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I had three goals in trying
to climb the highest mountain in Europe, 18,511 feet high Mt Elbrus.
I wanted to raise money for
the kids I work with daily in Bermuda (Beyond Rugby Bermuda), I wanted to plant
a WWE and Bermudian flag on the summit and I wanted to not die. I accomplished
two out of the three.
I have worked with WWE since
December of 1995 and I have been able because of them to be able to do some
wonderful things. I have been to the war zones of the Middle East eight
different times and was part of the first civilian group to visit Afghanistan
shortly after war started. I was with WWE when we went down, as one of first
groups to do so, to thank the heroes that were still saving lives in the
burning rubble at Ground Zero. I was with WWE when we were the first mass
gathering just two days after 9-11 in one of the most emotional events I have
ever been a part of in a sold out arena in Houston Texas. From Make a Wish to
literacy programs to an anti bullying campaign WWE has gone way beyond what companies
would dream to do to make the world a better place.
So, when I decided to climb
the Seven Summits (highest mountain on each continent) and do it to raise money
for kids I work with daily in Bermuda that are deemed ‘at risk’ by society I
knew I wanted to partner with my family again in the WWE.
I’m 45 years old and have had
a broken back, four knee surgeries and two herniated discs-so I knew this would
not be easy. But, we tell our kids daily that everyone has problems, it’s what
you do with what you have that matters. I wasn’t just raising money for the
kids; I was doing my best to set an example. We all have mountains to climb,
mine ahead of me were just literal.
I trained for over half a
year for Mt Elbrus. I had gotten to where I would do a stair master up to three
hours straight and when in NYC climb up to 400 flights of stairs in my
apartment building (which took 3 ½ hours), I had gotten up to 18 miles hiking
around Bermuda. I can’t run due to my injuries so I would walk the 18 miles,
taking about 4 ½ hours.
I trained walking with a
backpack for several hours straight many times a week.
This was not a ‘Hollywood’
production, this was something I put the time and effort in to accomplish,
exactly what we tell our kids they must do to be successful.
My plan was, and is, to climb
the Seven Summits over the next two years and Mt Elbrus was first on the list.
After flying through Moscow
and St Petersburg doing the normal tourist visits of Lenin, Red Square and the
Hermitage while still training for what was to come we arrived in the Baksan
Valley which is located just north of Georgia and next to Chechnya. The valley
was closed the year before due to the conflicts and I was hoping that another
conflict would wait till I had left.
We immediately started to
acclimatize, which involved up to ten hours of climbing at altitude. George
Mallory had first developed this when trying to summit Mt Everest in the 1920s.
You hike higher to an altitude and then return to increase the red blood cell
count in your body so your body can absorb more oxygen, however, this also
raises the risk of heart attack.
Climbing for hour after hour
straight up is hard; doing it with half the oxygen is indescribable. It’s like
climbing stairs for hours with a plastic bag over your head, your heart beats
so fast you can feel it racing very loudly in your head and you never really
get your breath.
I got my first dose of
mountain medicine on one of these hikes, I had gotten terrible blisters and one
of the climbers who had just returned from Mt Everest, Dr. Mark Schwab (the
best climber on the mountain) gave me duct tape off of his climbing pole to
wrap by foot, which I did.
We left the valley for base
camp at 12,000+ feet-“The Barrels’. I split my barrel with some real veteran climbers
in Dr. Schwab and his mate he had been to medical school with in West Virginia
Dr. Ched Lohr along with Chris Zahn owner of a real estate management company
in Long Beach, California.
Our guide was Mark Ryman of
Mountain Madness who had guided on all seven continents and this was his sixth
trip to Mt Elbrus. The one thing I miss about being in WWE was the banter and
camaraderie; it was very welcome to have such a great crew to climb with.
The Barrels had electricity
only a couple of hours a day but did have cell reception. We would sleep in
heavy sleeping bags and in our mountain gear, as we had no heat. The outhouse
is renowned as the world’s worst, and I am not sure that even that moniker is
enough.
I have been to some very
nasty places from Kabul, Afghanistan to islands in Antarctica that were covered
with penguins and their waste that made you want to vomit when you smelled it.
I great up near cattle ranches and a few pig farms, I have dressed in locker
rooms by some professional wrestlers who have taken too much protein and tried
to ruin my nostrils with their emissions. Nothing and I mean absolutely nothing
is close to this outhouse.
It is a building that you
walk onto and a hole was just cut in the roof and a tin shed put on top of the
hole. So for decades people have been filling up this building with human
waste, year after year folks doing their business on top of last years and last
weeks and yesterdays business. To say it is despicable is like saying Kim
Kardashian kind of likes being in the media, a severe understatement.
I could even go into more
graphic details, but it would make you sick. I had the constant fear of the
“Slumdog Millionaire” scene of me somehow falling through the roof. By this
year the building (a whole building) was over half full
There were no showers and no
running water; we got water from melting snow.
I had used my hotel points to
stay in the Ritz Carlton in Moscow right by Red Square, going from that to this
was a bit of an adjustment.
We took two climbs from base
camp and the second to over 15,000 feet to finish our acclimatization, the
second climb was about eight hours and though hurting I made the climbs in good
form, I felt great about summit day.
Summit day started at 1am
with breakfast and a 2am start on the mountain to catch the snow while it was
still hard and easier for our boots and crampons to travel over. We only had a
headlamp for vision.
Chris Zahn and I were
climbing partners and my guide was Vladimir a very funny guy who was also part
of the mountain rescue squad. Vladimir spoke little English but spoke German
well so we communicated in German (which I had learned while wrestling and
living in Europe for two years before I made it to the WWE).
There were storms in the area
but the storms were lower than us so we got off on time and things went badly
almost right away. I had little problem on my acclimatization climbs but for
some reason this morning my right hand had gone completely numb due to the cold
and the only way I could get it warm was to stick it down my pants, which made
my hand feel much better but was not so great on my private parts.
I was hoping to be able to
make it to the sun coming up so the air would get warmer and I wouldn’t get
frostbit and lose my fingers. Vladimir looked at me and warned me I also had
hypoxia, I don’t think I did but he was a better judge than me.
The sun came up and gave us
one of the most wonderful views I have ever seen looking down at the Caucasus
Mountain range. I had regained feeling in my hand for the most part as the
temperature rose with the sun.
Water we carried next to us
as it would have frozen in our backpack.
After climbing for 7 ½ hours
we were at the beginning on the “saddle’ between the mountain’s two peaks.
I can’t describe the effort
these 7-½ hours took to climb. I have had somewhere around 4,000 wrestling
matches, played two games in college on a broken leg but the mindset of trying
to keep putting one foot in front of the other, in those conditions, was the
greatest test I have ever taken. I understand why climbers climb, there is no
greater test that I know of to see how far your body can go-it’s beyond pain,
but also wonderful in a weird kind of way.
We stopped for lunch and I
discovered that my lunch had somehow been squished and ruined. However, we were only about 1,000 feet from
the summit-though that 1,000 feet would take 4-5 hours. It looked so close.
Vladimir had gotten concerned
by the weather and was warning us we might have to turn back but now he was
adamant. He told us, correctly, that if we continued that we would be caught up
by what turned out to be a huge storm. I did not want to turn back, at all.
We were so close and I had
worked so hard, to turn back now was something that didn’t even seem realistic.
The summit was so close you could almost touch it.
Chris reluctantly had agreed
with Vladimir. Chris is a mountain veteran who hated to give up on the summit,
I was climbing for my kids and the thought of turning back was so hard to
digest. However, we finally all agreed that we ran the risk of being stuck on
the mountain if we continued. And, my third goal of not dying would have been
put in jeopardy.
I just sat there for some
time looking at the summit and thinking of the support that the WWE had given
me and the greater goal of helping kids that need it. It was one of the saddest
moments of my life.
We turned back. Chris and I
both were totally out of gas. Climbing down is almost as hard as climbing up;
the snow had softened so we sank into the snow on most steps. At one point we
sat down and slid down part of the mountain. Vladimir was helping me so much;
Chris’ guide Albert was helping him as well. I don’t ever remember being that
spent.
At one point Vladimir had me
take off my crampons and harness and we slid roped together down the mountain
with Vladimir behind me to help put on the brakes as we got too fast.
We made it down at 2pm, half
a day after we started. The storm was now setting in and Vladimir was right in
his warning and advice. There is a good chance that we could have been in dire
trouble if we had continued; we could have easily been stuck on the mountain.
The storm has closed the
mountain and so there is no hope of another summit attempt-I will have to
return next summer. My lips bled badly this morning (from exposure) as I tried
to brush my teeth and my blisters are so bad I can’t wear shoes, but everything
I have wrong is temporary and I just had the wildest week of my life and loved
every second of it.
I did get a great pic with
the WWE and flag at over 17,000 feet and got a pic with the Bermuda flag for my
kids (and to say thanks to the government there for the support they give our
program and to our partner The Family Center).
The one thing I missed was
taking a picture with my Fox News crew I have done the show Cashin’ In with for
years (I had a photo of them I was going to hold up at the summit), the picture
was in the part of the backpack where the food exploded. Fox was wonderful in
their support and allowing me the time to do this.
The two doctors, Mark and
Ched, along with head guide Mark Ryman made the summit. They were faster, and
superior, climbers than us but they also had the advantage of using skis for
part of the climb-which is still a remarkable achievement but is easier than
hiking and getting down is much faster so the storm didn’t play a part in their
summit like it did ours. Dr. Mark Schwab snowboarded down the mountain; he had
just come back from Everest where he was turned back at over 27,000 feet due to
frostbite. Dr. Schwab had knee surgery just before Everest-this wild man
belongs in the WWE.
Dr. Lohr watched his ski
slide thousands of feet off the summit so he had a long walk down. These three
guys were pure beasts.
All three of them had a
summit party with us and Dr Mark gave us gold medals he had bought somewhere,
was a great gesture and a heck of a party.
I have Kilimanjaro scheduled
next in September. My feet will be better than and I will have a couple more
months of training and the experience of being at altitude. I plan on making
the mountain and then it’s to South America and then to Antarctica all by
January. I have Mt Everest scheduled for spring of 2014.
I tell my kids you can only
control what you can control and you can’t worry about what you can’t. I can’t
control the weather, but the mountain didn’t break me, so I’m getting geared up
for round two. I still plan on making the Seven Summits but realize now why
only a few hundred people have ever done it, these are world-class mountains.
But for a kid from
Sweetwater, Texas who became longest reigning WWE champion in Smackdown TV
history huge tasks don’t scare me. I figure if you are not getting up everyday
climbing and trying to do something great than you are just wasting good folks
oxygen by just existing.
In Bermuda there is a 50%
dropout rate among black Bermudians, after one year 100% of our 60 kids still
say they will graduate, they won’t give up and neither will I, the money raised
with this will hopefully allow us to double our program next year.
I’m now heading back to Bermuda
where I am fishing July 4th in the Marlin World Championship with
several local friends; my peak to pond adventure is half over.
Most importantly I have my
WWE and Bermudian flag all packed and ready to go to Africa for round two. We
are only just beginning.
www.SevenSummitsforkids.com is where you can donate if you want or just keep up
with the adventure. Also, my Twitter is used to update the trips @jclayfield
and my Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/John-Layfield/194176253533?ref=ts has tons of
pics and videos.
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