McAllen doctor climbs Europe's highest mountain

McALLEN — Dr. Richard Gillett was hurting. He had been trying to reach the peak of Europe’s tallest mountain, Mount Elbrus in Russia, since 2 a.m. That was more than nine hours ago.

On his way up, the McAllen ophthalmologist saw some hikers vomiting. Others were coughing blood.

“I am hyperventilating and my heart is” — he puts his hand on his chest and mimes heart palpitations. “(I think), ‘What the hell am I doing here?’”

Like a mantra, he kept repeating, “This is the most stupidest thing I’ve ever done; this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” he said.

In that moment he concluded he needed the help of a professional.

“When I get back — I have a friend who is a psychiatrist — I’ll go see him and find out why I am doing this,” Gillett recalled thinking.

“I feel like I’m dying,” he said, describing the experience. “Your heart is just racing. … You are breathing so hard that you can’t drink water.”

His state of mind soon changed when he reached the summit.

“All of a sudden you get this feeling of euphoria and all the pain goes away, and it is just like an epiphany, just reaching the top of the mountain,” he said. “Then after 10 minutes you think, ‘What is the next mountain I am going to climb?’”

Gillett discovered his passion three years ago while hiking Kilimanjaro, a mountain in the East African nation of Tanzania, with his son.

He found his next goal as he was “fooling around on the Internet.”

This summer he accomplished it.

“Most people think that the Mont Blanc in France is the highest mountain in Europe — it is 15,782 feet — but it is not,” he said. “The highest mountain in Europe is in Russia, is called Elbrus and is 18,510 (feet) — it is another 3,000 feet higher” than Mont Blanc.

Elbrus is located in a remote southwest corner of Russia, on the border with Georgia and Chechnya.

“Those are war-torn countries and they don’t get much tourism because of the civil war,” Gillett said.

Elbrus is a rare, twin-peak mountain — the name means “woman’s breast” in the local language.

The western peak is 67 feet higher than the eastern peak.

“Everybody kind of climbs the western peak,” Gillett said. “You can’t tell the difference at all.”

Gillett signed up with an eight-person group out of Washington.

From the United States he flew to Moscow in the middle of a heat wave. Gillett ended up in a hotel with no air conditioner, and the windows did not open.

“In four days, 1,200 people died because they do not know how to take the heat,” he said.

From Moscow, Gillett flew to Mineralnye Vody, the closest airport to Elbrus. From there, his group drove to Cheget, a very small village in the middle of a pine forest.

“I thought (south Russia) was cold and ugly, but no, there are some places that are really, really pretty,” Gillett said.

After getting their bodies acclimated to the high altitudes, the group and its three guides began the ascent.

On his way up, Gillett discovered how much he relies on his equipment.

Beside the crampons — steel claws that attach to a climber’s boots — Gillett had an ice axe in one hand and a ski pole in the other.

“I was going up and I was doing pretty good, and there was a guy coming down and you can see he was real tired and unstable, and when he was passing me, he fell,” Gillett said.

“He fell on top of me and knocked me down,” but the man was attached to a climbing partner by a rope, and the second man stabilized him, Gillett said. Meanwhile, Gillett had to rely on his ice axe to gain a purchase on the mountain and prevent himself from sliding down.

“It was scary for a few minutes,” he said.

Back in McAllen again after the summer adventure, Gillett said he plans to continue summiting mountains.

“(Hikers) leave their wives at home, climb up a mountain (and) get this rush when they get to the top,” he said. “It’s addicting.”

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Martha L. Hernández covers Mission, western Hidalgo County and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4846.