A mountaineer, one time journalist, women’s rights advocate and now, she holds the title of being the first Sri Lankan and first Sri Lankan woman to summit the ‘God of Mountains’ – Mount Everest. ‘Dream big’ they say and so she did, and she made the dream a reality by pushing herself to make it come true.
Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala reached the summit of Mount Everest on the wee hours of May 21, marking that day as a historic moment for her and the country. She and her climbing partner Johann Peries - who made it beyond a landmark called the Balcony at over 27,500ft - took on this expedition which every sponsor thought was crazy at first when approached, because of their passion for climbing, fulfilling a childhood dream and to take Sri Lanka right to the top.
Many who were on their trail and keeping up with their Everest updates thought that Jay and Johann were a couple and taking a crazy couple adventure to climb the Everest. But these two great friends with the passion for the same things in life, truly did set out to make their dreams come true!
The Daily News had the opportunity to meet these two amazing personalities to find out what went on over there.
Body weight before and after
Jayanthi: I think I was about 48kg when I went there and now I am 40kg - basically, skin and bones! At that height, your body starts consuming itself as the food doesn’t digest. It’s called the dead zone; it starts eating your muscles and fat. In other sports you might look fitter but this drains you out. My taste buds are all gone. You lose your appetite when you are there but you have to eat somehow and drink water.
Johann: I have lost about 10kg. I am going to enjoy the loss while it’s not there but it will come back. When you come back to sea level, it’s always better. The body starts recovering because we are at sea level. You become very weak and tired. We couldn’t even open a bottle. It takes a couple of months to recover.
Personal hygiene
Jayanthi: At base camp, there is a toilet in a tent with a seat so your back doesn’t freeze. But beyond Base Camp, Camp 1 is very basic. It’s on a cliff with ice everywhere and no tent as such. So we make a small half circle with ice blocks and a bucket behind it saying “Let’s Do It!” With regard to urinating, we had to use a bottle and you have to make sure you do it in one go.
Cuts and burns
Jayanthi: The mark on my left cheek was due to the oxygen mask. You have to keep it tight, otherwise your goggles fog up. It was so tight that my cheeks became plump and there might have been some skin exposed. It happened due to snow and sun.
Johann: It’s really cold and windy up there as it’s all snow! But it’s something you have to be really careful about. It’s so cold that you don’t realize that the sun can burn you. You can go blind because of the reflection of the snow. You can even freeze your corneas because of the cold wind. So there are lots of things that you have to be careful with and you don’t realize it because it is so harsh.
Also when we were on our third rotation at Camp 3, I had to come back to Base Camp to have a small surgery done on my toe. I had used a warmer in my shoe and it had got under my toe and squashed the toenail. It had built up pressure which became very painful.
Coming down the mountain is harder. Basically, you are coming at a 75 – 90 degree angle and all the pressure is on your toes. And you have to keep your legs straight or you can slip and fall. There was no way that I was going to climb back down with that foot.
There was an orthopaedic surgeon - another climber - who conducted the procedure on my toe by heating a needle and pricking my toe to release the pressure. I had to cling on to Jay and she was looking the other way as all the blood and ‘other stuff’ just shot out!
Support and challenges
Johann: It was the backing from everybody that kept us going. There were many times that we looked back and we couldn’t believe that everyone was on this journey with us. Thank you to everyone who was there in thought and spirit, and supporting us throughout this entire journey.
Jayanthi: It wasn’t just physically challenging. It was mentally challenging as well. It takes about two weeks to get to Base Camp. We left in April and we were at Base Camp by avurudu. All we were thinking about was ‘avurudu kavili’ and celebrations back home but we were on a bed of ice, basically. There is nothing green and the only living thing is a bird. You are shown into your tent where there is a mat and a sleeping bag. If you roll off the mat, you are on ice again. And we were both wondering, “how on earth are we going to make it?” This was only at Base Camp and it was going to be our home for the next one and half months.
Also this is where team work comes in. We motivate each other when our moods are low.
Johann: Of course, from then on, we started off our journey. We had to do the rotation from Camp 1, 2 3 and 4, and we had to cross the Khumbu Icefall which is a stretch of ice block that is high as buildings. You don’t see the bottom because there is no bottom. We had to cross that Khumbu icefall every time we did the rotation. To me and Jay, it was one of the scariest moments to go through. And to think that we had to do this over and over again was just mind-blowing. But we had to do it.
Fatalities
Jayanthi: There was no climbing in the last two seasons and the snow had covered all the dead bodies. There was one place apparently, where you had to step over a dead man’s leg but all that was covered by snow. I actually didn’t see any dead bodies on my way up or down.
Johann: There were five who had died and two had gone missing. They found the bodies of two Indians who had fallen over the Balcony. Over the years, you hear about deaths on Mount Everest but death is not something we face on a day to day basis. I can’t tell you what it did to me when I saw somebody actually falling to their death right next to me. I was shattered and broken. I first thought it was a bag that was falling but then I realized it was a human being when he came right up to me and went right past me. I just wept there.
Seeing the summit!
Jayanthi: From Everest Base Camp, we had to go to the Khumbu Icefall and these are big blocks of ice. You keep on climbing and you are tired, and then you see people like ants far away. But you know you have to keep walking. Sometimes we think ‘how are we going to do this?’ It looked impossible.
Initially, when you get to Base Camp, we have to do a dry run which means you don’t go all the way up to Camp 1 but do it partly in the ice fall. We did that but we didn’t keep to the timing. We had to do it in four hours but we took five hours. We were told to be more focused, more efficient and get there faster, otherwise we are out of the game. So we did it again and made it in exactly four hours. It was like a competition. So we spent one night at Camp 1 and came back to Base Camp. Even there you have a certain time limit.
I started my climb at 8pm. We used our head torch and all you see is your Sherpa’s (guide) feet in front of you and the path. It’s actually better because you can’t see how steep it is and at one point you are walking on the ridge that’s really sharp. It took me 23 hours to do all that. I reached Camp 2 at 7pm the next day (May 22) with an hour’s break at Camp 4. But you can’t sleep there. I wanted to sleep there and the people there said “there’s no room here. You climbed Everest so you can go to Camp 2.” At this point, you are suffering.
Cyclone
Johann: We had to wait five days as the weather was not clearing up. With winds up to 40 knots, we couldn’t go up the mountain. So we were waiting for it to clear. One day, around 4 o’clock in the evening, a person came rushing to the tent and said “emergency meeting! Come up!” Everyone knew that something was up and we went out immediately. What had happened was that the pressure in the Bay of Bengal had built up and it was turning into a cyclonic condition. But we didn’t know that this cyclone was heading to Sri Lanka. We being the only two Sri Lankans, they knew that it would affect us and they didn’t tell us about it. Somehow this had cleared our way to go and so we went to the summit. It was only after we came down and everything was over that they conveyed the sad news to us. The cyclonic condition that cleared the jet stream for us to go up, had turned to Sri Lanka creating absolute havoc in the country.
Unfortunate halt
Jayanthi: Each climber is given two tanks on the summit day. The first is given at Camp 4 when you climb the Balcony. The climb is separated into three parts. From Camp to the Balcony is three hours and from there to the south side is three hours. From there to the summit is another three hours. So you have to get to the balcony and change your oxygen, which means, you keep the one you used and you get a fresh tank which gives you 10 hours of oxygen to get up to the summit and back down. Then when you get back there, you change your cylinder and come to Camp 2.
Johann unfortunately couldn’t complete his journey even though he was just 8,400 metres away. His Sherpa told him that he didn’t have enough oxygen to make it back to Base Camp. Johann and I left at two different times. At the time we left it was more crowded than at the time I left.
Johann: I was caught somewhat to a traffic jam and well, you couldn’t simply overtake anyone. I was hanging on a 90 degree rope for over 45 minutes in one place. My Sherpa short roped me and bypassed some people to get to the Balcony. But when I was just below the South Summit, I took a break for a sip of water which is when the Sherpa checked the oxygen tank and said, “I’m sorry but there’s no oxygen to make the full journey!”
As you would imagine, after making this great journey with years of planning, I just looked at him and said “absolutely no way there’s something wrong”. It was the hardest choice I ever had to make. Do I go up there and not live to tell the tale or go back down and to tell my experience? I meditated for a few minutes and made up my mind to go back down.
On top of the world
Johann: It’s an amazing feeling and literally indescribable. I was standing there at the south end of the Balcony and I was realizing; there’s Nepal on one side and Tibet on the other. You are literally standing on top of the world and you can see everything below you.
Jayanthi: You can’t describe it in words. As you get up there, you see all the prayer flags laid down. You can’t wait up there for a long time. So I took my small camera out and as I was about to snap a picture, the battery died! Luckily, I had a spare but it was inside the jacket and I had to unzip so many layers to get to spare battery, zip back up and “snap” take the picture! Also you can’t stand on one place. You have to keep moving back and forth because even through the many layers of clothing, you do start to freeze.
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