Tipperary doctor and adventurer Clare O'Leary honoured by top university

A Clonmel doctor, the first Irish woman to climb Mount Everest and one of the country's great adventurers,  has been honoured by  a top university.

Dr Clare O'Leary, a Consultant Gastroenterologist / Physician at South Tipperary General Hospital was conferred with an Honorary Doctor of Laws at NUI Galway.

  Dr O’Leary is an accomplished adventurer and has a special interest in high altitude and expedition medicine and is a Fellow of the Faculty of Sports and Exercise Medicine at the RCSI. 

She was the first Irish woman to climb Mount Everest, to reach the South Pole and to complete the world's highest seven summits.

She also attempted to reach the North Pole by foot in 2012 but the expedition had to be called off because of fears for her safety and that of her fellow adventurer Mike O'Shea.

Bidding to become the first Irish team to reach the geographic North Pole by foot, they had to abandon the attempt and had a narrow escape when they were caught on a cracking ice floe during their retreat.

 By then they had completed the toughest part of their trek, 12.4 miles from their start point in Cape Discovery.

“I had heard the clanking of ice periodically but I didn’t realise it was breaking up so close to us until we were actually in the middle of it”, she said after the ordeal.

Mike O’Shea said that if they hadn’t kept their cool and stayed on the ice blocks they could have been in trouble. 

 The pair had to scramble across moving ice and water with the sledges and their boots in water, and when they got to a metre-high gap they jumped straight through onto stationary ice.

She described the ordeal at the time as ‘serious stuff’.

Four years earlier she had been part of  Pat Falvey’s team that reached the South Pole in 2008,  becoming the first Irish woman to walk to the South Pole. 

In 2012 she was named as one of Ireland’s Top 25 Most Powerful Women.  

 Her hometown of Bandon has honoured her achievements by opening a walkway in her name.