Go back to News pageSAN FRANCISCO -- Reaching the summit of the 23,085-foot sentinel of ice and rock called Aconcagua will be the second toughest thing Vicki Boriack and her teammates have ever done.
But it promises to be a walk in the park compared to the toughest: surviving breast cancer.
In January, 15 breast cancer survivors, eight of them from Northern California, will leave for Argentina. Their goal is to conquer not only the loftiest peak in the Western Hemisphere, but also the disease that will strike one of every eight women in the United States.
Their expedition hopes to raise $2.3 million -- $100 for every foot they climb -- for breast cancer research and support programs. The women also hope to show it's possible to beat the disease and go on to new heights.
"Surviving breast cancer is a long, uphill struggle that takes determination and teamwork, so it's a lot like climbing a mountain," said Boriack, who designs outdoor clothing for MontBell America in Santa Cruz.
Boriack discovered a lump in her left breast in October 1993 that turned out to be two different forms of cancer. A former mountain guide who named her daughter after Mount St. Helens, Boriack feared she would never return to the mountains.
But this September, after a mastectomy and six months of chemotherapy, she celebrated her 40th birthday atop 13,057-foot Mount Dana in Yosemite with her two children.
"I've purged the cobwebs of chemotherapy, and I'm back to the kind of shape I was in before this started," Boriack said. "But I'm going to have to be more fit than I've ever been in my life to get up Aconcagua."
The expedition is being organized by the San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Fund, whose founder, Andrea Martin, herself a survivor, will accompany the group to base camp.
Leading the group is Laura Evans, a veteran climber who was given only a 15 percent chance of survival when she was diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago. Since then, she has scaled 19,340-foot Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and 19,870-foot Huayna Potosi in Bolivia. Paul Delorey, president of JanSport Inc., the expedition's largest sponsor, lost his aunt and a 24-year-old employee to the disease.
"In this country, we can genetically re-engineer a tomato, but we can't seem to invest the time and money to cure breast cancer," he said. "These women are setting out to change that."
Related story: Bay Area breast cancer rates abnormally high
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