The Magnificent Seven

Wind howls over exposed rock and tears off a white veil of snow that blots out the peak ahead. Heart pounding and lungs gasping in the rarefied air, four roped-together figures fight the burning in their legs as they press ever upward. The land drops away on all sides but one, and soon there will be nothing but space between them and the heavens.

Since 2002, 29-year-old Meagan McGrath has climbed six of the seven highest peaks on each continent in her bid to join that exclusive club of mountaineers who have scaled the “Seven Summits.” In late May of this year, she’ll be headed to Asia for an attempt on the highest of them all, Everest, finalizing her tally and becoming the first active-duty female member of the Canadian Forces to do so.

The Seven Summits were first publicized as a mountaineering challenge by American Richard Bass, who completed his climbs in 1985 and co-authored a book of the same name. Fewer than 200 adventurers have since followed in his footsteps. The official Seven Summits are: Kilimanjaro (Africa), Aconcagua (South America), McKinley (North America), Elbrus (Europe), Vinson Massif (Antarctica), Kosciuszko (Oceania), and Everest (Asia). There is also an alternate version of the Seven Summits—the Messner or Carstensz list. On it, Reinhold Messner replaces Mount Kosciuszko with New Guinea’s Carstensz Pyramid, arguing that Indonesia is a part of the Australasia continent and that the Carstenz Pyramid presents the greater challenge.

McGrath, a full-time captain in the Canadian Air Forces, didn’t initially set out with the goal of conquering these climbs. She simply “wanted to do something physical and go somewhere unique.” A vacation in Kenya in April, 2002, offered the chance to climb Kilimanjaro with a French group. “I was able to climb it with pretty much no instruction,” she said. “It was pretty easy. I thought, ‘Maybe I have a knack for this.’” She decided to tackle Argentina’s Mount Aconcagua next, after first taking a mountaineering course. It turned out to be her best climb yet. “I could have gone another 1,000 feet,” she said. A pattern soon developed in her travels and she decided to jump in with both feet. “I could see that I was already doing the Seven Summits anyway.”

Meagan’s childhood in Sudbury, Ont., planted the seeds for adventures to come. Curiosity drove her to scale the rock cliffs near her home and to summit local hills to “see what was on the other side.” Independent exploration was tempered by a strong background in team sports, where athleticism and competitiveness take second place to shared goals. “I was taught that if I joined a team, it was my job to give that team every bit of effort,” she explains. “There was no room for being half interested—you played or you didn’t.”

It wasn’t until the travel bug bit her that McGrath had her first real taste of mountaineering, and she’s never looked back. “When I experienced my first climb to 19,000 feet in April, 2002 [Kilimanjaro], I knew that I was onto something. When I climbed to 23,000 feet [December, 2002], I knew that I had fallen in love with climbing. Standing there on top of Aconcagua, I knew that this was a sport I wanted to pursue. Nothing beats that elation that you feel on top of a mountain or the euphoria you feel when you’ve made it back down. Nothing!”

In a pursuit that’s rife with danger and high profile accidents, McGrath has had her share of close calls. One that stands out in her mind was an avalanche on Mount McKinley in 2003. “We were the only team heading toward the Upper West Rib out of ABC (Advanced Base Camp) when I heard what I thought was an F-18 fighter jet. I was looking up wondering where it was, and then the ground started to tremble.” The avalanche swept across their tracks 15 metres behind them, and she was the last one on the rope.

Many would be discouraged by a sport that contains so many unknowns, but McGrath sees it as a calculated risk. “There will always be things that we cannot control, and yes, I suppose you could say that I enjoy this aspect of climbing—but it would be fairer to say that I accept the risks.” What really drives her is a love of the mountaineering lifestyle: the people, culture, travel, and the feeling of health and fitness.

It’s a lifestyle filled with challenge, the greatest of which, for McGrath, was learning to go with the flow. Travel quickly taught her the benefits of patience, adaptability and the futility of resisting the natural course of events.

Her current challenge has been training for high altitude exertion while living and working in downtown Ottawa. “I’ve had to become very imaginative when it comes to looking for steep slopes,” she says. “The stairwell of one particular building comes to mind!” As important as the physical preparation is, mental toughness is what pulls you through when your body is breaking down. “When you’re on the mountain, some days you’re feeling great and some days are just a struggle. You’re climbing very high, where the air is very thin. This should not be a shock. Be prepared for the toughness of the climb. Go through it in your mind before you start. You should have a good idea of the feelings you’ll encounter and be prepared to deal with them.”

What comes after the Seven Summits? How can you go up when you’ve already been to the rooftop of the world? “I would like to make mountaineering my full-time job. I love climbing, and I’d love to be able to do it for a living. I enjoy pushing my limits a bit more each time I go out. I do have some lofty ambitions, but I’m going to address each challenge one step at a time.”

One step at a time. It sounds a lot like mountaineering, doesn’t it?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Going Hard. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.