FOR three days in May 2006, the world looked up to Filipinos on the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak towering at 29,035 feet (8,855 meters). Three intrepid mountaineers, two separate expeditions, a mad dash for the summit of the world’s highest peak and a grateful nation. A sure recipe for a pulse-pounding story of passion, courage, danger, sacrifice, camaraderie and historical achievement in the remote Himalyas.

Wild cheers broke out as Leo Oracion announced over the radio “The Philippine Eagle has landed,” signaling his successful summit bid to be the first Filipino to reach the top of the Mt. Everest on May 17. Oracion, 32, made the announcement amidst howling winds after planting the Philippine flag on Everest’s summit at 3:30 p.m. Nepal time (5:30 p.m. Manila time).

The following day, May 18, teammate Erwin “Pastor” Emata, also 32, repeated the feat at 5:24 a.m. Nepal time (7:24 a.m. Manila time) after slogging through the early morning hours in the thin air to greet the sunrise at the peak of Everest.

The elation was tripled the very next day as Romi Garduce, 37, completed the Philippine effort by setting foot on the summit at 11:20 a.m. Nepal time (1:20 p.m. Manila time) shouting “Mabuhay ang Pinoy!” into the high, howling wind after setting the Philippine flag on Everest’s summit for the third time in as many days.

The triple feat was hailed in Manila and the rest of the country as a great triumph for the Filipino people, grabbing the headlines for three straight days and providing an inspirational break from the usual depressing fare. The mood was especially festive in Lucban, Quezon, the home town of Leo Oracion; in Davao City, home town of Pastor Emata; and in Balanga, Bataan, home town of Garduce.

Mad Dash to the Summit

Intense emotions filled the rarefied air as updates of the trio’s progress were relayed to Manila from the Everest Basecamp on May 17. Teammates Oracion and Emata of the First Philippine Mount Everest Expedition (FPMEE) had overtaken erstwhile leader Garduce in the attempt to summit first and Oracion was expected to summit by 11:00 a.m. Nepal time (1:00 p.m. Manila time). The mobile phones of teammates, friends and family members buzzed constantly as minute-by-minute updates were relayed and passed on.

The FPMEE team arrived in Nepal on April 15 and after weeks of preparation, Oracion left Camp 3 on the night of May 16 for Camp 4, the penultimate way station to the summit of Everest with an elevation of around 26,000 feet (8,000 meters). Choosing to sacrifice rest, and despite deep fatigue and hunger, Oracion pushed on to the summit to fulfill his lifelong dream. He carried with him only a few precious essentials: bottled oxygen, water, a little food and his daughter’s drawing of the Philippine Flag. He would have summitted sooner but was delayed by the “traffic” on the Hillary Step, so named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to reach the summit of Everest. This part of the trail, a mere 900 feet from the summit, has become a bottleneck with climbers waiting in line to climb up the highly technical section using fixed ropes set up by Sherpa guides. Oracion finally reached the rooftop of the world after a superhuman 15-hour push in the Death Zone.

Emata on the other hand was put on stand-by on Camp 3 as part of the FPMEE strategy to ensure a successful summit bid in case the weather turned bad. He later pushed on through the night upon seeing clear skies. From Camp 4, it took him just under eight hours to make it to the peak. There he radioed Arturo Valdez, the leader of the expedition, just as dawn was breaking on May 18. Wild cheers broke out the Philippine Basecamp for the second time. Always full of humility, Pastor’s radio message from the summit was, “Ang lamig dito! (It’s so cold here).”

Oracion and Emata descended together to Basecamp on May 19 after getting much-needed sleep and meals on Camp 2. From Basecamp, Arturo Valdez declared, “The Philippine Expedition to Mt. Everest in 2006 will not be complete until Romi Garduce makes it to the summit and back safely.” It erased any hint of competition between the climbers and reflected the strong spirit of camaraderie shared by mountaineers.

Perseverance pays off

Garduce arrived first at the Everest Basecamp in late March and proceeded to follow a strict regimen of acclimatization, a slow and laborious process of adjusting one’s body to the high altitude and the thin oxygen. Acclimatization involves climbing through a series of four pre-set camps on the slopes of Everest and then returning to camp, moving higher after the completion of each foray until the body has fully adapted to the high altitude. The exercise significantly limits the chances of altitude sickness and accidents. Garduce climbed to Camp 3 on May 8 and returned to Basecamp the next day to gather strength and wait for a safe climbing window for his final summit bid.

Before Everest, Garduce held the record for highest peak scaled by a Filipino. On January 1, 2005, Garduce climbed Mt. Aconcagua (22,831 ft.) in Argentina, the highest peak on the western hemisphere. He broke his own record in September of the same year when he scaled Mt. Cho Oyu (26,906 ft.), a neighboring peak of Mt. Everest and one of 14 eight thousand meter peaks in the world.

Just as the Oracion and Emata were on their way down, Romi Garduce was approaching the summit. During his painstaking acclimatization, Garduce had clambered up and down the slopes of Everest several times to prepare for this day. Conserving their oxygen supply, the climbers pushed their way from Camp 3 to Camp 4 without using supplemental oxygen. The other dangers of high altitude mountaineering were ever present. Romi and his Sherpa guides witnessed three avalanches thundering down the sides of the mountain on their final push up the summit.

High winds also buffeted their tent on Camp 4 at 9:30 p.m., dimming the prospect of a clear day for a summit bid the following day. A team of Italian climbers was forced to turn back and descend at around midnight because of gale-force winds. Garduce and his guides slept fitfully until the howling abated at around 4:30 a.m. The next morning, Garduce strapped on his oxygen mask and pushed on. Each step in the nearly seven-hour trek was taken with extra care. It was not the time to risk an accident.

When the summit finally revealed itself, Garduce dropped to his knees. He was fatigued, yes, but also a-swirl with heavy emotions. He hugged his three Sherpa companions in gratitude. That moment was the peak, as it were, of the hard work and sacrifices three individuals endured to fulfill the dream of their country. In a later TV interview Garduce proclaimed, “We offer our success to the Filipino people to show them that the impossible dream is possible.”

“Romi played it cool and stuck to his plan; he knew rushing things would only endanger him and his Sherpa companions,” said close friend and U.P. Mountaineers compatriot Ninoy Leyran. “They earn a hard living; we don’t have to ask them to assume more risk than is absolutely necessary. It showed good judgment on his part,”

Against the Odds

“This is a big accomplishment for a country at sea level,” said Reggie Pablo, president of the Mountaineering Federation of the Philippines (MFPI) and member of FPMEE. Oracion and Emata, who also belong to the FPMEE, were principally sponsored by TV network ABS-CBN. Garduce mounted his own expedition sponsored by rival network GMA and The North Face.

“We are not used to the Alpine conditions; this is alien to us. It’s like putting a Filipino on the moon,” said Pablo.

Climbing Everest is a very difficult and prohibitive endeavor. It takes from six to eight weeks to accomplish, and the costs of mounting an expedition can easily reach US$65,000, which would include hiring Sherpa guides, porters and securing a climbing permit from the Nepalese Government. Sherpas are inhabitants of the Himalayan region renowned for their great physical strength and their resilience in the oxygen-depleted air of high-altitude mountaineering. They serve as guides, porters, cooks on most if not all Himalayan expeditions, accompanying climbers up the mountains, breaking the trail and setting up ladders and fixed ropes on the most dangerous sections of the climb.

The first and possibly the most perilous portion of the climb is the Khumbu Icefall, a slow-moving glacier on the face of Everest often described as a “row of tumbling dominoes in slow motion.” Climbers find their way though an ever changing maze of blocks of ice the size of houses and pick their way through hidden crevasses that litter the trail. Records indicate that over the years, many climbers have perished by falling into these dark fissures.

Climbers also have to withstand thinning oxygen levels as they ascend. The oxygen in Everest is only a third of that at sea level. A person taken from sea level to the summit of Everest would die within minutes. He would suffer high altitude cerebral and pulmonary edema. This occurs when fluids leak into the brain or lungs of a climber. The condition is potentially fatal and requires immediate medical attention. Climbers who suffer from cerebral edema are often euphoric and delusional. Their ability to make sound rational decisions is impaired, making them dangerous to themselves and their companions. Victims of pulmonary edema suffer from uncontrollable hacking coughs and continually emit frothy blood. Untreated, victims may drown in their own blood.

Temperatures drop to as low as -50 degrees Celsius (-58 degrees Fahrenheit) on Everest. This is aggravated by the wind chill factor that saps the energy of anyone exposed to it. Prolonged exposure leads to severe frostbite and hypothermia, which is often fatal in these extremes. Snow-blindness can also occur because an excess of UV light reflects on the snow-covered slopes and burn the cornea. Extreme conditions also cause the body’s metabolism to slow down to the point where digestion and appetite cease. The body, starved, commences to consume itself slowly. “In the Death Zone, you are literally dying, only slowly. We were not designed to survive in such conditions,” Leyran said.

The descent from the peak is often the more dangerous phase of the climb because climbers often give their all on the ascent and leave nothing for the descent. Many have died from sheer exhaustion, unable to stand, much less descend further. Climbers have been saved from this fate by companions who literally “slap sense” into the victims to wake them from their stupor. Extreme exhaustion has also caused climbers to slip and tumble down the steep sides of the mountain, particularly on the more technical sections. In the extreme altitude of the Himalayan peaks where rescue efforts will only endanger the rescuers, there is little choice but to leave behind the remains of fallen climbers. The luckier ones are wrapped up in their own sleeping bags before being pushed over the side to save them from the indignity of having other climbers step over their remains or decaying out in the open.

The highest peak

The first person to conquer the summit of Mt. Everest was Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand. With his Sherpa companion Tenzing Norgay, they reached the peak of the mountain on May 29, 1953.

Sir Edmund, now 87, relayed his congratulations to the Everest’s Pinoy climbers through GMA-7. “I have nothing but the greatest respect for the [Filipino] expedition, for the determination and the will to battle on and go to the summit,” he said. “My heartiest congratulations to Leo, Romi and Erwin for their success in getting to the top. Very good luck to them. They must have been strong and determined.”

Mt. Everest is a revered mountain known locally by its Tibetan name Chomolungma, which means “Goddess-mother of the Earth.” Twenty four years earlier, Brits George Leigh Mallory and climbing partner Sandy Irvine disappeared on the high slopes of Everest on what is called the Yellow Band near the summit. This sparked probably the most debated mystery in the history of exploration and mountaineering: Had Mallory and Irvine been the first to summit the highest mountain on earth? The mystery came no close to a solution even after 75 years when the remains of Mallory, largely intact, were discovered by Conrad Anker in 1999 on the slopes of Everest. Though many experts agree that it would be highly unlikely for the two to summit at that time because technical equipment and expertise that were needed were not yet available, the debate still rages.

Perhaps the greatest feat pulled on Mt. Everest is the ascent of Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler in 1978.Without the use of bottled oxygen or the customary Sherpa train, the duo scaled the summit in a single push. It has been hailed as a triumph of style immortalized by Messner’s slogan “Everest by Fair Means.” Messner repeated the feat in 1980, unsupported and without oxygen. In 1986, Messner became the first climber to summit all the fourteen 8,000-meter peaks.

The year 1996 was an eventful year for Everest. Ten climbers perished in a blizzard after failing to return to the camps because of the congestion on the route. That same year, Goran Kropp rode his bicycle from his native Sweden to Mt. Everest Basecamp, climbed solo (unassisted) to the summit and rode right back home.

There are three routes from which Mt. Everest can be scaled, the most common being South Col route. This is the point where Oracion, Emata and Garduce began their historic ascent.