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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the Weekend Catch-Up for those of you who are too busy to listen daily, but have FOMO. There are also those of you who listen all week, each day, and have ears on the catch-up as well. We know this because you've told us via email. Yeah, ray.darcydaily.com. So this week, there were lost shoes, found fodders, fond farewells, and the gift of equanimity.
But we start at the highest mountain in the world, Everest. Adam Sweeney from Dunmore East is hoping to be the youngest Irish person to summit Mount Everest at the age of 22. He said goodbye to his family last week in Dublin Airport. We spoke to his mother, Karen, and we asked if there were tears.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Of course. You know, can you imagine one of your kids heading off?
Karen, I can't. I actually can't imagine it.
Oh, stop. Yeah. No, look, he's done a lot of different things. And, you know, he's done the training and, you know, they've got a plan. You know, they know that if they don't get up to the top of the mountain by two o'clock in the afternoon, they turn around, they have a meeting beforehand. Everybody agrees this is the time they're going to turn around and come down.
And, you know, because when you do get up into high altitude and the oxygen is low, you can make decisions that are, you know, you're not making good decisions. So that's decided before they go, they write it on their arm and say, that's the time, that's my time that I'm coming back down. So they'll turn around then and that's it, they'll come back down.
And at the end of the day, it's just about, you know, getting home safely.
Yes, of course. Have you watched any of the movies, read any of the books or...
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Chapter 2: What challenges did Adam Sweeney face before attempting to summit Everest?
Oh, right. So this is the problem, right? When the kids were small, right, I always had a fascination about Everest myself. Yeah, I've always had a fascination. Even in our loo downstairs, I've got the front page of the English Chronicle that kind of is celebrating Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary getting up to Everest the first time.
1953, 1953, yeah.
Yeah, but yeah, this was... I put that up there years and years and years ago. And I don't know whether Adam's been sitting on the loo looking at that all these years. Subliminal. So it's my fault, you know. But yeah, I have read all the books. And, you know, Joe Simpson, you know, the one where he had to crawl...
back to base camp and that this wasn't, this wasn't an Everest, but I've read Touching the Void.
Chapter 3: How does Adam's family cope with his Everest expedition?
That was his book. And I've read Into Thin Air by John Krakauer. I've watched all the movies, you know, so I feel, you know, I know all the awful things that can go wrong, you know, but, but you know what? I mean, the success rate in, in Everest is actually not, not so bad at all. He's done more dangerous mountains already.
So, you know, and he only tells me about that when he gets home though, you know, when I get the pictures then.
It's odd because we get a skewed sort of version of how dangerous it is because it's become a lot safer. So if you do the totals over all the years since 1953, it's quite high. But if you look at the last number of, say, the last 20 years, it's very low.
Yeah, because the equipment's got better, you know, and people are better, yeah, they're better equipped and they're better trained as well. You're always going to get people who are going to go up there who aren't prepared and it's just like on a bucket list or whatever. But, you know, you've got to be smart and you've got to do it properly.
I mean, they're going to be in base camp now for probably the guts of six weeks. They're waiting for a weather window. They've gone up early as well, you know, so that they get prepared earlier than other teams. You know, and it's all about the preparation. It's so, so, so important. It's not to be taken lightly.
You know, so, yeah, so it's all kind of, it's going towards this point now where they're waiting for that weather window and up they'll go probably.
And Adam isn't a tourist because, you know, not that anybody would be a strictly full on tourist, but there are people who depend on these package deals to get them up Everest. And we've read about those.
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Chapter 4: What preparations are necessary for climbing Mount Everest?
When you say we, who, it's a team, is it?
Yeah, so there's four people from Ireland, Adam being one of those. So you've got Jason Black, who's like a mountaineer.
I know Jason, yeah, from Donegal.
Yeah, so Jason's a great guy, exactly. He's the Ulster man on the team and he's, well, he'd be the team leader. So he's organising all the logistics for the lads and... So I'd have great faith in Jason. Adam's climbed with him before and Adam reached the summit of Amidablam there two years ago, I think it was. Amidablam would be a bit more technical than Everest, but it's lower altitude.
So he got up there and Jason is great. He'll keep in touch with the families and let them know how they're going.
but so there's Jason then we've got Porrig O'Hara who's a Mayo footballer I mentioned him yesterday yeah yeah so Porrig is heading up there as well and then there's another chap called Eanna McGowan he's from he's I think he's from Wicklow or Dublin Eanna I haven't actually met Eanna because he's living in Switzerland but funnily enough each province in Ireland is being represented by this Irish team it's really nice like so you've got Jason from Ulster Porrig is from Connacht Eanna's Leinster and Adam's from Munster up Munster yeah
And you were mentioning your business. It's the Adventure Centre in Dunmore East, which has been going for 30 years. And we've enjoyed the Wibba down there on numerous occasions over the years. Ireland's first aqua park. Ireland's first aqua park. So you and your husband Gavin, you were always adventure people.
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Chapter 5: What are the dangers of high-altitude climbing?
So it's no surprise really that Adam is heading up Everest.
Yeah, I suppose, like, we've always encouraged them to do kind of like, you know, to kind of follow their dreams. And, you know, we are a bit on the adventurous side. I'd say about, I think it was about maybe 10 years ago, maybe, we used to rent out holiday homes in Dunmore. And there was a group of people who asked us, could they rent out one of the holiday homes? And I said, no.
And I said, what are you doing, by the way? And they said, oh, we're actually doing skydiving trips from Waterford Airport. So I said, well, look, if you bring my family up and let's all skydive, I'll give you a house for the weekend for free. So we brought all the children up in the airplane. Now, Adam was a bit young to jump because he was only eight. He was too light.
So Luca, his bigger brother, he was the youngest that time. We all jumped out of this airplane and down. It was fantastic, you know, but... You know, I mean, I suppose we're all kind of a little bit on the adrenaline jumping side.
So he does the Instagram. He has access to a satellite phone now, Karen. So how regular will the communications be between now and when he makes his attempt?
Well, up to now, up to say the kind of radio silence that we had, he was ringing us every single day. So like, you know, or he'd send a message if he couldn't ring or whatever, you know, we'd get some kind of a message. But yeah, look, I mean, they're going to be, once they start their rotations up the mountain, I would imagine we'll probably have a day or two in between times.
But generally somebody is posting because there's other lads there. So we're following everybody. So, you know, there's going to be, there's going to be somebody that's posting something at some stage. So just to keep in touch that way. But he's very good at keeping in touch with the family. He really is.
Did you ever try to discourage him or question him on doing this?
No, no, never did. No, no, it's, no, it's, it's, he's a smart kid, you know, he's, he's, he is a smart kid and I know he's going to do the right thing and I'm, I'm happy with who he's going with and, you know, and I know that he'll, he's weighed up, he's weighed up the risks, you know, and he's not going to do anything stupid.
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Chapter 6: How has climbing Everest changed over the years?
So I have all that info. I just can't remember.
Yeah. So you were somewhere, were you closer to base camp than you were from where you started, if you know what I mean?
Oh, yes.
I see what you're saying.
We took when we when we finished the track, we took a little like eight seater airplane and we flew over Everest. All right. That was amazing because you just realize like people talk about Everest, but you realize just how amazing. how high it is. Like we were up, up, up in the sky flying over and we could see the tip of it, the peak of it. Yeah. Yeah, it was incredible.
And did you want to climb it when you saw it?
I've always wanted to. I've always gone... Not that I've wanted to. I've wanted to climb Everest, but I can totally understand why somebody wants to climb Everest. There's like... I think it's like this pull that you just want to climb it. And I'm not a religious person at all, but there is something about that area and there's lots of kind of prayer flags everywhere.
It's a Buddhist country and it is a very, I hate to use this word, but spiritual place. Like you feel something there.
Spiritual. And all agreed that there was something otherworldly about the voice of Moya Brennan, who died during the week. We remembered Moya with some music and chat about Boyd Eddy, the wreck of a French fishing boat that featured in the video for the song In A Lifetime that Clonid recorded with Bono back in the 80s.
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Chapter 7: What role does family support play in Adam's journey?
It was whatever you call your inner self or your real true self. I'm so lucky that something came in that was really like true in me, in my being and said, no, no, it's not actually going to help. In a really nice way. Like it wasn't saying to put that wine down.
You can understand though, because you use it.
from your life as a coping mechanism I did yeah and you can understand why people are drawn to it because it numbs those that's what I'm saying it numbs the stuff but what I'm saying is I feel so grateful that in that moment would have been even more likely to do it that something kicked in that showed me really clearly that that was really stupid
Even though I should have known that by now, you know, I only got it that day. And I'm really, that's the thing about, you know, we talk about my father dying by suicide and my mother seeing it as a gift or framing it. Like I am big on, this has happened to me two years ago. And there's things that have happened that I wouldn't have done. Like I wouldn't have stopped drinking wine.
And maybe that would have been something that had caused me lots of health problems in the future or whatever. Yeah. I see that as a gift. And I have that thing of I have a beautiful German neighbor called Bettina who works with people in end of life. And she she's with people.
I got to interview her during the pandemic because I was talking to people who had been various people who were caring for people at the time. And she was talking about how loads of things happened in the pandemic that they've been trying to get happen, but they couldn't. Because of all the bureaucracy.
But then suddenly you were allowed to have people on the phone talking to people who were dying and you were allowed to have playlists and all these things. And anyway, I went to see Bettina. It's funny because she lives a few doors down. That's what I realized. I was interviewing Bettina on Zoom. And then I asked her where she lived and she said North Strand. And I said, oh, where?
And then she said, my road. And then she said, what number? And it's literally like four times. But that was weird. Anyway, it seems weird that I went to see Bettina in a way because like she's an end of life person. But I did go to see her very close to when I've got this news. I was thinking, why am I doing this? Because she deals with people who are dying and I don't want to die, you know.
But it was wonderful to see her. Anyway, she's from East Germany and she told me about an expression in Germany called I don't know the German of it, but it translates to illness, a chance. Illness, comma, a chance. And that really helped me.
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