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BEND, Ore. — Wendy Booker's left side is numb from her toes to the top of her rib cage. Yet somehow, she has managed to climb the tallest peaks on six continents. For Booker to complete the climbing feat known as the Seven Summits, just one peak remains: Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth.
Living with multiple sclerosis, Booker says, is much like climbing a mountain.
"I wanted to show what life with MS is like," she says. "It's a struggle. You can't always get to the top."
Booker, 54, (pictured) will strive to become the first person with multiple sclerosis to climb the highest mountain on each of the world's seven continents when she attempts Everest this spring.
At 29,035 feet, Mount Everest towers above the Himalayas on the border of the south Asian countries of Nepal and Tibet.
A single mother of three who splits her time between Boston and Boulder, Colo., Booker will have plenty of help from Central Oregon climbers.
Booker, who has received international media attention on her quest, plans to climb Everest with Brooke Barnes of Mountain Link guide service in Bend. The two have trained at Mount Bachelor, practicing ladder crossings while wearing crampons, in preparation for the dangerous Khumbu Icefall on Everest.
Barnes and Booker have reached together the top of three of the Seven Summits: Mount Vinson Massif in Antarctica, Aconcagua in Argentina, and Mount Kosciuszko in Australia.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From the intro to an AP feature about Wendy Booker:
