UK climber Kenton Cool will fulfil vow to take medic Arthur Wakefield's Olympic medal to Himalayas 90 years after tragic prior expedition
British mountaineer Kenton Cool was sitting in the check-in lounge at Gatwick airport last Thursday with a locked waterproof box that, if all goes according to plan, will not leave his side until he reaches Everest's summit for a 10th time this spring.
The box contains the Olympic medal awarded to Arthur Wakefield, a medic on the unsuccessful 1922 Everest expedition that ended in tragedy when an avalanche killed seven porters.
If Cool succeeds in climbing the world's highest mountain again, he will have honoured a pledge by Lieutenant Colonel Edward Lisle Strutt, deputy leader of the pioneering 1922 expedition, made to Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who awarded the climbers medals at the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix. Strutt promised to return to Everest and take a medal to the summit, something he never managed.
The attraction of Everest to Cool remains undimmed even if he is ambivalent about aspects of its commercialisation. A professional mountain guide who has climbed Everest more times than any other UK climber, Cool was also the first Briton to ski down an 8,000m peak.
"I still really like Everest. I enjoy working with my Sherpa friends. I get to see people at base camp ? friends like American climbers who I never see except there. It feels a bit like escapism."
Cool is pragmatic, too. The high prices paid by clients to climb on Everest and the media attention that surrounds every Everest season has allowed him the freedom to be more selective about what he does in his own climbing and what guiding he does in a gruelling profession.
"When I first met my wife Jazz a few years ago she was clever about it and asked me where I saw myself in five, 10 years. I said I wanted to be climbing. When we got to 20 years, she said: 'You'll be crippled by then [by the punishing strain of guiding].'"
In some respects it is remarkable that Cool has done as much as he has. In 1996, he suffered a serious accident in Snowdonia, shattering the bones in his heels and damaging his ankles, which forced him to take a year out of the sport. He still has metal in his limbs, finds running difficult and struggles, he says, with an awkward gait. Despite that he will run one of the relays with the Olympic torch in London on 23 July.
After his recovery, Cool was recruited as an Everest lead guide after an ascent of a new route on Annapurna III ? which saw his team nominated for the Piolet d'Or mountaineering award.
In an interview last year he recalled reaching the world's highest point for the first time. "The first client was just behind me, so I had five minutes at the top to savour the moment. It was a great sunny day so I sat there trying to pick out all the other nearby mountains. It was a mind-blowing moment."
This year he will be climbing only with a cameraman to record the ascent with the Olympic medal. "I didn't guide during my ascent last year either. I went up to prove that you could make a 3G call from the summit. With no clients it felt very free. I did the whole round trip in 23 days. It was wonderful."
As well as Everest, Cool has guided the polar explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes up the north face of the Eiger.
What has been less easy, he admits, has been taking leave of his wife Jazz and 22-month-old daughter Saffron. "That was very difficult. I think for the wives and girlfriends who stay behind it is much harder. When you are on the mountain you have to be on top of your game to make sure that no one gets injured."
Two years ago, one of his clients, Bonita Norris, 22, fell close to the summit and lost the feeling in her legs, necessitating a gruelling rescue.
He is not sure he is finished with Everest yet. Next year marks the 60th anniversary since the first ascent by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, and Cool would like to be involved with that.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/01/everest-pioneer-olympic-medal-1922
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