"He has packed a 65-pound pack filled with water bottles and his alpine skis. Sometimes, he packed his 7-year-old son, Logan, in his backpack and headed up the hill," she said.

On Saturdays, he would climb for up to seven hours on the same local mountain, near Sessions Canyon.

He met more than his share of rattlesnakes in the Wasatch Mountains and even a mountain lion during those training exercises, she said.

On his Everest expedition Cook also had to cope with thin air: There is less than one-third as much oxygen on the mountain's summit as is available at sea level.

"He's very athletic," Kim Cook said. " He is just your average soccer dad with an incredible drive to always reach higher."

She said her husband is very anxious to get home and will likely return to Utah during the first week of June.

Vance Cook is a businessman. He founded Headgate Studios, a video game developer, in 1992 in Bountiful. He then sold the company and it became EA Salt Lake.

The Cooks have two children besides Logan — Madison and Morgan.

• Thanks to favorable weather, 26 other climbers had reached the summit Wednesday. Many are in a rush to Everest, because there was a government ban on hiking there until May 10, spurred by plans to carry the Olympic torch to Everest. The torch reached the summit May 8.

Various Web sites report there are at least 30 expeditions currently in the process of climbing Everest.

May is usually the best time to climb Everest, before the monsoon season begins.

• At least one other Utahn, Bruce Parker, of Logan, also was hoping to climb Mount Everest this year. However, his approach was from the south (Chinese) side and the Chinese government closed the mountain in early May, canceling his trip. Parker is now planning on an Everest climb in 2009.

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E-mail: lynn@desnews.com