The legal disclaimer that is always attached to financial investment offerings should also be thought of as directly applicable to mountaineering: “Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.” You can have five great climbs on the same mountain, but that doesn’t ensure that your sixth is going to be as smooth; there are too many variables that you cannot control. Even if a landscape appears familiar from past expeditions, there will always be elements of unpredictability. Plenty of incredibly accomplished and experienced mountaineers end up in trouble—or even die—on routes they may have climbed multiple times.
Bad things happen to good climbers. Of course bad things happen to bad climbers, too, and much more often. But my point is that even if you’re 100 percent confident in your team’s skills and have a strong performance record, you may still find yourself in situations where you need help. Sometimes, no matter how good you are or how experienced you are, things can still go wrong. That’s why it’s good to have people around who you can count on to help you out when or if you are in a dire situation. Because sometimes, when you least expect it, you need to call for backup.
Some of the most talented climbers I know have gotten themselves into terrible jams in the mountains. I have a friend who is a top-notch endurance athlete and has summited multiple 8,000-meter peaks in the Himalayas; he had to be rescued from 13,700 feet on Mount Rainier (which tops out at 14,410 feet) in Washington State after two members on his rope team slipped and fell into a crevasse, yanking the entire rope team down with them. He fractured eight vertebrae and busted a wrist, an ankle, and a fibula. He was an incredibly strong climber, knew the mountain well, and had climbed it in the past. The injuries he and his climbing companions sustained were bad enough. Even worse, a young park ranger fell to his death while trying to rescue the stranded climbers, a tragedy that all involved will forever mourn.
The National Park Service employs climbing rangers on many mountains in the United States whose jobs include search-and-rescue operations. But you can’t rely on that kind of help on most big peaks outside of the United States; there is no organization tasked with aiding climbers along the route. That makes it even more important to put real time and effort into building relationships and forming partnerships during expeditions. And I don’t mean with just the people on your team. You have to be really strategic and think about extending your social network to those outside of your group.
One of the first things I do when I arrive at base camp on any mountain is walk around and talk to members of the other teams. I like to drop in on all the various campsites to say hello and meet the other climbers whom I will inevitably run into on the route. People often tease me about being overly social, but while I like meeting new friends, I’m not making the rounds in hope of winning the Miss Congeniality title. I do it because if, God forbid, something happens to someone on my team high up on one of those peaks, I want the climbers on the other teams to feel emotionally obligated to help us. You’ve probably heard the stories of folks who just walk right on by a dying or an injured climber on summit day. It should never happen… but the reality is that it does happen. You reduce your chances of being passed by when you have strong relationships in place.
Other teams can be tremendously helpful when things go wrong. And guess what? You may need to rely on other teams to make sure things go right. Rarely does one team operate independently of others within the same organization. Research and development, supply chain, engineering, manufacturing, quality control, sales and marketing—teams from each operational unit typically rely on one another to achieve certain milestones. The same is true for expedition teams.
Every spring dozens of teams arrive at Everest base camp, all with aspirations of tagging the tippy-top of the world’s highest peak. Although these teams climb independently of one another, collaboration on the mountain is vital to ensure a safe and successful climbing season. For example, several parts of the route need to be “fixed” before climbers can ascend. “Fixing the route” refers to putting in the miles of nylon rope (known as fixed lines) that are anchored and left in place along the route so climbers can move along the steeper, more exposed sections of the mountain more quickly and safely. The fixed lines and ladders along the lower part of the mountain—those that run through the Khumbu Icefall and from Camp 1 to Camp 2—are set up and maintained throughout the season by a team of Sherpas called the Icefall Doctors (I feel a reality television show idea coming on…), but the upper portion of the route must be fixed by the climbing teams. This means that a person or a group has to climb all the way to the summit with the ropes and anchors (carabiners, snow pickets, ice screws) and set everything up for the masses of climbers who will eventually be making their way to the upper flanks of the mountain. Someone has to come up with the miles of rope, the anchors, the labor, and the oxygen required to get the job done. And someone has to pay for it all.
So, with no governing body at Everest base camp, who’s in charge of getting the route fixed? Who is going to put up the resources? Who is footing the bill for everything? There is no matrix reporting structure and no designated project manager to oversee the process. This is where the true collaboration among teams comes in. The various expedition team leaders meet at base camp to sort it all out. Typically, a handful of teams donate the supplies and the financial and human resources needed to set up the ropes on the upper portion of the mountain. Sometimes the route-fixing meetings go smoothly, and other times there’s a lot of controversy and complaining, maybe even some shouting and flared tempers. But ultimately the job gets done so that when the timing is right, climbers can go for the summit with a better shot at making it all the way up and back down as safely as possible.
Of course getting the timing right for a summit bid is always a challenge, as good weather windows are few and far between. The jet stream hovers over Everest’s summit much of the year, and the winds up there can reach speeds of 175 miles per hour. Ideally, you want to go for the summit when the wind speed is below 30 miles per hour. That means you have to wait for the jet stream to move out, which usually happens during the month of May. But you can’t wait too long, because the weather patterns change and the monsoons hit in June. It’s tricky—which is why different teams subscribe to different weather forecasting services and share the information with one another. That data pooling can significantly help you identify the best times to climb.
Teams also try to coordinate the timing of their respective summit attempts to avoid crowds on the route. Naturally, everyone wants to take a shot at the top on the better weather days. But the results of overcrowding on the route can be tragic (and I’ll get into more detail on this in the next chapter). Bottlenecks form at the more technical sections of the route, and as I mentioned earlier, climbers can get frostbite or run out of oxygen standing around waiting for the fixed lines to clear.
So do you bypass a good weather window to avoid the crowds and then hope another window opens up in a few days or weeks? What if another window doesn’t open? What if the guys forecasting the weather got it wrong? What if everyone waits out the first good weather window, and as a result the route is too crowded during the second window? What if you decide to go for it now and burn through your bottled oxygen getting partway to the top, only to have the weather turn bad—and there isn’t enough oxygen left to make another attempt? These are the kinds of scenarios you need to weigh, and your chances of making the right decision depend in large part upon communicating with other teams.
Team leaders—the smart ones, anyway—talk to one another. They kick around ideas and come up with solutions that take into account that their respective teams are not alone on the mountain. Ultimately, they try to come up with a joint plan that makes the most of the weather windows and minimizes crowding on the route so that everyone has the best possible shot at success.
Collaboration among team leaders and base camp managers certainly leads to increased safety and efficiency on the mountain, but the networking and relationship building should not stop there. Every member of every team needs to reach across team boundaries. It needs to go deeper, down to an individual level. The team leaders play a vital part in helping manage what goes on among teams, but they may or may not actually be climbing the mountain. Many of them remain at base camp, equipped with a telescope and radio, and manage expedition logistics from there throughout the climbing season. Your base camp manager or team leaders may be the best networked people on the mountain, but if they aren’t climbing with you, which is often the case, then their connections may not be enough to pull you through when you get up high.
Whether you’re climbing a real mountain or a metaphorical one, you need to be proactive about forming your own partnerships. Don’t leave the relationship building to others. Be strategic. Think about who you may need to call on for help at some point, and make sure you have relationships in place before you need the help. Even if you’re not the most outgoing person in the world, you need to get your network on. Building relationships and forming partnerships can’t physically get you to the top of a big peak (nothing can substitute for legs, lungs, determination, and warm underwear). But those abilities may mean the difference between living and dying.
Rarely has a single death on Everest captured as much media attention as the death of thirty-four-year-old British climber David Sharp in 2006, a tragedy that still stirs controversy today. Sharp, a math teacher from England, was climbing Everest for the third time after two unsuccessful attempts to reach the summit. He was climbing on a permit issued by Asian Trekking, a Nepali guiding company based in Kathmandu. But he was climbing alone, with no Sherpa support and no radio. He died, presumably on his way down from the summit.
The death of a climber on Everest isn’t in itself hugely newsworthy. Incredibly heart-wrenching, but not out of the ordinary, as there are multiple deaths on Everest every year. Sharp’s death became a high-profile story in the media because Discovery Channel was filming a reality TV series called Everest: Beyond the Limit, which followed a team from Himalayan Experience (Himex) as they climbed the Northeast Ridge route. Much of the filming was done via helmet cams worn by Sherpas along the route, so the footage literally took viewers along the entire journey of the climb. During the Himex group’s summit bid, many of the climbers came upon Sharp sitting in a rock alcove at more than 27,500 feet between Camp 4 and the summit. The alcove, known as Green Boots Cave, is the final resting place of Indian climber Tsewang Paljor, who died in 1996. Paljor’s corpse lies there, frozen into the terrain, with his green mountaineering boots clearly visible in the snow.
Dozens of climbers from various teams passed Sharp on their way to and from the summit. Some of them were aware that he was in trouble and some were not.
The footage aired during the series’ first season. Many people who watched the program on the Discovery Channel or read about the events in the comfort of their homes were outraged. And while there were dozens of climbers high on the route that day, the Himex team took the most heat—in large part because they were the ones who were seen on camera heading up and down from the summit during the time that Sharp lay dying.
There is no question that this incident is one of the most controversial, disturbing, and heartbreaking events that has ever been reported on that mountain. The various teams whose members saw Sharp and kept moving all provided differing accounts of what happened. Many thought he was just sitting there taking a rest break and didn’t realize that he needed help. Others mistook his motionless body for Paljor’s corpse, which at that point had been in that cave for ten years. Some people did try to lend assistance, but they concluded that Sharp was so close to death that it would be impossible to save him.
The person most caught up in the David Sharp controversy was Himex owner/operator Russell Brice, a New Zealander who is a veteran Himalayan climber and has more than fourteen summits of 8,000-meter peaks, including two of Everest. Brice has been guiding for decades and is known for his strong opinions and direct style. He was the team leader of the Himex expedition, and he found himself smack in the middle of the debate about Sharp. Many who followed the media stories accused him of not doing enough to try to save Sharp’s life.
But Brice wasn’t anywhere near Sharp at the time of the incident. He was stationed back at the North Col (23,000 feet), monitoring his climbers’ progress through a telescope and via radio. A segment of the Discovery program showed Brice instructing one of his climbers, Max Chaya, who came across Sharp on his way back from the summit, to leave Sharp and continue descending, believing that nothing could be done at that point. What the program did not show was that Brice sent one of his stronger Sherpas back up to the alcove with a bottle of oxygen to try to help Sharp, but his efforts proved fruitless as Sharp could not be revived.
People watching season one of Everest: Beyond the Limit did not see all the footage that was shot—only edited portions—so they did not have all the facts behind Brice’s decision. Brice believed that because Sharp had been up in the death zone for so long without supplemental oxygen and was not mobile, he could not be saved or was perhaps already dead. There was a good chance that staging a rescue attempt would end in the deaths of more than one climber.
Many members of Brice’s team were already in bad shape due to the exceedingly cold conditions that night coupled with the effects of high altitude and exhaustion. A number of them suffered frostbite as the temperatures dropped to fifty below. Mark Inglis, a double amputee who also came under fire for not helping Sharp, made the summit but was unable to descend on his own and had to be helped down the mountain. He later had to undergo further amputation to the stumps of his legs as well as to several fingers.
Generally speaking, climbers should try to help one another in the mountains. When you come upon a climber in trouble, you should drop your summit ambitions and try to help. That seems obvious. If someone’s life can indeed be saved, then all climbers who are physically able to help absolutely have a moral obligation to attempt to save a life. No one would ever argue that. But “the right thing to do” isn’t always obvious, because each set of circumstances is unique. And the harsh reality is that not everyone can be saved—which is tough stuff to chew on, for sure. In my view, Brice’s first responsibility was to get all his people back down alive. He made a difficult decision—but not a callous or uncaring one.
Everyone seemed to have an opinion about the events surrounding David Sharp’s death: the climbing community, those outside of the climbing community, the media, and so on. Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to summit Everest, was quick to share his thoughts at the time: “I think the whole attitude towards climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top.… They don’t give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress, and it doesn’t impress me at all that they leave someone lying under a rock to die.”
Was all the criticism warranted? I don’t know. And neither do you, unless you were there. It’s easy to be critical of other climbers from the comfort of your living room sofa. I especially remember one blogger’s comments that read, “I have been to 23,000 feet and I can tell you that there is no doubt that I would have stopped to save him.” There is a huge difference between 23,000 feet and 27,000 feet. And even if you’ve climbed into the death zone in the past and have stood on the very spot where Sharp died, you have no way of knowing exactly what went down unless you were there at the time.
Brice has taken part in more than fifteen high-altitude rescues. And while Sharp was not part of the Himex team, Brice retrieved Sharp’s belongings and personally delivered them to his parents. This fact was not reported by most media outlets.
Sharp’s parents understood that their son had made grave errors in judgment during his final attempt to climb Everest. He was climbing alone and wasn’t carrying a radio, which is hard to understand. Had he been carrying a radio, he may have been able to notify someone that he was in trouble.
He certainly had as much, if not more, experience than most successful summiteers on the mountain. He had previously summited Cho Oyu, a neighboring 8,000-meter peak in Nepal, so he knew what it was like to be in the death zone, where your lungs are screaming for oxygen while your body metabolizes itself in order to feed off its own tissue. This was his third attempt to reach the summit of Everest. The terrain was familiar to him. He knew what was required physically and psychologically. And in fact, 2006 was the year he finally made it. Unfortunately, he ran out of energy and oxygen and froze to death before he could make it back down.
Fast-forward to 2012, one of Everest’s deadliest seasons. Ten people lost their lives on the mountain that year. But amid the media reports of the tragic deaths, there were also some inspiring stories of heroism. One of the most memorable had to be the rescue of forty-six-year-old Turkish American climber Aydin Irmak, who immigrated to the United States from Turkey in 1990. Irmak had little climbing experience. Despite what the media reports imply, most people who attempt to climb Everest have quite a bit of experience. There are often a few who show up ill-equipped and underexperienced; those people are exceptions to the rule. But Irmak happened to be one of those people. What was perhaps more concerning than his lack of climbing experience was his desire to pull off a unique stunt—he wanted to carry his bicycle to the summit. That, of course, required a permit from the ministry of tourism in Nepal, and they wouldn’t allow it. (Score one for the Nepalese.) Still, he carried his bike partway to base camp, so most climbers were questioning his judgment (and sanity) from the time he arrived on the mountain.
Against all odds, Irmak did manage to climb to the summit. But the top of the mountain is only the climb’s halfway mark—because you still have to get yourself all the way back down to base camp safely. Irmak couldn’t do that; he began his descent and collapsed less than 1,000 feet below the summit, out of energy and out of oxygen—two things he desperately needed to make it back to the comfort of his tiny tent.
But Irmak got the lucky break of a lifetime when twenty-four-year-old Israeli climber Nadav Ben Yehuda, who was on his way up to the summit, happened to come upon him. Ben Yehuda saw a climber in distress—he did not realize who it was at first, but once he got closer he realized this was not just any climber. He shouted two words: “My brother!” The two men had befriended each other at base camp and formed a strong bond. There was absolutely no way Ben Yehuda was going to leave Irmak there to die. He abandoned his summit bid, and along with some Sherpas managed to help Irmak back down the mountain. Both men suffered frostbite and were eventually evacuated from Camp 2 by helicopter and taken to a hospital. Irmak would live to see another day and would have another opportunity to ride his beloved bicycle, thanks to the generous spirit of one man who didn’t think twice about giving up his summit dream in order to save a life.
Keep in mind that many variables factor into whether or not someone will be rescued—where they are on the mountain at the time they collapse, the weather, the amount of time they have been without oxygen above 8,000 meters, how severe their condition appears to be (are they too far gone to save?), whether they are at all mobile, the strength and condition of the people who will be mounting the rescue attempt, and the stability of the terrain, among other things. But there’s another factor, often overlooked: whether the people on the route actually know the distressed climber. People are more willing to risk their lives and well-being for people they know. In Irmak’s case, Ben Yehuda felt a moral obligation to help because he considered Irmak a brother—even though they had met only a few weeks before. The fact that Irmak had relationships with others on the mountain saved his life.
To further illustrate the point about the importance of networking, check out these two quotations. One is from Ben Yehuda, the friend who rescued Irmak, and the other is from Mark Woodward, one of the Himex guides who was on Everest in 2006 at the time David Sharp was dying.
From a May 25, 2012, Associated Press article:
Ben Yehuda, who spoke to the AP just before leaving Nepal for urgent medical treatment in Israel, said he could not say with certainty how he would have reacted if he had come across a stricken climber he did not know. Oxygen is in such short supply and the conditions are so harsh, he said, that people on the mountain develop a kind of tunnel vision.
Ben Yehuda’s honesty in that interview is to be admired. Everyone wants to think that they would do the right thing, the honorable thing, and help a struggling climber who would otherwise die if left to battle for his or her own life. But the fact is that when you are in the death zone, what seems plausible at lower elevations is not always possible. What you like to think you would do and what you are actually able to do are often different. Your brain is suffering from hypoxia and you can’t always process information clearly or accurately. Some people have been known to hallucinate; others fail to notice events unfolding right in front of them.
One thing is certain: the fact that Aydin Irmak and Nadav Ben Yehuda got to know each other at base camp at the beginning of the climbing season and struck up a friendship altered the future for both climbers. Irmak got to live. Ben Yehuda did not get his shot at the summit but became a national hero at age twenty-four and received an award for his humanitarian efforts from Israeli president Shimon Peres. Lots of people climb Mount Everest. Not too many people receive presidential recognition and are categorized as heroes.
Now consider what Himex guide Mark Woodward said about David Sharp’s death on Everest. This quotation appeared in an article from the August 2006 issue of Men’s Journal:
We were kind of shining our head torches on him [Sharp] and going, “Hello, hello.”… He didn’t have any oxygen on him, and he had fairly thin gloves on. He was completely unresponsive and pretty well into a hypothermic coma, really. I realized that, you know, it was so cold that there was little chance that he would survive anyway. And primarily my responsibility is to the clients and people that I’m with. So at that stage, not knowing who he was or anything, I presumed that somebody from his expedition would be trying to do something if they knew he was still on the mountain.
Woodward made the best decision he could given the information he had at the time. Would things have turned out differently for Sharp had people known who he was? Would others have made more of an effort to help?
Maybe so. No one can know for sure what would have happened, but I can tell you that people will always be more inclined to help people they know as opposed to people they don’t know. Responsible climbers are well aware of the risks involved when they decide to take on a mountain and will do everything in their power to position themselves for success (which means coming back alive). You just can’t assume people you don’t know will come to your rescue. You can pray for it, but you can’t count on it, so that’s why it’s important to put effort into getting to know people and fostering relationships.
Maybe you won’t ever be in a situation where networking is going to save your life, but it could very well change the course of your life. If it were not for some heavy-duty networking I would never have had the opportunity to climb the Seven Summits and ski to both Poles. My participation in each of those expeditions came as a result of others helping me to get to those places.
Take the first American Women’s Everest Expedition in 2002. There is no way I could have raised the money and put together the team had I not spent time fostering relationships with classmates, friends, and people in the climbing community who made the trip a reality for me.
Here’s how it went down: By 2001 I had climbed the highest peak on each of six continents and had done a lot of other climbing on lesser known but more difficult mountains. While expedition life fed my soul, I figured my passion for the outdoors had to be put on hold. I was fresh out of graduate school with $60,000 of debt from my student loans as well as $10,000 of credit-card debt that I had racked up during school. (Save it, Suze Orman.… We don’t need to go there.)
Somehow, through luck and probably a lapse in judgment on the recruiter’s part, I managed to land a job with Goldman Sachs upon graduation, which was one of the jobs most coveted by business school graduates. Now, most people think if you work at Goldman you’re setting yourself up to make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars each year. Some do score big at the firm, but only after they’ve been there a while or were hired away from another firm to fill a very senior position.
I, however, didn’t fit either category. I was a very junior employee and was only there for three years and never made more than five figures. No, that wasn’t a typo. Five figures. Don’t get me wrong—I am not complaining by any means. I made a very respectable salary that I was grateful for—and it was more money than I had ever imagined making in my life. But I was living in San Francisco (one of the most expensive cities in the country, where parking costs more than monthly rent in most other towns) with $70,000 worth of debt. So, after paycheck deductions for medical coverage and taxes, I wasn’t exactly living large. Given I wasn’t making much of a dent in paying off my debt, an Everest expedition seemed completely out of reach. It was something that was not even on the radar, because I couldn’t afford even the $30,000 price tag for one person to climb the mountain, let alone come up with the money for the entire team. It would never happen.
Then, in the summer of 2001 I got an e-mail that gave me a glimmer of hope and turned Everest from “never going to happen” to “maybe, possibly, long shot, but don’t get your hopes up yet.” A couple of women I knew had been throwing around the idea of putting together the first American Women’s Everest Expedition, and they asked me if I would serve as team captain.
Ugh! I didn’t feel ready to take on that kind of responsibility. I wasn’t ready physically or psychologically. The whole thing felt intimidating beyond belief—too much of a stretch for me. In a nutshell, I was scared. And beyond my own hesitations about whether I was ready to take on a mountain like Everest (especially as the team captain), we had no way to fund the trip. None of the other women had any kind of budget for an expedition, big or small, either.
Several weeks later came the horrific events of September 11, 2001, which made me reconsider. Tragedies have a way of changing people’s priorities and outlooks. As I watched the Twin Towers crumble on television, I thought about how life can change in an instant, and we don’t ever really know what is waiting around the corner. September 11 was a wake-up call that gave me a sense of strength and resolve, and I realized that I needed to pursue the things I was passionate about. Even if those things were out of my comfort zone.
There are times in your life when you just have to step up—even if you feel like you aren’t ready. This was one of those times. I decided that I was not going to let fear, nor a lack of funds, stop me from pulling this women’s Everest team together. Getting over the fear was an internal battle I would have with my psyche, and I knew I could wage war and win. Getting the money was an entirely different challenge. I knew I needed to land some kind of corporate sponsorship. I have always felt that if you don’t have money to do something you are passionate about, you can find the money if you are willing to put in the time. I had been granted permission to take a two-month unpaid leave of absence from work in order to climb Mount Everest, and I was going. That was that.
I started calling major corporations with deep enough pockets to come up with the kind of money we needed to send a team to the mountain. My efforts were discouraging, to say the least. Rarely were my phone calls or e-mails or letters returned. I was frustrated and disheartened from the lack of response. I knew I needed to get creative given the lack of love I was feeling from the prospects I had been approaching. I finally came up with a plan: instead of sending pitch e-mails and letters to companies, I started sending out the letters in a cardboard box, along with one of my hiking boots. I put the letter and the boot into the box, and at the end of each letter I closed with something like, “Whether or not you choose to sponsor our expedition, please send my boot back to me so I can keep training for the climb.” I also enclosed a return FedEx label to make it easy for the recipient to send back my boot. Obviously I had another pair of hiking boots at home, so my training did not come to a halt while the boot was floating around. But sending my boot to prospects created a sense of urgency and forced them to take action since they needed to send the boot back to me. A little hokey—yes. But it worked! Well, sort of…
I sent my hiking boot to companies like Nike and other outdoor apparel manufacturers. I sent it to ESPN and other media outlets that I thought might be able to help. The new approach proved effective, and people actually started responding to my inquiries! People could ignore a letter or an e-mail, but they couldn’t ignore my boot. The return package with my boot was coming back to me every few days; people were responding pretty quickly, since they knew I needed it back. The problem, though, was that they still weren’t sending me checks. They were simply returning my hiking boot and letting me down easy by sending me notes of encouragement and moral support. And while I truly appreciated the black-and-white autographed glossy of Dick Vitale, it wasn’t going to buy me an Everest climbing permit.
Finally, one day when I was at the pumpkin festival in Half Moon Bay (about thirty miles south of San Francisco) with some friends, we were walking the festival grounds sampling pumpkin dishes and looking at pumpkin displays when we came upon a display that stopped us in our tracks: not a pumpkin arrangement, but an automobile. And not just any old, ordinary automobile—it was a concept car and it was an impressive sight! It was a massive vehicle with tires that seemed to dwarf me in size. It was majestic and intimidating and gorgeous all at the same time. The white paint sparkled in the sunlight and seemed to be winking at me. For the sake of the environmentalists reading this I wish I could say this concept car was a Prius. But alas… it was a Ford SUV and it had a monstrous sign in front of it bearing the name Himalayan Expedition. Lightbulb. Ford Ford Ford!!!! Ford should sponsor our expedition!!!
I needed a way to get to the right people at Ford. And it just so happened that I had a business school classmate, Kevin Ropp, who worked in the Mercury division of Ford in Southern California.
I e-mailed Kevin a copy of our proposal, which outlined what we wanted to accomplish with the expedition and the funding we needed to make it all happen. Kevin reviewed our proposal and liked what he read. He mentioned that Ford’s global director of marketing was a woman, and he thought she would be interested in what we wanted to accomplish as a team of female mountaineers. He promised me that he would do everything he could to help us. He started by forwarding the information up the ladder to the senior execs in Dearborn, Michigan.
While I was new to the process of fund-raising, I knew from my business experience that no deal is a done deal until the check is in hand, so while I was waiting to hear back from my pal Kevin I continued to network and pitch other companies in case Ford turned us down.
Then… finally… bingo! Kevin came through. He got the information to the right people at Ford. The Ford team then looped their advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson, in on the idea, and within a few weeks—after much negotiating—the deal was done. Our trip would be funded, and five American women would get to take a shot at the world’s highest peak. Thank you, Ford. I will forever be grateful to that company.
It took a lot of work to close my first corporate sponsorship deal. I definitely had to cast a wide net and had to pitch dozens and dozens of companies in order to get anyone to even respond to me. I got a lot of rejections, of course, but all I needed was for one organization to come through. A lot of companies liked the idea but didn’t have the funds. Others were excited about partnering with me but were worried about the liability. Mostly I hit roadblocks because I wasn’t getting through to the right people. In the end, I took advantage (in a good sense!) of my relationship with Kevin Ropp, who took advantage of his relationships with coworkers who could get our proposal in front of the decision makers at Ford.
I also realize that much of the success in putting the deal together had to do with timing. Ford agreed to sponsor us because our expedition happened to coincide with the launch of their new full-size SUV—the 2003 Ford Expedition. What could be more perfect?!? It was our expedition paired with their Expedition—a match made in heaven.
I was absolutely thrilled that things worked out with Ford. Not just because it meant we were going to Everest, but because one of the other companies I was negotiating with at the time was Chevy, and their full-size SUV is the Avalanche. I’m no marketing genius, but I’m fairly certain that if you’re going to Everest, it’s much better to be sponsored by the Expedition than the Avalanche. Call me crazy.…