Chapter 11
EMBRACING FAILURE
Own It, and Come Back with a Vengeance
The last place I thought I would find myself in the spring of 2010 was in Nepal. Yet there I was, getting ready to go another round with the big mountain after getting knocked out in 2002. I had really believed that I would never come back. What changed my mind? My girlfriend Meg.
Meg Berté Owen was one of the first people I saw when I got back from Nepal in 2002. She was an amazing friend whom I could share everything with—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Meg could take the bad and the ugly and turn it into something positive, which was part of her magic. She was an optimist by nature. We sat for hours in a coffee shop in New York City, and I told her the whole story—all the details of the trip, about the amazing team of women I had climbed with, and how we’d given it everything we had before coming up short of the summit.
“Well, when are you going to go back and try it again?” she asked.
I responded with absolute clarity, “Uh… I am not going to go back and try it again. I pretty much had the whole Everest experience already.”
She tilted her head and gave me a look of skepticism. “Come on, I know you better than that. You’re going to go back to that mountain.”
I rolled my eyes and chuckled “Only if you go with me.” Which pretty much put an end to that conversation.
Meg wasn’t a mountaineer. But she was one of the most talented athletes I had ever met. She was a brilliant all-American soccer player and captain of her team at Harvard. She was a fierce competitor in every sense of the word. She had to be. When Meg was in her twenties she beat lymphoma—twice. But her lymphoma treatment (chemo, radiation, and stem cell transplant) left her with lung damage, and her compromised lung function meant she could no longer play soccer, the activity she had been most passionate about her whole life.
But Meg didn’t let that slow her down. She was always stretching her limits. After a while nothing she did surprised you, because you realized that it was just her nature to live outside of her comfort zone. She found that even with her reduced lung capacity she could ride a bike pretty well, so she put her athletic efforts into cycling. She put so much heart and soul into cycling that in 2005, she was one of two dozen riders chosen to cycle across the country, from San Diego to Washington, DC, with Lance Armstrong (and no, she did not use performance-enhancing drugs) as part of the Tour of Hope to raise awareness about cancer research.
And then in 2009, at age thirty-seven, she passed away due to complications from the flu. She got a lung infection, and because her lungs had been damaged from her lymphoma treatments, she wasn’t able to recover. It was one hell of a crusher. Meg was “that girl”—the brilliant, charismatic, funny one who was so high-energy that when you were with her you felt like nothing could stop you. Nothing. She had friends all over the world—literally. After she passed, people started doing things to honor her. They did cycling races and triathlons in places like Japan and Europe. A team ran the New York City Marathon in her honor. I desperately wanted to do something to honor my friend as well, and of course the thing I’m most passionate about is climbing mountains. So I decided to go back to Mount Everest in the spring of 2010, just five and a half months after losing Meg. I engraved her name on my ice axe to make sure she was coming with me this time around.
April 4, 2010. It was a sunny day in the Khumbu Valley. We were a couple of days into the trek from Lukla to base camp. I was doing my best to just enjoy the hike and not stress out too much about what I would face on Everest’s slopes. There is a saying that no one conquers Everest—the mountain merely allows you to climb it. I wondered if I would be allowed to this time.
Part of me envied the people who were just there for the trek. Their trip would be over in two weeks, and they would be back home in their warm beds with running water and good food and Law & Order: SVU. The trekkers were all incredibly friendly and enthusiastic. They didn’t have to worry about anything too heavy—like surviving a bout with the world’s highest peak. I did my best to be cordial to those who tried to make conversation, but my mind was focused on what lay ahead, so sometimes conversations didn’t flow all that smoothly.
“First time in Nepal?” a random trekker asked.
I answered with one word: “Nope.” I wasn’t feeling chatty. I was busy dreading the Khumbu Icefall.
Trekker: “So you’ve been here before?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Trekker: “Here? To the Everest region?”
Me: “Yep.”
Trekker: “What were you doing out here?”
Me: “Climbing Everest.”
Trekker: “So you’ve actually climbed this mountain before?”
Me: “Yep, I have.”
Trekker: “When?” He wouldn’t stop with the questions.
Me: “Two thousand and two.”
Trekker: “Wow. So you summited Everest, and you’re going to try to do it again?”
Me: “I actually didn’t summit on my last trip.”
Trekker (stopping in his tracks): “Ohhhhh maaaaaaann. Seriously? What a bummer.”
Me (still walking): “Yeah, pretty much.”
Trekker: “I mean… to spend all that time on the mountain… and not get to the top…”
Me: “Well, it happens.”
Trekker: “Yeah, but that has really got to eat at you. I mean, that kind of thing has got to haunt you.”
Me: “Uh… Only when people like you bring it up.” Which was the truth. The guy was relentless!
The truth was, after returning from my 2002 trip, I really didn’t feel like I had any unfinished business on that mountain. Sure, occasionally I would get the urge to go back, but usually that happened only when people were giving me a hard time about the trip, which didn’t happen often.
But when it did, it would usually go down something like this:
I would be at a dinner party at someone’s house, and the host of the party would introduce me by saying, “Oh, hey, I want you to meet my friend Alison—she climbed Mount Everest!”
Then the guy sitting across the table from me would raise his eyebrows and respond, “Oh no way!!!! All the way to the top?”
And then, of course, I would have to smile and explain, “Uh, well, no, actually, our team turned around just a couple hundred feet from the top in a storm.”
Then he would tilt his head and look at me, as if he felt sorry for me, and say, “Ohhhhhhh… so you didn’t climb Mount Everest.”
Of course I would try to defend myself without actually sounding defensive and without throwing a glass of wine on him. “Well, really, we did climb it. My team was awesome—and we got superclose to the top, but ultimately had to turn around in bad weather. The climb was a fantastic experience, etc., etc.” I’d explain what happened, how we spent two months on that mountain and just had bad luck with the weather. I’d even go as far as giving him the lecture about how getting to the top is optional and getting down is mandatory.
But he wouldn’t buy it. He’d shrug his shoulders and say, “Well, come on… if you weren’t at the very top, then you didn’t climb it. It doesn’t count.” His know-it-all tone would annoy me. I could barely refrain from throttling this guy for his arrogance and lack of appreciation for what my team had accomplished.
People who have never climbed a big mountain don’t realize that summits are overrated. The cliché about the journey being more important than the destination is right. It’s the climb that matters, not the summit. This isn’t just sour grapes. I would have loved to have made the summit in 2002, but the fact is, the world doesn’t change just because you touched the top of a mountain.
We often look at things through a harsh black-and-white lens—either someone made it to the summit of a mountain or they didn’t. They hit their quarterly sales numbers or they didn’t. They launched the product on time or they didn’t. But before you define success or failure in such concrete terms, you should know that the people who reach the top are often nowhere near the caliber of climber of those who fail to reach the top. This goes for mountains as well as anything else.
Take Chad Kellogg. I met Chad on Everest in 2010. People outside of the climbing community have probably never heard of him. He’s incredibly low-key. But he is extraordinary—as a climber and as a person. He has set speed records on mountains all over the world—from Alaska to Kazakhstan. He has also dealt with tragedy along the way. His wife, Lara, died in a climbing accident in Alaska’s Ruth Gorge in 2007. Chad was off climbing in a remote area of western China at the time and learned of his wife’s death when someone on horseback rode in to his camp and hand-delivered a note to him in his tent.
Just a few months later Chad was diagnosed with colon cancer. He’s suffered many other losses as well, including that of his younger brother, who died of a heart attack.
In 2010, Chad attempted to break the speed record for climbing Everest without supplemental oxygen. Marc Batard of France was the record holder; he made it from base camp to the summit in 22 hours and 29 minutes, then made it back down to base camp in time to set a 36-hour round-trip record. Most climbers who are on their final summit push will spend days going from base camp to the summit, and they’ll make use of three or four camps along the route on the way up. Then after they summit, they will spend a night or two at one of the camps on the way back down. Not Chad. His plan was to do it in one push from base camp to the summit and back.
From Chad’s blog (www.chadkellogg.com), posted May 26, 2010:
My brain was a bit hypoxic at 26,000 ft. I moved up the fixed lines aware that there were over 150 climbers above me.
The going was slow as I picked my way through the snow-covered rocks. Near the Triangle Face I began to encounter traffic coming down the fixed line. The upward progress was slowed down by all the climbers descending. I soon ran into some of the Argentinian climbers going down. They let me know that the wind and snow increased greatly once I got above the Balcony above the Triangle Face. I continued up slowly and encountered an old climber’s body between the rocks. I decided maybe I should take a dexamethasone tablet to reduce the chances of HAPE and HACE. I made it just below the Balcony and decided that Wednesday the 23rd of May was not going to be the day for the speed ascent. I looked at my watch and realized it was 11 a.m. I had been going for nearly nineteen hours. I sat down on a rock at 27,000 ft. and watched as dozens of climbers passed me on their way down to the South Col. The view was obscured by clouds and blowing snow to the North. The morning weather had been good, but the weather had deteriorated as predicted.
I reflected on the combination of problems at hand: wind, snow, traffic, and fatigue. The ascent had a combination of issues that I could only learn from for the next ascent. The focus of the climb had not just been to get to the summit. If that were the case I would have just strapped on a bottle of oxygen and gone to the top. This climb was about meeting the mountain in the most difficult way I could imagine. No porters carrying loads, helping to fix lines, without oxygen from Base Camp to the Summit of the world in a continuous push. I had made it nearly 10,000 vertical feet from Base Camp to the Balcony at 27,000 ft. Although I was disappointed with not achieving the summit, the effort was notable.
“Notable”? He calls this effort “notable”? I call it unbelievable. Failure to reach the summit—yes. Failure in the grand scheme of life—no. Hell, no! Chad was one of the most skilled and capable climbers on the mountain in 2010.
I caught up with Chad on the hike out at the end of the trip. He shared his training regimen with me—his diet, his workout schedule, his tips for healthy living. I don’t think I have ever met anyone who is so disciplined. Had he been climbing with oxygen and supported by Sherpas like 98 percent of the other climbers on the mountain, he would have made it and could probably have gone up and down and tagged the top several times in the same amount of time it would take the rest of us to drag ourselves up there once. But he has no interest in doing things the conventional way.
Chad went back to Everest a second time in 2012, again with the hope of breaking the speed ascent record without oxygen. He was forced to turn back at 28,215 feet/8,600 meters. Once more, just short of the summit. I got an e-mail from him on May 13, 2013, and guess where he was? Back on Everest again. Why does he keep going back? In his words: “I have chosen a style of climbing that is so difficult for me that I have had much to learn from the mountain. I believe in the ‘old school’ technique of the sequential learning curve. You take on the next biggest challenge after you have established the proper base experience.”
With each trip to the mountain, Chad was building his knowledge base. And each time he returned, he was better and more prepared. After researching when the weather window looked most promising, Chad set off from base camp at around 3:00 p.m. on May 22, in his third attempt to break the speed record on Mount Everest. By 5:00 a.m. on May 23, he had reached an elevation of over 27,000 feet and was on track to break the record.
From his 2013 blog:
A bit past 5:00 a.m., I realized that the winds on the summit ridge were well into the 40 mph range with spindrift blowing across the Balcony and high into the air off the summit ridge. I knew that, without oxygen, my appendages would not withstand the windchill. Seemingly in unison with my growing apprehension, a radio call came in from our head Sirdar, Phurba. He said that the summit weather was too dangerous for me and he urged us to return to Camp 4. This was the dilemma that I had feared most. I was on pace! Pushing myself for over 14 hours, I was in position to set the speed record on Everest without oxygen. I had seven hours with which to climb the final 1,800 ft. to the summit. I had climbed nearly 10,000 vertical feet above Base Camp to reach an elevation of 27,225 feet.
This was my third attempt at the summit, and I would not get the window. Why was this happening? Everything was going so well up to this point. Deep inside, I knew that the only decision to make was to go back down, but I still wanted to go up. I began to climb again.… Another set of climbers began to descend on us, knocking more rocks down on us. It was clear that I could not ignore the signs any longer. With a heavy heart, I made my way slowly back to the South Col.…
I have to admit that I’m a bit disappointed that I did not reach the summit on this expedition. The takeaway point from this trip is that the only thing you can hope to control in this life is your mind. I am proud of my effort and the ability to return from this expedition healthy and happy. There will be other climbs and trips to be made because I made the right decisions. I have all my fingers, toes, and appendages. I learned and progressed as an athlete and as a human being. After all, life is about living for each moment. I do not have any regrets, as each moment is a gift.
Finding that sweet spot of perfect weather is always a challenge, especially when you’re trying to set a speed record, because you can’t sit around in your tent and wait for the winds to die down. Chad has yet to summit Mount Everest. Yet he is one of mountaineering’s elite. Few high-altitude climbers can match his strength, speed, and skill. He pushes his limits further and further each time he confronts the mountain. He makes smart decisions about when to push and when to back off, which means he’ll have more opportunities to try again in the future. Chad Kellogg is not afraid to fail. With each attempt he comes back stronger. And those are just a few of the many things that make him great.
The lesson here? Don’t judge climbers by their summits. I give a hell of a lot more credit to people like Chad, who are willing to push themselves, than to those who always take the easiest path because it’s familiar and safe. You’ll never improve your skills if you keep following your standard route. And getting out of your comfort zone is not enough; you must take it a step further and learn to be comfortable with discomfort. This is an important part of leader development.
Your chances of failure may increase when you’re pushing yourself into unfamiliar territory, but you can’t let that deter you. In fact, one of my leadership role models is a polar explorer who is most well-known for his epic—and I do mean epic—failure: Ernest Shackleton, who was the leader of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which set out from England in autumn of 1914.
Shackleton had plenty of Antarctic experience prior to setting sail for the world’s southernmost continent in August 1914. In 1901 he joined Captain Robert F. Scott on the Discovery Expedition, which was setting off to Antarctica for the purpose of research and exploration. The ship departed London in July 1901 and took five and a half months to reach the Antarctic coast. While the main purpose of the trip was to explore and research the Antarctic environment, Scott, Shackleton, and another man, Edward Wilson, made an effort to trek across Antarctica and set a record for reaching the southernmost point on the continent that anyone had reached—82°17′S.
Shackleton struggled through most of the journey, weakened by poor health and the harsh elements, and Captain Scott ended up sending him home from the expedition while the rest of the men stayed on to continue their work in the region. Shackleton may not have been the strongest member of the Discovery Expedition team, but the experience proved to be invaluable. He then had a much better idea of what the Antarctic environment could throw at him.
Several years later, he set off on the Nimrod expedition, this time as the expedition leader, with the goal of reaching the South Pole. He and his team made it to 88°23′S, which is within 112.2 miles of the South Pole, another new record at the time. As a result of this achievement, he was knighted by King Edward VII. His record would, of course, be broken less than three years later when Norwegian Roald Amundsen and his team reached the geographic South Pole, but Shackleton still had another goal in mind that no one else had yet accomplished—completing a crossing of the Antarctic continent.
Many people are familiar with this part of Shackleton’s story—his ship, the Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and was eventually crushed, and his team had to survive for more than twenty months in the most extreme conditions known to man. Shackleton and his men were presumed dead. No one believed that human beings could survive in that type of deadly environment. But survive they did. And while the team never even had the opportunity to set foot on the Antarctic continent, Shackleton has been hailed a heroic leader because he managed to get every member of his team back alive. Had he not experienced numerous failures during previous Antarctic expeditions, he might not have been the same type of leader when placed in such seemingly hopeless circumstances.
If Shackleton’s leadership abilities were measured solely on whether or not he accomplished his goal of crossing the Antarctic continent, then he would hardly be considered a success. But despite his failure to achieve his goal of crossing the continent, he goes down in history as one of the greatest leaders of all time. The brilliant and heroic skills he demonstrated can never be disputed.
Leaders need to make sure that everyone feels like they have purpose and are contributing to the overall efforts of the team. Shackleton’s men never lost hope, in part because he gave every man responsibility for performing particular tasks on a daily basis. As a result, everyone felt like they were a critical part of the expedition. Leaders need to make sure that everyone feels like they have purpose and are contributing to the overall efforts of the team.
Getting people into a routine helps them stay focused in extreme environments when things look bleak. But in order to know who to choose for each task, Shackleton had to know quite a bit about each individual on his team—another important aspect of leadership (as mentioned in chapter 8). He not only had to figure out how to best utilize his strongest and most talented team members, but he also had to prevent the troublemakers from making a grim situation worse by bringing down morale. That meant Shackleton had to assess each man’s physical and psychological strengths.
Shackleton never stopped thinking about what would be best for all of his men, even in his absence. Eighteen months into the expedition, when he set out in a twenty-two-foot wooden rowboat to go for help, he had to choose five men to go with him. In making his selections, he wasn’t just looking at prospects who would be the strongest rowers; he was also considering who might cause the most trouble if left behind. The six men’s open boat voyage across eight hundred nautical miles of the harsh southern Atlantic Ocean was ultimately successful. Shackleton orchestrated a miraculous rescue and, as noted, brought every man on his team home alive.
Looking back at our first attempt on Everest in 2002, when our summit bid was thwarted by bad weather, I remember that we felt a lot of pressure to get to the top. We wanted Ford (our corporate sponsor) to be proud of us and to be glad they had sponsored our trip. Our expedition had a strong media following—more than 450 media outlets covered it. We made the rounds on the Today show, CNN, and CNBC, and we were featured on World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News, and many other programs. We were all over the news before and during the trip, and then CNN did live updates from the mountain throughout the expedition.
We were incredibly grateful for Ford’s sponsorship, and we wanted to do everything we could to get them as much positive PR exposure as possible. But that being said, it was often hard to manage all the media demands and also remain focused on the climb. It was an added layer of pressure that gave us even more to worry about.
There would be times when all I wanted to do was sleep, but I had to get up and get everyone out of their tents because some television or radio network wanted a live update or an interview. And then when we came back after the trip, we had to make the rounds on all the television shows that had interviewed us prior to the expedition, and we had to explain about the storm and why we didn’t make it to the summit.
Typically, in a situation like ours, you get only one shot at the top, because once you’ve burned through most of your oxygen supply, you don’t have enough left to try it again. Plus, you want to limit the amount of time you spend in the death zone, since your body is basically consuming itself and your brain cells are slowly dying. So you get your shot, you make it or you don’t, and then you head home. Disappointing to get that close and then not make it? Sure. But in my book, as long as you come back alive, with all of your fingers and toes, and as friends with your climbing partners—I consider that a damn successful trip.
I worried about what Ford would think about our so-called failure and how it would reflect on them, but then I also thought about how it would reflect on them if something seriously bad had happened to one of us on the trip—the ultimate PR nightmare. In situations where lives are on the line, you always err on the side of safety. And when you are a leader you have to think about how your every move will affect not just you, but also the people around you. It doesn’t matter how much blood, sweat, and tears you personally put into something; if the conditions aren’t right, you cut your losses, you turn around, and you walk away from the deal. Mount Everest isn’t going anywhere. You can always go back. But if you do something dumb up there… you may not have the opportunity to go back.
If Ford was disappointed in our performance on the mountain, they certainly didn’t show it. Folks from their publicity team met us at LAX with massive bouquets of flowers when we arrived back in the States. After everything we had been through on the mountain, it was so nice to see friendly faces at the airport. Ford even offered me a free Ford Explorer to drive for six months, as a way of thanking me for my efforts as the team captain. It was an incredibly generous gesture. (Unfortunately, I had to turn it down because I could not afford it. Crazy, right? I couldn’t afford a free car. Sounds ridiculous, I know. The problem was that I would have had to pay for the insurance and also for parking in San Francisco—neither of which were affordable for me at the time. So the “free car” would have cost me about $400–500 a month. God, the irony of that just kills me.)
We must always own our failures. Whether or not those failures were due to factors outside of our control isn’t relevant. The important thing is to learn from them. That’s what really makes us grow as leaders. When we achieve something that we have worked hard for, too many of us don’t take a moment to simply reflect on and analyze things—we just move on to our next challenge or conquest.
But after coming up short and not succeeding in what we set out to accomplish, we’re more likely to dissect everything and analyze what went right, what went wrong, and what we should do differently the next time around. Players in team sports watch tapes after each game so they can evaluate those actions that contributed to the win or to the loss. While our own day-to-day performances aren’t captured on video (unless we happen to be starring in a television series), we can still take the time at the end of each day or week to review the play-by-play and determine what we need to do to improve.
Often, we’re hesitant to even talk about failure. Almost as if we’re afraid that if we let the word enter our mind, we’ll jinx ourselves. One of the many benefits of serving on the Thayer Leader Development Group’s board is that I have the opportunity to interact with some of our country’s best military and business leaders. We meet twice a year at the Thayer Hotel at West Point and share insights on how we can best cultivate leaders of character in the public and private sectors who can meet the complex challenges of a rapidly evolving business climate. Obviously, there is no single right way to approach leader development, which is what makes the dialogue both interesting and lively.
I am always fascinated by what I learn during these conversations, as few people know more about leading teams in extreme environments than military leaders. Combat is no time for on-the-job training, and there is little room for error.
One of my fellow board members is Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Pete Dawkins, who has accomplished more in his lifetime than just about anyone I have ever met. For starters, he overcame polio as a child. He attended the United States Military Academy, where he was first captain (the top-ranked cadet at West Point) and also captain of the football team, which went undefeated his senior year. By the way, he also played baseball and hockey, although football was where he really focused his abilities. In 1958, he won the Heisman Trophy.
But wait—there’s more. Dawkins was awarded a Rhodes scholarship and earned his master’s at Oxford (he later picked up another master’s and a PhD from Princeton). He pushed himself even harder in his career as an army officer. He completed infantry, parachute, and ranger training. He learned Vietnamese and served in Vietnam. He continued to rise through the military ranks, commanding a company in the famed 82nd Airborne Division, a battalion in Korea, and two brigades—one of which was the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), another highly decorated unit. He earned numerous military awards, including two Bronze Stars with Valor (for heroism).
I have met few people in my life who have achieved so much success in so many areas. Pete has been supported through every step of his career by his lovely wife, Judi, to whom he has been married for more than fifty years. They raised two children, daughter Noel and son Sean. Sadly, Sean died at the age of forty-two of a heart defect. They have six grandchildren. This is a guy who has lived, learned, and thrived through situations that most of us could not imagine.
I first met Pete at a TLDG board meeting, shortly after I had appeared on a CNBC program called Meeting of the Minds: The Future of Leadership, which centered on how to produce the right kinds of leaders for the twenty-first century. The program was filmed at West Point and my fellow panelists were Jim Owens, CEO of Caterpillar; Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox; Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots; Hank Paulson, former Treasury secretary; Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger; and Gen. (Ret.) Wesley Clark. In thinking about where I could add value to this esteemed panel, I figured I would talk about the importance of failure (clearly setting fiscal policy, landing a plane on the Hudson, commanding NATO forces, running a multi-billion-dollar company, and owning a winning Super Bowl franchise weren’t on my list of potential topics).
Anyway, I was telling General Dawkins about my experience on the panel and why I thought it was important to discuss failure in the context of leadership. He agreed that failure was indeed an important topic, one that was too often avoided.
The irony was not lost on me that I was talking to one of the most successful human beings to ever grace God’s green earth, and we were having a conversation about failure. I figured talking to Pete Dawkins about failure was akin to talking to the pope about sex—something he knew existed but happened only to other people. What could this guy possibly know about failure? A lot, surprisingly.
Pete subsequently sent me a copy of an article he had written back when he was a captain. It appeared in the September–October 1965 issue of Infantry Magazine and was titled “Freedom to Fail.” In the article Pete wrote about the dangers of obsessing over perfection, which creates “a cult of the unerring.” He said we tend to hold people who have had perfect track records in high esteem—but often it is those individuals with blemishes on their records who have really pushed themselves and have taken the risks that allow others to succeed. The risk-takers are the ones whose mistakes spur progress. Often, those who have never failed have not pushed themselves enough.
Dawkins wrote, “No man, no matter how talented or inspired, is perfect. If he is to pursue a bold and vigorous path rather than one of conformity and acquiescence, he will sometimes err. Greatness can ultimately succeed only if such men are granted the freedom to fail.” If we take risks without the fear of being judged when we fail, then we set ourselves up for success when it really counts.
In general, we are not a failure-tolerant society, which is ironic, considering our country’s entrepreneurial and innovative roots. But a lack of failure tolerance can stifle progress and creativity. Very often, we hesitate to take risks because we fear potential failure. Trust me, if Pete Dawkins is okay with failure, we should be, too. Whether the risk we take is climbing a mountain or accepting a position that will stretch our intellect, demand new skills, and require hard work, it is always easier to avoid the risks—unless we have failed before. There is something about surviving past setbacks that increases our willingness to risk again.
May 23–24, 2010
11:00 p.m. We have lost radio contact with base camp.
They have no idea what the weather conditions are up here in the death zone at 26,000 feet, so in order to not worry our friends and loved ones back home who are reading the cybercast online, the base camp staff reports that the weather is pretty good but that there is an “increased chance of precipitation.” The reality is that just about every base camp manager of every major expedition on the mountain is worried about us, and many stay awake the entire night in their attempts to check in on us. It’s a tight group on the mountain. Everyone pulls together to help everyone. The good folks do, anyway.…
We leave camp at the South Col and start climbing in the howling winds that have been battering our tents for the past few hours. The snow is really coming down now. It’s pitch-dark, but you need to protect your eyes so that your eyeballs don’t freeze, so I’m wearing clear goggles because if my corneas freeze I am done. I know of several people who have had to turn around close to the top because of frozen eyeballs. Within minutes my goggles fog up and are worthless. Arghhh. I scrap the goggles and just try to close my eyes for a few extra milliseconds in between steps. I am getting pelted in the face with snow. Hard. Not really appreciating the free microdermabrasion. I can feel little icicles forming on my eyelashes. There is no way we are going to climb for long in this weather.
We keep moving. Lakpa Rita Sherpa is first in line, followed by Chhewang. If Chhewang makes it all the way to the top he will be one summit short of tying the record for the most Everest summits.* After Chhewang there is me, followed by a few others who have also chosen to continue despite the perilous conditions. Lakpa and Chhewang are breaking trail and have to kick in steps, since there is a decent amount of new snow covering the trail. Their steps are too big for me. My legs cannot reach that far. Trying to use their steps is exhausting, so I do my best to kick in my own, which is also exhausting. I hate being short.
Very few climbers are going for the summit tonight, because the weather is not ideal.
The upside is that we won’t have to deal with crowds on the fixed lines or at the Hillary Step. We have now been climbing for about two hours. I look up and see a big group of headlamps ahead of us. This is a good sign and gives me hope, because it means that there are other people up here who feel like this mountain is climbable in these conditions. It takes me a minute to realize that the headlamps are not pointing uphill but are pointing toward us. That’s not the way to the summit, you guys. My hope starts to disintegrate. The headlamps finally catch us as they make their way down. It’s a large group—maybe about twenty people who had left camp about two hours before I left my tent, and their guide tells us that the weather conditions are too extreme for them to continue, so they are calling it quits and heading back down to Camp 4 at the South Col. His last words to us: “I hope we don’t regret this decision.” The group doesn’t look human. They look like zombies. But then again, no one really looks human up here.
His words reverberate in my head, bouncing back and forth from ear to ear. I know those words and that feeling oh so well from 2002, when our team turned back just a few hundred feet from the summit. Up here, you always have to err on the side of safety, because getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory. Still, I remembered the feeling of disappointment of not making it to the top like it was yesterday, even though it was eight years ago. But disappointment is a natural part of life. Dying in the mountains is not. I had to stop thinking about the group descending and focus on performing the best I could during the next eight to ten hours of climbing.
Part of me now hopes we also will turn around in the crappy weather, because the ferocious winds and snow are making me nervous. I don’t know if I can do this. I want to be able to blame the weather rather than my own weakness if I do not make it. But we keep climbing. I’m still unsure of whether I’m happy or sad about that. Every part of me is numb. Including my feelings.
Visibility is horrible. I know my pal Meg would tell me to ignore the pain and discomfort and to just put my head down and keep taking steps uphill. She was a fighter. Much more so than I am. Having her name engraved on my ice axe gives me superpowers. Meg, I miss you. I didn’t even get to say good-bye.…
We stop at the Balcony—27,500 feet—to switch out our oxygen bottles. If your equipment malfunctions, your hopes of getting to the top will be dashed. So many things can go wrong. I don’t need another oxygen tank problem like the one I experienced last time. We have been climbing for about five hours. I am glad it’s dark because I think I would be even more intimidated if I could see the steepness of the route. We keep climbing throughout the night and into the early morning. The weather seems to be in a steady state of sh*tty. Then we reach a 90-foot vertical rock pitch. What the??? No one told me about this!!! Son of a… Apparently the fixed lines usually go around this section of the route, but this year the lines go straight up and over the intimidating, towering rock wall. One by one, so do we. I am out of breath, even with my oxygen tank feeding me. One step at a time, we are getting closer to where we want to be. I think about the fact that we are climbing at an elevation where airplanes fly.
We reach the South Summit—28,700 feet. This was where I turned around back in 2002. It was the highest point I had reached on this mountain. I don’t remember ever being here at all. I have no idea how I even got this far on my last trip. I have no idea how I got this far on this trip. I am feeling totally dehydrated and I need calories. It’s so cold and the terrain has been steep, so we haven’t stopped much for food or water.
Suddenly, someone is right next to me. Michael Horst, mountain guide extraordinaire, unclipped himself from the rope to climb up alongside me. Michael was supposed to be climbing with a woman who had hired him to be her private guide, but she had to pull out of the trip early and isn’t getting her shot at the summit. Her loss is most certainly our gain, because now he is climbing with our group. He pulls off his mask and starts to talk to someone. Wait—he is talking to me. What could possibly be this important? “Hey, Alison… I need you to promise me something.” He has to yell so I can hear him over the wind. What the hell do you want, Michael? This is no time to be asking me for anything. Don’t you get that it is all I can do to put one foot in front of the other right now? I am not strong and tough like you are. I wish I had your long legs and your powerful lungs. I am huffing and puffing. I reply, “What?” He is still without his oxygen mask as he climbs closer to me and speaks: “I need you to promise me… that you are going to go farther than this.”
Michael is referring to the spot on the mountain where we are standing, the South Summit, my previous high point. I start to laugh but am choking back tears at the same time. I don’t know why I am so emotional. I guess knowing that someone else up on that mountain actually cared about my success was an overwhelming feeling. The mountain can be very isolating. Even when there are people climbing right next to you. Michael and I shake hands on the promise. I never break a promise to a friend. Now I have to keep climbing.…
The route feels deserted. Is this good? Yes. No crowds, no bottlenecks. Or is this bad? Maybe we are fools to think we can keep going in this weather. I see a climber and a Sherpa in front of us. The climber is barely moving. I get closer and recognize her red down suit. It is Lei Wang, a woman I met on my way to Camp 3. We had chatted on the steep Lhotse Face. I am excited to see that she is on her way to the summit as well. “Lei, Lei? Are you okay?” She doesn’t answer. Or maybe she did—but I couldn’t hear her over the wind. Up in the death zone, it’s very easy for your mind to go to the darkest place. A wave of fear rushes over me. But then Lei starts to move very slowly. Phew! She is fine! Probably just taking it slow. We carefully pass her, but I keep a mental picture of where she is on the route. I am still worried. I turn back one last time… she is moving again. Okay then, onward.…
We keep climbing. I look down. Everest’s Southwest Face on one side and Kangshung Face on the other. One drop is 8,000 feet and the other is 10,000. Slipping is not an option.
Up ahead, the Hillary Step. Forty feet of damn-close-to-vertical rock and perhaps the most dreaded part of a summit bid. But the crappy weather, poor visibility, freezing temperatures, hypoxia, chances of frostbite, altitude sickness, and falling thousands of feet to your death are all right up there, too.
I get over the Hillary Step. I keep moving. One… step… at… a… time. I see something up ahead. A mound of snow, prayer flags, a small statue. I think I am hallucinating.…
8:10 a.m. I am standing on the summit of Mount Everest. Could I really be here? I am waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out and tell me I have been punk’d. People start hugging me and congratulating me because I have just completed climbing the Seven Summits (highest peak on each continent) and skiing to both Poles, an accomplishment known as the Adventure Grand Slam. If nothing else, this should be good for a free breakfast at Denny’s.
It still hasn’t really hit me that I am where I am. I look around and try to take in the view, but there is no view because the clouds have completely closed in. Now it hits me. I am here. I am standing on the very spot where legends have stood before—the adventurers I have been reading about for years, the ones I have admired and idolized, true trailblazers in their day. I wondered what they must have been feeling when they reached this point—29,029 feet/8,848 meters.
So, on May 24, 2010, I made it to the summit of Mount Everest in honor of my girlfriend Meg. After turning back at the South Summit—just a few hundred feet from the top in 2002—I swore I would never try again. Part of me can’t believe I actually did try again. And trust me, there were many moments of self-doubt. But somehow I found myself on the top of that mountain.
I am often asked what it was like—to go back to that mountain eight years later, after everything I had been through, and finally stand on top of the highest mountain in the world. I can honestly tell you (wait for it… deep breath…) it just wasn’t that big a deal. Heavy sigh. Think about it for a moment. It’s just a mountain. It’s nothing more than a big ol’ pile of rock and ice. And you are only on the summit for a very short time. You spend two months climbing that mountain, and only a few minutes at the very top. I was up there for thirty minutes. Standing on top of a mountain is not important, and the people who stand on top of Mount Everest are no better than the people who turn around short of the summit. Because climbing mountains isn’t about standing on the top of a pile of rock and ice for a few minutes—it’s about the lessons you learn along the way and how you are going to use that knowledge and experience to better yourself going forward.
I promise you that plenty of better, stronger, more skilled, much more deserving climbers than Alison Levine didn’t make it that day—for whatever reason. Most of them turned back because of the weather. But because I had that failed experience from 2002 under my belt, I knew what it felt like to get beat up and knocked around on that mountain. I knew what it was like to get the snot kicked out of me high up on the summit ridge in a storm. And I wasn’t afraid of that this time around. I knew what my risk tolerance was, and I knew what my pain threshold was. Had I not had that failed experience eight years prior, I very well might have turned around when most others did.
Shortly after my return, the New York Times ran an article about my completion of the Adventure Grand Slam on the front page of the sports section. They published a photo of me at the summit, which resulted in phone calls from dozens of friends congratulating me on the accomplishment. “Hey, I’m looking at a great photo of you in the Times!” they would say. But there was a lot more to that photo than what they could see. That photo was actually very misleading. Because while people did see me standing at the top of Mount Everest, let me tell you what they didn’t see: the sponsors who helped to fund my trip, the logistics providers who got all the permits in order, the amazing team of Sherpas who helped ferry loads up and down the mountain, the incredible guides who gave me direction along the way, the friends who helped me train before I left for Nepal, the loved ones who gave me their moral support leading up to the trip… I could go on and on. There were a lot of people who played a part in my reaching that summit; you just can’t see them in the photo. Always remember: nobody gets to the top of Mount Everest by themselves. Nobody.