1. Read the text. Circle the correct answers (a–d). The man who climbed Everest

These days, climbing up to the top of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, has become so popular that it is often crowded with teams of climbers. Fifty years ago, only a few people had reached its summit. Nowadays, more than a hundred people a year do the climb up Mount Everest. However, in 2006, one of the many people who reached the top was different. His name was Mark Inglis, he came from New Zealand, and his successful climb was unusual because Mark doesn’t have any legs.

If you know anything about the history of climbing Mount Everest, you’ll know that Mark wasn’t the first New Zealander to reach the summit. In 1953, Edmund Hillary was not only the first New Zealander to climb the world’s highest mountain, but also one of the first two men on earth to do so. He reached the summit along with his climbing partner, a Nepalese mountain climber called Tenzing Norgay. However, Mark’s achievement was a first for someone with his disability. Other disabled climbers, including a blind American man and a Nepalese man with no hands, had succeeded in climbing Everest before Mark, but what Mark managed to do was perhaps more incredible. He wore artificial legs during the climb, which had been made especially for him, but the strength and effort he needed to achieve his goal was amazing.

After the climb, Mark told reporters that he had decided to go up Everest because he was a mountain climber and had always dreamed of climbing Everest, and not because he wanted to set records as a disabled person. He had lost his legs when he was in his twenties. At the time, he was working as a mountain rescue worker and during a climb, bad weather meant that he and a friend had to find shelter in an ice cave. When they were rescued, two weeks later, their legs had frozen and doctors had had to cut them off. Despite this personal disaster, Mark continued to love climbing, and never stopped dreaming about reaching the top of Everest one day.

As well as achieving a personal goal, Mark climbed Everest to raise money to help other people. On his website, he says that you don’t see many disabled people in Tibet, one of the countries where Mount Everest is situated, because life is hard there, and there is very little support for people with disabilities. By raising money, he hoped to be able to provide artificial arms and legs for disabled Tibetan people, as well as for people who had lost arms and legs in other poor countries, such as Cambodia. Mark’s successful climb was both an important personal achievement and an act that helped give other people hope and support.

1 Which of the following sentences about climbing Everest is false?

a Not many people had climbed Everest fifty years ago.

b About a hundred people have climbed Everest in the last fifty years.

c A lot of people reached the summit of Everest in 2006.

d More and more people are climbing Everest these days.

2 What was special about Edmund Hillary’s climb up Everest?

a He was the first man with a disability to climb Everest.

b No one believed that it was possible to climb to the top of Everest.

c He was the first man to climb the mountain alone.

d No one had climbed to the top of the mountain before.

3 What reason does Mark give for climbing Mount Everest?

a It was to remember his friend who died.

b He wanted to show that disabled people could climb well.

c He had always had a dream of climbing Everest.

d Hewanted to set a new record.

4 What do we find out about the time when Mark lost his legs?

a It happened twenty years ago.

b He was lost in the mountains by himself.

c He fell down a mountain.

d Bad weather caused him to spend a long time on a mountain.

5 Who has Mark raised money for?

a He has only raised money for disabled Tibetan people.

b He has raised money for people in poor countries with disabilities.

c He has raised money for people who have lost arms and legs while climbing.

d He has raised money for poor children whose life is hard.

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