The travel never stops.

On travel day, it was a really hectic morning. Local Los Angeles news channel KTLA TV wanted to do a morning news piece on my journey and Second Seven Summits goal. Because it’s LA, that meant full hair and make-up before the shoot. Cut to the internet not working well enough at my house, segment delays, and all of a sudden barely having time for filming the segment before leaving for the airport.

My flight was with Delta and their Sky Team partners. I checked in for my flights: First, SLC to Amsterdam; then Amsterdam to Moscow. The total flight plan was just shy of 24 hours and the quickest route to Moscow. Upon landing in Moscow, I planned to book a separate ticket to get to MRV (Mineralnye Vody Airport), the airport closest to my starting location. I had a six-hour layover in Amsterdam, which was fine as the lounge was nice and the airport was clean. When I landed, I checked on my next flight, and all was good. Fast forward to an hour before my flight, it’s time to board, flight crew scan my boarding pass, and I’m blocked from boarding. I’m told that I can’t fly to Moscow through Amsterdam unless I am a repatriating Russian citizen! Amsterdam is a “red list” country for travel into Russia on tourist visas (Wow, I wish someone would have caught this before booking!). When I went to the help desk, I had to be re-routed through Germany, Turkey, or France, as those countries allow transient travel into Russia. At that point, the quickest option was to fly to Paris and then onto Moscow. This change added another 10 hours to my flight itinerary resulting in me missing my fight to MRV.

I arrived in Moscow, went to baggage claim, and discovered my bags didn’t make it and were completely missing. I had to file lost luggage reports at the airport and communicate with everyone through Google translate as my Russian was as good as anyone’s English (i.e. bad on both sides). I was beyond tired and hadn’t slept, so decided to find an airport hotel and try to sleep for four hours before catching a morning flight to MRV. Without any of my stuff, I got to the hotel, showered, slept in my clothes, and headed back to the airport. The hotel jaunt probably wasn’t worth it in the end, but I was so fried that I needed a dark room and no overhead speakers blaring. I hadn’t even gotten to the mountain yet and my mental state was deteriorating quickly.

I landed in MRV late morning of 9/13, got picked up from the airport, and driven straight to a rental store to rent gear. The weather window for the trip and going for a summit was a narrow, now or never situation, so there was no time to wait for my own gear to arrive. A lesson I keep learning in the mountains is to be resilient, and this was a whole new kind of resilience on the front end of the journey.

The rental store was amazing! They helped the best they could with everything from sleeping bags, to boots, to crampons, a climbing harness, a backpack, bowl, spoon, jackets, gloves, underwear, socks…ALL THE THINGS. I finally felt like something was going my way. Naturally, most items weren’t my correct size, and nothing was the quality (hyper lite) that I am used to, but hey, it all worked for the most part.

We left the rental store and I met up with my two partners in crime, Garrett Madison and Chase Merriam. And off we went on a three-hour car ride to Base Camp. The car ride was 1.5 hours of paved road and then 1.5 hours of non-paved, non-maintained road. We passed through three passport guard station checks in a vehicle with a back seat only going up to the middle of one’s back and no head rest. We made it to Base Camp later in the day than planned and then met our guides, Victor and Alexi, both legends in the world of mountaineering, and whose skill and abilities humble me.

We completed a full gear check and got to bed so that we could wake up early for our 9/14 start.

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