PART ONE: A Beginning, a Decision, an Unexpected Change, and a New Data Point.

I didn’t climb the mountain that I had originally planned to climb on my expedition to the Andes. This mirrors lots of things in life. What you initially planned as your destination isn’t where you end up.

If I scroll back 6 months into late 2024, I had a more modest plan to climb Cerro Vallecitos, a peak in Andes with a somewhat disputed summit height of approximately 18,000-19,000 ft. Like many mountains in the Andes, geological surveys are old, the mountains are still growing, and climbers get different readings depending on barometric pressure and equipment calibration.

This mountain, or “hill” as they call something this small in the Andes, seemed like a modest goal for someone who had never been above 14,600 ft before. When I planned this trip, I was also factoring in that my training would be erratic at best, given my travel and work schedule during the period I would have to prepare. I am not a full-time mountaineer or anything close. Just a few years ago, I couldn’t run a mile, and I now helm a busy global consulting firm. Most high-altitude mountaineers aren’t hobbyists; they dedicate heavily to training. They live and breathe everything mountaineering.

Nevertheless, one Saturday morning, I submitted my climbing credentials, my current fitness metrics, and placed my deposit on a guided expedition. When I pressed the submit key on my computer, I had that mix of fear, doubt, and excitement in my stomach. I closed my laptop screen and went for a trail run where fear faded into excitement. I was mentally locked in.

Here's the thing, for those of you thinking that stepping up from 14,600 ft to 19,000 ft feels like a lot, I will tell you that I have a long history of placing big bets on myself. This was born out of absolute necessity from my earliest days on this planet. I’m not always successful with the ultimate goal of these “big bet” strategies, but I have learned that the path I must walk always yields massive personal gains, so I do it. As someone who has been taking big risks since I was a child, I’ve learned that I can survive just about anything, and those experiences always change me. I thrive in a state of metamorphosis.

Scroll forward a few days from submitting that email, and I have a return email in my in-box from the outfitter that would significantly challenge my vision for what was possible.

They had reviewed my climbing credentials. Several things stood out to them: I had elected to do the Mountaineers Route for my climb of Mt. Whitney - requiring 6,500 ft of climbing with a technical component - executed in just under 6 hours on summit day. Additionally, we climbed in marginal air quality because of the ash raining down on us from the CA wildfires. During that multi-day trip, we beat every split time by 30-60 minutes. Early that year, I was also out in Colorado, and I summitted a series of Fourteeners by staying up and climbing around the clock for 24 hours. That was after 3 previous days of summiting other Fourteeners each day. My trail running stats and weightlifting were solid, and my blood work was strong.

Then there was that one last thing that caught their attention.

Everyone who knows me knows I am slightly obsessed with telemetry. I like to track weather, aviation statistics, and health performance data. As such, I had my records from those two particularly interesting climbs - including blood oxygenation, heart rate, HRV, training zones, and more. I’d also done zero acclimatization for any of them. I just showed up and climbed to the summit with no altitude issues. This data all showed that I had a clear, probably genetic, advantage for processing oxygen, and I was comfortably operating below my physical capacity on both climbs.

So, the outfitter had an option for my consideration: climb something that wasn’t a “hill”. In hindsight, I understand that when you live and breathe the Andes all day, as this outfitter does, you see things differently than other cultures. I’d also mentioned in my original email that I didn’t want to be on an expedition where we would see a constant stream of other people. I wanted to be remote, to enjoy the solitude of the mountains. They had just the proposition: Climb Cerro Tupungato instead. Comfortably over 6,000m / 20,000 ft. In fact, it had a generally accepted summit height of closer to 22,000 ft.

My first reaction was disbelief, then slight terror. I sat staring at the computer screen feeling deeply uncomfortable. Have you ever had a time in your life where you set a goal for yourself that you thought was really big and hairy? Then someone comes along and says you were actually aiming too low for yourself? And it rocks your whole perspective. It makes you question why you didn’t see that in the first place. That was me.

I took a couple of days to sit with it. When I say that, I mean I really rolled it around in my head. I thought a lot about what it would take to leap this far into the unknown. I thought about the risks and I thought about how much I could endure. I thought about whether I could extrapolate my modest mountaineering skill into a high-altitude summit bid. I also thought about a conversation I had six months prior with a well-respected US-based mountaineering outfitter who recommended that I do a long sequence of acclimatization work to be ready for a 5,000m peak, and that would be an appropriate “next goal” for me.

I spent hours of reflection using my own internal compass because in the end, getting up that mountain would come down to my ability, my effort, my skill, my decision making, and my mental toughness. No one would do any of that for me. I have a lifetime of learning that lesson over and over. Other people can give you insights, excellent qualified opinions, and educated ideas, but ultimately, they don’t have to live it. You do.

So, I wrote back. And I said yes.

Scroll forward 6 months, and I am on a plane to Santiago, Chile.

During those 6 months prior to my departure, our firm delivered global projects, go-lives, workshops, and keynotes both domestically and internationally. My training was not ideal. I had to do some crazy things. I had to continue to believe. I researched. I invested in some new gear. I spent as much time above 12,000 ft as I could. I tested my endurance and did as many remote solo back country climbs in bad weather as I could. I worked on becoming mentally comfortable with the total unknown.

Little did I know that some of these choices would be lifesavers in a few weeks. Here is the thing: when you place a lot of big bets and take a lot of risks in your life, you put yourself in some very tough situations and you learn a few things.

In everything we do in life, three things really count:

1.) Your preparation.

2.) Your ability to make great choices with limited information and under duress.

3.) Your ability to remain resilient and mentally strong for long periods of time when profoundly tested.

I was about to put all of those to the test. Big mountain, here I come.

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