The world’s highest peak rests above 29,000 feet in elevation. At this height, temperatures drop as low as -76 degrees Fahrenheit, and the winds blow as fast as 100 miles per hour. Despite the daunting climate, Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the very first to ascend Mount Everest in 1953.
Through the 1990s, fewer than 200 people would make the attempt each year. However, since the turn of the millennia, the trek has continually gained in popularity, with more than 800 people attempting the climb every year. More and more of those hikes are ending with triumph, with success rates doubling in the past few years.
One of those mountaineers is Southlake resident Ami Anderson, and she didn’t waste any time preparing for the feat ahead of her. In just nine months, this adventurous woman went from dreamer to doer and learned some valuable lessons about life and its limits along the way.
Bucket Lists, Boots And Backpacks
Before moving to Southlake in 2015, Ami lived in Minnesota for 20 years. Growing up, she always kept a bucket list of adventures to experience someday.
“I’ve done a lot of crazy things in my life,” Ami says. “I’ve been to nearly every continent and all 50 states. I hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. I dived in the Great Blue Hole and the Great Barrier Reef. And I did a monthlong safari in Africa. My whole life has been one big adventure.”
Even after checking so many adventures off of her lifelong list, one dream remained: climbing Mount Everest.
“I remember being in high school, seeing a picture of base camp, and I said, ‘I’m going to go there someday,’” Ami recalls. “I knew I was going to make it there. It was just a question of when.”
Today, Ami is happily married with two children and has a successful marketing career. Despite her busy and fulfilling life, her passion for adventure remained.
Fate approached Ami many years later when she was asked by a friend to join her climb up Mount Everest. Ami leapt at the opportunity.
With another close friend of Ami’s joining them, the trio signed up for the trek through a professional expedition company along with four other climbers from California, Utah and Tennessee. The booking service reserved the essential travel permits, licenses, accommodations and guides ahead of time, so there was no backing out.
“I was determined to do whatever I could so I would not be the last one dragging the group from behind,” Ami says.
Ami, who stays fit through regular workouts with Camp Gladiator, began training aggressively for the journey ahead. First, she increased her daily walking regimen to 20,000 steps, or roughly 8 miles, a day. In order to get those extra steps in, Ami often hiked the local trails after her training sessions. She upped the challenge even more by hiking in full gear — boots and backpack included.
“I would go to the grocery store, put my groceries in my backpack and walk home all the time,” Ami chuckles. “I was always worried some neighbor was going to call [the police] on me thinking I was some drifter because I was always walking around town with this backpack on.”
During her final weeks of preparation, Ami intensified her efforts by mimicking the Everest ascent through regular 90-flight stair climbs in full gear up Southlake Town Square’s West parking garage. To ensure she could handle herself at higher altitudes, Ami spent two weekends hiking the hills of Minnesota and the mountains of Colorado.
“Some days I was so tired, I came home and I didn’t want to do anything else. Yet, I still had 90 flights of stairs ahead of me,” Ami says. “Determination was what got me through it. I set this goal for myself. I made this commitment. Now I [had to] stick with it.”
Just as her motivation began to wane, Ami’s Camp Gladiator friends boosted her spirits by showing up in their own boots and backpacks to hike along in solidarity. Trainer Brooke Nicholson says seeing Ami’s determination inspired her peers and strengthened their bond as a group.
“It was so fun to be around her, knowing she was about to take on this big challenge,” Brooke says. “It was like watching one of your family members go out and experience this amazing adventure.”
From Home To Hike
Just getting to the Himalayas was an experience in and of itself for Ami and her group. Flying out of Dallas with a layover in Saudi Arabia, it took 21 hours before they finally landed in Nepal’s capital city of Kathmandu. It was initially a jarring acclimation, with mopeds, bikes and other motor vehicles speeding and beeping through the streets.
“It was very chaotic,” Ami says. “There’s no real traffic patterns. To cross the street was like a minor miracle. I congratulated myself for making it across every time.”
But once they got to their hotel and settled in, things slowed down enough so Ami could experience a whole other side of the city. She visited the Kopan Monastery and learned about Buddhist practices, indulged in some of the tastiest Nepalese cuisine and spent time with native Rhesus monkeys at the thousand-year-old Swayambhu temple.
“We took so many pictures,” she recalls. “I worried that I wouldn’t have enough space to take pictures when we reached Mount Everest.”
After a few days of sightseeing, it was finally time to make their way to Everest Base Camp, which was roughly 150 miles away.
“For hours, we were seeing signs that said ‘base camp,’ and it always seemed like we were almost there but not quite,” Ami says of the seemingly endless hike. “When we finally got there, it was so exhilarating. We took pictures, people from our campsite came to us and brought us tea to warm up and celebrate.”
Ami spent three days at base camp, alternating between acclimation hikes and climbing back down to sleep. Though she was always cold and tired from the long days and freezing nights, Ami was also equally fulfilled.
“It was breathtaking,” she says. “The pictures don’t do it justice. We had a different view of the mountains every time we looked up because of the clouds constantly moving. I was surrounded by the most beautiful scenery I had ever experienced.”
Some days were harder than others. The summit of Mount Everest reaches as high as 29,000 feet, yet on one of Ami’s more difficult days, she was struggling to catch her breath at even 16,000 feet.
“Your body is different every day,” Ami explains. “You just go as far as you can, and sometimes, it isn’t very far at all.”
Interestingly enough, Ami’s weakest moment was also the most special.
“[Reaching 16,000 feet] was actually one of my favorite moments because up until that point, I didn’t have much time to sit and reflect that high in the mountains,” she says. “It’s funny because you’re so focused on making each step that you sometimes forget to look up and see everything that’s happening. It’s hard to imagine that I was that high up and I almost missed everything around me.”
Motivated by both reaching her goal and enjoying the views, Ami then ascended to 18,000 feet the day after. During the helicopter ride back, Ami realized the full scope of her accomplishments.
“I never would have seen what we conquered had we not taken the helicopter,” she says. “We got to see the towns we stopped in, the glacier lines we passed, the trees that we hadn’t seen in days. It was so unbelievable.”
When they returned to Kathmandu, Ami was greeted with the same sounds of people and motor vehicles whizzing by as when she first landed.
“I was just so proud of myself,” Ami beams. “I set a goal, I trained for it and I made it. That’s why I didn’t feel the need to hike back down. It was a big goal, and I already accomplished it.”
A Once-In-A-Lifetime Experience
Looking back on her journey, Ami realized she was indeed capable of much more than she initially believed.
“[Brooke] often told me ‘you can do anything for one minute.’ For this hike, I told myself ‘you can do anything for seven hours,’” she says. “Sometimes thinking about the whole journey can be overwhelming, but if you just focus on the one step in front of you, that makes the task much more doable.”
And her biggest takeaway from the hike will stay with her forever — the word “Namaste,” which means “Greetings to you.”
“Every person, every child, every hiker we passed in the street, all of them said ‘Namaste’ with a smile,” she recalls. “It left me with the feeling that everyone was amazingly friendly. Imagine if we acknowledged every stranger on the street with ‘greetings to you.’ A little gesture like that can go a long way in making someone’s day.”
As she looks through the many pictures of her trip, Ami is confident and content she’s reached the pinnacle in more ways than one.
“I’ll never be able to top that,” she says. “This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”