Everest is crowning glory of woman's seven-peak dream

Kit DesLauriers recalls stepping into her ski bindings at 29,000 feet on Mount Everest as bright sunshine filled a pale blue sky and snow swirled in subzero temperatures. She was about to do something no one had accomplished.

"This was the most serious ski descent we had ever attempted," DesLauriers says. "We were aware that this had serious consequences. One mistake, and you would be unrecognizable at the bottom. It was very, very intense."

With oxygen mask in place and ski tips hanging over the edge of a cliff no larger than a sofa, she pushed off and skied, becoming the first person to ski from the summits of the highest peaks on the seven continents. She made history at 11 a.m. Oct. 18, just 37 days before her 37th birthday.

The trip to Everest had begun the last week in August when the team landed in Nepal. The expedition was under the guidance of Berg Adventures and led by Wally Berg, a 25-year veteran of mountaineering expeditions. Seven weeks later, the 14-member team of five climbers and nine Sherpas reached the summit.

The climbers: Kit, a two-time women's world freeskiing champion and accomplished ski mountaineer; Rob DesLauriers, Kit's husband and one of the original pioneers of extreme skiing; Dave Hahn, a 20-year mountaineering veteran with seven previous ascents of Everest; Bryce Brown, a physician who has been the medical doctor on two Everest expeditions; and Jimmy Chin, a professional photographer and accomplished skier and mountaineer who has made two ascents of Everest. The North Face and Balance Vector funded the expedition. Berg selected the Sherpas because of their experience, expertise and relationship with him. "The special forces of Sherpas," Rob DesLauriers says, quoting Chin.

Ultimate test of knowledge and will

The climb to the summit, which began at 1:45a.m., was exhilarating and exhausting. The descent, at times, was treacherous and challenged every bit of their knowledge and will. The weather was closing in and had been since they reached the summit.

"The margin between life and death is thin at 29,000 feet," Rob DesLauriers wrote in a dispatch from Everest on Oct. 20.

"You don't have a lot of energy or time or resources to correct a situation that is not just right," he said Monday in an interview with USA TODAY. "If something starts to go bad, the steps you take to correct it have to be so precise. The world drops off 8,000 feet all around you."

They walked that thin line during the descent.

Kit, Rob and Jimmy Chin skied from the summit to a point on the mountain known as the Hillary Step, named after Sir Edmund Hillary, who, along with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, was the first to reach the top of Everest.

"The Hillary Step is a 40-foot rock cliff," says Berg, who has climbed Everest four times and is one of the world's leading authorities on Everest and the Himalayas. "It was just that you can't ski vertical rock."

The Hillary Step is at nearly 29,000 feet, an area known as the death zone. They decided to "down climb" the step using ropes with their skis on. Rob went first so he could film Kit. Hahn provided a backup belay as a safety measure. Halfway down and at the crux of the rappel, Rob ran out of oxygen.

"My world began closing in," he wrote in a dispatch.

Then Kit began her descent.

"As I climbed down the Hillary Step, I looked down and saw Rob just hanging there at the bottom of the step looking pretty stunned," she says. "There were Sherpas there trying to help him. He was out of oxygen and, in his words, the world was floating around him. They gave him some of their oxygen. Things were really starting to spiral."

Her oxygen supply was next to nothing. She turned the flow down to very low.

"I said to the Sherpas, 'Please take care of him. Please take care of my husband.'" Kit says. "I knew I could get myself down without affecting other supplies. The Sherpas were able to get Rob down and help others down."

'Like your life depended on it'

And while they could have continued on skis, they recognized the snow conditions as being highly questionable. Kit, Rob and Jimmy took off their skis and put spiked crampons back on their boots. "We decided the universe was conspiring to keep us alive," Kit says.

By 5 p.m. the climbing team reached camp at the South Col, where they spent the night at 26,000 feet. They were "exhausted and humbled," Rob describes in a dispatch.

What they faced the next morning was the Lhotse Face, 5,000 vertical feet of wind-scoured, shimmering white-and-blue ice at a 45- to 50-degree pitch, which is 15 to 20 degrees steeper than a standard stair step or a typical black diamond slope at a ski resort. An earlier avalanche had wiped away several feet of snow. At 9a.m. Oct. 19, Kit, Rob and Jimmy stepped into their ski bindings and started down the Lhotse Face.

"As we went down the mountain, we would look down the fall line and try to read our line," Kit recalls. "Everybody was totally focused and our senses were so alert. There were times when you didn't see your other two partners. Each of us had to find our own best way down, and we were living our own experience. We would check in with each other along the way. It was so icy that at times the ice ax would barely penetrate an inch. Your skis weren't even leaving a mark."

They picked their way down by linking up patches of snow. Kit latched on to a mantra while skiing the Lhotse Face: "Like your life depended on it." And with each turn she uttered those words. Sometimes out loud.

"It was one of the few times in my ski career when it was, 'If you fall, you die,'" Rob says.

"One time Rob asked me how I was doing, and I said, 'I'm scared and I don't want to die,'" Kit recalls. "He said, 'Good, let's get a plan and get out of here.' It was said almost in a carefree manner at the seeming absurdity of our undertaking."

Kit makes a strong distinction between being scared and being grasped by fear.

"I have no room for fear in my life," she says. "Fear is paralyzing. It's one thing to be scared, but once you allow fear in your life, it is debilitating.

"I don't make any claims to not being scared. It's important and it's healthy. I've been scared enough that I'm comfortable with it. When you experience fear, the next thing out of people's minds is 'I can't.' We are in control of our minds. As much as our minds try to control us, it is important to not let your mind run too far."

This mind-set has allowed her to set goals and attain them. It isn't the spotlight that motivates her, she says, though she's has had more than 20 media interviews since her accomplishment, including a feature in the current issue of Outside magazine.

The accomplishment of being the first to ski from the summits of the highest peaks on the seven continents is still sinking in. "It feels incredibly rewarding," Kit says. "It's a very peaceful feeling to have set out this very lofty goal and to have accomplished it. But I would like it to be a quiet statement, really. I'm not out there as a feminist. I'm someone who followed her heart."

Kit started following her heart to the seven summits in May 2004, when she became the first American woman to climb and ski from the summit of Denali, Alaska's Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America at 20,320 feet.

Berg says Kit's accomplishment is in the vein of an old-style expedition.

"Following your own heart and your dreams and approaching the greatest mountains in the world with the humility, commitment and respect that Kit showed is unique in recent years," Berg says. "The continental high points are taken for granted by many people. I just feel it is an old-style approach to meet the mountain on its own terms and not ask for any shortcuts."

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