KATHMANDU: Kirstie Ennis, a former US Marine Corps sergeant and an amputee, who is maneuvering her way atop the Mt. Everest, felt happy to hear some Sherpas and foreigners cheering her up.
She writes on her blog saying she and her friends stumbled into a few people who, she said, weren’t so happy to see her making her way through extremely narrow terrain because using her SideStix was almost impossible.
However, there is something that brought tears in her eyes when most of the people, including Sherpas and foreigners alike, cheered her. “Honestly, it brought tears to my eyes,” she wrote on her blog.
Kirstie, who in 2012 survived a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, said she was ‘so flattered’ by the number of people who actually knew her story and were in her corner. After the 2012 incident, she suffered severe injuries, lost one of her legs, but decided to move forward.
She is currently in a mission to conquer the top of the world, Mt. Everest, with her left leg amputated above the knee to become the first female amputee to scale the 8,848 meters summit.
Her unwavering determination and enthusiasm helped her to endeavor the adventurous journey to the Everest. If she is to be followed on her social platform, she is heading inching towards Camp III.
Kirstie, who is determined to scale the world’s highest peak this season, also hopes to raise money and awareness for her Kirstie Foundation, which has a slogan of “Making a Million Dollars To Give A Million Dollars Away” and targets ‘education, opportunity, and healing in the outdoors’.
She shares on her Instagram post about her bumping into Dawa Sherpa, North Face athlete, who is on a mission of National Geographic Society to establish automatic weather stations on Mt. Everest. “Dawa stopped me on the trail”. According to Kirstie, Dawa embraced her in one of the best hugs she had ever received and encouraged her by saying, “Safe climbing, I’m inspired.”
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