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Capt. Elyse Ping Medvigy, an active-duty field artillery officer currently assigned to the …
Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY An Army veteran who lost his leg to a roadside bomb in Iraq reached the summit of Mount Everest on Tuesday, becoming the second combat amputee to climb the mountain in six days, according to a veterans group that sponsored the expedition.
Chad Jukes, 32, made the climb with a prosthesis. A Marine veteran who also lost his right leg to a roadside bomb in Iraq, Thomas Charles "Charlie" Linville, 30, reached the summit of Everest on Thursday, becoming what is believed to the first combat amputee to conquer the mountain.
The current climbing season for the 29,029-foot mountain has been marred by the deaths of three climbers during the past weekend; two others are missing.
Jukes was climbing on behalf of U.S. Expeditions and Explorations (USX), a veterans group trying to raise awareness about military suicides and post-traumatic stress disorder. Two others members of his expedition who reached the summit were Army Capt. Elyse Ping Medvigy, 26, and 2nd Lt. Harold Earls, 23.
USX issued a statement Tuesday describing a harrowing climb and descent with temperatures of minus 20 and wind gusts up 65 mph. Earls, a novice climber whose only previous experience was reaching the top of 14,416-foot Mount Rainier in Washington, suffered bloody, frost-bitten toes, and his goggles were blown off his face.
A Sherpa guide gave Earls his goggles, but eventually he began to suffer snow blindness, nearly falling off a 7,000-foot ridge. Earls managed to grip a rope linked to the guide, which saved him, USX said.
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