Saturday, August 30, 1997

Everest survivor uses experience to climb different mountaintop

By LORETTA FULTON / Abilene Reporter-News

One mountaintop experience led to another for Beck Weathers.

He wishes the first one hadn't happened, but since it did, he is using it as a transformation to the second.

On May 10, 1996, Weathers was with a group of 30 adventurers trying to make it to the top of the world's tallest mountain, Mt. Everest, the mountain top by which all others are measured.

A sudden, violent storm trapped the group, leading to the deaths of eight, including three professional guides. Weathers and a female climber were believed to be dead and left on the side of the mountain. Weathers' family in Dallas were notified of his death.

But the next morning Weathers awoke from a premature cryogenic experience and found himself alive, but barely. He lost his right hand and part of his left hand and nose to frostbite. He mananged to stagger into the base camp 300 yards away.

Now, after eight major surgeries to repair the damage, Weathers works seven days a week as a pathologist in Dallas and speaks to groups as a therapeutic and enlightening sidelight.

He was guest speaker Tuesday at McMurry University's Opening Convocation. In an interview prior to his speech, Weathers talked about the second mountain top experience -- the spiritual aspect of his ordeal.

He was glad to know that freshmen at McMurry are introduced to ethics right away as part of the core curriculum.

"Students are filled with a sense of ambition and drive," he said. So was he, and he hopes his message to the students will temper that drive.

"You're going to have to deal with life as it is," the 50-year-old Weathers said. Bad times will come, but something can be learned from that.

"That's how you know how good the good parts are," he said.

Raised as a Methodist in an Air Force family, Weathers attended many churches and served as an altar boy. However, over the years, his busy schedule kept him from being a regular church goer.

And his message is not about attending church or having a formalized religion. He has been asked, he said, if he prayed during his near-death ordeal.

"I didn't go down on one knee, I didn't say, ÔDear Heavenly Father,' and I didn't give a text and follow with an Amen," he said.

"But I'd have to say to the extent that you have in your heart a love for your family and others to guide you that that is a prayer," Weathers said. "You certainly don't have to stand there and say that for that message to be true."

Despite not offering a formal prayer himself, Weathers later learned that "there were a great many people who were kind enough to take part of their lives and pray for me on that mountain. I think maybe that made a big difference for me."

Weathers said his experience didn't revolutionize his spiritual awareness other than to make him more open to that part of his existence.

Something Weathers said he learned from the experience is "there is a real power in prayer both for those who give it and certainly for those who receive it."

As so often happens, Weathers' plans for his life changed dramatically in that mountain top experience. He had put his spiritual life on hold until he got older and had more time.

"My getting older occurred pretty quickly," he said. "I've had a chance to have to confront that a few decades perhaps before my neat, planned existence would have had scheduled."

He hopes the young people he addresses hear that message and take it to heart.