Mountaineer Greg Attard

Six weeks after he left for Pakistan, Gregory Attard returned yesterday as the first Maltese to reach the summit of both Gasherbrum mountains in the Himalayas.

After hugging his girlfriend, Sharon Zahra, and receiving friendly taps on the back at the airport, Dr Attard admitted there were a lot of moments where he was going to give up.

“In fact, there were a few moments where I wasn’t going to give up,” he said with a smile.

“Every day, I was faced with different challenges: while preparing to summit we got strong winds and, despite planning ahead, we didn’t always manage to keep up with the schedule.

“Everything went well but there was also an element of luck. There are a lot of capable and well-prepared mountaineers who still don’t manage to peak.”

The 36-year-old medical doctor and expert mountaineer scaled the two 8,000-metre-high Gasherbrum I and Gasherbrum II mountains within a week.

The expedition was fraught with uncertainty following one of the worst terrorist attacks on climbers on a nearby mountain. In June, Taliban gunmen stormed the base camp of Nanga Parbat and shot dead nine foreign trekkers and a Pakistani guide. Dr Attard had passed by the same base camp just a day before the attack.

As the Pakistani government deliberated withdrawing all climbing permits, the whole expedition became compromised as the Gasherbrum mountains have a very short summit window and a mountaineer can only reach the summit a few days every year.

However, he reached the summit of Gasherbrum II unassisted on July 21 after a nine-and-a-half-hour-long climb and then tackled the steeper and more demanding Gasherbrum I within a week.

In 2010, Dr Attard, together with Marco Cremona and Robert Gatt, became the first Maltese to conquer Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain.

And he seems to have a list of mountains to climb. For the next challenge later this month, Dr Attard will be accompanied by Ms Zahra and three other people who will climb Mount Blanc in aid of Make a Pink Difference, raising awareness about breast cancer.