Air Force Team Reaches Everest Summit

Air Force Team Reaches Everest Summit
May 23, 2013
Seattle Times
by Hal Bernton

SEATTLE _ Even after repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Maj. Robert Marshall, an Air Force Special Operations pilot from Mercer Island, Wash., has rarely been content to stay at home.

Instead, he has hungered to climb mountains.

On Monday, Marshall was one of four active-duty airmen to climb to the summit of Mount Everest.

The ascent was the final climb in the USAF 7 Summits Challenge, co-founded by Marshall in 2005, which has sent Air Force climbing teams to the top of the highest peaks on every continent to honor fallen comrades and raise money for military charities. Marshall climbed six of the peaks, forced to retreat from Mount McKinley when he was called back from leave because of an upcoming deployment.

Once on top of Everest, he took off his oxygen mask to repeat a ritual begun on earlier peaks he had summited.

"I dropped down and did 30 push-ups," Marshall said in a satellite-phone interview Wednesday evening. "Everyone else on the summit was giving me a strange look, like 'What's this guy on?'"
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