BY BETTY ADAMS

Staff Writer

Nearing the end of his five-year hitch in South Korea working for a defense contractor, a Litchfield man could no longer resist the siren call of Mount Everest.

Mike Moody, 58, had already summitted a number of mountains in South Korea, including Halla-san, the highest one. And for a long time, he was the only westerner in a Korean hiking club on Geoje.

At 5-foot-8 and165 pounds, the blue-eyed Moody stood in sharp contrast to his fellow hikers.

“There are two reasons why I wanted to do this trip,” he said. “One, I have always been very interested in the Himalayas and have read several books and watched most of the movies produced about Everest. Two, I have been getting serious about photography and wanted to shoot the trek in mostly black-and-white film, which I did. I had to hire a additional porter to carry my camera equipment due to the weight — nearly 40 pounds. I took about 1,300 images in both 35mm and 120 film.”

So Moody grabbed his L.L. Bean hiking boots and began a workout regimen in Ulsan, Korea.

“I trained by going up and down the stairs in my apartment building,” he said. “I live on the top floor of a 15-story building. When I began doing the stairs, I could only do one lap. One week before I left for the Himalayas, I was doing 15 laps with a pack and got to the point where I could do 10 laps in one hour, so I thought I was ready.”

His brother-in-law, Ron Chase, of Topsham, detailed Moody’s route starting with a flight to Kathmandu, Nepal, on May 2.

“The next day, he flew to Lukla, at 9,200 feet, and began walking to Phakding. After gaining another 2,000 feet of elevation, he spent two days acclimatizing at Namche Bazaar. On the following two days, he hiked another 3,000 feet through the village of Tengboche, home to the world’s highest Buddhist monastery, and continued on to Dingboche, where he again stopped to acclimatize.

“After two more days of strenuous trekking while dealing with the effects of high elevation, he arrived at the Mount Everest Base Camp at 17,450 feet on May 11. After another day of climbing to the summit of Kala Pathar at 18,208 feet, the most physically demanding part of his adventure, he savored 360-degree views of the Himalayas. He then spent three days descending to Kathmandu.”

Moody phoned home along the way, as well.

“Believe it or not, there is a cell phone tower at base camp and cell phones work all along the trek, and I did call home from base camp once we arrived there,” Moody said via email. “The trek was incredible but very demanding physically.”

Moody’s wife, Patricia, recalled getting that call.

“He sounded tired,” she said from her home in Litchfield. “He did say it was a lot harder than he thought it would be.”

Patricia Moody initially spent a year in Korea with her husband, and then began traveling back and forth, spending a few months with him and then returning to Litchfield or to the Moodys’ home in Florida.

“We talk twice a day,” she said. “Because of the time difference, we manage twice a day if not more.”

Michael Moody is due home for a two-week vacation on Friday.

“I can’t wait to see him,” his wife said.

And then he’ll return for the final month of his five-year contract.

She expects him to take on another job.

“We don’t know what destination yet,” she said. “His adventures are not done.”

Patricia Moody will visit him wherever that is.

The couple, who will celebrate their 24th wedding anniversary in Augusta, have switched roles.

“Back in the day, he was the fisherman and hunter. I was the travel agent,” she said. “I gave him the bug. I used to take him and now he takes me.”

They’ve been on the Great Wall of China and visited Tokyo together, but she declined the trip to Everest.

“He wanted me to go, and thank God I didn’t,” she said. “I wouldn’t have made it. I would have cried and stayed in a hotel in Kathmandu, probably.”

Moody said working in South Korea is not too difficult because his Korean co-workers speak English. He is a volunteer English teacher for several different groups each week.

“Life in Korea is very different than life in the United States,” Moody said. “There is very little land available here. South Korea has a land mass about the same size of Maine and New Hampshire combined; however, there are nearly 50 million people living here and over 60 percent of the land mass is mountainous and uninhabitable.

“So Koreans don’t own homes but live in apartment buildings. They don’t have lawns to mow and yard work to do. They are, however, very social people and spend many hours with co-workers when work is done for the day, usually after a 10- to 12-hour day. Koreans work very hard, and most work six days a week. Shop owners typically don’t hire employees; they work all the open hours themselves, and some of the time it’s a family business where husband and wife share the hours.”

Betty Adams — 621-5631

[email protected]