Announcer: “At 42 years old, Lucille de Beaudrap has already reached the peaks of a few mountains: Mount Logan, the highest mountain in Canada, and Mount Aconcagua in Argentina(highest mountain outside of Asia). She is now reaching for the ceiling of the world, Mount Everest. My colleague met the adventurer.”
Lucille: "Ok, here we go. It's been probably about 2 years that I've been training solely for Everest. I decided to do this when I was 10 years old. It took me a few years to be in shape and to have the knowledge to climb a mountain like that. What do I do? I do stairs with a backpack that weighs about 40-50 lbs. Sometimes I do hills with a backpack that weighs up to 95 lbs. Sometimes it's 3-4 hours at a time, sometimes 8 hours. Yesterday was 8 hours.
I'm going to be gone about 10 weeks. So for me to be gone, away from my husband and family and work for 10 weeks, it's really something, so I need to be training to be in shape to be able to succeed. Because I probably won't get a second chance.
I'm a nurse. It's been 20 years, this year. I work for STARS so it's flight nursing, so I go in a helicopter and we go out for accidents, or to transport patients from a hospital outside Edmonton to one here. This is one of my jobs. The other, I work at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Intensive Care. So, between both I work a lot of hours each month, but there is still time to train and spend time with my husband."
Marie Beaupre (Mother of Lucille): "The thing with Lucille, there's nothing that stops her. It won't be work, it won't be fatigue. There's nothing that stops her when she's decided she wants to do something."
Lucille: "In May of last year, I climbed Mount Logan, the highest mountain in Canada. It was amazing! It was so beautiful, with snow everywhere. Mount Logan, the reasons I picked that one is because it's a beautiful mountain, it's in Canada, and also because we spent 17 days on the mountain. We lived in tents, and I wanted to see how my body would function on a mountain, in a tent, during 17 days. Mount Everest will be much longer than that, but it was a good trial.
This is the equipment I'll be bringing with me to Everest. So we'll start with the boots. These are special boots. There are two parts and they should keep my toes nice and warm. These are my crampons, that go on my boots because we'll walk on a glacier. To walk on ice that's over snow, you need crampons so that you don't fall. This is the line that will bring us all the way to the summit. So I'll put the rope between this and it will slide up the rope but won't come back down.
I'd like to bring my father's ashes to the top, all the way to the summit. I was very close to my father. He passed away two years ago, and I'd like to bring him with me on my adventure.
On the summit, there are lots of flags, they're called "prayer flags," and I'll be leaving these on the summit. My friends have all signed my prayer flags and I'll leave these on the summit.
(Laughing) I don't know what he (my father) would think of this! My father was always scared of ladders, and climbing, all sorts of things. Whenever I did anything outside, he would tell me to be very careful and now I'm going to bring him to the highest peak in the world! I don't know what he would have thought; I think he would be up for the adventure.
At base camp, there will probably be about 300 or 350 people. Most of them will try to reach the summit. There aren't a lot of days when the weather is nice and the wind is down so we might all be on the mountain at the same time, so it could be very busy. My strategy is to leave before everyone else and maybe stay in the front. That's my plan for now, but I don't know what will happen over there.
Um, I'm afraid of losing my fingers. Oh boy, I can't... I'm afraid of not coming back. It's always a possibility. But I like to think that I've trained enough to be strong enough, and that I've put enough plans in place that it won't be a problem.
I'll be back in two months! Au revoir!”
