Anthony Perezthe mountaineer postman The Orotava, (Tenerife) announces that it has achieved the challenge of reaching the top of Lhotse, of 8,516 meters of altitude, in an expedition to the Himalayas organized to make visible, through the association Pigeon Trail Projectthe fight against multiple sclerosis and its dramatic consequences. His expedition began on April 9 and on the morning of May 16, at 9:10 a.m., he managed to reach the summit of the fourth highest mountain in the worldwith your guide Kaljang Sherpa.
Anthony Perezwhich in 2021 had to give up attacking the Manaslu summit due to bad weather, and Fefi Hernandezan experienced mountaineer with ascents on four continents, including the 7,134-meter Lenin Peak in Kyrgyzstan, have been protagonists of two solidarity expeditionswith a shared route in Nepal, which has allowed Anto to climb Lhotse, 8,516 meters high, and Fefi to Lobuche East, whose summit is at 6,119 meters.
They left La Orotava on April 9 and they shared the journey between the island and the Everest base camp (at an altitude of 5,360 meters), which they reached after a 140-kilometre walk from Luckla. Fefi returned to Tenerife on May 3, after reaching the top of Lobuche to show the work of Afes Salud Mental, and since then Anto has focused on the complicated ascent to the so-called South Col of Everest, from where he attacked the top of Lhotse. After reaching the summit of Muztag Ata, in China, at an altitude of 7,546 meters, and verifying the hardness of Manaslu, Anto had prepared himself like never before to become one of the few canaries who have climbed an eight thousand and in the first to reach the top of Lhotse.
Anto recognized before leaving that he had trained conscientiously to achieve this dream, for which he spent the 13 weekends of last winter spending the night at more than 3,300 meters of altitude, after carrying out extremely tough training on foot from the town of La Orotava to the top of Mount Teide, passing through Guajara, Las Siete Cañadas and Pico Viejo . “It has been hard, we are not going to deny it, but I feel much better prepared now than last year,” he acknowledged to EL DÍA before leaving for the Himalayas last April.
Anto’s first words after his achievement
Despite the difficulty of communications, Anto says that “on May 16 at 9:10 a.m., on a day with some wind, but good in general, my guide Kaljang Sherpa and I stepped on the summit of the fourth highest mountain mountain in the world. Until now, it has been the strongest and toughest challenge of my entire mountaineering life. The conditions of living at more than 7,500 meters of altitude are difficult to imagine and much more difficult to explain”.
“After a first failed attempt for various reasons, such as the wind and the intense cold, which made me fear for my fingers and toes, I decided to try again but this time with the help of supplemental oxygen to have more options. to get to the top. Without that extra contribution, I wouldn’t have made it”, admits Anto.
This mountaineer from Tenerife says that “the very small peak of Lhotse, where two people barely fit, is accessed by a rocky wall of about 15 meters that leads to a very unstable snow ledge that cannot be accessed. The precariousness of the situation at the top meant that I couldn’t take the photos and videos that I would have liked to take”.
