Tag Archives: Ed Viesturs

Canucks get secret pep talks from Bainbridge mountain climber

Viesturs

If the Vancouver Canucks win tomorrow’s Stanley Cup final, they’ll likely give a big thank-you to Bainbridge mountain climber Ed Viesturs.

Viesturs, who summited Mount Everest seven times, has been giving closed-door motivational talks to the NHL team.

“You’re not supposed to know about that my friend,” Canucks defenceman Kevin Bieksa told a Globe and Mail reporter. “You’ve got privileged information. That’s something we don’t talk about, that’s our own personal thing.

The Canucks’ opponent, the Boston Bruins, have drawn inspiration from a jacket they pass to each game’s best player.

Viesturs, said Bieksa said, has been the Canucks’ version of a magic jacket.

“He spoke to us at the beginning of the season and spoke to us before the playoffs,” Bieksa said. “So he’s been our guy.”

Bieksa said there are “a lot of parallels” between hockey and high altitude mountain climbing.

“The challenges and teamwork obviously,” he said. “(Viesturs) summits a lot of the peaks but it takes a whole team just to get up there. It’s months and months of climbing and it’s years and years of training, too.

Read the full Globe and Mail story here.

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Have breakfast with Ed Viesturs

Photo: edviesturs.com

High altitude mountaineer and Bainbridge resident Ed Viesturs will be the featured speaker at a breakfast fundraiser for Bainbridge schools on Friday.

Viesturs, who summited Everest several times and was the first American to climb the world’s 14 tallest peaks without an oxygen tank, will discuss how he has overcome mountain climbing challenges.

The event is free, but organizers are asking attendees to bring their checkbooks. Proceeds from the event will help bridge the funding gap for the 2010-2011 school year.

Viestur’s two recent autographed books will be available for purchase at the event. A percentage of profits will be donated to the Bainbridge Schools Foundation.

The event begins at 7 a.m. at Woodward Middle School.

Reserve a seat online at bainbridgeschoolsfoundation.org.

Click below to see Viesturs’ recent appearance on the Colbert Report.

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Viesturs makes seventh trip to Everest’s summit

Ed Viesturs on the summit of Mansulu, 1999. www.edviesturs.com
Ed Viesturs on the summit of Mansulu, 1999. www.edviesturs.com
Bainbridge Islander and renowned mountaineer Ed Viesturs climbed to the summit of Mount Everest for the seventh time early Tuesday morning.

“Conditions were good. The weather was almost perfect. You could see forever,” he said in a radio dispatch while descending the world’s tallest peak.

Viesturs, who turns 50 next month, recently reached a 16-year goal of climbing the world’s 14 highest mountains without the use of supplemental oxygen. He became the first American and the fifth person in the world to do so.

His Seattle-based team climbed through the night to reach the 29,000-foot summit at 8:30 a.m. Nepal time.

The round trip from their base camp at 26,000 feet to the summit was about 14 hours.

“It could have been a lot quicker had we not been dealing with traffic problems,” Viesturs said, referring to a glut of other climbing teams near summit. “The only drawback, in my opinion, was the traffic that we had to deal with. A lot of bottlenecks. A lot of just standing around really going nowhere, but that’s pretty much what you sign up for these days.”

Viesturs plans to recuperate at base camp and then spend a few days descending the mountain.

“We’re going to spend the night again here at camp,” he said. “We’re pretty hammered. We don’t have the energy.”

You can track Viesturs climb at http://blog.firstascent.com

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