People: Jay Budnick
ON TOP OF THE WORLD
Climbing Mt. Everest involves danger, extreme hardships, and killer cold. Few try it, even fewer survive. One in five dies from a fall, exposure, or sheer exhaustion. Why, then, would a medical doctor endure the 29,028-foot ascent? 'Because I'm permanently and hopelessly hooked,' says Jay Budnick, '83, M.D. '87, of Manitou Springs, CO, the team physician for the 1995 Mt. Everest Commemorative Expedition. 'That feeling of overcoming limitations, of hanging desperately by your fingertips and your mind screaming, 'I'm never going to make it.''
But on May 16, 1995, Budnick made it. For 45 existential minutes, he stood atop the world. 'There was a strong sense that I was allowed to be there,' he recalls. But his oxygen supply was dwindling, so Jay promptly embarked on the treacherous descent to their Tibetan base camp at 17,500 feet--just beating the approaching monsoons. 'I'm glad to be alive,' he sighed afterwards, referring to the last 1,000-ft. climb to the summit, which he did in total darkness, without glasses, which kept fogging up, while the temperature plunged to minus-20 degrees and the wind howled. 'It's so steep and icy up there,' he recalls. 'The smallest mistake, and that's it. You're dead.'
Miraculously, Jay survived a few slips-- including a 20-foot slide on ice, and one fall where he was saved by imbedding his axe into solid ice. The scale of the expedition effort was enornous. He and his 22-man crew had spent six weeks trekking across Tibet transporting five tons of supplies by yak caravan to the base camp. The cost is estimated at $750,000.
Jay began his climbing at age 14 more modestly, near Grand Ledge. But he soon graduated to the likes of Yosemite, Pike's Peak, and Alaska's Mt. McKinley. And now, as a Mt. Everest survivor, he truly ranks among the elite climbers of all time. 'Looking back, it's clear to me that everything happens for a reason,' says Jay, a staff physician at Penrose Hospital. 'Life is too short not to be happy. We're all here for a purpose.'