Laura has a history of overcoming and her challenge of becoming an “echomilist” also arises to carry out the education project “If someone believed in me”, and her goal is to place education “as high as possible”, according to she herself said.
There was another woman from Mendoza, Nancy Silvestrini, the first Argentine to reach the summit in an eight thousand, but she died on the descent, on July 5, 2003, at the age of 31, Gasherbrum I -known as Hidden Peak (Pico Oculto)-, of 8,068 meters.
Laura Horta achieved the long-awaited summit on September 28 at 11:45 Nepalese time.
“I am immensely happy! I lived the summit of Manaslu with so much joy! There are endless deep emotions that will pass through my heart day by day and I will share them with you. And today I am already very happy, back home, together with my three children (30, 25 and 23 years old) and my affections,” Horta told Télam today.
Regarding her goal, the athlete said: “I took education, the rights of all women and the flag of my country, Argentina, to the top of one of the highest mountains in the world.”
“This 8,000 is in Nepal, in the Himalayan chain. There are 14 mountains above 8,000 meters on the entire planet, and I have decided to go for the Manaslu summit, which I was finally able to reach. Manaslu means the ‘mountain of the spirits’, and its name won me over. It is one of the most technical hills,” he said.
Manaslu is a very dangerous climb and according to statistics it is the sixth deadliest mountain of the 14 ‘eight-thousanders’, and Himalayanism is mostly male.
The university professor has not been in mountaineering for many years, since only six years ago she started in the activity and the first mountain she reached the summit of was Aconcagua, at 6,956 meters, the highest peak in America.
Horta is a member of the Team Aventura running team and her coach, Sergio Furlán, motivated her to face the challenge.
This expedition has a cost of 25 thousand dollars. Horta sold a van to pay for a trip to the Everest base 6 months ago and there he hired the Dream Carrier Trek expedition and met Pasham, a Spanish-speaking sherpa who was his guide.
They had days of anxiety and a lot of anguish, because once in camp 3, at 6,800 meters, they had to go down because there were several days of rain and danger of snow avalanches, but finally on September 28 they had a window of mild weather and they decided to attack the summit.
Horta’s feat takes on added dimension as the same day she reached the summit, renowned American mountain skier Hilaree Nelson was found dead on Manaslu after reaching the peak two days earlier and being swept down 1,500 meters by an avalanche.
The university dean, who carried an 8-kilo oxygen tube on her back, assured: “Being an eight-miler is a very difficult undertaking, more so for a woman, and on top of that, as is my case, I am not a mountaineer. On several sides Conquering this summit has been a great challenge, and what I wanted to show is that you can, and you can continue to be a mother, continue to be a housewife, and continue to be a teacher and dean”.
“I have always liked challenges and being able to show that we have a special strength. I had to start from scratch, but when we have conviction and commitment to something we want, for our ideals and our purposes, we must not leave things aside even if they can seem impossible”, closed Horta.
The athlete, after descending from the Himalayas, had three fingers on her hand without mobility, due to the intense cold she had to endure (-38°) and severe blisters, for which she was admitted to a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, until He was recovering and after complying with the health protocol rules, he was discharged.
Source: Ambito
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