What am I doing here? That’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot over the past few days. This expedition is expensive, time-consuming, dangerous, and uncomfortable (to say the least). Instead of coming here, I could have (i) made a down-payment on a house, (ii) continued to advance in my profession, (iii) pushed myself athletically in trail running, orienteering, martial arts, or ballroom dancing, and (iv) slept easily and happily in fully-oxygenated air in a climate-controlled room for 8+ weeks.

We just returned from our first acclimatization rotation up Mt Everest, and everything is going well!!

Yesterday morning was our first foray into the Khumbu Icefall—AND IT WAS AWESOME!!!!

The icefall is a ~2,000′ cascading glacier that separates base camp from the upper slopes of Mt Everest, and aside from the objective hazards (seemingly bottomless crevasses, 3-story tall ice walls, house-sized ice blocks teetering above us, and Mt Everest’s west shoulder constantly threatening to fall on us), it is a beautiful, natural jungle gym that gave me the biggest adrenaline rush I’ve had since my first experience properly mountain biking last summer in Banff.

Last week, we spent a couple of days acclimatizing at the base of Lobuche Peak (~16,500′). During that stay, our team shot a music video to Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” One of our team members was a former ballerina, and another had a good eye for videography. With me helping to organize and direct the production, we made a pretty hilarious video—complete with Pulp Fiction dance moves and a Sherpa re-enactment of a scene from the movie Titanic. The video should be viewable on the IMG Everest blog, if you look for posts about Team 3. https://www.mountainguides.com/everest-south17.shtml It is also viewable on YouTube.

I left Minneapolis on April 5. This departure felt quite different than did leaving Philly two years ago—perhaps because I’m in such a different position in life (working consultant vs. graduate student), perhaps because I know now what to expect out of the trek and Everest’s lower slopes, or perhaps because two years ago the closest call I’d ever had in the mountains involved falling into a crevasse on Denali. Our 2015 expedition forever changed me: it reminded me first-hand just how precious life is, when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake unleashed a wall of ice and rocks on our camp, narrowly missing me and my teammates. We helped treat and comfort the victims before assisting with reconstruction efforts in the Khumbu on our way out of Nepal.