Project Climb Higher | Final Dispatch: Denali — The Full Picture

We're home.

It takes a minute to close something like this properly, which is why I waited until I was back in real life, sitting in an actual chair, eating with an actual fork, drinking water that didn't require over an hour of fighting a stove to produce. Those things hit differently after two weeks on a glacier. Gratitude gets very specific very fast when you've been without things long enough to actually miss them.

So here's the full recap of how Project Climb Higher ended.

We summited Thursday. Friday, we made one of our biggest days of the entire expedition, descending the mountain, digging up every cache we'd buried on the way up, and getting back to base camp ahead of every other team. Not because we're the fastest climbers on the mountain. Because we left the earliest and didn't waver from the plan. That's it. Saturday, we got the first flight out, first come, first served, and we took it. That night: a hotel room, hot showers, Alaskan king crab legs, and a meal that tasted like the best thing any of us had ever eaten. Then a red eye home, and back in Park City by Sunday.

Now that I have a little distance, I keep thinking about everything that was stacked against us from the start.

One of our original team members had to drop from the expedition for personal reasons very close to our departure date — too close to make any adjustments to the permit. So we went in as five. We landed on the glacier with 650 pounds of gear among the five of us, and I weigh 112 pounds. We had fuel problems. The stove never fully cooperated. Things went wrong in the small ways that compound into big ones when you're at altitude and exhausted and out of options. And we just kept putting one foot in front of the other. That's the whole strategy. It's not glamorous, but it works.

The biggest win of this entire expedition wasn't the record.

It was watching something shift in Jacob.

At some point up there he realized: if his mom can do this, he can do this. Every time he felt weak or uncomfortable, he'd look over and see me still moving, and decide that meant he could too. I don't know if he fully understands yet what he gave me by doing that, but our kids are watching what we do far more than they're listening to what we say. That moment is why I will keep doing hard things in front of my children for as long as I'm able.

But what Jacob said coming off the mountain is the thing I keep turning over in my mind. He said: every time his mind told him he was done, his body took another step. And eventually he realized his mind was just telling him stories.

When a kid gets that, really gets it in their body and not just as a concept, it changes everything. That knowledge doesn't stay on the mountain. It travels home with them and into every hard thing that comes after. I'm not saying mountaineering is the only way to find it. But it is very good at putting you in a place where you want to quit before you should, and then showing you that you didn't have to.

Jacob also noticed something about the exposed ridge, a section that was genuinely scary, heavy pack, serious consequences, no margin for error. We crossed it multiple times between caching, moving, and descending. The first time was the hardest thing. By the last time, it was manageable. He said he'd never really understood before how much repetition changes something that scared you at first.

I think a lot of us stop at the first hard. We feel how difficult it is, decide that's just what it always feels like, and never find out what's on the other side. There is so much on the other side.

When things were at their worst up there, we got silly. Inside jokes, ridiculous mantras, music in our ears when the mountain got too loud in our heads. Joy doesn't wait for the summit. You have to carry it with you or you'll arrive empty.

And the summit really is only halfway. Jacob understood that one intellectually before this trip. He understands it in his bones now. Getting to the top is the midpoint. Getting home is the finish line.

We came back to color. To smells. To chairs and forks and water from a tap. To ordinary things, two weeks of absence turned into extraordinary ones. That's maybe the quietest gift an expedition like this gives you, the ability to notice what was always there.

Project Climb Higher is complete. A second Guinness World Record is in the books. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, my seventeen-year-old son learned that his mind tells stories, and his body knows the truth.

Cheers to the next chapter.

Something to think about today:

What's the hard thing you stopped at the first time, decided that's just how hard it is, and walked away from before repetition could make it easier? The ridge doesn't get less exposed. But you get more capable. There's a difference.

And whatever your summit is — remember it's only halfway. Plan for the whole journey home.

Thank you for following every dispatch from Project Climb Higher. The expedition is complete. The story continues.

— Jenn