Aucklander dies scaling Kilimanjaro
Brett Clark suddenly fell ill when on a dream climb with son Byron in Tanzania
An Auckland man has died attempting to climb Africa’s highest mountain with his 23-year-old son. Brett Clark travelled with his son Byron to climb Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
On their way to the summit, the 57-year-old became ill at 3000m — over halfway up the 5895m landmark — but Clark told his son to continue while he waited there. It appears he was affected by altitude sickness.
By the time Byron had reached the summit and begun his descent, Clark had been removed from the mountain and admitted to Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre.
His condition worsened and he died. Before Clark passed away, he was able to send one text message to his son, “I love you son, and tell Lisa I love her too,” it said.
Clark’s wife of 20 years, Lisa Clark, was crushed after receiving a phone call from his doctor last Friday evening to say Clark had died.
“It’s unreal, it’s devastating. When he arrived his oxygen stats were so low . . . he turned into pulmonary edema where he was getting no oxygen,” she told the Herald.
“He went into a cardiac arrhythmia but at first it looked like he was getting better. It was about 4pm [on February 7 local time] when he got into big trouble, at 6pm he coded and at 7.30pm they couldn’t do any more.”
She, Clark and Byron had climbed other mountains, including Mt Taranaki three times.
Mt Kilimanjaro — considerably higher than Aoraki/Mt Cook, which is 3724m — had been a dream of Clark’s for more than 20 years, Lisa said, one which takes nine days — six to climb and three to descend.
Clark met second wife Lisa in 1998 through an ancient history website when she was based in her hometown of Boston, Massachusetts.
The pair were both writing about Roman history when they connected, corresponding for a year before Lisa moved to New Zealand in October 1999.
Clark was in the process of finishing his master’s degree at the University of Auckland after completing a bachelor of arts with first-class honours in ancient history. He was club captain of ImperiumRomana, a New Zealand organisation that puts on Roman living history displays.
“We were both very active [with the group] and we did a lot, we did a lot of parades and did the Armistice in Cambridge every year,” Lisa said.
“We’ve got a shed where we store 20 shields, four tents and four ballistas (catapults). He was so into this and always making gear, he was right into the whole archaeological experimentation.”
An obituary said Clark was the son of Annette and Philip, the wife of Lisa, and the “loved father” of Byron and Conrad Clark, 21. At the funeral, Clark will have a full honour guard with everyone in complete classic Roman outfits.
“He was bloody brilliant, he had a great sense of humour and he really put himself out there for everybody.
“Everywhere he went, even when people met him for the first time, people would just think ‘what a great guy’.”