NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH

Dublin Fire Brigade members have long been known to go to any lengths or heights to raise money for a good cause, and in February, FF/P Alan Sexton took this to the extreme when he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise funds for paralysed man Eoghan Gorman.

Tallaght-born Eoghan, a keen mountain biker, global traveller and mixed martial arts fan, was in an accident while mountain biking on

Ticknock mountain in Dublin some 18 months ago, fracturing his C3 vertebrae and leaving him paralysed from the neck down.

Upon hearing about the accident, members of Tallaght Fire Station’s D Watch got together to raise money for him through a bucket collection at e Square, and it was some with fortuity and serendipity that FF/P Sexton read about this on social media while he himself was hiking on Ticknock.

FF/P Sexton, who joined the ERCC in 2016 before becoming an FF/P on C Watch Tallaght three years ago, got into hiking a couple of years ago, and having explored the nearby Dublin Mountains, began to hike in places around Ireland, completing the Four Peaks Challenge last year. On one long hike in the Dublin Mountains, he saw the social media post and decided that he could help.

Determination

“I was planning to climb Mount Kilimanjaro for charity anyway,” he says, “because a er doing the Four Peaks I was looking for something bigger, but a er reading that, I decided I would do it for Eoghan. My colleagues on D Watch were telling me about him, so I went to see Eoghan and stayed for several hours hearing his story, and I was blown away by his positive attitude and determination. He had been told he would be on a ventilator and tube for the rest of his life but he was already o that when I met him, so that determination was just mind-blowing. A er meeting him, I knew I wanted to climb the mountain to raise money to help him.” e dormant volcano in Tanzania stands almost 6,000 metres above sea level, so it was a big step up from hiking up Irish mountains, but FF/P Sexton says he prepared well.

Training

“ e best kind of training you can do is getting out hiking with a heavy bag on your back,” he says. “You want to hike for six to eight hours a day for two days in a row with that weight on you, and if you can do that consistently, every couple of weeks for a few months, you shouldn’t have any trouble taking on Kilimanjaro.”

FF/P Sexton did the climb as part of a group called Earth’s Edge, which consisted of 16 people, including a guide and doctor, and though he had never met any of them before, everyone got on very well and rallied around when members of the group were struggling, which was necessary because the going was sometimes understandably hard.

Challenging

“It is tough over there,” he says. “ e days are long, you are out of your comfort zone, getting patchy sleep on the ground, in a tent, you are eating food that isn’t the best, day in and day out. For the rst three days, I think I got a total of six hours of broken sleep, so some days could be hard. at’s not to mention the very steep inclines. ere isn’t much actual climbing that needs to be done on Kilimanjaro, but there is a lot of scrambling over rocks, and a lot of very steep inclines, so it is a tough slog. “ ere were times where I was thinking, this is tough, I was battling against weather changes, altitude, shortness of breath and there were a couple of times where I thought of Eoghan to get me through it. It drove me on.

“Hiking at night was extremely tough. For the Summit night, for example, we got up at 6am to start hiking from 7am to 2pm, then took a break until 11pm, then at midnight set o again to reach the summit by around 8.30am the next morning. We were walking in -12C temperatures, up a very steep incline, with the air getting thinner the higher you go, weighed down by the multiple layers of clothing you need to wear.”

FF/P Sexton says the determination to reach the summit was always there, especially as the end drew near.

Reaching The Top

“I just put my head down and kept going,” he says. “ ere were times when we were really tired, but on that summit hike, at 6am you know you only have two or so hours le before you reach the top, you have trained for six months to get there, and you have walked uphill for six days, so you are not going to stop with just a couple of hours to go.

“You get to a certain place called Stella Point, and a er walking through the night, from there you can see the sunrise. It is hard to explain, but you get a second wind because you can actually see the summit from there, whereas for the previous few hours you’ve been walking uphill in the dark, seeing nothing but the ground in front of you. When you see the summit in the distance, you say, right, nearly there, and to actually get to the top is an unreal experience.”

Eoghan Gorman’s family had given FF/P Sexton a special banner to bring with him, which he proudly unfurled at the summit.

“I had brought the banner with me on warm-up hikes around Ireland and would take a picture of it at the top of every mountain I climbed, and used it for my fundraising, so it was great to have it with me and to y the ag for Eoghan when I got there,” he says.

Funds

In total, FF/P Sexton raised €3,500 for Eoghan through the climb, and presented him with a cheque in March, which proved to be an opportune time.

“Eoghan is in the National Rehab Centre in Dun Laoghaire for close to a year and a half, and they need to free up his bed to give to somebody who has been more recently injured,” he says, “and just a er I got back, I found out that he had been given his own wheelchairadapted place in Lucan. e house needs a lot of repair and refurbishment to make it accessible for Eoghan, needing a bathroom downstairs and a li to the upstairs part, so the money I raised for him is going towards making the house suitable for him ahead of him moving in. I managed to raise a small amount towards these costs, but every bit helps.”

In terms of the next adventure, FF/P Sexton has his sights set on Mont Blanc, which he plans to climb in mid-2024.

“I will need a fair bit of training for that, because there is a lot of climbing involved, some of it using ice picks, so I would need a year and a half to prepare,” he says, so from here it is onwards and upwards.

To donate to Eoghan Gorman’s fund, go to www.gofundme.com and search for # ghtwitheoghan.