A MENSTRIE ski instructor has become the sixth Scottish woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
Kirsty Mack, a ski instructor from Menstrie, got to the top of Everest at 8.10am local time on Monday, May 22, alongside her climbing partner Lhakpa Wongchu Sherpa.
Daughter to the late mountaineer Tom Mack, Kirsty inherited her interest in mountaineering from her dad -who himself managed to complete several of the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each of the continents.
Kirsty said it was an out of this world experience to reach the summit and credited her dad with teaching her everything she knows.
“It was amazing,” Kirsty said. “It’s so cool that you’ve got this technology now where you can look back on your trip up the mountain.
“Looking back on the whole thing, it was awesome. For about a minute, I was the highest woman on the planet and that is really cool.
“It was a very proud feeling, but you don’t feel it until you touch back down in base camp and you realise what you’ve done.
“I was in the scouts because my dad was the group scout leader and I definitely have tried to follow in his footsteps quite a bit.”
Conquering Mount Everest was the fifth stop in Kirsty’s mission to complete the Seven Summits, having already reached the top of Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Elbrus in Europe, Denali in North America and South America’s highest Aconcagua.
Kirsty completed her climb of Mount Elbrus, located in Russia in 2019, 25 years after her dad accomplished the same feat.
She also reached the summit of Denali in July 2022, which was the 41st anniversary of Tom ticking it off his list.
Kirsty suffered a setback during her preparations for Everest two years ago after sustaining a serious shoulder injury whilst skiing in the Cairngorms.
Despite several surgeries and gruelling rehabilitation, Kirsty never managed to regain the full use of her dominant arm.
Kirsty credits the extensive time she spent in the mountains as being paramount to her physical and mental recovery, putting her fully back on the path to climb Everest.
She added: “The hardest part was having to use the one arm the whole time.
“I’m left handed and usually you can switch arms so you can catch a break but I had to use my non-dominant arm the whole way up and that was the hardest thing.
“There was definitely some anxiety from not knowing if the next part of the mountain would be too hard to do with one arm but it was all fine.
“Two years to the day after my skiing accident, I walked into camp two on Everest.
“I think if that was as far as I ever got, I still would have been thrilled.”
