She was bad at finishing things. Then she conquered Everest

When Brigitte Muir reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1997, a feeling more of relief than joy came over her.

Breathing hard, with the odd cough, she said into her video camera: “Well, I’ve done it, and I’m only relieved, really.

Brigitte Muir at the summit of Mount Everest with Sheila the koala in 1997.

“No more up. Gosh, it was hard. I’m never, ever coming back again here. Only one time, it’s enough. And I’m totally buggered.”

On May 27, 1997, she became the first Australian woman to conquer Everest, and the first Australian to reach the top summit on all seven continents. The Age’s headline read: “At last our Brigitte is on top of the world.”

Her feat was front-page news in The Age for days.

The front page of June 2, 1997, reported that when she arrived in sunshine in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, Muir beamed and said it felt fantastic to be the first Australian to conquer Everest.

Brigitte Muir climbed Mount Everest in 1997 and still leads fundraising treks to the mountains below.Credit: Emma Cross

She said she could do with some tandoori chicken and a gin and tonic.

She told reporters she felt “really tired, but apart from that, I feel fine. Everything’s OK now. Right now all I need is a bath and a good sleep.”

Her achievement was sweeter because Muir had made three previous attempts on Everest, once almost dying when her headlamp went out. She spent the night outside, alone, as colleagues climbed on. But Muir said her experience and a willingness to turn back in poor conditions served her well.

In 1996, Muir was lower on Everest, waiting to ascend, when eight climbers trying to descend from the summit died in a blizzard.

Despite finally reaching the summit, she regrets taking off her oxygen mask to speak into her video recorder. On her descent, she developed a potentially fatal pulmonary oedema.

At Everest base camp, a Channel Seven news crew arrived in a helicopter to interview her. What followed was “a media circus”, she in a recent interview with The Age.

She wrote a book, made documentaries and did speaking tours.

She stopped climbing the highest summits in 1999 when a Danish friend died as the pair were climbing 8485-metre high Makalu, near Mount Everest.

“It was too sad,” Muir said. She later worked as a guide and mountain climbing teacher.

She started leading fundraising treks for the Australian Himalayan Foundation.

“My next one is a women’s trek, we’re going to the hills and mountains below Everest and visiting the village I’ve been going to since 2007.

“I love it. I love sharing the place, and people and the way of living,” she said.

Muir, born in Belgium, now lives in Natimuk, in western Victoria.

Recently at a talk in Robe, South Australia, she met a pilot who flew solo around Australia, aged in her 40s.

“She told me she got the inspiration to do it from what I did,” Muir said.

The Everest climb erased a bugbear of Muir’s.

“I was a girl who was good at starting things and not finishing them. I’d just lose interest. And this was something that I really wanted to take to the end, to see if I could do it.“

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