Adrian Ballinger - Climbing Mt. Everest & K2 Without Supplemental Oxygen

The SnowBrains Podcast

Adrian Ballinger - Climbing Mt. Everest & K2 Without Supplemental Oxygen | Brought to you by Alta Ski Area

"I was heli-ski guiding in Alaska, and through a series of communications breakdowns between me my co-guide and my pilot, we ended up getting out of a helicopter my 6 clients me and a co-guide, and it turned out we were on top of a cornice. The cornice broke 18 feet back as the helicopter lifted off. Me and 2 clients were on the wrong side of that break and took an 1800- foot fall. The first 200 feet over cliffs, and then through a huge avalanche runout zone, two people buried, a bunch of broken bones between all of us, and really bad injuries. Took a long time to get comfortable around cornices again." - Adrian Ballinger
"Made it really close. I was probably 400 vertical feet from the summit, at well over 28,500 feet. I got to the point where I couldn’t feel my hands to behind my wrists, So I could no longer clip devices onto the fixed rope. So then I had to solo because I couldn’t use the rope. I was still going up, and Im soloing, and I cant feel my hands, started to think about the consequences of frostbite when I have a girlfriend who is a professional rock climber. It still took a long time, but I did ultimately decide to turn around… Im sure thats what saved my toes and fingers." - Adrian Ballinger

Adrian Ballinger's list of accomplishments is over-the-top. It's too much. Here are some of his career highlights.

• First person to ski Manaslu from the summit (6th tallest peak in world)
• Only American with 3 complete 8000m ski descents
• 4th American to summit Everest and K2 without supplemental oxygen (first in 25 years)
• 8 summits of Mt Everest, 13 seasons on the mountain, over 100 clients on top
• 17 total 8000-meter peak summits
• 6 total 8000-meter peak ski attempts
• Summited Mt. Everest twice within 3- weeks on 2 separate occasions
• Guided/led more than 150 international expeditions
• Founder of Alpenglow Expeditions, in 2004
• Guided on Kilimanjaro (14 times by 4 different routes), Denali (by the West Rib), Alpamayo (14 times by 3 different routes), Cotopaxi (more than 30 times), and many other expeditions on many other high peaks all over the world.
  
• Ballinger has also led successful expeditions to more than 25 Himalayan summits over 6000 meters, including twelve ascents of Ama Dablam, which is a highly technical 6800m peak next to Everest.