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.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS