Topic: Feeling on top of the world - with no legs and laryngitis
The first double amputee to climb to the top of Mt Everest was almost speechless when he reached the summit and called his wife by satellite phone.
Mark Inglis, 47, who lost both legs in a climbing accident 24 years ago, was suffering an attack of laryngitis and managed only to croak: "I did it!"
Sir Edmund Hillary, 86, who conquered the world's highest peak in May 1953, was among the first to offer his congratulations. "It's a remarkable effort. He's done a pretty good job," he said.
Mr Inglis, a New Zealander, reached the summit on Monday and yesterday was said to be descending to base camp.
According to members of his party, his short conversation with his wife Anne when he spoke from the summit were among the few words he was able to utter.
Asked by New Zealand television yesterday by satellite phone how the climb had been, he managed to say only: "Bloody hard."
His wife said one of his carbon fibre artificial legs snapped on the ascent, but was quickly replaced from a bundle of spare legs and parts taken with him.
Wayne Alexander, one of three climbing companions up the 29,035ft summit, said: "What Mark did was absolutely remarkable. I have never seen such human endurance." Speaking from Advance Base Camp on the mountain, he added: "He did so well. It was a bit like chasing a greyhound - he was gone."
Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister, said: "To reach the summit of Everest is a once in a lifetime achievement, but for Mark Inglis it will be even more satisfying. He has said it was a childhood dream to stand on the roof of the world, but he thought he had lost it when he lost his legs."
Miss Clark, a keen amateur climber, added that Mr Inglis had sent a signal to others with disabilities "that your ambitions should never be limited".
Mr Alexander said the group had been coping with temperatures as low as -22F (-30C) which had caused their cameras to freeze up on the last day's nine-hour climb to the summit.
In an interview by satellite phone, he said of the final ascent: "We came across a chap sheltering under a rock, who was perhaps hours from death. That was probably only two and a half hours into the climb.
"He had made a mistake the day before. He started too late and couldn't get off the mountain. That was a very sobering reality, that every pace you took further from that point was further from safety, and we had to all make it back. It didn't deter Mark."
It is not yet known what happened to the climber they passed on the way up.
Mr Alexander said Mr Inglis was likely to find the descent more painful because "his body weight goes down on the stumps".
Mr Inglis was on the way down the mountain yesterday and hopes to be home early next week. He had his legs amputated below the knees due to frostbite, suffered in 1982 while he was trapped for 14 days by blizzards on Mt Cook, the highest peak in New Zealand.
He went on to become the first double amputee to reach the mountain's summit, followed by the 26,906ft Mt Cho Oyu in Tibet, the world's sixth highest.
He won a silver medal for cycling in the 2000 Sydney Paralympic Games.