UNSUNG HEROES
GABBY KANIZAY Meet the youngest Australian ever to successfully summit Mount Everest. (She took her mum.)
How old were you when you decided climbing Everest would be a good idea? Fourteen. We spent a lot of time speaking with climbers, and eventually Sherpa overseas, about what we would need to do to train up to do it safely, to be qualified to be on the mountain. And to be honest there were mixed responses, but we just made a massive case of doing all of the training and preparation. What sort of training? In the climbing gym and doing altitude training, and then we had expeditions over to Nepal where we would progressively increase our altitude and put the alpine skills into practice. I don’t actually remember sitting down with mum and dad and deciding whether this was a good idea or a bad idea. It was just an awesome idea. What was the hardest part? It was very physically demanding: long, hard days of walking and climbing for ages and then resting up with a [high-altitude] headache, which was difficult, but I enjoyed the challenge of it. I wanted it to be hard. Waking up in the morning and knowing I had to climb for hours and hours, not feeling particularly fuelled, I guess those things add up. But the summit day, and on the subsequent day that I summitted Lhotse (8516m), I was so full of adrenaline that I don’t look back on it as a hard experience. What is climbing the world’s highest mountain like moment-to-moment? The first day you leave Base Camp to get up to Camp 1 and climb through the Khumbu ice fall, which was definitely my favourite day. There are some nearly vertical faces there that you have to get up—although never more than maybe 3-4 metres at a time. And then you have
ladder crossings that are horizontal in oh, what have I gotten myself into? It the ice col, and then once you’re out and wasn’t her dream, it was always mine. in the Western Cwm, which is where Is it right that the summit of Everest is both Camp 1 and Camp 2 are, it is a fairly about the size of a car? shallow gradient. It doesn’t feel like That’s actually pretty accurate. climbing; essentially, it’s more like glacial We measure everything by the size of travel across a snowy plateau, where cars. What is it like to stand at the top? Cold! But so spectacular. You walk up the you’re navigating crevasses. The last last few steps to the summit and then you glacier crevasse on the mountain see the mountain drop away on the other requires some more intricate side, the side that we didn’t climb up. We manoeuvres, and then you hit the were lucky that ours was quite a quiet day, Lhotse face, which is fairly steep. We and so we got to hang out up there for were lucky in that there wasn’t too much maybe an hour and watch the sunrise. blue ice, which is where you really have What’s it like to be in the ‘death zone’, to kick in your crampons, and we had that altitude where life is unsustainable? quite decent snowfall the night before Can you feel your energy sapping away? we went up the Lhotse face. It’s all Yes, especially with the oxygen mask off. fixed lines the entire way up, and that You decline a noticeable amount in a simplifies the climbing. What do you love about climbing? short period. Mum and I spent an To be a part of that environment is so extended period just below the death overwhelming. To be in the presence of zone in Camp 4, because I summitted the mountains takes my breath away Everest and then returned to stay at Camp 4, and then summitted Lhotse. At every time. You feel small, but not in a that altitude you can see just sense that you probably the lack of energy in everyone, shouldn’t be here—I feel even the Sherpa, who are small in the sense that I LIFE AT THE TOP always so sprightly, because don’t need to feel bigger WHO? this is what they do. People than the mountain. I’m just Gabby Kanizay really aren’t supposed to hang happy to be on the WHAT DO THEY DO? out up there. mountain. Gabby was 19 years What’s next for you? You climbed alongside and 68 days old Well, last week I ran my first your mum. Was she an when she summitted Everest (8849m) ultramarathon. My knees are experienced climber? in 2022. She’d still feeling it! And I’m doing a No! Mum got into it already become the youngest woman commerce degree at uni. because I wanted to. ever to summit Cho Is a commerce degree the Wow. That’s a good mum. Oyu (8188m), the world’s sixth-tallest opposite of mountaineering? She’s the best mum! In my mountain, in 2018. It really is! But I’d love to mind she’s the hero of the GLOSSARY: move into more rock climbing story. She was always like, Cwm: pronounced and ice climbing in the next “Oh, it’ll never happen!” ‘coom’, is a Welsh word meaning ‘bowlfew years and become And then we were booking shaped valley’. more technical. flights and Mum was like, Col: a low point on a ridge between peaks, where passage is possible.
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MAX*D GO YOUR OWN WAY
VISIT:
gabbykanizay.com
