"I am pleased to do something that was a first. It is a privilege to be the first," O'Dowd said Sunday after returning to the Nepalese capital.

O'Dowd, a 30-year-old tourism agent from Johannesburg, South Africa, reached the summit May 29 with Ian Woodall, 42, also from Johannesburg, and two Sherpa guides Pemba and Jyangbu. The team climbed from the Chinese-Tibetan side of the mountain. In 1996, O'Dowd and Woodall scaled the peak from the Nepalese side.

The sky was clear and the weather pleasant this time around -- until the climbers reached their last camp at 27,000 feet. "Had we been a day late, we could have never made it to the top," O'Dowd said. Her team was the last one to attempt the summit this season, which runs from March to May. "The summit part of the Tibetan side is much more difficult than from the south," she added.

Last year, she had tried from the Tibetan side but was foiled by unfavorable weather. At about 28,400 feet, her team found an American woman, Frankie Arsentev, who had been there for at least two days. "She was too far gone for us to help her. She had severe frostbite and was incoherent ... we had to leave her there," O'Dowd said. "It was an enormous shock to see a woman die. There are not many women who take up mountaineering. It was upsetting, but that was not going to stop me.'' Before attempting the Everest in 1996, she had climbed smaller mountains in central Africa. When the first South African expedition to Mount Everest was announced, the team sought applications for a woman climber. Over 200 responded and O'Dowd was chosen.

"No more Everest for me now. Maybe Mount K2 next year," O'Dowd said, referring to the world's second-highest peak, the 28,250-foot K2 in Pakistan. Since Everest was first conquered by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953, it has been climbed over 800 times. Over 180 people have lost their lives on its unpredictable slopes.
salon.com | June 7, 1999

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon