30 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {punchline} the spot and recovered some artifacts. Since summiting Everest, Heidi has climbed Mount Rainier several more times, adding to her total of guiding more than 100 trips there. After leaving the professional mountain guide life behind, Heidi was a real estate agent in Seattle until the couple moved to the Peninsula 10 years ago. Currently, Heidi is a personal assistant for a local family and offers massage therapy for a small group of clients. After all that time in the Pacific Northwest, Heidi and Tap are enjoying the Bay Area’s fair weather and love that so many of their friends and neighbors are outdoorsy and game to go camping. Their daughter is a rising high school senior who has done some climbing in Yosemite. “She does seem interested, and is a very strong athlete,” Heidi says. But it’s a bit too soon to tell if she will follow in her parents’ adventure-filled footsteps. the South Col route. The client made it as far as Camp III before having to turn around. Heidi, her husband Tap and two others made it all the way to the top. The couple spent about 15 minutes up there, took photos and used a satellite phone to share the news with their dads before making the difficult descent. A photo taken of the group at base camp the day after they summited captures “one of the happiest days of my life,” Heidi says. She was 39 and ran into a friend along the route who told her that after this Everest trip, she was going to start a family. Me too, Heidi replied. In 2008, she and Tap welcomed their daughter on the same day that mountaineering legend Sir Edmund Hillary died. Back in 1953, the New Zealander and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first confirmed climbers to reach the summit of Everest. Heidi and Tap considered the date to be a good omen. Almost a decade earlier, the couple had a brush with another famous mountaineer on Everest. In 1999, they were involved in a research expedition to locate the body of English climber George Mallory. He and Sandy Irvine died on the mountain in 1924 while attempting to summit the north side, and it is still unknown whether the pair of Brits ever succeeded in making it to the top. The team found a frozen body and Tap spied the nametag on its shirt: G. Mallory. The group performed a burial ceremony on ABOVE: Heidi and Tap on Mount Everest. PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: HEIDI RICHARDS
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