South Kingstown resident and Warwick chiropractor Tim Warren, left, works out with an 8-pound ball as trainer Jaime Gamache, of North Providence, looks on at Northeast Sports Training and Rehabilitation, in Warwick.

The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy

WARWICK

Tim Warren, veteran of the slopes of Mount Everest, starts up his slide show with some motivational music: the 1980s guitar anthem “Eye of the Tiger.”

Warren knows he’s going to need all the motivation he can get, as he starts the 10-month grind toward again trying to reach the top of Mount Everest.

Warren, a South Kingstown resident and Warwick chiropractor, had to call off his first attempt to summit the world’s highest mountain in May, when he came down with a heavy cough and had to halt his climb at 23,000 feet.

But in the auditorium of Winman Junior High School in Warwick last week, Warren showed a 75-person crowd a series of slides from his two months on the side of Everest this spring, regaling them with tales of the chasms he crossed, avalanches he witnessed, and the inspiring feeling of hearing his teammates reach the summit.

He promised that he is on his way back up the mountain next spring — and he now plays the part of a seasoned climbing veteran, with his own merchandise to boot. If audience members want to support his effort, he tells them, they can buy one of his brand-new Dr. Tim’s Everest Climb 2008 hats or T-shirts after the talk.

“It’s a journey that I’m still on, and it’s a journey to the top of the world,” Warren tells the audience.

Why go back? When a once-in-a-lifetime attempt turns into a twice-in-two-years hassle, why undergo the year of rigorous training, the $100,000 expense, the disruption to work and family life, and the miserable month of altitude acclimatization in the cold on Everest, just for another shot to say you did it?

And no, “because it’s there” is no longer an acceptable answer.

Warren grappled hard with that question. Sometimes, Warren’s mind wanders back to the lowest point, perhaps of his life, he said. The rest of his team was about to summit Everest, but his body was failing him, and he had been left behind, his cough persisting and his lungs feeling like they were full of glue.

He tried once more to climb toward the summit, but he was too weak and sick, and had to turn back. He cried.

He came back to his tent at base camp, and stayed up all night listening to the rest of his climbing team reach the summit via the radio. He e-mailed his teenage son in the middle of the night, and told him that he was never climbing a mountain again. He was done with climbing.

He trudged back down the side of Everest, miserable. But on the way, something changed in him, he said — his motivation returned, his desire to win, to conquer, to achieve, all started to come back as he descended the world’s highest mountain.

He started to examine his Everest attempt, and he saw possibilities for change, another chance to adjust, and to do things better. To come in better prepared, to apply his knowledge, and particularly, to not let the mountain conquer him.

He looks back on his first attempt and sees all the things he could have done differently. Boots that didn’t fit right. Not enough protein in his diet. Not enough gum and candy to keep his mouth moist. A smaller, easier to access water bottle. Small things, but they loom large in the day-to-day on Everest.

In retrospect, Warren puts his chances of succeeding this past spring at 20 percent. Looking forward, he says he now has an 80 percent chance of success.

“I haven’t had that mental battle since,” he said Tuesday while working out at Northeast Sports Training and Rehabilitation in Warwick.

Warren acknowledges that he wasn’t in perfect shape for Everest, and wonders aloud if that could have resulted in his getting sick. He was in good enough shape to climb almost any other mountain in the world, he said, but the climbs on Everest are longer and tougher than any he had seen before, and at around the four-hour mark on many of the daily six-to eight-hour climbs, he would start to tire.

“The mental battle of being completely wasted and still having hours to go, that was new to me,” he said.

So he is pressing harder in his training now, trying to get beyond his comfort zone, so that all his work is not undone by a simple cough.

“I think I can learn enough that I cannot get sick this year,” Warren said. “I think everything’s intertwined. If I had a better oxygen uptake and better ways to oxidize oxygen, maybe.”

Warren used to train in a garage outside his South Kingstown home, a purpose-built gym he called the Pleasuredome. No more. Working out by himself meant that he wasn’t pushing himself hard enough, he said. If he felt totally drained, he’d stop.

Now, he goes to Northeast Sports Training and works out with Jaime Gamache, a trainer with a self-admitted sadistic streak. When Warren feels drained, Gamache pushes him further.

He already feels far stronger and more confident than at this point last year.

“I think it’s going to be easier because I know what to expect,” Warren said.

But if he doesn’t make it this time?

“I’m done,” he vowed.

dbarbari@projo.com