It was the best of times, and then, the worst of times.
One fine day last April, Nancy Hansen was hiking alongside her partner, Ralf Dujmovits, partway into the 22-kilometre trek from base camp to advanced base camp on Mount Everest’s north side in Tibet.
Then the earth shook. Massive boulders tumbled down from the slopes beside them. Running for their lives, they scrambled up a moraine and watched the sky fill with a giant dust cloud.
They didn’t know it yet, but their climb, and the entire spring 2015 climbing season on Everest was over. A horribly destructive 7.9 magnitude earthquake had just jolted Nepal, killing more than 9,000 and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.
On Tuesday (Oct. 6) Hansen will share her gripping story and photos at the Canmore Legion. Hosted by the Alpine Club of Canada’s Rocky Mountain Section, her presentation, titled Everest and Earthquakes, begins at 7 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public. Beer is sold by the Legion – a great way to help support Canada’s veterans.
Without their satellite phone, which was still en route to base camp, it would be weeks before Hansen and Dujmovits fully understood the magnitude of what had happened. After the dust settled, they simply continued their hike to advanced base camp, where they stayed for five nights.
For Hansen, the adventure had already been the trip of a lifetime. The first woman and only the sixth person to climb all 54 of the Canadian Rockies peaks above 11,000 feet (3,353 metres), many of them big glaciated mountains with long approaches through remote wilderness, Hansen competed that quest in less than half the time of any of her predecessors. She also climbed a number of them by more difficult, technically challenging routes.
Among other impressive alpine accomplishments, Hansen, a self-described “list person,” has also completed 46 of the routes listed in Roper and Steck’s book, Fifty Classic Climbs of North America – more than any other person.
Being invited to climb Everest by the twice-climbed Norton Couloir – in 1980 by Reinhold Messner solo and without supplemental oxygen, and in 1984 by two Australians, also without oxygen – came as a surprise to Hansen. While she’d long harboured a dream to climb Everest, she never imagined she’d actually have the opportunity.
“There are ways to climb Everest that are not crowded,” Hansen said prior to leaving. “And we will have to actually climb. There’ll be no crowds, no Sherpas and no fixed ropes. It’s a really attractive route.”
The earthquake, however, changed everything.
After being met by officials from the China Tibet Mountaineering Association, they were driven for 14 hours to Lhasa, all on the hospitality of the Chinese. They spent a few days sightseeing and shooting photos and video of Tibetans.
Then, equipped with backpacks stuffed with food, sleeping bags and a tent, they flew to Nepal in the hope they might be able to somehow be helpful to those affected by the earthquake.
What they encountered in Nepalese villages affected both Hansen and Dujmovits profoundly.
“We passed through about 15 villages and in every one of them, 80 to 85 per cent of the homes, buildings, were flattened,” Hansen said. “It was grim. At the end of the day I felt like somebody had torn my soul out. I was gutted.”
