1News presenter Melissa Stokes looks back at the highs and lows of Kiwi mountaineer and double amputee Mark Inglis.
Looking back, it's one of those stories that other telly reporters hate you for. One guaranteed to have majestic pictures, a hint of danger, travelling in helicopters, a few nights away in one of our most majestic spots and some people with a great yarn to tell.
I'm not sure how the Mark Inglis story fell in my lap, most likely the time of the year, early January, when all the more experienced reporters took leave and newsrooms around the country were staffed by people like me, hopeful of their big break.
That summer, Inglis, a mountaineer who'd had his legs amputated after getting trapped in a blizzard on Aoraki Mt Cook 20 years before, was returning to try and summit the mountain on prosthetics.
Two decades ago, Inglis and his climbing mate Philip Doole were trapped in an ice cave they called middle peak hotel. They checked in for 14 days and sometimes worried if they'd ever be able to check out.
It's an event Inglis thinks about often. "My story is the story of middle peak hotel in 1982 that 324 hours that Phil and I spent in that ice cave and I guess, more importantly, it's what you do after it."
The plight of the two men was major news in 1982.
Rescuers were only able to search during breaks in atrocious weather conditions, taking a week to locate them, an army helicopter crashed during one rescue attempt.
Finally, after two weeks the pictures of the men being stretchered off the mountain ended a gripping story in our nation's news cycle. But for Inglis, the stay changed his life.
"I think the biggest thing that happened post middle peak hotel was I've got my gold standard for change and that was when Phil and I both had our legs amputated on that Christmas eve 1982 and that was really the opening of a door of a whole new opportunity in life."
He's not one to waste an opportunity, which leads us back to Aoraki Mt Cook in 2002, 20 years later. The climber had already had one failed attempt on the mountain after a problem with his prosthetics.
I remember being in the chopper circling near the summit of the mountain, the doors open, the bracing air and the camera operator swearing with delight of it all. You could see Inglis' newly designed technical climbing legs hauling him 3759 metres to the top. Those legs designed with Wayne Alexander are now in Te Papa.
Back on top of the mountain that changed his life. A test for himself and his legs because the next challenge was the highest peak of them all, Everest.
He knocked that bugger of in 2006 - the first double amputee to do so.
"I don't remember a lot apart from the fact it was minus 38, my fingers were getting awfully cold, and I know that 80 percent of the people who die on Everest die on the way down, so I thought I'd spent about 3 minutes there, but it was 12 in total.
"I had that real focus that I just have to get off that mountain, standing on top of the mountain is great, but by far the best view you can ever have of a mountain is when you get back down to the bottom and look back up."
He found himself back in a media storm again, after criticism for not assisting a dying climber.
"That was super hard," Inglis remembered. "The bullying that you have from people who didn't understand what the situation was, it made a major impact on both myself and my family and I have had to go and get some help to get through that."
These days he's zipping along biking trails he manages in Canterbury and uses his story as a motivational speaker. Spurred on by his motto that having a disability shouldn't define your life.
His 60 sets of prosthetic legs, testament to that.
"I think they are supposed to last about five years and mine seem to last about 18 months - two years. A lot of the legs, I've built myself with Wayne Alexander, we've built the climbing legs, the cycling legs, the ski legs. I've got trekking legs, ice climbing legs, I've got my gardening legs.
"They are really short because you don't' need to bend over and chainsaw legs they are aluminium so you don't' cut the leg off."
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