Showing the way to other Omanis

It wasn’t success that inspired Nadhira al Harthy to challenge Mount Everest, the most daunting of all mountains, but failure. Yet, she succeeded where so few have dared to venture, and in doing so inspired a nation and generations.
Al Harthy wasn’t one of those serial winners we all know; she wasn’t set upon mountaineering all of her life, but a typical young Omani woman, a diligent student who graduated from Al Rustaq University and went to work in the education sector. Teaching briefly, she supervised a student group on a geographical field trip to Mount Kilimanjaro, where, suffering from altitude sickness, she failed to make the summit.
But she was made of sterner stuff, and, her interest piqued, she threw herself wholeheartedly at the many challenges of climbing, from the very basics, including how to use her physical attributes in concert with the psychological demands of simply “looking a long way up and a long way down,” as she told me in 2019.
She trained determinedly for the UTMB event on Al Jabal Al Akhdhar and was stung by her inability to complete it, the DNF only increasing her focus. She worked with Khalfan al Siyabi to develop her physique even further, and even an abortive climb at Ama Dablam in Nepal later that year, 2018, did little more than reinforce her confidence in her abilities.
And here’s where it all came together, and an Omani woman, a daughter of the Sultanate of Oman, a child of the sea and sand, put it all together, and in June 2019, Nadhira al Harthy cemented her name, her reputation and her strength of character, at the Everest, on top of the world, where so few have been, where according to folklore ‘to face the Everest is to know there can be no expectation of mercy.’
Edmund Hillary, a modest, shy beekeeper from New Zealand, was the first to conquer the ‘staircase to the stars’ in 1952, with so many going before, failing, and so many before, both successful and otherwise. Yet none of those should demean the reality of Al Harthy’s achievement. And she would go on, always challenging herself and ‘her’ mountains, with Madly, Ama Dablam, K2, the Matterhorn, Nd Nanga Parbat, the so-called killer mountain, all proving she was much more than a ‘one-trick pony.’
I interviewed her twice, post-Everest, and found sitting opposite me a young woman, much younger than her years, with a nature, a manner, and a confidence that distanced arrogance. She had a clarity of purpose that wasn’t overwhelming, but discomforting in its way, and evident in my past interactions with Frankie Dettori, Paula Radcliffe, Jonah Lomu, and John Walker, all masters of their respective fields.
She had a bold eye! Clear, bright, and so intense. She hated to lose at anything, and confessed that this side of her character only emerged as she learned of the possibilities that lay ahead of her. I confessed to being scared, no, terrified, of heights.
She didn’t want to be idolised, but to ‘show the way,’ to other Omanis, boys or girls, and for them to know that nothing comes easy, but that success is all the richer for the struggle.
I will never forget the strong, forthright, bold woman who tolerated my intrusion into her past, present, and future, with such openness, her faith secure, her intent certain, and that future in the hands of fate. I also know that none of us want to ‘go,’ but if she was to, to do so doing what she had grown to love.
Edmund Hillary spoke of looking out from the summit of Everest, and “seeing another route to climb the mountain,” and thinking, “This can’t be the end of everything.” In Al Harthy’s life... it was just the beginning. She is mourned and celebrated, but clearly chosen to be more than a teacher... an inspiration.

Ray Petersen The writer is a media consultant