Those who have been more than eight thousand meters above sea level—and have returned to tell the tale—have faced an irony: while you are sitting on top of the world, you are dying. Atmospheric pressure drops, breathing becomes agitated, tiredness invades, cheeks and feet become numb, and the skin is on the verge of freezing. To be a mountaineer is to be torn between glory and survival. Always against time. And with a dream to be willing to die for.
Silvia Vásquez-Lavado (48 years old) has spent her last twenty years running that risk. Not for fame, he says, but to free himself from his demons. When she climbed to the summit of Everest in 2016 and the news made waves in Peru – the country where she lived until she was eighteen to leave for the United States in 1992 to study on a scholarship at a university – because of her status as a gay woman, she had learned as a mantra that the highest peak on Earth was not created to be conquered but to embrace its majesty with humility and respect.
"It's a spirit to be honored. I consider Everest as a mother," reflects Vásquez Lavado, from Cerro San Cristóbal, Lima's viewpoint. We are 400 meters above sea level and yet the city looks so tiny. A jungle of ants and miniature cars on the move. How it will be from the Himalayas. Much more than indescribable. At that height it is impossible to look down, because the below does not exist. It is covered by clouds. Only sounds are heard: the slapping air and the creaking of avalanches.
In 2015 Vázquez-Lavado climbed the Vinson Massif, the highest mountain in Antarctica at 4,892 meters above sea level. Silvia Vásquez-Lavado (Courtesy)
For a couple of weeks, this woman with messy silver hair has been in Peru promoting the Spanish edition of El abrazo de la montaña (Planeta), the testimonial work she wrote during the pandemic as a therapeutic exercise and which was originally published in English. She often says that they are three books in one: an approach to mountaineering, the community she integrated to ascend Everest, and her personal story, full of self-destruction. Her tendency to alcoholism took hold of her by triggering three issues: discovering and accepting that she liked women, the aggressiveness with which she had been treated by her father, and remembering the sexual abuse she suffered from a family friend when she was a child.
"The problem for many survivors is that we are like a walking time bomb. The macabre coincidence is that at some point in my life I ended up working in a vodka company," says Silvia Vásquez-Lavado, who woke up several times in hospitals intoxicated by having drunk to unconsciousness, crashed a bus due to her drunkenness and was imprisoned for it, and once her apartment almost caught fire because she left the stove on. In fact, when he came down from Everest he drank liquor for two days in a row. It was his way of celebrating, even if he was hurting himself.
Until she looked in front of the mirror and made a promise: "Silvia, if you're going to write this book, you're going to have to be sober for the rest of your life." While he did not follow the twelve-step approach recommended by Alcoholics Anonymous, he did pursue therapies, including one focused on self-compassion. He is winning the battle: in July he will be five years without tasting alcohol. "Even if he brought me a pisco from Mars (laughs) I wouldn't taste it. For what? What revolutionized me was understanding that if you only have yourself, you can also give yourself love and forgive yourself," he says.
Vázquez-Lavado at the top of Everest, 8,848 meters above sea level, in 2016.Silvia Vásquez-Lavado (Courtesy)
A vital episode of this healing process was his first approach to ayahuasca, that millenary plant that reveals who you are in case you have prepared yourself conscientiously to receive it. It was thanks to a revelation of ayahuasca that Silvia felt the urge to climb. He understood that he needed to be breathless ascending and descending peaks to gain great lessons. In 2006 he crowned Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania. The following year, the Elbrus, in Russia. In 2014, the Aconcagua in Argentina. In 2015 there were three peaks: Kosciuzko in Australia, Jaya in Indonesia, and Vinson Massif, the highest mountain in Antarctica; and in 2016 Everest, in Nepal.
On many occasions death has haunted her. "That's as far as I've come. This is the end," it has been repeated. It happened in 2017 when he climbed the Acatenango volcano in Guatemala and survived a storm. Of the expedition, six died and two were saved. It happened again in 2021, a few months after the presentation of his book, when he reached the top of the snowy Coropuna, in Arequipa, and the pressure began to go down. "My first Peruvian mountain and I'm going to leave. The fault was mine: I had not studied it enough and sent myself. I was angry because I was going to miss the book launch. I'll come back as Gasper (laughs)," he told himself. Fortunately, other mountaineers warmed him. Up there, when the frost begins to slowly shut down your body, what is urgent is sugar and hugs. Silvia ate chocolates, felt warm, and eventually recovered.
In 2017, on his first anniversary of Everest, he received a gift from the mountain: a brain tumor was found at the base of the cerebellum after having suffered an accident with his bicycle in San Francisco, where he resides. The doctor has forbidden him to climb. But she, who last year returned to experience ayahuasca sessions, feels that several missions in the mountains still await her. Returning to Everest is one of them.
Silvia Vásquez-Lavado in Lima (Peru). Angela Ponce
For several years now, Silvia Vásquez-Lavado has caught the attention of Hollywood. American singer and actress Selena Gomez is interested in playing Silvia and bringing her story to the screen. After a couple of versions of the script, the mountaineer says that it would no longer be a feature film, but rather a streaming series. They are about to make that decision. Meanwhile, she is looking for allies. Last week he met with Women's Minister Nancy Tolentino in her office. Her desire is to hold conversations in Lima's neighborhoods about shame and empowerment. She is affected by the various cases of violence against women that dominate the news on a daily basis. Undoubtedly, another of his pending missions.
Follow all the international information on Facebook and Twitter, or in our weekly newsletter.