Everest bid thwarted by eyesight problems
A MOUNTAIN climber has decided to back away from his first attempt to climb Mount Everest due to health worries.
Bob Kerr, 35, from Melvich has been trying to complete the Seven Summits challenge – to climb the highest mountain on each of the world’s seven continental plates.
But after developing sight problems towards the end of last week, he called off his planned final push to reach the top of the world’s highest peak.
There is some dispute as to which mountains make up the Seven Summits, so to be sure of completing the challenge there are actually nine mountains to be climbed.
They are: Mount Kosciuszko in Australia; Mount Elbrus and Mont Blanc in Europe; Mount McKinley in North America; Kilimanjaro in Africa: Vinson Massif in Antarctica: Carstensz Pyramid and Mount Everest in Asia and Aconcagua in South America.
Mr Kerr has climbed eight of them and if he had scaled Everest, he would have been one of only a handful of Scots and several hundred in the world to have completed the challenge.
Mr Kerr set himself three life goals at age 12 to help him overcome his fear of heights. First was to climb Ben Nevis by the age of 16 – which he completed aged 14; the second was to climb Mont Blanc by the age of 30 – completed aged 29.5 on his second attempt and the third was to climb Mount Everest by the age of 50.
He has been acclimatising on Everest since the end of March and within the next two weeks had hoped to be making a final push for the summit.
During acclimatisation he had been as high as 7,200m – 23,600 feet – without oxygen and was going to use oxygen to attempt to reach the summit at 8848m. On his journey from base camp up the mountain he ran out of water, which may have had an effect on him, and he arrived at the 7850m camp tired and very dehydrated.
In the final half hour up to camp, he had thought his protective sunglasses had been steaming up, but after removing them he was surprised to see no significant difference.
The sight in his left eye was fine, but he had lost nearly all his sight in his right eye.
Less than 24 hours away from the summit, he took the decision to call off the attempt in case the loss of vision got any worse.
The fogging of an eye could be an early indicator of the potentially fatal condition of High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE) or Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) but Mr Kerr had no other significant symptoms of it.
On descending to a lower altitude, the sight in his right eye has recovered to about 95 per cent of normal. His fiancée Sarah has done some internet research and found it could be the relatively unknown condition of High Altitude Retinal Haemorrhage (HARH).
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If the problem is HARH, his eyesight should fully recover within eight weeks of getting to a low altitude.
Mr Kerr was attempting Everest via the harder North Col route which George Mallory and Andrew Irvine perished on whilst attempting to scale Everest in June 1924.
Today is the 60th anniversary of the first climb of Everest by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary.
Mr Kerr and his team had hoped to cross back into Nepal yesterday and get back to Kathmandu on the same day on their route home.
Mr Kerr has been an active member of the Assynt Mountain Rescue Team (AMRT) since 1999 and was awarded a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.
On May 21 he was awarded, in his absence, the Founders Medal from the Society for Radiological Protection (SRP) for his voluntary work supporting the society.
Whilst out on Everest he was also conducting a scientific study on cosmic radiation exposures at high altitudes for a scientific paper.
Mr Kerr still wants to achieve his third life goal of reaching – and safely returning from – the summit of Everest before he is 50.
He has been supporting three charities during the expedition and has asked that they are not penalised as a result of him not making it to the top.
More than £1500 has already been raised for Alzheimer’s Disease International, the AMRT and the SRP’s benevolent fund.
His journey home can be followed at www.bob-kerr.com