NJ Army veteran with one lung scaled Kilimanjaro. What's his next challenge?

By Philip DeVencentis, NorthJersey.com

For some people, it is a check mark on a bucket list.

Others may view it as a chance to escape their humdrum routines — or as an opportunity to get immersed in a culture that most can only dream about or read about in National Geographic Magazine.

Everyone takes away something from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, and for Army veteran Adam Faatz, it was strength.

“It was one of the hardest things that I’ve ever done in my life,” Faatz said of the 19,341-foot mountain climb.

That Faatz completed the nine-day hike was noteworthy. But that he did it with his debilitating condition was unprecedented.

Faatz, 36, a borough resident who graduated from Hawthorne High School in 2006, has pulmonary fibrosis. His left lung was removed in November 2018, and the disease has scarred about a third of his right lung.

On account of his illness, he said, Guiness World Records has approved his successful mountain climb as a new record.

Faatz uses an inhaler — like what an asthma patient may use — and he trains hard nearly every day with a doctor of sports medicine at a clinic on West Crescent Avenue in Allendale.

It is there that he was introduced to a form of training called Hypoxico, which is meant to simulate exercise at a high altitude. He walks on a treadmill while wearing a mask that reduces his oxygen intake. He said he also prepared for the Kilimanjaro climb by hiking what are known as the 46 Adirondack High Peaks, including Mount Marcy — the tallest point in New York.

Faatz said he believes that he developed the lung disease from prolonged exposure to burn pits during his military deployment to Iraq. Fumes and particulate matter emanating from them have been compared to Agent Orange for post-9/11 veterans.

Open-air combustion of trash was a common military practice in Afghanistan and Iraq, though the Department of Veterans Affairs states on its website that most pits are “now closed out.”

President Joe Biden signed legislation called the PACT Act in August 2022 to widen health care benefits for veterans who, like Faatz, say they were exposed to the pits.

Biden has said his late son, Beau Biden, whose military service overlapped Faatz’s, was exposed to the toxic pits during his deployment to Iraq. He died of glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer, in May 2015.

Faatz said he has been fighting with Veterans Affairs for full disability benefits since his life-altering procedure more than five years ago.

As that case drags its way through the appeals process, Faatz said, he is finding comfort in scaling the world’s highest mountains.‘Very proud moment’

Kilimanjaro, a dormant volcano, was enough to charm Ernest Hemingway.

It is unsurprising, then, how more than 30,000 people — including many lay climbers — try to reach its peak each year.

Jim Sumpter, an expert climber and a co-owner of Florida-based Endeavor Expeditions, which has led teams to the top of Kilimanjaro three times, said the mountain is the most attempted ascent of the fabled Seven Summits — the tallest mountains on each of the seven continents.

It also has the highest failure rate, he said.

“People have a misconception that it’s easy,” Sumpter said. “It’s very tempting to nonprofessional climbers.”

Sumpter, 56, an Army veteran of the Gulf War and a native of New Orleans, said Kilimanjaro is appealing because it is so accessible.

Unlike other lofty summits, the African mountain does not require technical skills.

There are no crampons or ropes involved, Sumpter said. Nor is there a need, he said, to learn how to rescue a fellow climber out of a glacier crevasse. “Think of it more as a very long trek,” he said.

Sumpter and his wife, Kristi Paxton, a yoga instructor, guided Faatz and 10 other Americans to the top of Kilimanjaro last month. They were assisted on their hike by more than three dozen porters, local men and women who carried most of their gear on their heads.

Faatz said he landed at Kilimanjaro International Airport in Tanzania on Jan. 3 and that the hike started two days later.

The white-capped mountain was visible from the Plexiglas cabin windows of the airplane as it made its descent.

“It’s the only part of the continent with snow on it,” Faatz said. “And you’re like, ‘Oh, boy, what am I getting myself into?’ You can’t fathom what 20,000 feet looks like until you’ve seen it in person.”

Faatz said the most difficult leg of the hike came as the team left its campsite at 15,250 feet — a height that is taller than any mountain in Colorado — to make its last push toward the summit, known as Uhuru Peak.

They departed in the middle of the night, Faatz said. Wearing headlamps, they first scaled to a resting place in a cave — then, to the rim of the volcanic cone.

The wearied climbers finally made it to the mountaintop crater at dawn.

“The sun starts to rise, and you actually realize that you’re above the rising sun, and the clouds,” Faatz said. “When you see that, it’s emotional. It’s a very proud moment.”

Faatz started an internet fundraiser before his mountain climb to help cover the cost of medical bills for lung transplant patients. As of Friday, the donation drive had collected almost $31,000.

It will remain online through next month.

Faatz plans to conquer Mount Baker this summer. The active glacier-covered volcano — the third-tallest peak in Washington — is 143 miles southeast of Vancouver, British Columbia.

Faatz said the weeklong trip will teach alpine climbing skills, such as skiing and snowshoeing, to prepare him for his next challenge: Mount Everest.