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Thursday, May 18, 2006
Oracion is first Pinoy to reach top of Mt. Everest
MANILA – In a country where no mountain reaches 3,000 meters and the only ice is inside freezers, 32-year-old triathlete Leo Oracion, his teammate Erwin Emata and rival climber Romeo Garduce were hailed as heroes as they labored up the southern slope of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain in Nepal.
Of the three, though, it is Oracion who yesterday earned the honor of being the first Filipino to reach the summit of the 29,028-foot mountain.
The Lucban, Quezon Province-native Oracion reached the top of Mount Everest at 3:30 p.m. Nepal time or 5:30 p.m. in Manila.
Disapproval
“Even if you are fully capable, you will not succeed if the mountain does not approve of your climb,” said Oracion, who refused to use an oxygen tank for the first three days until he reached Camp 4 (26,300 feet) of the South Col route on Tuesday.
His teammate and fellow triathlete Emata, also 32, is set to leave Camp 4 and attempt to reach the summit today, expedition leader Art Valdez said.
Garduce, 37, a systems analyst, is due to reach the summit tomorrow, according to his main sponsor the GMA media network. Garduce said in his Internet diary this week that climbing on thin air requires “three breaths for every step.”
Garduce arrived at the Everest base camp in late March in a bid to follow the route taken more than 50 years earlier by Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Everest. He said he saw himself “not just as a climber, but a gate-opener, a ribbon cutter.”
The team began a three-year training regime in 2004. The 17-member group would split into two and climb Everest from both the Nepalese and the Tibetans sides next year, team member Regie Pablo said in a press conference. (AFP/PNA)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (May 18, 2006 issue)
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