Mike Cassidy talked to Bob this week and the honchos liked the story so much they put it on the front page.

“It took a bit of doing,” he told me the other day.

A bit. Like three days, a total of 20-plus hours of arm pushing, chair twisting and back bending to make it the last 1,700-plus feet up from his base camp to the top. No one in a wheelchair had ever made the summit. For a time, Coomber wasn’t sure anybody ever would.

“To a hiker,” Coomber says, “this trail is a piece of cake.” To a hiker traveling on two legs. To a hiker on four wheels, it’s Everest.

Mike has a blog post with more Bob-related details here.

They also let me write a little sidebar. Summation: it never felt so good to be proved wrong.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t write the story myself, well: I hiked the whole way, took all the pictures, copy edited the story, wrote all the headlines and photo captions. Somebody else had to do some of the work.