THe Road to K2, Lesson 1

I have taken the last few weeks to absorb my Everest experience while enjoying time with my family and friends. Thank you to everyone who has been on this journey with me and my family. We are beyond grateful for all of the support, from words of encouragement to helping with rides to sports practices. I hope there is a time that I can return the love sooner than later!

As the departure date for K2, my next goal peak in my Second Seven Summits journey, quickly approaches, I will be writing blog posts daily, hoping it helps me to keep my lessons from Everest top of mind for what lies ahead.

Lesson 1: The people you adventure with are as important, if not more important, than the adventure itself.  

Everest was not quite what I expected. I thought it would be 70% physical and 30% mental. For me, it was actually the opposite – 30% physical and 70% mental. I was lucky to be blessed with an amazing team to help with the mental part. I can’t help but reflect on how much better the whole experience was because of them. 

Here are some things that really stood out…

Stress happens on the mountain and in everyday life. When the moments of stress happen, how do the people in your life show up? Do they encourage you? Do they step in to help? Do they increase the stress or lower it?  

I came to Mt. Everest later than the rest of my teammates so I could spend more time at home with the super 7 (my seven kiddos). When I arrived at Base Camp, it was already time to move up the mountain and do an acclimatization rotation. Ideally, I would have been at Base Camp a few days before this, but the weather had other plans. So, up we went. I was doing fine until we climbed to touch Camp 3. This part of the journey ended up being harder for me than I expected, mainly because my body wasn’t quite acclimatized for that altitude yet. 

What did my teammates do? They offered to carry some of the weight in my backpack. They shared their snacks with me, so I didn’t need to get out mine. They threw out jokes to get my mind out of my misery. It was so humbling and a reminder to me that we all have moments of weakness and can help each other share the load of burden, whether physical or mental. I learned from my team’s generosity and found myself turning inward to ask: When others are struggling, how am I showing up for them? What does my self-talk look like? This experience was why I needed my team, so I thanked everyone who helped and was grateful to be able to repay the kindness in other ways later throughout the expedition.  

Confidence is built by repetition. When someone is struggling with a skill, do I give them space to figure it out? Do I offer helpful advice? Is my tone helping or hurting?

We had many opportunities to practice our skill sets in the lower ice field on Everest. The Sherpas set up a mini course on some steep ice that allowed us to practice using our ascenders and belay devices, clipping on and off different ropes, and crossing the ladders used to bridge crevasses. I’m lucky that I live in Park City, Utah, so I had a decent amount of experience with this specific skill set prior to this expedition. Any on-site training event it is a bit stressful when you are newer to skills, and watching everyone work together, sharing tips and tricks and encouraging each other was amazing! This one training day unified us and allowed us to know each other in a way that we could play to everyone’s strengths, keeping all of us safer and happier on the mountain. 

Back at home, I am noticing that we can always work on this a little better as a family, remembering that we are all on the same team, blessed with different strengths and weaknesses.

“I get by with a little help from my friends.” – The Beatles

Isn’t that simple phrase true?

We played this iconic song quite a few times in the dining tent on Everest at night, especially when we needed a boost. We didn’t have the best weather windows to climb. Storms seemed to be coming in consistently enough preventing a great weather window to push for the summit. 

When signing up for this expedition, we were given an itinerary of a potential summit window. While we knew it was a “best guess”, it was a window, so in my heart of hearts I was planning on being home for Memorial Day weekend. I had even booked my trip to reconnect with my family in St. George, Utah that holiday weekend. Well, when it was obvious that the trip wasn’t going to happen due to a delayed summit push, I cried some ugly uncontrollable tears. I’m pretty sure all of us had tears at some point. 

My team hugged me, comforted me, related with me and shared their moments of frustrating tears. I learned that these moments of emotional unwinding are eased with the help of each other. I’m grateful I could be on the supporting end of these events at times, and a little self-conscious for the moments I was in them, but they all happened.

We all got through it, and as we distanced ourselves from these low moments, with the high of successful summits, looking back makes them a little easier to accept.

The people on this adventure with me will be friends for life. We did this big hard thing together. We supported and encouraged one another.  We pushed ourselves mentally and physically and are all better because of it. We achieved personal and collective goals together. I will be forever grateful for the lessons of friendship. The importance of give and take to keep balance within a group and the awareness of how interconnected we all are, are both really essential for survival. 

May we all have such support in the pursuit of our personal adventures at home and beyond.