Photo: DANIEL SANNUM LAUTEN / AFP / Getty Images
Naomi Uemura was born in 1941 in the farming village of Kokufu (now Toyooka) in the region of Tajima in northern Hyōgo Prefecture. The youngest of seven children, grew up surrounded by abundant nature in Tajima, an area also known for its harsh winters.
He started his climbing career in college and joined the alpine club of Meiji University. A novice climber, during his first outing with the group to Mount Shirouma in Nagano Prefecture, he struggled to keep up with the other climbers.
After graduating from college, Uemura avoided the path of his fellow job seekers and departed to travel the world, boarding a ship to Los Angeles with only $110 in the pocket. For the next four and a half years he would go around the world in search of new challenges.
Almost immediately he began racking up records: he teamed up with guide Pemba Tenzing to make the first successful ascent of Ngojumba Kang (Tenzing Peak) in the Himalayas of 7916 meters, a feat accomplished as part of a Meiji University alpine club expedition, and completed the first solo raft trip down the Amazon River, a trip of about 6, 000 kilometres.
With an insatiable appetite for adventure, Uemura crossed the Seven Summits of the world, conquering peaks such as Mont Blanc (then considered the highest in Europe), Kilimanjaro in Africa and the Aconcagua of South America, and made repeated incursions into the polar regions.
In May 1970, joined the Japanese Alpine Club expedition to Mount Everest and was the first Japanese, and only the twenty-fourth person, to stand on top of the highest peak in the world.
The more he considered his goals, the more he believed that solo efforts, which had not been his main focus up to that point, better matched what he wanted. expected to achieve.
The decision opened up new prospects and reignited a long-standing ambition for Uemura to make a solo crossing of Antarctica. Shifting his focus from mountaineering to polar exploration, he set his sights on the most extreme prizes.
In April 1973, put his nascent skills to the test, setting out on a sled pulled by dogs on a round trip along the northwest coast of the island, covering a distance of about 3. kilometers on your own.
His next outing, a solo voyage of 12.04 kilometers across the Arctic from Greenland to Alaska via the northern coast of Canada, tested his polar survival skills to the limit.
Uemura undertook the exhausting journey in December of 1974 and spent the following year and half navigating the icy and rugged expanse. His arrival in Alaska in May 1974 was a huge triumph, his success against all odds solidifying his reputation as a world-class explorer.
At 1979 returned to Denali with the goal of making a solo winter ascent of the mountain, which he accomplished on 12 February, his forty-third birthday. But the next day, in the midst of inclement weather, he disappeared when he was coming down from the top.
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