Woman carves out career in wilderness medicine

Susan Purvis got an unexpected e-mail a while back.

A group of scientists and explorers were headed to the Danakil desert in Ethiopia - dubbed the hottest place on Earth - to make a documentary for the BBC and Discovery Channel about how people and animals survive there. They needed a medic from the United States to accompany them and Purvis, a renowned wilderness and high-altitude medicine trainer, was their top pick.

Purvis, of Whitefish, didn't think twice about signing on for the extreme expedition. Her mantra, after all, is "life's always about searching" for the next big adventure.

"I was the only one who didn't get sick," she said about the trip into the remote Ethiopian desert. "But I rarely get sick. I'm a Nazi with my own health and hygiene. There, it was all about drinking enough water."

Purvis, 47, makes an unconventional living by teaching others the survival skills she's honed in her own life, from work as a survival instructor in the desert Southwest teaching students to live off the land to her most recent work a wilderness medical training instructor who specializes in high-altitude medicine.

Six years ago she developed and taught a high-altitude medical course for the African guides working on Mount Kilimanjaro at 19,340 feet. The success of those courses catapulted her into the same kind of work in the Mount Everest region in Nepal, where she founded the nonprofit Wilderness Medicine as a Second Language School, also known as Khumbu Medical School.

Though many people have the misconception that the Sherpas who guide climbers up the high peaks are skilled from the get-go, it's just not so, Purvis said.

"The Sherpas were potato farmers and raised yaks," she said, adding that they've had to develop their climbing skills and learn about altitude sickness basically on the job. Money from guided hikes has become an important income stream for Sherpas in many remote villages.

Her nonprofit school provides free instruction to Sherpas who carry gear and guide clients to elevations above 29,000 feet.

"I teach them how their bodies work and how to recognize and prevent high-altitude sickness to protect themselves and their clients," she explained.

Her first class in 2005 included 24 Sherpas. Five months after the course ended, three of her students were killed in the Khumbu Icefall, regarded as one of the most dangerous stages of the route to Mount Everest's summit. And since that first class four other students have perished on the way up the mountain.

"It makes you realize the percentage" of fatalities involved in such extreme mountain climbing. "It devastates entire villages."

Throughout her time in Nepal, Purvis has developed a deep appreciation of the land and the people.

"For me, Nepal is all about the people and the culture," she said.

In Nepal's high country, there essentially are no roads and she stays with families during her time there. It's a step back in time, a pureness of culture that's rare any more.

PURVIS' work is a world away from the small mining town of Marquette, Mich., where she grew up. But she was an outdoors enthusiast, a ski racer and backpacker.

She tagged along with her best friend's family as they backpacked through the Bob Marshall Wilderness one summer while she was still in high school, and it piqued her interest in the backcountry.

"I loved the outdoors and I wondered, what can a gal do in the outdoors that makes money?" she recalled.

Purvis picked geology, which she studied at the University of Montana. True

to form, she worked for the university's outdoors program leading backcountry trips throughout the West.

After a stint teaching survival skills, Purvis' work took her to all corners of the world. She worked in Antarctica as a medic on a Coast Guard boat, spent a winter skiing in France and lived with the Kanamari Indians in the Amazon jungle. Wearing her geologist's hat, she explored for gold in Montana, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

It was in Crested Butte, Colo., where her career ventured into medicine and search-and-rescue work. During her time as a medic at an urgent-care clinic in a ski area, she gradually learned about trauma and high-altitude sickness.

Purvis and her rescue dog, Tasha, spent a decade responding to avalanche rescue missions around Colorado, earning Congressional recognition along the way.

In 1998 Purvis founded her own wilderness instruction company, Crested Butte Outdoors, a business that has become her bread and butter. She raises money independently from her business to afford trips to Nepal to teach Sherpas for free. Anyone wanting to donate can go to www.susanpurvis.com.

Purvis spends time each year in late fall or early winter in Nepal and collaborates with a couple of other Montana-based endeavors - the Bozeman-based Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation that founded the Khumbu Climbing School Program, and Dr. Luanne Freer of Gallatin-Gateway, who worked as a volunteer physician with the Himalayan Rescue Association and started Everest ER, the first-ever medical clinic at Everest base camp.

Skills gained from those collaborations have enabled the Sherpas to start the first Sherpa rescue team on Mount Everest.

Purvis is as much motivator as she is teacher.

"I want to motivate young people to follow their dreams," she said. "I have an unconventional career and I want to tell people, 'Here's how I can help you find your passion.'"

These days, Purvis also is writing a book, a memoir about her search-and-rescue work. Ironically, it's one of the toughest things she's ever done, she said, but friendships and connections with local writers are buoying her through the process.

Still on her to-do list?

Not climbing Mount Everest. She's never scaled that summit, nor is she interested in doing so.

"No, just to say you've been there and done that, not for me," she said, adding that guided trips up Everest have become too big and too commercial.

Her dream vacation would be hiking from Nepal to Tibet.

"Of course I might get killed along the way," she said matter-of-factly. "It's very unsafe," given the unrest that has accompanied China's stepped-up security along the border.

Still, she mused, "It would be three weeks in no man's land."

And for Purvis, that would be pure pleasure.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com