INTEREST PEAKED
Author says writing book about trek more difficult than Everest climb
Rising: Becoming the First
Canadian Woman to Summit Everest Sharon Wood
Douglas & McIntyre
It’s not unusual for an author to describe the process of writing a book as exhausting.
But the statement seems to take on a bit more gravity when it comes from Sharon Wood.
The Canmore, Alta.-based mountain guide and speaker is known for being the first woman from the Americas to summit Mount Everest. Thirty-three years after that 1986 adventure comes her book Rising: Becoming the First Canadian Woman to Summit Everest.
“I discovered that writing is really, really, really hard,” says Wood. “I’m not sure I want to work that hard anymore.”
“Writing this book was definitely more challenging than climbing a mountain,” she adds.
Is she joking? Well, perhaps not. One thing that becomes clear when talking to Wood is she is happy to skewer the accepted narrative of her history-making ascent. She has parlayed the experience into a secondary career as an inspirational speaker, using her summit as a sturdy metaphor for any situation that requires grit and never-saydie determination. But Wood says she is also conflicted about what has become a simplified narrative about a woman’s personal triumph in a male-dominated world. Her relationship with the Everest excursion is far more complicated.
As she says in her preface, Everest often feels like an “overbearing friend. It has often preceded me, elbowed its way into rooms, sashayed across floors, cut swaths through conversations and embarrassed me,” she writes.
So while Wood has been giving presentations about it for 30 years, she still had questions about her motivations for the climb, about what it really meant to her. She thought the story of teamwork and relationships formed during the ascent could still be mined for some self-discovery.
“The conclusion that I came to was that it has always served me to be wholehearted with everything I’ve chosen to do,” she says. “It always seems to come out well. Whether I succeed in it, or whether I fail, I have gained a lot from being wholehearted. The climbing gave me a tremendous leg up in terms of confidence and something to bring home.”
Still, whatever snippets of self-awareness if may have provided the author, Rising is also an amazing adventure tale.
In 1986, Wood was part of a Canadian team of nine climbers who attempted to ascend Everest via the West Ridge from Tibet, establishing a new route that has never been repeated. They did all this without Sherpa support. Four were chosen to make the summit and, in the end, it was Wood and Dwayne Congdon who made it to the top to unfurl the Canadian flag. This made Wood the first North American woman to reach the summit.
It was certainly a hook the media loved and Wood admits the team dangled that history-making possibility when seeking sponsors. But beyond that, Wood says the notion was “put to bed.” She didn’t think in terms of gender. She was part of a team.
“If anything, I suppressed that,” she says. “It does not serve anyone to be special on a team. Everyone on that team were all highly talented, very experienced and all deserved a chance at the summit and everyone was aiming for the top in the beginning and no one was singled out.”
“The mountain is going to make a lot of those decisions for you,” she says. “You don’t start with a plan other than everyone throws everything they’ve got into the pot and at the end of the trip you see who is left standing. Remarkably, much to my amazement, I was one of the four people chosen for the summit because of our consistent performance.”
During the climb, the team took full control of the narrative. They had a media liaison who released only what the climbers wanted the press to know. At least that was the plan. But near the end of the climb, a sponsor let slip to the press another tantalizing hook, one that Wood was hoping to keep quiet.
There was a U.S. group making the climb at the same time. Annie Whitehouse was on that team. She happened to be the current girlfriend of Wood’s former boyfriend and mentor, Carlos Buhler, who was also part of the U.S. climb. This proved to be catnip for the press, which offered headlines such as “2 Women in Everest Foot Race” and ledes such as “The siege of Everest is a race between two nations, two women and two ex-lovers.”
“It was a very strange situation, where my past lover, mentor, climbing partner arrived at Everest base camp on the American team with his American girlfriend who, yeah, had the potential to be the first North American woman to reach the top of Mount Everest,” Wood says. “You can imagine that this was a little tricky. I didn’t really welcome the presence of the boyfriend who broke my heart and we kept that under wraps. We were really careful in terms of how we dealt with the media throughout that climb.”
But the media pounced on what Wood now calls this “soap opera” on the mountain.
“This didn’t happen until near the end, close to our summit bid,” says Wood, who is now a friend and admirer of Whitehouse. “At first it just devastated me. I felt quite humiliated and exposed. Then I felt that it was just an obstacle that I have the (ability) to alter just by my perception.”
The final chapter of Rising revolves around a 20-year reunion of the Canadian team. It was at Wood’s Canmore home or, as she refers to it, “the house that Everest bought me.” It was an event that allowed Wood to work through some of the complicated feelings she had about reaching the top.
“I realized I was still carrying some of this guilt for being the one and for taking the place of someone else who may have been able to go to the summit as well,” she says. “I was very conflicted with some of these stories in my head. When everyone showed at that reunion, that was the first sign that this chapter in our lives was really important to everyone.
“The way they regaled everyone with stories and different events that went on on the mountain and recalling a level of hardship that we didn’t acknowledge at that time. The pride that stood out told me to push the refresh button on my story.”
It does not serve anyone to be special on a team. Everyone on that team were all highly talented, very experienced and all deserved a chance at the summit ...