The height of achievement

Two of the three Maltese Challenge 8000 climbers, Gregory Attard and Marco Cremona, who recently scaled the heights of Mt Cho Oyu in Nepal, made a triumphant return to Malta yesterday.

However, their celebrations were dampened on hearing that Clifton Maloney, 71, husband of an American Congresswoman, whom the men had met several times, died after summiting the mountain the day after they did.

The three climbers, including Robert Gatt who lives in London, set off from their second base camp at an altitude of 7,200m for the summit at 10 p.m. on September 23. Malta's pioneering mountaineers reached the 8,201m high summit at 7 a.m. on following morning, taking a total of nine hours.

They were part of a team of eight climbers - three from Malta, four from Brazil and one from Guatemala.

They were accompanied by a Nepalese Sherpa and famous British guide Victor Saunders, both Mount Everest and Cho Oyu veterans. Only seven made it to the summit because the female Guatemalan climber experienced altitude-related vision problems and had to abort her ascent.

This was not the first time the Challenge 8000 team experienced trouble there. Dr Attard, who is a doctor, went to the aid of a mountaineer from New Zealand suffering from life-threatening high altitude pulmonary edema and took her to the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu.

Dr Attard insisted mountaineering was not about bravado but about taking very calculated risks. He spoke of how it was necessary to calculate a time window in which ascents could be made due to enduring difficult weather conditions at such high altitudes.

Mr Cremona said: "Thirty minutes into the beginning of our final ascent, my feet started to blister badly. I just had to concentrate and push myself to keep going. I had set a target for myself and I'm glad I reached it."

Their next goal is to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the highest place on earth. If this is achieved, then Cyprus will be the only European nation not to have a representative having climbed Everest so far. The next six months will involve intensive training for the team and a search for sponsorships.

Challenge 8000 was conceived to raise awareness about asthma and better air quality in Malta through the Society of Maltese Asthmatics and the Stop the Dust campaign.

www.challenge8000.net.