EVEREST ASCENT: "I love canoeing, I love running along the beach, but there's nowhere in the whole world I'd rather be today than standing in the teeth of the wind at the summit of Everest."
So said west Cork man Mick Murphy (43) over the radio at 29,035 feet yesterday morning when he and Limerick man Ger McDonnell (32) made a successful ascent of the world's highest mountain by the original Hillary/Tenzing route from Nepal.
The two climbers are the third and fourth Irish mountaineers to reach the plateau, 10 years after the first successful Irish ascent by Dawson Stelfox on May 27th, 1993 - an expedition which Mr Murphy was also a member of. Their colleagues, team leader Pat Falvey (45), from Cork, who climbed the mountain on the North Ridge route in 1995, and Hannah Shields (38), from Derry, were forced to turn back at the 28,710-foot South Summit, and all four mountaineers were recuperating at the 26,000-foot Camp Four on the South Col last night.
Speaking to The Irish Times by satellite phone from the South Col, Mr Murphy said he was "exhausted and dying tired", but in good spirits. He expressed delight at the team's achievement and paid tribute to the expedition's Sherpa team, led by Pemba Rinji Sherpa, their climbing sirdar.
Both Mr Murphy and Mr McDonnell, who reached the plateau just over an hour after Mr Murphy and pucked a sliotar into the clouds, were in the company of Sherpas throughout their haul up the mountain. The four climbers were making their second attempt on the summit in the company of several other expeditions on the Nepalese route and had left South Col Camp Four at 10.30 p.m. Irish time on Wednesday.
The Irish expedition, along with all the other climbers attempting to scale the world's highest mountain, had been thwarted by bad weather. Their first summit attempt in the early hours of Wednesday morning had to be abandoned due to high winds and the sheer pressure of numbers, as around 120 climbers all headed for the same goal.
John Joyce, communications officer and Base Camp manager, was out of range when Pat Falvey radioed in to Base Camp at 7.50 a.m. on Wednesday to say that he and his three fellow climbers - Murphy, McDonnell and Hannah Shields, bidding to become the first Irishwoman to summit - had returned to Camp Four. The group had climbed 1,500 metres on the South Col but had wisely opted for a retreat to the relative safety of Camp Four.
Many teams abandoned the effort there and then, returning to the lower camps, but the Irish decided to sit it out and wait. Their patience was rewarded when the longed-for window in the weather finally appeared on Wednesday night, allowing Murphy and McDonnell, dubbed the "silent man" of the Irish team, to reach mountaineering's holy grail the following morning.
"The forecast wasn't great, but we sort of took a chance, as the wind had cleared," Mr Murphy told The Irish Times. "Some of the Sherpas went up before us, and we headed off with a good few other teams. We walked through the whole night, and there was a huge risk of frostbite in doing that.
"I got there about 9.45 a.m. local time, which was 4.45 a.m. Irish time, and Ger was up just over an hour later. We became separated in the later stages, and Pat Falvey developed hypoxia from the oxygen and got very weak, though he had made it to the South Summit.
"Hannah was about 20 metres below the South Summit when she had to stop. She was just exhausted. She had a bit of frostnip on her fingers, but she is fine. She was very disappointed, but she gave it a great shot," Mr Murphy said.
Ms Shields, a Derry dentist, was one of two women on the Falvey-led expedition - Dr Clare O'Leary, a Cork gastroenterologist, became ill and had to descend to Base Camp at the beginning of the week. Early in May, the expedition also had a close call with their sixth member, Cork doctor George Shorten. He developed severe signs of altitude sickness and had to be taken down the mountain by his team leader.
"The morning was lovely, but it was very bad as the day went on," Mr Murphy said, describing the hazardous descent yesterday. "We came through a bit of a blizzard and we were just glad to make it back to the South Col. We're getting lots of text messages on the phone, and we are just going to rest up here now and move down to Camp Two tomorrow, and then to Base Camp on Saturday."
Dawson Stelfox, the Belfast architect who made the first Irish ascent of Everest by the North Ridge or Mallory/Irvine route on May 27th 1993, congratulated the members of the expedition yesterday.
"I am delighted for Mick and for Ger, but especially for Mick, as he was with us in 1993," Mr Stelfox said. "It is very disappointing for both Pat and Hannah, but good that they are all safe."
Mr Joss Lynam, veteran Irish mountaineer and leader of the 1987 expedition to the neighbouring Zhangzi peak, said that it was wonderful news.
"Mick Murphy played a part in the 1993 trip and would have made an ascent with the other climbers if the weather hadn't been so bad. It is disappointing for Hannah, but she now shares the record for the highest Irishwoman with Josie Kieran, who made it to 28,750 feet in May 1998. And Pat must be disappointed, but at least he has been up there already."
The disappointments and frustrations of the Irish team - including the departure of George Shorten, who was airlifted from Base Camp with cerebral oedema three weeks ago, and Clare O'Leary, who was totally debilitated by a stomach bug which brought about an enforced early descent to Base Camp on Monday - were finally wiped out with yesterday's triumph, turning John Joyce's lonely vigil on the Base Camp radio into a period he will remember forever and giving cameraman Kevin Hughes the perfect finale to his documentary.
Praise for the ascent came also from the co-ordinator of the Northern Irish expedition on the North Ridge route, led by Armagh man Richard Dougan. Some concern was being expressed yesterday for the welfare of the Northern climbers, who have not been in communication since last Tuesday.
Earlier this week, a Japanese expedition became the first to ascend the mountain this year on the 50th anniversary of the Hillary/Tenzing climb. Weather had delayed summit attempts on both sides of the mountain. On Wednesday, a joint Chinese/Korean/Tibetan expedition beat a US cable station to broadcast the first live television images from the top.
While previous expeditions to Everest have been captured on film, this was the first to beam live television pictures from the 29,035-foot plateau.