Sorry this is a bit late for International Women’s Day. Then again, Nicole Niquille really deserves a day to herself. An interview in the latest edition of the Swiss Alpine Club’s bimonthly magazine brings us up to date with her story.
Back in the 1980s, Niquille was one of Switzerland’s top alpinists – notice that the phrase isn’t “top female alpinists”. She went to K2 in 1985 and Everest in 1986, qualifying as a mountain guide, the first Swiss woman to do so, in the same year. “There was no feminist motive, I just wanted to live in the mountains,” she is quoted as saying in the interview.
Eight years later, on a Sunday evening in May 1994, her life changed forever. While she was picking mushrooms just a few hundred metres from her house, a falling stone hit her on the head. When she woke up in hospital, she was a paraplegic.
During the next two years, she had to relearn everything, from speaking to moving her fingers and limbs. Despite all her efforts, she could not learn to walk again. Yet the mountains continue to give her strength: "When I freeze at night and can't pull up the blanket, I think of the nights in the airy tent on K2."
“You never accept your disability, but you have to live with it,” Niquille says. Living with it meant, in this case, opening “Chez Nicole”, a mountain hostelry which she has run since 1997 with her husband Marco on the banks of Lac de Taney at an altitude of 1,408 metres.
The restaurant led, in turn, to her next project. One of her kitchen helpers, a Nepalese Sherpa, told her about her sister Pasang Lhamu Sherpa. In April 1993, Pasang was the first Nepali woman to reach the summit of Everest, but lost her life while descending.
Deciding to get involved, Niquille set up a foundation and invested 100,000 francs of her disability capital in building a hospital at Lukla, the starting point for treks to the Everest region. Opening its doors in 2005, the hospital runs on funds raised by Niquille’s foundation, about 450,000 francs annually.
Without the accident, Niquille says, she “would have led a different life and the hospital in Lukla would not exist”. For herself, she has no regrets: “There is no happiness or unhappiness in life, only people with different life stories,” she says.
And even if she were to be offered the use of her legs again, she would accept this only every other day. “That way I would really appreciate them and I would know exactly what I had to do on the days I was able to walk.”
“You never accept your disability, but you have to live with it,” Niquille says. Living with it meant, in this case, opening “Chez Nicole”, a mountain hostelry which she has run since 1997 with her husband Marco on the banks of Lac de Taney at an altitude of 1,408 metres.
The restaurant led, in turn, to her next project. One of her kitchen helpers, a Nepalese Sherpa, told her about her sister Pasang Lhamu Sherpa. In April 1993, Pasang was the first Nepali woman to reach the summit of Everest, but lost her life while descending.
Deciding to get involved, Niquille set up a foundation and invested 100,000 francs of her disability capital in building a hospital at Lukla, the starting point for treks to the Everest region. Opening its doors in 2005, the hospital runs on funds raised by Niquille’s foundation, about 450,000 francs annually.
Without the accident, Niquille says, she “would have led a different life and the hospital in Lukla would not exist”. For herself, she has no regrets: “There is no happiness or unhappiness in life, only people with different life stories,” she says.
And even if she were to be offered the use of her legs again, she would accept this only every other day. “That way I would really appreciate them and I would know exactly what I had to do on the days I was able to walk.”
References
«J’ai dû trouver une utilité à ma chaise pour pouvoir l’accepter» Rencontre avec Nicole Niquille, interview by Martine Brocard in Les Alpes/Die Alpen, the bimonthly journal of the Swiss Alpine Club, edition 1/2024.
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