69-year-old amputee conquers Mt.Qomolangma after 43 years

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CGTN

May 14, 2018. That’s the day that 69-year-old Xia Boyu finally stood on the peak of Mount Qomolangma, 8,844 meters above sea level. It has been 43 years since his first attempt.

Xia Boyu /VCG Photo

Mount Qomolangma /VCG Photo

Xia has had both his feet amputated, as well as lymphoma, thrombus in the lower limbs and four failed attempts to reach the peak. People say that his story is the real-life version of "The Man and the Mountain." Standing on the top of the world, Xia says: "There's no special feeling. I deserve it."

Everything began in 1975 when, as a 26-year-old footballer, Xia was selected to be on the Chinese Mountaineering Team. After training for months, he was admitted to the climbing team of 20. However, the attempt failed at 8,400m because of strong winds. During the retreat, one of the teammates lost his sleeping bag. Xia insisted on offering him his own because he was in better shape, and he could jog at minus 20 degrees Celsius without wearing a down jacket.

Xia Boyu was a footballer when he was young. /Photo courtesy of Xia Boyu

Unfortunately, he was severely frostbitten and lost his feet. He was lying in a hospital when he heard that nine of his teammates had made it on the radio. "I should have been one of them," he thought.

Everyone thought the incident would have ended Xia's career as a climber, before a prosthetist said to him: "You can live normally, even climb the mountains again with a prosthesis."

Photo courtesy of Xia Boyu

Xia was encouraged. He began to train his leg muscles in bed with sandbags. After trying on the prosthesis, he rode a bicycle for more than an hour to go to work, and climbed Beijing's Fragrant Hills three times a week. The prosthetics were eventually upgraded from straps and planks to more professional equipment. He even won many medals in sporting events like the National Games for the Disabled. It seemed that he was once again close to achieving his dream.

Photo courtesy of Xia Boyu

But in 1996, fate dealt another blow to Xia. He was diagnosed with lymphoma. Yet he refused to remain hospitalized as a cancer patient. Instead, he insisted on going for chemotherapy by bicycle.

In 2008, Xia returned to the Everest Base Camp (EBC) as an Olympics torchbearer, and felt the peak calling to him again. So he had the prosthesis adjusted and trained on Mount Yuzhu in Qinghai Province and Muztagh Ata in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

"The prosthesis has no sense of touch. You don't know what you are stepping onto," says Xia. "You could totally get stuck in the snow. I had to compact it with my knees before stepping on it." It was very dangerous and exhausting under oxygen-deprived conditions.

CGTN Photo

By 2014, Xia felt prepared to take on the challenge of Mount Qomolangma again. "But I had such bad luck." A major accident caused the Nepalese government to cancel all peak climbing plans for that year.

In 2015, Xia set off again. This time, an 8.1-magnitude earthquake hit Nepal when he was at the EBC. They narrowly escaped the avalanche caused by the quake.

CGTN Photo

In 2016, it seemed that he could finally go for the peak, but a sudden blizzard stopped them at a distance of only 94 meters from the top. He would've fought for it, but he felt that he had no reason to risk the lives of his guides, who were young men in their twenties and thirties. So he decided to retreat.

"Every time I told myself that 'this is the last try.'" But he kept breaking his promises to give up.

In May 2018, after several setbacks, Xia began his fifth try with his team. "I was very familiar with the route to the peak, and was always prepared for the difficult parts of it," he says.

Photo courtesy of Xia Boyu

Considering Xia's physical strength, the guides set up a temporary Camp 5, which made him feel somewhat uncertain. The camp was set beside a cliff, and it took him an extra half hour for the detour. "Had I known the condition around the camp, I would've gone directly for the peak."

Finally, after six days of climbing, the peak was within grasp. "When I saw the peak, I thought: 'Well, this is the place I've been longing for in 40 years’," says Xia. He took photos and stayed in his dream location for 10 minutes before they had to retreat from a snowstorm. By that time, Xia's legs were too swollen to wear the prosthesis. When they were 10 minutes away from Camp 2, the guides had to fetch the spare prosthesis for him to finish the trip.

Xia Boyu and his teammates. /Photo courtesy of Xia Boyu

In spite of everything, he reached the top on his own legs.

Since he first left his footprints on Mount Qomolangma at 8,600 meters, he has finally finished the last 244 meters 43 years later. With frostbitten cheeks and fingers, he laughs: "That was for the last time…this year!"

May 16, 2018, Xia Boyu was hit by frostbite. /VCG Photo

The story is one in The 1.3 Billion series exploring the diverse lives that make up China.