Offaly's Martin scales Everest

Fifty-eight-year-old Martin Byrne is today home in his native South Offaly, after becoming the first member of An Garda Siochana and the oldest Irish mountaineer to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Speaking to the Offaly Independent just hours after arriving in Dublin on a flight from Abu Dhabi, Martin from Golden Grove (near Coolderry) where his mother Kitty still resides, told of his mixed feelings on reaching the highest point in the world. "I was quite upset by the bodies close to the summit," he said. "I had mixed feelings when I got to the top to be quite honest." Martin successfully reached the top of Everest via the North Ridge from Tibet three years after his first Everest climb. He completed the climb on Thursday, May 26 last along with team leader Lakpa Sherpa and two other Nepalese climbing partners. Martin has been based at Harcourt Street Station in Dublin for the last 21 of his 34 years as a guard. He left Ireland on April 9 and began his climb from Tibet on the night of April 12. Six weeks later, he completed the feat. He had hoped to attempt to summit between May 9 and 17, but bad weather conditions meant his attempt had to pushed back and he finally summitted at 11.30am local time on May 26. "This was my fourth time to climb on Everest and anything other than a summit would have been a failure for me," Martin candidly explained this week. Martin has been a keen mountaineer for 25 years. He met his team in Nepal in 2005. Since then they've climbed in 2007, 2009 and 2010, reaching a high of 8,300 metres last year, just 550 metres below summit height. It was this team that partly inspired Martin to attempt the Everest climb. "What inspired me more than anything to climb Mouth Everest was the sherpas I became friends with in Nepal," he explained. The final push was finding "no real challenge" when climbing Mount Kilimanjaro (the highest mountain in Africa at 5,895 metres high). Martin said he "always felt strong" on this year's climb, thanks to a "well prepared, well organised, well disciplined" team, hard work and luck. "I've trained hard for the last five years for this. It's not something that just comes natural or easy. You really have to work at it. This year my health held up very well and we were lucky with the weather. Strokes of good luck made it possible." Mixed feelings came into play however when the reality of death on the dangerous climb came into sharp focus. Martin got to know fellow Irish climber John Delaney well at Everest's Base Camp. News of his death just 50 metres from the summit on May 21 made Martin question whether or not to continue. "The night I heard I was going to just cancel everything and return home the next morning," he said. "I was devastated. I'd got to know John well at Base Camp and we'd built up a good relationship. It was absolutely devastating to me when the news was conveyed." Loyal to the last however, Martin decided to continue the climb so as not to let the rest of his team down. When he left his mark on the summit in the form of an Irish tri-colour thoughts of his fellow climber's death came back to him. "I didn't see John's body," he said. "I couldn't bring myself to look around." Tragedy aside, Martin said reaching the summit of Everest was not only a high point for him, but also for his employers An Garda Siochana. "I was delighted to be the first member of An Garda Siochana to put the flag on the summit." Praising the organisation, Martin said his employers had been nothing but accommodating around his bid to reach the top of the world. The admiration is most certainly mutual, with colleagues proudly displaying a picture of Martin at the summit of Everest in Harcourt Street Station. Though Martin's 93-year-old mother Kitty in Golden Grove near Coolderry might hope her son's climbing is over, he has no plans to hang up his hiking boots. "I'm not getting any younger," Martin agreed. "I might not plan any of the 8,000 metre peaks in the Himalayas, but there are lots of 6,000 metre peaks that are spectacular."