By Tyler Wright
The Dandenong Ranges National Park formed the setting of Jen Willis’ first experiences with nature.
Born in Upper Ferntree Gully and attending high school in Monbulk, Jen and her family would take an annual trip for a week each summer to Thredbo, a ski resort in NSW, and for a week each winter to Falls Creek.
When Jen was about eight years old, her grandpa gifted her a brooch with an ice axe and mountaineering boot; the beginning of her love of climbing.
Despite enjoying forest near her family home, Jen said she wasn’t a “sporty” child, and went through adolescence with low confidence after being bullied in primary school.
“Honestly, when I was younger, I didn’t go out into the forest. I wasn’t very physical, I was always last for the PE team,” she said.
Dropping out of school at the start of Year 12, Jen was able to create a new pathway for herself by enrolling in an outdoor education course at Boronia Tech – but the change wasn’t easy at first.
“I was hopeless… I cried when I first abseiled, I got my air stuck. I found it so hard.”
“I went on the Monbulk High ski camp once a year when I was in high school, and that was the only thing where I’d ever been a little bit better than average. Everything else, I was just so much worse than everybody else.”
But a year after she began her course, Jen started rock climbing; where she found a sense of passion.
“That really was the first time where I said “oh my God, I can actually do something physical with my body, where I feel good, and I feel capable.”
With this new found confidence, Jen went on to study Outdoor Education at Latrobe Uni and an MBA in Master of Applied Positive Psychology at Melbourne University.
But it was a spontaneous trip to Nepal in 1996, where she would stay near mountain Ama Dablam’s base camp that further cemented her love for mountaineering.
“My friends went off rafting while we were there, and I went up trekking on my own, and ended up spending a night at the Ama Dablam base camp, and meeting these mountaineers that had summited and going, ‘oh my God, whatever it is that they’re experiencing, I want to feel what it is that they’re feeling, because it just seems so powerful,” she said.
“I idolised these strong people that would head up into the mountains…they were my heroes.”
Jen would go on to work at various outdoor education centres and with schools both in Australia and internationally – and a become a mother to three children; putting her aspirations of mountain climbing to one side for years.
In 2008, after years of health episodes, physical discomfort and fatigue, including several months in 1995 barely able to walk, Jen was told she may have Multiple Sclerosis (MS); a chronic disease that attacks the brain, spine and optic nerves.
“I knew that by the time that the diagnosis was being suggested, there were medications that were delaying disease progression, and that it was that research that was making a difference, and that I was going to be a direct beneficiary of that research, and so I wanted to,over time, work out how could I do my part to support that as well,” she said.
“I was in Colorado, looking at the mountains going, ‘I’ve always dreamed of climbing and mountaineering, so maybe at some point, I’ll go and I’ll follow that dream to climb, and I’ll raise money for research as well.”
Noticing her memory becoming not quite as good as it was, her tongue feeling like it was burning, and her vision blurring or become double at times, Jen was officially diagnosed with MS in 2018; almost 10 years after hints this was the root of her fatigue and health issues.
Jen’s neurologist advised her that if she were to do nothing new, she would likely be in a wheelchair within three to four years.
Rather than discourage her, this news sparked a determination within Jen to fulfill her dreams of becoming a mountaineer; and she set off to Nepal again in October 2022; climbing the 6476 metre-high Mera Peak as well as trekking the 6812 metre-high Ama Dablam; raising almost $10,000 for MS research in the process.
“I’ve always loved reading other people’s books of adventure and things like that, and telling their stories and telling other people… ‘oh, have you read this book? And have you heard that? and then thinking I’d like to write my own book, because I’ve done some interesting things in my life,” Jen said.
“And then I thought, ‘I just have to create that story’. I actually have to become the heroine in my own book, so I can write that story.”
Now 51 years old, Jen’s story isn’t over; with a plan to jump on a plane to Kathmandu in April this year and climb the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, with a summit that sits at around 8,500 metres high and takes around 60 days to complete.
She plans to donate the total trip cost of $60,000 to the Trish MS Research Foundation and the Forum for the Welfare of Himalayan Children, but still needs to raise around $50,000 for the trip by the end of January.
“On one side, seeing these donations coming in the last couple of days is super exciting… and then facing ‘sorry, I can’t help you,’ ‘we can’t help’ as well… where it’s like, ‘oh, can I really pull this off?’ I went through ‘oh, my God, I think I can do this’ to, ‘oh, my God, can I?’
“As far as the trip, the climbing,I feel really confident to have a real go…having just been in the mountains…the big part then is that sense of being able to tell a story, and that what I’m doing has enough purpose to help others.”
As a way to give back to those who have helped Jen wants to run webinar sessions on how she was able to overcome her battles as a teenager to eventually climb Mount Everest, despite a diagnosis of MS.
“I realise that I’m lucky at the moment that I can go through this, but raising those funds to make sure I can climb this April, because in another year’s time with MS, you just have no idea… will I still be as well as I am now, and walking?”
“That’s where you rely on medication… a lot of people to progress a lot more quickly without medication.”
To support Jen in her adventure to Mount Everest, you can visit this link and donate to organisations, visit https://www.mycause.com.au/p/302222/climb-for-ms-help-jen-become-the-first-aussie-woman-with-ms-to-climb-mt-everest-in-honour-of-trish-langsford
