Climbing the 14 Highest Peaks in the World with Tracee Metcalfe

0:02The world's 14 tallest mountains are all located in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges in Asia. They each rise above 8 ,000 meters or 26 ,000 feet. At this elevation, the weather is unpredictable, the temperatures are extreme, and the air is so thin it's hard to breathe. The tallest and most famous of these peaks is Mount Everest, though it's not necessarily the hardest to climb. K2 is steeper, and Annapurna is deadlier. Summoning any one of them requires years of training, serious financial investment, and a massive amount of grit. In October 2024, Tracy Metcalf, a doctor from Vail, Colorado, became the first American woman to climb all 14 of these mountains.

0:49I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.

1:03Tracy Metcalf, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. You know, your story is so interesting because I haven't talked to a lot of mountain climbers that are doing it completely unsponsored, on their own. And you have this huge record. How did you get to the mountains? Were you outdoorsy as a kid? Were you always interested in the outdoors growing up? You know, I really wasn't outdoorsy as a kid. I was really kind of a nerd, really focused on, like, studies, drama, speech, not athletic things. I think mostly because my parents weren't super athletic. So that was just not something that I was encouraged to do.

1:42But I loved reading books about the outdoors. I loved reading mountain stories. And when I was about 12, my parents were getting a divorce. And my dad really wanted he and I to have something we could do together. And so he started taking me to Park City to go skiing once a year. And that definitely inspired my love of mountains. I love that you were nerdy growing up and had nothing to do with the outdoors and you're like this record-breaking mountain climber today. This is amazing. How did you get into like mountaineering and climbing and getting interested in the outdoors in a bigger way? Because that's quite a leap going from like nerdy, no sports to I climb like 27 ,000 foot mountains plus.

2:25Yes. So slowly, right after high school, I was supposed to start college in January because they were sort of staggering the starts for college. And I was going to go move out to Colorado for the, you know, for the like eight months and just take whatever job I could take and just be in the mountains. Because there was something about the mountains that really called to me. I mean, I still remember the first time that I drove into Colorado. When I got to Glenwood Canyon and just saw how magnificent the canyon was and the river, I was just blown away that things like that were accessible. And once I moved to Breckenridge, Colorado, I decided that I was not going to return to school in LA like I was supposed to.

3:08And I reapplied to other colleges and ended up applying to the Colorado College in Colorado Springs and starting there a year later. Wow. So you took this gap year and then it sounds like you studied medicine right away or did you know you wanted to be a doctor? No. I mean, and I should clarify, when I took the gap year, nobody was doing it. My parents were really angry at me. The way I remember it is that they were almost like, we're not going to support you in college if you do this. Because I think they were just worried because people didn't do that. But, you know, I knew I wanted to go back to school.

3:43I just realized that LA wasn't where I wanted to go to school. And when I first started studying at in Colorado Springs at Colorado College, I had a big emphasis in biology. And I, I kind of thought that I wanted to somehow do cancer research, which my dad had been diagnosed with leukemia. And he's still alive. And he's doing amazingly well. But But that really kind of impacted me. And I did pre-med because it was just a few more classes. And then I actually worked in a cancer research lab after college for two years. And I realized that I didn't like that. Like, I think I need to be on the clinical side.

4:23I really like interacting with patients. I like hearing their stories. And so that's when I decided to apply to med school and thankfully got in to CU and went to school in Colorado.

4:39During her time in Colorado, Tracy started spending more and more of her time in the mountains. After medical school, she moved to Seattle for her residency. The city was a perfect fit. It was home to leading cancer research institutes, and on clear days, she could see Mount Rainier in the distance. During her residency, Tracy decided to climb Mount Rainier without a guide. To prepare, she practiced glacier travel, crevasse rescue, and rope systems. She summited Rainier twice, and pretty soon after, she was offered a chance to become a medic on Denali. After residency, my first job was in Vail, Colorado, doing primary care.

5:22Amazing. Yeah, I was still thinking that I wanted to maybe do a fellowship for cancer, but my residency was really intense and I needed some time off. So I thought, well, I'll take this job in Vail, Colorado, kind of get back to the mountains, and then I can always apply for a fellowship the next year if I'm ready. And then you can see this story. You can predict how it ended. I did not go back to do a fellowship, but stayed in Vail. So my first job was doing primary care. And the way I got the job working on Denali is sort of funny. I was heli skiing with some friends in Alaska and we had a female heli ski guide and she was just amazing this woman Leanne and I remember I was just like in awe of her and like how she had because heli ski guiding at that time was definitely a man's world yeah there were no female heli guide skiers that's crazy we had two we actually had two females and I think because it was me and my other girlfriend.

6:28Maybe they were trying to show us like, look, we have some female guides. It's cool though. Good for them. Right. It was awesome. So anyways, Leanne said, you know, I see that you love skiing and you have a good attitude. And my husband, Tucker, is a ranger on Denali and he's always, they always need a doctor each for each of their patrols in the summer. And I remember being like, oh my gosh, like I've climbed very near, but I am not qualified for this. And then she was like, No, no, no. Like, as the doctor, you don't need to be like the expert on the ropes and the crevasse rescue, and you will learn all that when you're there.

7:06So I talked to her husband, Tucker, he convinced me that, you know, that the prerequisites were really to be physically fit and to have a good attitude and to have, we were going to do it all on skis, not to the summit, but to travel up to 14 ,000 feet. So he was like, you know, it seems like you have all the prerequisites. So he invited me to be part of a patrol on Denali. What was that like? It was awesome. It was terrifying. It was a lot of things. I definitely was a little, I was pretty terrified when I agreed to do it. And I spent a lot of all my time, free time training with a big heavy pack.

7:51So because I just didn't want to be the weak member of the team, even though, you know, I was the doctor. So I was like, Oh, probably no one expects me to be the strongest, but I don't want to be the weakest either. And then when I got there, yeah, I remember I was pretty intimidated. The two other volunteers from our group were ski patrollers from Jackson Hole, and they've both become lifelong friends. But at the time, I was like, oh my goodness, okay, there's professional ski patrollers here. I was very intimidated. But after, you know, a little while after we practiced lowering each other into the crevasses.

8:31I got to realize that these were really nice people and that, you know, I knew some things that they didn't know about medicine. And so it was awesome. We were busy that summer. We unfortunately, somebody died skiing that we had to rescue their body. And that was, I realized the first time I'd seen death in the hospital a lot, but I'd never seen death in the mountains. And so that was really sobering to me. I had kind of had like these fantasies that maybe someday I wanted to ski Denali. And after seeing that, I really realized how serious of a mountain Denali is. Tracy spent two seasons as a doctor on Denali, and eventually she started dreaming about doing the same thing on Mount Everest.

9:18A friend put her in touch with an expedition company in the Himalayas that was looking for a doctor to join their team. Before Tracy worked on Everest, the company offered her a position on Manislu, an 8 ,000 meter peak where she could test her skills at altitude. And I was like, great, sign me up. I want to be the doctor on Manislu. And so I did that as the base camp doctor, but I wasn't like, I wasn't on the permit to try to summit. And after doing that for a year, not a full year at all. I mean, the expeditions are like six weeks, so they're short expeditions. But after that first year, I thought, you know what, like, this is really cool, but I don't want to sit at base camp.

10:00I want to see what's at the top of the mountain. So basically, after working for a couple of seasons on Manuslu with Russell Bryce as his base camp doctor, you know, he said, I think you're ready to come to Everest. And I said, that's great. I said, I don't think I want to go unless I can climb with the climbers. And at that point, he he trusted me because we'd worked together and he'd seen me climb. And so he, I don't know if he believed I would do it. But he said, like, okay, instead of like paying you, we could use your money. And then, you know, you don't have to pay and you could have a permit and you can try to climb with the team.

10:37It was a trade. And that worked. I got to summit Everest. So my first like real try on an 8 ,000 meter peak was Everest in 2016. And I got to climb with like our five person, we had like five paying clients, five Sherpas, one guide. And I got to climb with them all the way to the summit. It was the most amazing experience. I love that. So you traded to climb Everest. You gave your medical... What would happen though if you were the one who needed medical help? Right? So I had to balance that. I feel like I did everything in my power to be over prepared for that trip and to not push myself. In reality, probably the Everest ER is still at Everest.

11:22So if I was really needing that type of care, I'm sure I would have been taken over there. But I was doing everything in my power to be overprepared for the trip so that I wouldn't be a liability and wouldn't need care. So at this point, I had climbed Denali. And I think in some ways, Denali can be harder than Everest. That's a controversial thing to say. It depends on the person. It depends on the year. But on Denali, even though it's a much lower mountain, it's only 20 ,000 feet. It is really far north, you know, on the globe. And the further away you are from the equator, there's less oxygen in the air.

12:07So the fact that it's 20 ,000 feet, it actually feels more like it's like 22 ,000 to 23 ,000 feet. And it's very cold, and there's no one carrying anything for you on Denali. Like on Everest, part of the deal is there's Sherpas there. And even most of the time, even if you're trying to be a totally independent climber on Everest, like Sherpas are putting fixed rope in. They're making footsteps. And in my case, they were carrying our tents and our stoves. And on Denali, none of that's happening. So in many ways, Denali is hard because you're on the mountain for several. When I was there, I was probably on the mountain for 28 days with no shower, no nothing.

12:50And on Everest, you have this like nice base camp where there's I mean, it's not a nice shower, but it's a shower with heated water. And there's like a cook tent and people are preparing you food. And on Denali, you're doing all that yourself. So for me, I really, I thought that I was, I kind of knew what I was in for. And obviously on Everest, the altitude is much more extreme, but I was using oxygen, right? I'm going to, I mean, I don't know that I have the capability to do it without oxygen, but that wasn't even something to discuss as the doctor. Like I was absolutely going to be using oxygen above 23 ,000 feet.

13:28So I kind of felt like I knew how to manage cold. I felt like I knew how to train. and in some ways I thought like this is going to be a little bit easier because someone's going to be cooking my food at base camp and I'm going to be able to stay clean.

13:51Tracy's time on Denali, Manislu and Everest showed her what she was capable of. Once she returned from Nepal, she knew she was ready for bigger adventures. Her ambition led her to make history as one of the most impressive mountaineers in the country.

14:20A year before Tracy Metcalfe summited Mount Everest in 2016, she had a hip replacement. She was in her late 30s at the time and knew that this procedure was necessary if she wanted to keep climbing big mountains. On a physical level, the surgery worked well and Tracy was able to climb Everest. Afterward, she went on to climb two other 8 ,000 meter peaks, Cho Oyu in Tibet and Makalu in Nepal. But while she was achieving these remarkable feats, Tracy was also struggling to overcome a battle with addiction that started soon after hip surgery.

14:59I had been struggling with, I was drinking too much on my time off and I had become addicted to Percocet after my hip surgery. And so I was struggling with addiction. And in 2019, I, when I got back from McAlew, I had, you know, it was like, I felt so happy that I had climbed to McAlew, but it felt honestly like, you know, like imposter syndrome, because there was this part of me that people didn't know about that I was drinking too much, and that I was struggling with addiction. And so I, I found AA and I got sober at that time, I had a couple of hiccups. But at this point, I've had continuous sobriety since September of 2022.

15:47And so, you know, it was, I think for me, like it kind of admitting that to people I worked with and then getting the help I needed, it felt like I should pause on work for a little bit and decide like, do I want to keep being a hospitalist or do I want to do something different with medicine and with the second half of my life? I really appreciate you sharing that because I think we have countless people on here that struggle with addiction. And I think addiction and sometimes these big endurance adventures go hand in hand and, you know, addiction runs in my family. So, and it's also really common after like hip surgery or like a big surgery for people to get addicted to painkillers.

16:28That's happened in my own family. It's happened in probably a lot of people's families. So thank you. And good on you for getting sober. Like it's a journey and I'm sure you're going to help a lot of people who are listening to you talk about that. You confronted your addiction, which I think is like one of the biggest mountains to climb. And then you continue to climb these other mountains. Oh, so I was mostly sober. But you know, I had a couple of slip ups where I would like drink and celebrate. But for the most part, I was living a life of sobriety from then on. But 2022 was when I finally said like, you know, I don't need to even like have a celebration after climbing a mountain.

17:08Like I do need to have a celebration, but it doesn't need to involve alcohol or drugs, right? Like there's other more healthy ways to celebrate. And it wasn't until I did Annapurna, which was my fourth 8 ,000 meter peak summit, which was for me the hardest, the most challenging mountain, the most dangerous, that then I kind of something just changed in my brain. And it was like, you've just like done the objectively most dangerous and hardest peak in Nepal, in the world, probably, in my opinion. And that was when I was, for the first time, really being honest with people in my life about what was going on, what I'd struggled with.

17:51And it's hard, right? I don't think I'm unique as a doctor. But I will say, as a medical professional, people kind of, I think the public is pretty understanding. I think other doctors are, they're kind of harsh, because they don't want to believe like they want to believe that we're immune from disease, right? And it's, you know, addiction is a disease. And just being a doctor doesn't vaccinate you from it. So, so, so there was mostly people were supportive in my life. But it was it was definitely those were some hard years for me. And I think mountain climbing gave me, that just let me get away from all that and be in nature.

18:35And just, it was like me, my training, the mountain, the people that are there, like nobody in Nepal needed to know my story of what was going on back home. Nobody cared, right? They cared like what I could do on the mountain and how we could work together. After summoning Annapurna, Tracy had successfully climb four of the 14 tallest mountains in the world. Fewer than 100 people have climbed all 14 of them, and no American woman had ever done it. This challenge had been in the back of Tracy's mind ever since she summited Everest. Now that she was a third of the way through, she decided to go all in and climb all 14 peaks.

19:17Just a warning, this part of our conversation contains a description of a tragic event that happened during one of her summit bids.

19:28So then somewhere between 2022 and 2025, you climbed 10? Yeah. Wow. I decided to quit my job completely and try to finish this project in a couple years if I could. I wanted to try to finish it as close to my 50th birthday as I could. I ended up climbing my last mountain in September, like a few months after my 50th birthday. So I didn't, I didn't quite make the goal, but it was close enough. And it wasn't a hard and fast goal. But yeah, a few things happened. Basically, there was there's a climber named Nims Purja, who he has like a documentary on Netflix called 14 Peaks. And the reason I mentioned it is that Prior to 2000, it was 2019 when he did that.

20:20And I remember I was on McAlew and we were hearing about this guy, Nims, who was like doing these peaks back to back. And as a physician, I was thinking, is that going to work? Like, is his body going to have enough time to recover? Like he's using oxygen and he's flying from base camp to base camp. But, you know, the training we had was kind of like the most you should do in a season is two or three. and then here he goes and he does all 14 in like less than a year and that that just changed the industry for better or for worse like as soon as people saw that you could do that then paying clients started thinking well you know if I'm taking all the time to train for a mountain and then I'm you know spending a couple weeks on the mountain getting acclimatized like why wouldn't I want to do two or three because part of this part of what takes a long time about climbing the mountains is sitting like going up and down from base camp to get acclimatized.

21:15So after he did that, I would say the industry changed. You know, I was kind of being around seeing this and being exposed to these ideas and seeing that the human body could do it. And so I thought, well, like, why not? Right? Like, I'm not a super athlete, but I, you know, it seems like it makes more sense to me to like, take two years off, I have money saved, I'm gonna have to dip into my retirement stuff. But like, this is like, the way I sort of told myself was that it's like, I'm doing some of my retirement now. And then I'll work later on the second end. And with the hip replaced, I knew I had to have a knee replaced.

21:52I felt like my time to climb mountains was finite because of my body. And so for me, I was like, I'm all in like, I'm going to try to do this in a couple years and get it done. And that was, yeah, that's what I did. incredible is there um one that stands out as like the most memorable uh of of those i mean shisha pengma the last one was the most memorable um for so many reasons um it was the site of a tragedy so in 2023 i actually tried to do shisha pengma uh after manaslu um and when i was there with my team, four people were killed in two separate avalanches. They were not on our team, they were on different teams.

22:36But one of the women was my friend, Gina. And it was basically Gina and another American woman named Anna were competing to be the first US woman to finish all 14 peaks. And I think that, you know, they got really caught up in it in trying to not instead of working together, you know, trying trying each one trying to be the first. And the conditions were pretty dangerous that year. And yeah, there was two separate avalanches. So I saw the avalanche that killed Anna. And then I turned around because I was upset, terrified that there would be more avalanches and then found out that a second avalanche had killed Gina and Lama, the Sherpa that she was climbing with.

23:29And they were buried and their bodies were never recovered. So I don't even know what that would be like. We could see their bodies down there. And I remember thinking, you know, I'm a backcountry skier. So I've been involved in some avalanches before. And I remember thinking, oh, their bodies are on top. Like, that's great. They're fine. And then But they were far, you know, like, I don't know, I'm so bad with feet, but, you know, a couple of football fields away. So I could see their bodies and I could see that they weren't moving. And then right away, two of the Sherpas who were much closer to them moved in to examine them and determined that they were both dead and had pretty, like, I don't want to, you know, they had severe injuries that were not compatible with life.

24:16And so I kind of went from like, should I go down there? Like, is there anything I can do to help? Well, first I thought they were fine. So it was like relief. And then it was like, oh, they're not moving. Like, okay, is there anything I can do as a doctor to help? And then it's like getting more information on the radio. No, like their injuries are not compatible with life. There's nothing to do. And probably we should just get out of here because like for people who don't know, once an avalanche occurs just from somebody moving or walking, that it means the snow is really unstable. And it means that it's really likely that there's going to be more avalanches.

24:53Like, it's not like, oh, it just released. Now it's safe. No, there's all these other places where there's still other unstable snow that's going to come down. So you really, it's not safe to stay there and you want to get out of there. So I went, some people wanted to keep climbing. I did not. Like, as soon as, between the tragedy and the fact that I just knew it was unsafe, like, I just started heading down immediately.

25:26Shisha Pangma wasn't Tracy's only unsuccessful summit. In the process of climbing these 14 peaks, she ended up going on a total of 21 expeditions to Nepal, Pakistan, and Tibet. After her experience on Shisha Pangma, she successfully crossed a few other peaks off her list, but she had to return to the mountain in order to complete the project.

25:51So how did you go back to Shish? Yeah, so how did I go back? That's a good question. So I thought a lot about not going back and making it like Project 13. I like the number 13. And I thought, you know, like, I think like 13 peaks might be good enough. And then I had a year to sort of think about it. And what I eventually realized was that I know myself and that at some point, Maybe it wouldn't be a year. Maybe it would be five years. I would want to go back to that mountain. And the thought of going back to that mountain with strangers versus my team who I was there with when the trauma happened was horrible.