Chinese mountaineer Xia Boyu knows that the best way to accomplish a goal is to just keep moving.
The 69-year-old who lost his legs to frostbite while attempting to summit Mt. Everest 43 years ago finally conquered the 29,000-foot mountain on Monday.
Xia’s first attempt in 1975 was thwarted by bad weather about 200 meters from the summit. On the descent, he gave his sleeping bag to a climber who was not feeling well. Though selfless, the move cost him his feet due to horrible frostbite.
He started hiking and climbing again with prosthetic legs, but was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1996 and needed to have his legs amputated below the knee.
In 2014, avalanches derailed his plans. Then in 2015, he had to abandon his climb after the Nepal earthquake. A year later, he again made it to within a stone’s throw of the Everest summit, but dangerous storms forced him to turn back 100 meters from the peak.
His fifth attempt was almost curbed by the Nepal government, which banned double amputee and blind mountaineers from making the trek up. However, the restriction was lifted by Nepal’s highest court in March.
“Climbing Mount Everest is my dream. I have to realize it. It also represents a personal challenge, a challenge of fate,” Xia told Agence France-Presse before his trip to Mt. Everest.
He reached the summit at approximately 7:30 a.m. on Monday with seven members of his team.
“Boyu finally won his 40-year-long battle for Mount Everest,” Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, the managing director at Imagine Treks, who accompanied the Chinese climber, told the Himalayan Times.
Xia becomes the second double amputee to ever conquer the mountain. Mark Inglis, a climber from New Zealand, “broke trail” and accomplished the feat in 2006.
Just minutes before Xia reached the summit, Steve Plain conquered his goal of becoming the fastest person to climb the tallest mountains on all seven continents. He did it in 117 days, four years after he broke his neck in a bodysurfing accident.
“Three and a half years ago I was lying in hospital with a broken neck and at that time set myself the goal,” he wrote on Facebook after reaching the summit.
Congratulations to Xia Boyu and Steve Plain for remaining steadfast in their pursuit of reaching the top of one of the most harrowing mountains on the planet.