Climbing mountains for a cause

Climbing mountains for a cause
By Dan Hilborn, Burnaby Now assistant editor
Published March 12, 2003

A Burnaby doctor is glad to be back on terra firma after a harrowing and treacherous climb up the tallest mountain in the Americas.
Dr. Lana Barber, a family physician with a practice on Kingsway, spent three weeks in January climbing Aconcagua - known as the Stone Sentinel of the Argentinean Andes, as part of the No Guts Know Glory team to raise awareness of abdominal illness.
Along with team leader Rob Hill, who suffers from Crohn's disease, mountain climbing instructor Brian Jones and student Cam Schooley, the quartet had no idea that their expedition would turn into a fight against time and the elements.
"There were quite a few tragedies," Hill told the Burnaby NOW. "Things started out fine and we were all quite healthy, but at base camp there were sick people, and once we got high enough things got worse."
The Web site Aconcagua.com describes the 6,992-metre-tall mountain as having two distinct personalities. "The peak of Aconcagua can be a sweet and complacent woman if the goddess of the sun (Febo) shines and the god of the wind (Eolo) sleeps," says the Web site, "but when the furies of the gods of the wind are unleashed and the dragons of the clouds devour the sky, the peak is converted into a terrifying and cold witch.
"Only when you have seen the two completely different sides of this mountain and its special climate can you really love and understand it completely."
The No Guts Know Glory team was among almost a dozen teams climbing the mountain at the same time. And they can count themselves as among the most fortunate, even though team leader Hill was unable to carry on past the first base camp.
The trek began on Jan. 13 when the four climbers landed in the town of Mendoza, tucked up against the side of the 22,841-foot-tall mountain. From the picturesque town, the group headed out to base camp, where they learned up to 100 climbers were already making the ascent in a variety of different groups.
From town, the group trekked to the base camp, where Barber was immediately pressed into service as a physician, treating one man who had contracted pulmonary edema - fluid in the lungs - who had to be taken off the mountain in a helicopter.
While the weather broke long enough for the team to start climbing up the mountain, conditions worsened once the crew reached their next camp.
"Up there a storm hit, and at this camp I had to treat a few people with mountain sickness, which causes head-aches and troubles with sleep."
Several people were taken off the mountain because of medical problems. Barber later learned that one of those afflicted people died before they could be admitted to hospital. The worst problems came during the trek from camp one to camp two when Hill, the team leader and person on whose behalf everyone was climbing, came down with complications of his abdominal disease.
"He began to experience abdominal pain and initially we weren't sure if it was the Crohn's disease acting up or an infection of the kidney or bladder. That's where I made a decision that we had to bring him down."
Disheartened, the team turned back to base camp, where a full- time physician was on staff to look after just such troubles. Hill's problems became acute, and a decision was made to call for a helicopter but, for a few hours, the weather refused to co-operate, and Barber almost had to join a mule ride down the mountain to care for her patient.
But just before she was forced to come off the mountain, the weather cleared and a helicopter was able to land and whisk Hill to safety.
With just the three climbers remaining, the team made a decision to continue their attempt on the summit. Luckily, the weather stayed calm this time, and the group ascended to the 19,000-foot second camp in just two days, where they rested for one day and then woke up in the wee hours of the morning to make their final ascent.
"We got up at 2:30 a.m., boiled some water and packed up our bags. We left camp at 4:20 a.m. in the pitch black with our headlamps on. And it was really, really cold."
The final climb took almost 12 gruelling hours. "The terrain is pretty rough, and you have to pass through very large tena tentes - an Argentinean name for big snow sculptures that are carved by the wind," Barber said. "Getting through them is like a maze and you don't know if the ground is stable, so that is a bit scary."
During that final ascent, which is steep but does not require ropes, Barber lost her down jacket to the wind.
Near the peak, Barber was also able to get a good look at the treacherous Aconcagua glacier.
"Underneath the glacier is a river, which you can hear roaring past. Only one person attempted to climb that glacier this year because there was just too much snow."
The glacier is also home to a helicopter wreck: the craft crashed about a dozen years ago in a failed attempt to remove a team of injured ice climbers off the slope.
With the memories still fresh in her mind, Barber knows her team was lucky to see most of its members make the summit and for everyone to get back safely.
And that's not a bad result from a journey that was supposed to simply raise the profile of a deadly disease.