[Vision2020] Suddenly I Don't Feel So Old

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (May 23, 2009) Spokesman Review.

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Another Everest Record Broken
Spokane is having a senior moment on Mount Everest this week.

Kay LeClaire, 60, of Spokane, was on top of the world Friday night as she
became the oldest U.S. woman to climb Mount Everest.

Late Friday, she was beginning the dangerous descent from the summit after
climbing for more than 10 hours in cold, windy weather.

She’s the second Spokane-area resident to reach the summit this week. On
Tuesday, Spokane’s Dawes Eddy, 66, reached the 29,035-foot summit and
became the oldest U.S. man to climb the world’s highest mountain and
return to base camp alive.

LeClaire departed Spokane on March 29 for her fourth attempt at Everest in
five years. The achievement caps her quest to climb the “seven summits” –
the highest point on each continent.

“I’m thrilled,” said her husband, Jerry LeClaire, who was monitoring the
expedition’s progress Friday night over the Internet. “And I’ll be even
more thrilled when she calls by satellite phone and tells me she’s safely
back at base camp.”

One team member had to leave the mountain last week after suffering
frostbite on eight fingers after briefly taking off his mittens, Jerry
LeClaire said. “It’s been bitter cold up there,” he said.

Kay LeClaire was with a group of eight climbers and four guides with
Alpine Ascents International, based in Seattle.

She slept the night before the summit bid at Camp 4 on the South Col,
breathing a low flow of bottled oxygen at elevation 26,300 feet. Her
previous high point was 23,600 feet, which she reached on Everest in 2006.

Jerry LeClaire talked to her briefly by satellite phone Thursday night.

“She was coughing but, she said, ‘feeling strong,’ ” said the
Spokane physician, noting that she had been toughing out a cold earlier in
the climb.

Her tent mate was suffering from snowblindness in one eye.

The group left camp for the summit about 10 p.m. Nepal time (10 a.m. PDT
in Spokane). LeClaire was in the lead group that reached the summit about
8 1/2 hours later, with a long descent still to come.

Former Spokane resident David Coombs climbed Mount Hood with LeClaire two
years ago as she was training for one of her Everest expeditions.

“As I remember, the Mountaineers had canceled a climb because of the
weather, but Kay was determined to go, so she called me,” he said.

“Kay is very level-headed, and obviously determined,” Coombs said in a
telephone interview from Boulder, Colo. “She’s very fit, both aerobically
and strengthwise.

“I remember on that climb that we walked right past groups of college
climbers. Kay has a steady pace, not the fastest, but she’s still going
when a lot of other people have dropped.”

LeClaire got a taste of the Himalayas in 1970 on a trek while her family
served in Nepal for the Agency for International Development.

“She has hiked and exercised all her life, but only took to mountaineering
on a climb of Mount Rainier in 2000 at age 50,” her husband said.

She was “appalled by her own lack of technical climbing skills,” he said,
so she enrolled herself – as well as her husband and son – in the Spokane
Mountaineers Mountain School in 2001.

Later that year, the family climbed the first of her “seven summits,”
Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

LeClaire’s climbing résumé since includes 30 significant peaks from
Alaska’s Mount McKinley to Vinson Massif in Antarctica, as well as 10
ascents of Cascades volcanoes from Mount Baker to Mount Shasta.

“She had initially planned to do the Coeur d’Alene Ironman in June and
talked of returning to Everest in 2010,” Jerry LeClaire said.

“She changed her mind when she found out that a good friend of hers from
previous climbs, Lori Schneider, of Bayfield, Wis., planned to go to
Everest this spring.

“She tried to keep her bid quiet until she was on the airplane, concealing
it even from another good friend,” he added, noting that she didn’t want
to detract from Eddy’s effort to make history on the world’s highest peak.

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Kay LeClaire
http://tinyurl.com/KayLeClaire

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Seeya at Farmers' Market, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown