An Australian man who climbed Mount Everest after learning to walk again has died on his return from the summit.
Jason Bernard Kennison died on Friday.
His family said “he achieved his goal of reaching the peak ... he stood on top of this world, but sadly didn’t come home.”
Photo: AFP
The 40-year-old mechanic was part of an expedition run by Asian Trekking, whose managing director, Dawa Steven Sherpa, told the Himalayan Times that Kennison had started showing abnormal behavior from the south summit.
The two Sherpa guides with him helped him down to the balcony area, which is 8,400m above sea level. The guides descended to camp four after Kennison refused to move, Dawa Steven Sherpa said.
“Since the oxygen cylinders that they had with them were running out, they decided to descend to camp four, hoping to climb back again with oxygen cylinders to rescue him,” he told Agence France-Presse.
However, strong winds and bad weather prevented the guides from returning immediately, the Himalayan Times reported.
Kennison’s climb came 17 years after he was told he might never walk again, following a 2006 car accident that left him battling spinal cord injuries and depression. He was using his ascent to raise money for Spinal Cord Injuries Australia.
He wrote on JustGiving that his motivation to climb Everest came after another spinal procedure three years ago brought another round of rehab.
“Someone close to me convinced me that I was still capable of being able to do anything I wanted,” he wrote.
He said the gift of a surfboard had given him the motivation “to see my life in a different light, to view what I was missing personally inside, and admire the obstacles that I had overcome.”
“In 2023, I will head to Nepal, to see and be on Mount Everest, a long way from once battling traumatic injuries and the low and dark days of depression. An ambitious feat that I would never have dreamed of, or thought was possible after once being told that I would not be able to walk,” he said.
“I am going to make the most of my life and part of that involves helping other people who have had their life changed in an instant through spinal cord injury. They shouldn’t be forgotten. They should be helped,” he said.
His family wrote on social media that “he was the most courageous, adventurous human we knew and he will be forever missed.”
Before he left for Everest, Kennison spoke to Australian broadcaster 7NEWS.
“I’ve always challenged myself internally overcoming these things. Everest has become this symbol to me of overcoming those challenges and getting that fulfilment,” he said.
In the lead-up to the ascent he flew to New Zealand for mountaineering courses, practiced abseiling and rock climbing, and set up training in his back yard for ladder crossing, jumaring and roping.
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was providing consular assistance to the family of an Australian who had died in Nepal.
Mount Everest has recorded 10 deaths this spring season, with two climbers still missing above the high camps, the Himalayan Times reported.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver