Close friends and PLNU alumni Dustin Ansley (13) and Ben Hammond (14) heed the call of adventure. The pair have individually and jointly embarked on numerous endeavors, including hiking the Sierra Nevada mountain range, traveling to Peru and climbing Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro. But one bucket list item remained elusive until recently: the opportunity to climb Mount Everest.
The allure of Mount Everest has fascinated mountaineers and outdoors enthusiasts with its regal stature and sheer beauty. Its Tibetan name is Qomolangma, which translates to “holy mother,” while its Nepali name translates to “the head in the great blue sky.” Everest, which is part of the Himalayan Mountains that straddle the border between Tibet and China, rises to an elevation of 29,032 feet above sea level.
The first recorded attempt to summit the mountain was in 1921 by a British expedition. Sir Edmund Percival Hillary and Tenzing Norgay achieved the first ascent of the summit in 1953. As of July 2024, a reported 340 people have died attempting to climb Everest.
Ansley and Hammond, who would set out to climb the mountain just over a century after that first British expedition, have been outdoors people from an early age. For Hammond, traveling to different countries has been a great way to experience different cultures.
“It’s really cool to be in a group of people from around the world and get their perspectives on things,” he said.
Ansley’s love of hiking stems from sentimental childhood memories.
“My dad is the one who got my siblings and me into [hiking] at an early age,” Ansley reminisced. “That’s what kept me doing it. It’s a nice way for me to relax. Anytime there’s an opportunity to go on an epic adventure, what makes it more exciting to me is if there’s more risk and reward.”
The pair decided to tackle Everest due to a shared appreciation for Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction book, Into Thin Air, which details the 1996 disaster where a storm left members of three climbing expeditions stranded on the mountain, resulting in eight deaths. Ansley related that once he started reading the book, he couldn’t put it down. The fact that Krakauer not only wrote about Everest, but actually summited it, was very inspirational to him.
Other influential factors they had to consider included time commitment, weather patterns, and personal fitness levels — notwithstanding the exorbitant cost of an Everest climbing permit, which can range from $11,000 to $18,000 per person for non-Chinese or -Nepali citizens, depending on which country a person chooses to climb the mountain. Ultimately, they decided to instead focus on finding a tour to Everest Base Camp.
Hammond’s past experiences going on tours arranged by G Adventures, a travel company that partners with the National Geographic Society, helped solidify their decision. Not only was it cost-effective, but the Everest Base Camp tour was one of the most popular and well-reviewed tours the company offered.
Hammond and Ansley’s 12-day tour, which Ansley details in depth on his blog “The Adventure Diaries,” took place in May 2024. Each day their guide would provide words of encouragement and a preview of the next leg of their journey following breakfast. The group would hike an average of eight miles per day. Hammond expressed the group developed a camaraderie over the course of the trip, and helped each other out as they each adjusted to the higher elevation and thinner air. Hammond joked that it was a kind of “trauma bonding” experience.
Once they settled in for the night, members of the group would unwind and get to know each other better.
“A couple of nights, we’d play trivia,” Ansley said. “We’d try to do things that were fun after the hiking was over.”
During this trek, Hammond and Ansley were constantly impressed and moved by Everest’s beauty. They rarely experienced a cloudy day and the expanse was breathtaking.
“You’re in awe sometimes,” Hammond explained. “You come around a bend and there’s a 29,000-foot mountain unfathomably rising above you [that makes you think] how many people climb that?”
But it wasn’t just the views that were breathtaking. At times, group members struggled to breathe the higher up in elevation they hiked. A few people actually turned back due to elevation sickness. This surprised Hammond given how physically fit they were.
“I think the scariest thing for me was when we got above 12,000 feet, I would wake up in the middle of the night and feel really short of breath — to the point where I was gasping for air,” Ansley said. “I’d sit up and feel normal, but when I laid back down it would happen again. This happened with a lot of people in our group where you felt you were suffocating at night, which was a shock to me. I thought we would acclimatize accordingly, and everything would be fine.”
Despite their ailments, the group pushed on until they reached Everest Base Camp on the eighth day at an elevation of 17,598 feet. They reached their destination around midday and stayed for only a couple of hours to avoid altitude sickness.
The group felt a great sense of accomplishment, hugging and taking photos at the famous Everest Base Camp rock.
Ansley felt excitement, but also a sense of personal reflection.
“It was a time for me to reflect on the last year of my life. It was kind of symbolic. Getting to base camp there are a lot of highs and lows. In life you also go through peaks and valleys, and hopefully end up in a good spot.”
“It was a time for me to reflect on the last year of my life. It was kind of symbolic. Getting to base camp there are a lot of highs and lows. In life you also go through peaks and valleys, and hopefully end up in a good spot.”
While Hammond didn’t feel the same sense of elation reaching Everest Base Camp, he experienced that sensation the next day when the group reached the peak of Kala Patthar where he could reflect on the journey because “you had a really good view of Everest and the whole valley you just came from.”
In terms of their next adventures, Hammond plans to travel to Patagonia with his father early next year, while Ansley looks forward to visiting Alaska’s Mount Denali to achieve a personal goal of ascending 20,000 feet in the near future.
For those interested in high altitude hiking experiences like Everest Base Camp, they recommended reading Krakauer’s book and visiting a few sites to train.
“Mount Whitney was a good training experience for me,” Hammond explained. “It was good to know what high altitude felt like there since you’re basically [ascending] about 8,000 feet per day.”
When asked whether they would ever attempt to summit Everest in the future, Hammond and Ansley both stated they probably would not try. They acknowledged the level of expertise needed to accomplish that and warned of the dangers inexperienced climbers face on the mountain.
“You really need to have good experience with high elevation climbing, and know how to belay ropes and all that,” Ansley said. “So many people die because they don’t know what they’re doing. That was a big thing in Into Thin Air. Jon Krakauer had to set the ropes himself when it wasn’t his job to do that. He was just a journalist along for the climb. I would make sure to be knowledgeable and train on other mountains first.”
For more of Ansley’s and Hammond’s journey up Mt. Everest, check out The Adventure Diaries.
