Mount Everest climb seeks to help combat veterans

A Helen business owner plans to climb the tallest mountain on Earth – Mount Everest – as part of his personal mission to raise awareness for the struggles veterans face when they come back from combat.

Josh Garrison, owner of Alpine Dispensary, said he served in the military and CIA for 22 years combined including more than 50 deployments in the Middle East during his time in service.

“I spent about 13 years over there,” Garrison said last week. “Working with a lot of guys during that time, but when all of the deploying stopped, we just had a rash of suicides. We lost 15 guys in 10 months.”

Garrison said he lost a very close friend of his that he had worked with for 20 years. The losses he experienced in that time made him want to draw more attention to the hardships veterans are facing. He decided his personal mission would be to make more people aware that 22 veterans commit suicide every day.

“You would think that’s an impossible statistic, until you realize how many suicides there’s been. I mean, everybody knows somebody, especially around these military communities,” said Garrison.

Garrison has made videos explaining what has helped him in his fight with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and hopes others will be able to overcome their trauma.

“And one of the problems I have with PTSD is they ask veterans to come home and reintegrate into society. Well, society is all screwed up right now, and it’s hard for veterans to come home and say, ‘OK I’ve just got to turn off all of this knowledge that I have’... And the final step I came up with, in my seven steps for how I got over my PTSD, was having a mission, and always having a mission out in front of you. It gives my mind something to think about when it starts to wander,” said Garrison.

Now that Garrison has the opportunity to climb Everest, he wants to dedicate his trek in the name of his mission to bring awareness to veterans issues.

Garrison has completed three training climbs over the past year in preparation for Everest. The first two were in Mexico on the volcanic mountains Iztaccihuatl and Pico De Orizaba. From there, he traveled to Aconcagua in Argentina. In addition to his climbs, Garrison has also been training in an altitude gym in Atlanta to prepare his lungs for the altitude he will be facing. Garrison has completed all of his practice climbs with Madison Mountaineering, which is a Seattle-based guide service that covers seven of the world’s highest summits and beyond. Garret Madison is the president and founder of the company and he is one of the top climbers in the world.

Garrison left for Everest on March 30. He will spend a few days in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. From there they will fly to Namche to begin the eight-day trek up to base camp, which sits about 18,000 feet above sea level. When the team reaches base camp they will go through training exercises to prepare to climb the summit. There will be 12 people on the trek including the guides and they will have to learn to work together as a team. They will start slowly going up and get their bodies used to the extreme conditions.

“We’ll go up to camp one – your body is going to start shutting down, and then you’ll come back down to base camp. Then you’ll go up to camp two, but try to only come down to one. Then you go up to three, back to two, four to three. And you keep rotating your way through those camps, allowing your body to recover each time. And then, from camp four, once you get a weather window you summit,” said Garrison.

He hopes that they will be able to reach the top by mid-May, and that it will only take around six weeks to climb summit.

Garrison is also planning on climbing Lhotse while he is up there, which is the fourth highest mountain in the world. After they summit Everest, they will go back down to camp four, where they will sleep for four hours and then summit Lhotse.

“We’ll do two 8,000 meter peaks in less than 24 hours,” said Garrison. “That will probably be one of the first 25 people in the world to do that.”

Garrison is not nervous at all for his trip of a lifetime.

“I’m just excited,” he said. “I’ve bought so much gear, and I just can’t think about anything else right now. I’m already there.”

If you would like to follow along with Garrison’s progress on Everest, you can receive updates from madisonmountaineering.com/dispatches. The team will leave dispatches on the website daily to keep people updated on their day to day activities.