In 1996, Deshun Deysel celebrated her 26th birthday at the foot of Mount Everest, a long way from her hometown of Uitenhage. She had travelled there with the vision of planting the flag of a hopeful new democracy on top of the world’s highest peak. What awaited her team was deceit, disorganisation and death.
Although initially hesitant — her children are five and eight, and she will be 50 next year — Deysel remembered how much she loved travelling the world and climbing high peaks. She was raised on the stories her grandmother would tell her about Edmund Hillary who, with Tenzing Norgay, were the first to reach Everest’s peak.
Deysel’s inclusion in the trailblazing team of 1996, which had received the patronage of Nelson Mandela, was tinged with controversy. Some at the time referred to her as “the victim of a cynical experience in political correctness”. Although the schoolteacher was an experienced hiker, her inclusion — out of a shortlist of six, from hundreds of applications — was criticised, with some suggesting that someone who was a member of the Mountain Club of South Africa would be a better option.
Patrick Conroy, who was at the time covering the expedition for 702, another sponsor of the expedition, writes that Vernon “chose sides early on and tried to unseat Woodall as expedition leader”. “I started having flashbacks of the ’96 expedition, when people tried to ignore the weather, and I thought to myself — I know how this turns out.” Also faced with the prospect of frostbitten toes — “my feet were absolutely rotten” — she turned back.
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