On Friday, Tracee Metcalfe became the first U.S. woman to scale all 14 of the world’s 8,000m peaks. She did so by summiting Tibet’s Shisha Pangma. At 8,027m, it is the lowest of the 14.
“It was magical,” Metcalfe told ExplorersWeb. The 50-year-old internal medicine physician from Vail, Colorado, added some details about the summit day.
“Conditions were much different than last year,” Metcalfe said. “We did get a heavy snowfall last week and had over one meter of fresh snow in Base Camp. But this year, the snow was very heavy and wet, which bonded nicely and made avalanche risk much lower than last year.”
Metcalfe noted the last meters before the summit were the most intense.
“We reached a false summit that required traversing a cornice for about 180m,” she said. “Mingma G led the way on that part, [fixing] the rope as he advanced.”
Here is a video of Metcalfe’s arrival at the summit.
Last year, a fierce competition between two American women, Gina Rzucidlo and Anna Gutu, to become the first U.S. woman to climb all 14 ended in tragedy. Both had only Shisha Pangma left to complete their list. Both pushed on in unsafe conditions and died with their guides in two separate avalanches on the same day.
“I climb for the joy of climbing and have never been interested in records,” said Metcalfe at the time. She too was on Shisha Pangma that day but did not attempt to summit then. At the time, she had climbed nine 8,000m peaks, making her the third most successful American woman on the 8,000’ers after Rzucidlo and Gutu.
Metcalfe recently told ExplorersWeb that the area between Camp 1 and Camp 2 where a slide made Naoko Watanabe and Sanu Sherpa fell, was solid and stable this year.
“Mostly I fly under the radar, but once in a while, I get to soar,” she declares on her Instagram page.
