Monty stoically awaiting a helicopter Medivac from Everest Base Camp

Moments ago I learned of the death of a good friend and 2008 Everest teammate, Monty Smith. He took his own life just days before his 49th birthday for reasons that I’ll likely never know. He was the perpetual optimist, the constant conversationalist and one of the most outwardly enthusiastic people I’ve ever known. He was a successful businessman, a life-saving mountain rescue leader, and a dedicated family man.

He and I shared considerable adversity at the completion of our time on Everest together: I had ruptured a disc in my low back and had to limp down from Camp III, and he had a fluke nosebleed in the cold, dry air of extreme altitude. In the course of a few hours at Camp II (21,500 feet above sea level), he bled out perhaps 20% of his blood volume before we could get it slowed down. 

I was thankful to Monty for three important reasons: for the shared friendship and shared regret of missing out on the summit together, and for a ride back to Kathmandu in his Medivac helicopter (instead of a 36 mile trek with a crippled back). I always assumed he’d eventually make his way back to Everest to “finish the job,” as he was an extremely accomplished mountaineer, but this was unfortunately not to be…  

Monty and I celebrating our expedition at the world-famous Rum Doodle with an Everest beer, as I'll always fondly remember him

I’ve never understood what would prompt someone to take their own life, particularly someone as broadly accomplished and positive as Monty was. I’m so very thankful to have known him, and my prayers go out to his family and other friends.

Life certainly has its ups and downs, but on average it should be a great celebration. If you’re having trouble seeing this, please seek out the help of friends or counselors.

Your many, many friends will miss you very much, Monty. Climb on.

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Monty’s Obituary is inspiring: Monty Smith obituary

Sporting SIr Edmund-style goggles, just prior to the summit push

A year ago today I was packing for my summit bid on Mount Everest, full of excitement and significant trepidation. A week later I was able to get past my earlier failure and injury, reaching the top just prior to sunrise on 20 May 2009. My good friend Sabrina Singh thought the occasion of this anniversary warranted a reunion of sorts, bringing together the two trekking teams that visited me at Everest Base Camp in 2008 and 2009. As such, I’ll be giving a presentation at the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s IMAX theater next Thursday evening at 6:30 PM. The public is welcome: if you’re in town, please come on by — kids welcomed and encouraged!

From the NASA Johnson Space Center “JSC Today” Newsletter:  
Astronaut Scott Parazynski will celebrate the one-year anniversary of his Mount Everest Summit with personal photographs and video taken during the 2009 trekking season. Also learn how your fellow team members from JSC, Goddard and Marshall hiked to the Base Camp of Mount Everest to visit Scott in Nepal in 2008 and 2009. Bring your families for this free, special event in the IMAX theatre of the Houston Museum of Natural Science. 

Where: Houston Museum of Natural Science 
5555 Hermann Park Drive 
Houston Texas 77030-1799 

When: May 20 at 6:30 p.m. (Doors open at 6 p.m.)

http://www.hmns.org/education/children_families/special_events.asp#5-20

I can finally stop holding my breath: Discovery is getting ready to release the EBTL series. Well, it’s still a few months off, but you can register your email, and they’ll probably ship around July 13th:

http://store.discovery.com/detail.php?p=257946&v=discovery

If you’d like to see me and my buddies slug it up the mountain beforehand, you can even visit Amazon.com (Amazon Video On Demand) and view my episode (#3) or the entire series with a credit card and a click of a mouse:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00326Z888/internatio086-20

I received an exciting email tonight from Karel Masek, an Everest climbing buddy from the 2009 season, who’s back to try again with my other 2009 compadres Louis Carstens and Chris Berghum. Wishing them a safe round trip to the summit and back…

Climb on!

Bob in the Cupola, Space Rocks in view…

GREAT VIDEO: Dedication of the Cupola: Space Rocks and a tribute to Lacy Veach

These photos aren't easy to take! It's hard to "drop" an object perfectly still and quickly take a photo...

Space Rocks on permanent display aboard ISS

Space Rocks Plaque, repackaged for flight

"Space Rocks," hermetically sealed...

Like a proud father, here’s a family photo album of the Space Rocks a.k.a. nuggets on-orbit, and as they were repackaged just before launch. The resin in which the lunar samples were embedded turned out to be more flammable than we’d like in a closed environment like the International Space Station. Thanks to a number of hard-working and wonderful people — Louis Parker, Doug Peterson, Ven Feng, Richard Guidry, Christopher Mcelroy, Rob Lazaro, Abigail Cassell, Paul Miller, Steve Huning, Shelby Lawson, Scott Wolf, Nathan Vassberg, Tony Brown and probably several I’m not even aware of — it was repackaged and manifested on the last Space Shuttle mission, STS-130. Much gratitude to the folks listed above, as well as the onboard crew, some of whom took the amazing photos in this post!

High Altitude Hydration System

Often the most difficult part of invention is just identifying the unmet need. Once you figure this out, bringing technology to bear on the problem is generally pretty simple. Having suffered mightily from dehydration on long hikes, treks and climbs in the past, I knew performance and good hydration were closely linked. From a climb of Cerro Aconcagua in South America, just shy of 23,000 feet, I also learned how quickly water bottles can crust over (despite being inside my down jacket), and eventually become blocks of useless weight! I’ve long been a fan of Camelback-type hydration systems, where you can take a swig of water whenever you need to, but the neoprene insulation commercially available for the tubing can’t come close to handling even modest cold, as I demonstrated to myself on the approach to Alaska’s Denali. In an effort to stay healthy and hydrated on Everest, some NASA colleagues of mine and I built the HAHS, a.k.a. High Altitude Hydration System. Check it out: http://www.fuentek.com/technologies/HighAltHydration.htm

Karen Hizer of Fuentek (NASA’s commercialization consultant) took my Everest HAHS to the Outdoor Retailers convention in Salt Lake this week, and several companies expressed great interest in licensing the technology. Patent pending, and coming soon to a mountain near you!

http://fuentek.blogspot.com/2010/01/live-from-outdoor-retailer-show-in-salt.html

The lunar and Everest rock samples (and fancy Pringles/duct tape holder) with Zambo

The past few weeks have been a blur of Everest-related activity, and hypoxia is not to blame! The Discovery Channel’s “Everest: Beyond the Limit” series detailing the 2009 summit season went live just after Christmas. Last week we held the official hand-off of the “nuggets” — the small Apollo 11 lunar samples I took to the top, and a summit rock I brought down — over to NASA.

The “Everest BTL” episode in which I was featured, along with buddies Dawes, Danuru, Mingma, Ed, Mike, Louis and Paul, is mega-dramatically entitled: “Deadly Countdown!” If you missed one of the dozen times it played that week, fear not! All is not lost! Assuming you don’t have a heart ailment or fear of heights, here is the full episode online: http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/everest-beyond-the-limit-deadly-countdown-full-episode.html

Last week three great friends joined me for probably the last pages of the “Everest chapter” in my life… Keith Cowing and Miles Obrien flew into Houston for a ceremony to formally hand over the small rocks, picked up literally worlds apart. The recipient was my good friend George “Zambo” Zamka, about to command the STS-130 Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station. Keith and Miles, both fellow Directors of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education (www.challenger.org), were driving forces in sharing the expedition with countless thousands of kids around the world through our blogs and videochats. They encouraged me and helped me find sponsorship despite the longest of odds, and I’m eternally grateful. Zambo flew with me on my final Shuttle mission, STS-120, and he and his new crew will now be the couriers of what I consider to be precious cargo. Although this is  a very minor duty on a very complex mission (!), I hope that having these tangible objects of exploration will help inspire future astronaut explorers as they venture off to places even more distant in the years ahead. You can see the hand-off ceremony (Miles was MC) and a presentation on my Everest years on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3St_RRXZLU

Apollo 11 lunar samples and a piece of the "Roof of the World" mounted and ready for a trip to the International Space Station; they will eventually reside in the appropriately-named "Tranquility Module."

Everest summit gear on display at Space Center Houston

Other mentions of recent events (Big Thanks to Robert Pearlman for the photos above!):

• collectSPACE (Robert Pearlman’s great site): http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-010610a.html
• Air & Space Magazine photo of the day: http://www.airspacemag.com/snapshot/80860072.html
• MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34757736/ns/technology_and_science-space/
• Mother Nature Network: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/rocks-from-the-moon-and-from-everest-join-crew-of-the

Happy New Year to one and all,

Scott

http://spacetweeps.podbean.com/2010/01/01/episode-201-can-you-spotscott-we-did/

I watched the final episodes of EBTL at home with laptop in lap, a first for me. Alan Arnette (@alan_arnette) had virtually assembled a group of Twitterers — both climbers and interested armchair mountaineers — to view and comment on the show in real-time (#EV09). My friend from Everest Base Camp, Keith Cowing (@keithcowing), who had orchestrated an enormous amount of educational outreach during my climb, was also online to reminisce and share his unique perspectives of the mountain and the recent season. Alan’s wrap-up of the night can be found at http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/archives/1777

The two final episodes concentrated on Russell Brice’s HIMEX summit teams, and featured stunning high altitude photography — owing to the fact their teams summited a bit later in the morning than our IMG teams did (their Sherpacams captured more of the upper mountain in full color with full lighting, instead of grainy infrared in B&W during our sunrise summit). By making somewhat later departures from high camp, and perhaps with larger numbers of climbers vying for the summit on their chosen days, the conga lines to the top made me break out in a cold sweat (!), and reaffirmed my belief in a strategy of early departure/keep-the-lead as the preferred way to the top (and safely back home). The final episode featured Russell’s slower climbers, each of whom very unfortunately succumbed to gastroenteritis, which is medicalspeak for the trots. In case you didn’t know, dealing with such unpleasant matters at extreme altitudes while wearing a down suit and a harness is a literal nightmare. Meaning no disrespect to the climbers’ strength and tenacity, my favorite Twitter quips of the night: @johnwhittle “This episode brought to you by Huggies” and my own simple offering: “Time to take a shower and burn your down suit…” HIMEX’s second team persevered through this and a developing storm to summit. Congratulations to them all, particularly their Sherpa team and the tough cameramen who accompanied them (including my friend Matt Green, who was on the first HIMEX summit).

My good friend and summit partner Ed Wardle’s (@aloneinthewild) photo is at the top of this post. He and Sanduk Sherpa were with Danuru Sherpa and I almost every step of the way on the mountain. It was Ed’s 2nd summit of Everest, and 3rd time on the mountain (he filmed on the prior two seasons of the show, and is one tough hombre). Always smiling, Sanduk claimed his 3rd Everest summit with us on May 20, 2009, and I’m sure he’ll continue to add to his impressive climbing resume in the future. Just below is a fun photo of our IMG Sherpa team during our puja ceremony at the beginning of the season, singing, dancing and enjoying life — the way I’ll always remember them… 

Namaste,

Scott

IMG Sherpas celebrating life during our puja ceremony, officially beginning our Everest season (March 2009)

Overall, I thought Discovery and Tigress Productions did a fantastic job capturing the essence of the climb, particularly the physical and mental challenge of approaching the mountain. It’s very hard to tell the full story of any given summit bid, but my only regret is that they didn’t tell more of the Sherpa side of the story, and that of the Discovery film crew. I climbed with my good friend, Danuru Sherpa, now an 11x summitteer and one of my personal heroes. Ed Wardle, Matt Green and Jamie Berry, along with Sanduk Sherpa and others, climbed with the added burden of an HD camera and the responsibility to film. Keeping my eyes on the mountain was enough for me to manage… I’m also thankful to Eric Simonsen, Mark Tucker and all my other Sherpa compadres who helped set and stock camps, and made the dream possible.

Alan Arnette, very well versed in Himalayan expeditions, hosted a Twitter conversation (#EV09) last night, and posted a review on his blog that’s worth reading: http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/archives/1750. My take on this 3rd season of the program is that this year’s series is about the climbing, and not about the interpersonal conflicts and related drama as in the first two seasons. I’m definitely OK with this, even though “Biker Tim” was better-than-average entertainment…!

I thought the coverage of John Golden’s attempt was really eye-opening. John’s one seriously tough guy who overcame an enormous amount to arrive at Everest. He was fit, well prepared technically, and deserved to be there — but I didn’t realize until just recently that he’d actually cracked 3 ribs and fractured his hand during his fall! I don’t know that I’d take another trip to the mountain in his boots, but this is a question that only he (and his outfitter) can answer. I wish him well, whatever the outcome… http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/345273/John_Golden

I’ve exchanged email with my friend Rejean in recent weeks, and I understand he’ll be headed back for another attempt this spring. As it was for me, I hope and believe the 2nd time will be the charm for him…

On belay,

Scott

Now in its third season, the Discovery Channel’s Everest: Beyond The Limit is taking a new approach to filming this year and will feature both International Mountain Guides and Himalayan Experience in a five-part series.

IMG climber Scott Parazynski returned to Everest this season after coming tantalizingly close last year. The former NASA Astronaut was sidelined with a ruptured lumbar disc at 24,500′ on his summit bid in 2008. This year Scott came back fit and ready to top out with Danuru Sherpa. Scott achieved his goal at dawn on May 20, 2009. A veteran of five space flights and multiple spacewalks, Scott is the only person to both summit Mt. Everest and fly in space.

Sunday, December 27
8:00pm: Episode 1: early trips through the ice fall, David Tait’s summit with the rope fixing team and the fatal ice fall avalanche
9:00pm: Episode 2: John Golden’s summit attempt
10:00pm: Episode 3: main IMG team summit on May 20 (Scott Parazynski)

Wednesday, December 30
9:00pm: Episode 4: first Himex summits on May 21
10:00pm: Episode 5: second Himex summits on May 23