The wild blue yonder

Let me declare an interest, one which relates to the recent Poppy Day debate over emblems and symbols. Just over four years ago, the irrepressible Cork mountaineer, Pat Falvey, took issue with my reaction to his declared intention to put the first Tricolour on Everest. This was after Dawson Stelfox, leader of the successful 1993 Irish Everest expedition, had already reached the world's highest point at 29,028 feet.

Because Stelfox was from Belfast, and perhaps because his team from both sides of the Irish Border had decided to avoid the jingoistic approach to summits by choosing to leave a pennant, rather than the national flag, at the top, Falvey seemed to be implying that this wasn't a true "Irish" achievement.

Stelfox had always emphasised that any such mountaineering feat had to be a team effort, and in this case it was very much an all-Irish affair. Yet Falvey's press announcement of his own plans appeared to question the credentials of someone who happened to be a dual passport holder. And who, perchance, kicked with the wrong foot? By such standards, Jack Charlton would never have presided over that successful Irish soccer team.

We agreed to disagree at the time, and the issue doesn't really arise in Falvey's autobiography, written with Dan Collins, environment correspondent of the Examiner. Given the continuing and unresolved debate over flags and anthems at the Olympic Games, it is one of those subjects that can still arouse strong passions; and Pat Falvey is persuasive, a natural charmer.

So he pays due tribute to Stelfox and to his deputy leader, Dubliner Frank Nugent, for the first Irish Everest ascent; and in case the reader should be in any doubt, he recounts how he rang the Belfast architect to offer him his warmest congratulations.

Indeed, the boy from Gurrane braher has come a long way since that phone call, having dedicated over three years of his life to travelling some 200,000 kilometres at a cost of over £70,000, including £20,000 granted by the State.

The purpose? To climb the world's highest seven summits, and to be the first Irishman to do so. On February 14th of this year he scaled the last of the seven, Mount Kosciusko in Australia. It was an incredibly determined and single-minded achievement, and surely one to prove the critics wrong.

Yet if successful mountaineering extends beyond "summit-bagging", style is most important. Falvey gives an inkling of his approach, and his motivation, when he describes his early years in Cork, before he took up hill-walking.

These were years when the lad in a family of nine was equally determined to be a millionaire. What drove him? The same spirit which allowed him to make his fortune in the family building business, and which helped him to turn his luck around when the company ran into difficulties.

Anyone who has had a similar experience will empathise with his account of how the family home was repossessed, and how his marriage came under severe pressure. When a staff relative strolled into his office and suggested that he go out hill-walking one Sunday, Falvey did not jump immediately. Hill-walking was for yuppies, he felt, even though the word hadn't been coined by then.

Soon, however, he was hooked. It was on the summit of Carrauntouhill that he pledged to tackle Everest. Ten years later he has done so, and much more, having been inspired by those with whom he shared hardship on the hill, including Kerry mountaineer, Con Moriarty, Cork publisher Con Collins and the late NASA astronaut, Dr Karl Heinze.

This is not a book for mountaineers, nor is it a travelogue. Just as no two people ever give the same account of a journey, some of Falvey's colleagues may not agree with his version of events.

Certainly, he has raised the profile of a little-known activity at home, and his enthusiasm and unpretentious approach are infectious. But, and one can only read between the lines, in spite of his refreshing honesty, it would appear to be at some personal cost.

Has he found himself? Is he a happy man? As with so many of the world's great men, one would really like to sit down and talk to the wife. . .

Lorna Siggins is a staff reporter with The Irish Times and reported on the successful 1993 Irish Everest expedition