Climbing Mount Everest

Trudy Healy, who grew up in Warden, climbed the world's highest mountain, Mount Everest, this April.

Members of Trudy Healy's team rest after coming down Mount Everest from 21,000 feet. Healy, who grew up in Warden, climbed Mount Everest in April.

by Steven Wyble<br> Herald Staff Writer
| June 2, 2011 6:15 AM

Members of Trudy Healy's team rest after coming down Mount Everest from 21,000 feet. Healy, who grew up in Warden, climbed Mount Everest in April.

WARDEN - Trudy Healy lives in Butte, Mont., but grew up in Warden.

Her parents, who took her on camping trips, paved the way for the adventurous spirit that would lead her to climb Mount Everest.

Healy said her dad would take the family on all kinds of camping trips, to places such as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Mount Rainier and Potholes Reservoir.

"I just grew up hiking and camping with my family and always have been a hiker," she said. "And then I just decided to try something a little bit more challenging, so I started doing mountaineering."

She climbed Mount Rainier in 2007 as a practice run for Mount Everest.

"I did Mount Rainier just to see about altitude, because altitude's a biggie," she said. "You can be in great physical condition but if your body can't take altitude, it can't take it."

After Mount Rainier, she had her mind made up: she wanted to climb Mount Everest.

"I don't know how I jumped to Everest, but I just did," she said. "You see it on TV and it was just ... I wanted to go there. It's hard to explain."

Healy climbed the mountain with a team from Summit Club, owned by Dan Mazur who famously saved Australian climber Lincoln Hall in 2003.

She trained for a year to prepare for the climb. She said her plyometrics workout relied mostly on her own body weight and included pull-ups, push-ups, jumping and stair climbing, she said.

Healy spent five days in Kathmandu, Nepal, before flying into Lhasa, Tibet. She was surprised both by the height of the mountain and by how much of it was made up of brown dirt, she said.

She made it to 19,000 feet before she experienced altitude sickness and pulmonary edema and had to turn back, she said. Her mistake was not drinking enough water, which led to dehydration, she added.

"Altitude is not easy," she said. "It's a very dangerous thing."

But now that she's figured out her mistake, she plans to go back next April and try again, she said. She wants climb to at least 23,000 feet, to North Col, a passage that connects Mount Everest to Changtse, a mountain in Tibet.