In 1985, Canmore’s Sharon Wood and her partner, American alpinist Carlos Buhler, planned what she called “a practice joust” in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca to prepare her for a fast and light ascent of Mount Everest. For the first eight weeks, however, bad weather blocked their attempts on every peak they tried.
Finally, on Wood’s suggestion, they decided on the unclimbed east face of Cerro Huascaran (6,768 m). The climb was hard, but went well until, on the third day on the route, Wood was struck by a rock which broke her shoulder.
“This,” she wrote, “must be what it feels like to get shot.”
The pain was excruciating, but instead of thinking about retreat, which would have been a multi-day epic of its own, she felt, in her own words,…
