FITNESS AUTHOR
Monica Hand
PHOTOGRAPHY
Courtesy of Gary Guller
STANDING ON TOP OF THE WORLD n How Gary Guller led a record-breaking, cross-disabled team to Everest.
A
s quarantine continues to push back, cancel and completely reshape any plans made for the year, this “new normal” can be a tricky thing to get used to. But in order to reconnect with the world during this time, it’s important to rely on one’s own memories and the stories of others. One such story that allows both world exploration and self-discovery lies within Gary Guller and his expedition to Mount Everest in 2003. It’s a dangerous feat, climbing Mount Everest, but it’s one that continually draws people from around the world since its first recorded summit of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. And since the start of quarantine, climbing the height of Mount Everest from one’s home—4,506 flights of stairs—has become something of a trend.
“It had always been a dream of mine as a little kid to stand on top of the world,” Guller says. Then, in 2001, he attempted to summit Mount Everest for the first time. Summiting the mountain, the tallest point on Earth, reaching 29,035 feet into the air, really is standing on top of the world. “The first time I went to Everest, I didn’t make it very far. I didn’t make it to the summit,” Guller says. “Honestly, I wasn’t as mentally prepared as I should have been.” It’s not uncommon for an Everest expedition to have to turn back. With weather liable to change instantaneously and the altitude physically and mentally impairing climbers, the journey can be one tiptoeing between life and death.
Guller’s Journey
Having lost his left arm in 1986 in a climbing accident on Mount Orizaba when he was younger, Guller’s story is different from the rest—not just in his physical disability, but in his unrelenting nature that threw caution to the wind and embraced his own handicap. Even having experienced every climber’s nightmare, Guller had continued to climb, hike and explore the world with a new passion for life—refusing to let his handicap or nerves get the best of him.
SEPTEMBER 2020
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