YFU Alum & Trustee, Andrew Towne Returns to Everest
Andrew summited Everest in support of Youth For Understanding USA. Support from individuals, corporations and foundations help YFU advance cultural understanding, mutual respect and social responsibility through a variety of high-quality educational exchange programs. Learn more about the different ways to give and the impacts your gift will make. We look forward to working with you to provide a strong, sustainable future for YFU.
Thank you so much for your support of my 2017 Mount Everest trek and campaign for YFU! I was fortunate to achieve my dream of summiting Mount Everest on May 25, and have now successfully reached the peak of the highest mountain on each continent, known as the Seven Summits. More importantly, together we brought awareness to the need for cultural understanding and intercultural exchange, raising over $33,000 for Youth For Understanding’s needs-based scholarship fund! I cannot thank you enough! Your support and encouragement never ceased to amaze me.
The last 72 hours are a blur. On May 25th, at about 4:35am, Pasang Kami (PK) and I reached the highest point on earth. We watched the sun rise over the Tibetan plateau as Mount Everest cast a shadow stretching into the horizon. We reverently acknowledged the Buddhist prayer flags and photo of the Dalai Lama that someone had placed on the summit, and we mentally prepared ourselves for the decent, even as we snapped a couple of photographs.
IT’S GO TIME!!!!! IMG Team 3 just got the call to begin our final assault on the summit of Mt. Everest at 2am tonight!!!! If all things go as planned, we will reach Camp II (~21,000′) tomorrow, then take a rest day on Sunday. Monday we aim to move to Camp III (~24,000′), and on Tuesday (the 23rd) we hope to reach the South Col (~26,000′). Weather permitting, we will attempt to summit Mt. Everest on Wednesday May 24th. I hope to be back on the grid with an update by May 26th or 27th. Until then, please keep in mind that no news is good news.
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.
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.
