Scaling a height as challenging as Everest
View(s):On a life’s mission to climb the highest mountain on each of the seven continents,
Johann Peries talks of his most recent expedition to Denali in North America
By Shannon Salgado
Back in Sri Lanka after one of his mountaineering adventures, Johann Peries sat down with Kumar de Silva in Hilton Colombo’s Moonstone/Amethyst Room to talk about his recent three-week expedition to summit Denali, the highest peak in North America.
Johann, an artist, singer and one of the country’s most sought-after hairstylists with salons in Sri Lanka and Melbourne, made headlines along with Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala in 2016 as the first Sri Lankans to attempt to summit Mount Everest. Jayanthi reached the summit becoming the first Sri Lankan and first Lankan woman to achieve such a monumental goal but due to a streak of bad luck, Johann was unable to do so himself. Undeterred, he returned in 2018 to finish what he started and became the first Sri Lankan male to summit Everest.
Johann on Denali
Johann has since climbed mountains all over the world and is on a mission to scale the seven summits, the highest mountain on each of the seven continents. He has successfully climbed Mount Everest (Asia), Mount Kilimanjaro (Africa), Mount Kosciuszko (Australia), Mount Aconcagua (South America) and now Mount Denali (North America). With Denali however, he was unable to summit due to severe weather conditions – the worst in 25 years – which had all climbers returning to base since advancing further would have been potentially life-threatening. The other two peaks in these seven summits are Mount Elbrus in Russia and Mount Vinson in Antarctica.
“Challenging,” is how Johann summed up the Denali climb. He even equates it to being on par with Everest because of the conditions surrounding the climb. “It was more than I ever imagined. I knew the difficulties I was facing. I had already done the research on it, as one would do, but when you actually face reality, it is something totally different. The company that I was going with advised me and said just because you’ve done Everest, don’t think that this would be easy.”
Comparing the expedition to Denali with that of Everest, he says that Everest was mentally challenging because there is a chance you won’t come back while Denali was physically challenging. One reason was the absence of porters, unlike on Everest, which meant Johann and the rest of the six-member climbing party had to carry loads of 30 to 40 pounds on their backs and pull another 40 pounds on a sledge.
Asked if he was disappointed that he had to turn back when he was only a few hundred metres away from the peak, he says, “A lot of people would look at this differently in a different way, but for an explorer or adventurer, it is the journey that counts. Yes, summiting is a bonus that you get with it. It’s the whole journey, and that itself is a victory.”
“We couldn’t fight nature. One day before the summit, we were told there was a storm coming in. We had to make the decision, if not, we may have been stuck there for two weeks and we didn’t have the facility to be there for two weeks.”
Johann is quite relieved to be back home, unharmed and in one piece as there were quite a few climbers who lost fingers and toes due to frostbite, as well as others with broken appendages. One climber from another party who had broken ribs had to wait two whole days to be airlifted due to the weather conditions. Keeping the momentum going, Johann is planning to travel to Russia next month to tackle the sixth summit on the list, Mount Elbrus, depending on the situation in the country which is volatile.
One of the reasons he continues to climb and trek, aside from his obvious passion, is that he wants to achieve something for himself and this is a goal that Johann has set himself to keep moving forward. Another reason he was adamant about the seven summits is also to make a mark and take the Sri Lankan flag to the seven corners of the world and show the rest of the world how resilient Sri Lanka is. “To say that we’ll always be up there. We’re very resilient and we are people who will fight and we will not give up. I am almost certain that in the future we will be up there so I think we need to have that drive in us to take it forward – to take the country forward.”
Talking about the pivotal moments in all of his climbs, Johann counts summiting Mount Everest as the most significant. “I think standing on top of the world and realising that I was at the highest point at that time. What made it real, what made me realise that this is reality was when I saw the curve of the earth from the top.”
At base camp
Johann, like most mountaineers and adventurers, abstains from using the term ‘conquer’ when talking about reaching the summit. “You ascend, you summit a mountain, but can never conquer a mountain. Mount Denali is a good example. You cannot conquer nature. I don’t think it’s the right word to use to say that we can conquer nature because we are not greater than nature. We are not greater than the elements that we face in the world. So we summit the mountain and we conquer ourselves in the process, we conquer the fears. We conquer the challenges that we put upon ourselves and that’s how we always look at it.”
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