This photo taken on April 27, 2019 shows an aerial view of Mount Everest (centre R) taken during a flight from Nepal to Bhutan. (Photo by Sarah LAI / AFP)
Saray Khumalo’s descent from Mount Everest has become equally fraught with danger after it was confirmed yesterday that two members of her team had died.
Seamus Lawless of Ireland fell from an 8,300m high area known as the Balcony on Thursday, while India national Ravi Thakar died in his sleep on Thursday at Camp Four at an high altitude of 7,900m.
The search for Lawless has been called off.
It is believed more than 200 bodies of climbers and their Sherpa guides lie frozen on the deadly mountain.
“Mountaineers are accustomed to suffering. The climbs are big and conditions rugged,” said Khumalo’s Summits With a Purpose fellow mountaineer Jeannette McGill yesterday. “But there is a passion and an appreciation that is deeply evident in all who aspire to climb big mountains.
Saray Khumalo, the first black woman to summit Mount Everest, on Thursday, 16 May 2019. Picture: Facebook
“The Summits With a Purpose initiative has evolved since 2013, when the platform was founded by Saray and supported by Sarieta Schultz from 2014, with the aim of taking Ubuntu to the top of the world through her Seven Summits challenge,” said McGill.
“With her birth in Zambia, Rwandan bloodline and now a South African, this sister of Africa has become a national icon.”
In 2012, Khumalo, a 47-year-old business executive, summitted Mount Kilimanjaro and in the process raised funds for the Lunchbox Fund.
In 2014, she summitted Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains in Russia and Argentina’s Mount Aconcagua in 2015.
Khumalo became a Nelson Mandela Libraries ambassador and raised nearly R1 million for school libraries.
After being on Everest during both the serac fall in 2014 and the 2015 earthquake, she reached the south summit in 2017.
For this year’s expedition, she supported the Dr Thandi Ndlovu Foundation.
“Saray arrived at Base Camp on April 20 after completing the remote trek up the Khumbu Valley in Nepal.
“She left on April 26 for her acclimatisation rotation [for the body to adapt to the reduced air pressures] that took her sequentially to Camp One, Camp Two and just below Camp Three,” McGill said.
“After this, she rested for a few days while some bad weather passed. She then set off on her summit push on May 12, arriving at the summit on Thursday morning.”
McGill said that mountaineers all appreciated the summit was actually only halfway, with the majority of accidents or deaths occurring on the way down due to fatigue.
“Having taken five days to climb Mount Everest, Saray is still progressively making her way back down the mountain safely and slowly.”
– amandaw@citizen.co.za
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