced a retreat at 5,100 metres. She'll try Alaska's Mount McKinley again, for she needs this if she is to succeed in her quest to become the first Canadian woman to vanquish the mightiest mountains on each continent. Three down, four to go.

Ms. Foster, 42, grew up in Ottawa and lives now in the Toronto area. She is a behavioural consultant and works with troubled children, but she craved more from her life. In the 1980s, she began to compete in Ironman competitions and marathons. In the 1990s, she turned to rock climbing before turning her attention to mountains.

Of the seven summits, she is saving Mount Everest for last, pencilling it in for next spring. Plenty will have come before her -- Everest has been scaled more than 1,000 times with 180 climbers dying in the attempt.

She is not the least bit deterred. She was thrilled to hear that 54 people had reached the 8,710.5-metre high crest of Everest at once, and sees no reason why everyone else should not be equally inspired.

"I would never ever undervalue the achievement -- be it one person on the summit that day or 100. I still think it is an incredible quest. And not because I am going to go for it, necessarily," she says. "It is more just because it still is an astonishing thing to put yourself through. I think it is important that we recognize that."

She understands how the increasing numbers of successful challengers to summit at Mount Everest might not rivet the imagination of some as it would have in the past, that in some way it has become considered almost routine. It's human nature. "The first person to go to Mars will be a phenomenon, but when 54 people go it'll be commonplace," she says. "It is easy for us as human beings to say 'Oh, it's been done now.'"

And while the equipment used to climb mountains and to buffer the harsh conditions of high altitude is today far superior than what Sir Hillary had on his ascent, Ms. Foster says the human spirit is the same now as then.

And nothing is going to convince her Everest isn't worth trying. Because for her it is not so much a conquest of Mother Nature but a triumph of spirit. For her, it is not really about physical endurance but conquest of fear -- fear of falling, of cold, of danger, of death.

"I truly believe that fear stops most of us from doing a lot of things in life that maybe we wish we could do," she says.

"We all grow up thinking we're not good at this and we're not good at that. I truly believe that we just have to break through our fears."