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On October 4, 2024, American climber Tracee Metcalfe trudged toward the summit of 26,335-foot Shishapangma in Tibet. It was freezing, the snow was deep, and winds gusted up to 30 miles per hour. Metcalf, 50, was on the edge of her comfort zone.

“If there wasn’t so much at stake for a lot of people, we might have considered turning around,” Metcalfe told �����ԹϺ���. “Or at least, I would have.”

Metcalfe was a member of a guided expedition with the Nepali company called Imagine Nepal, alongside other paying clients and guides. She and the Imagine Nepal team picked their way around a knife-edge ridge, with nothing but air thousands of feet below them on either side. As they completed the traverse, the group reached the peak’s summit. The climbers celebrated as they took turns standing on the pinnacle. Metcalfe, however, was too focused on the impending descent to party. “It wasn’t this crazy, sublime moment like you might think—but none of my summits have been,” she said. “I have a hard time being in the moment up there.”

Metcalf has now been “up there” on all 14 of the world’s mountains above 8,000 meters. In reaching the summit of Shishapangma, she became the first American woman—and just the third U.S. citizen—to complete the achievement, which took her almost a decade. But Metcalfe’s accomplishment on Shishapangma had its roots in tragedy. In 2023, Metcalfe was on Shishapangma when avalanches swept down the flanks, killing climbing guides Mingmar Sherpa and Tenjen Lama, as well as American climbers Anna Gutu and Gina Marie Rzucidlo. Metcalfe and Rzucidlo were friends, and at the time, Rzucidlo and Gutu were each attempting to become the first American woman to complete the 14 peaks. Shishapangma was the final peak for both women.

In the wake of the accident, Metcalfe became the frontrunner to break the record—she already had ascended nine of the peaks. But the deaths left her wondering what compelled her to climb—and whether she wanted to complete the record for herself, or for the history books.

“People started asking, ‘Who has the most in the U.S. now? Who is going to be first?’” she said. “And it was me. I had the most. I tried hard to avoid those questions, because that wasn’t what I was climbing for.”

A Mountaineering Hobby Becomes a Passion

Metcalfe grew up in Los Angeles, and began rock climbing and mountaineering while attending college and medical school in Colorado. She hiked many of the state’s 14,000-foot peaks, and in 2013 began working as an expedition doctor in Alaska on Denali, an experience that motivated her to take on higher mountains in the Himalaya. She climbed Mount Everest in 2016, and in subsequent years ascended other peaks above 8,000 meters.

“It wasn’t necessarily that I wanted to go climb the 14 highest peaks in the world,” she said, “but I did want to climb bigger mountains, and I didn’t have a group of climbing buddies.”

The commercial climbing industry, with its guided expeditions to the top of Everest and other high peaks, offered Metcalfe community and structure. She signed up for more trips to Himalayan peaks. She nearly reached the summit of 8,000er Manaslu the fall after she summited Everest. The following year, she summited 22,349-foot Ama Dablam. She returned to 8,000-meter success with Cho Oyo in 2018, Makalu in 2019, Annapurna in 2021, and Dhaulagiri and Kangchenjunga in 2022.

“My friends were all starting families or busy with their jobs, and I wanted to keep climbing mountains,” she said. “But I’m not a professional climber, I’m not totally self-sufficient, and there is such a strong culture and community around these peaks, that it made sense to keep coming back. It flowed and evolved.”

In 2023 Metcalfe traveled to Shishapangma to ascend her tenth 8,000er. By then, the goal of becoming the first American to complete the 14 peaks seemed out of reach—both Rzucidlo and Gutu had 13 and arrived in Base Camp looking to reach the summit first.

“In a way, I was grateful,” Metcalfe said. “Like, ‘Cool, they want to get this record. Let that attention be on them. I’m going to focus on me.”

Being four peaks behind Gutu and Rzucidlo may have saved Metcalfe’s life. Conditions on Shishapangma became dangerous after a storm dumped fresh snow on the summit. On summit day, Metcalfe left Camp II at 22,300 feet elevation alongside Gutu, but the latter soon outpaced Metcalfe and the other Imagine Nepal clients. When the first avalanche killed Gutu and Mingmar Sherpa, Metcalfe and her companions turned back. Rzucidlo, who was further ahead and continued climbing, was killed in a second avalanche. “I can’t put myself in their shoes,” Metcalfe said. “If I was to have found out there was another American woman attempting the summit the same day as me, I don’t know how I would have felt.”

The deaths of Rzucidlo and Gutu were hard for Metcalfe to reckon with, and it showed her just how selfish mountaineering can be at its core. But Metcalfe never considered abandoning the high peaks. “At a certain point, you can’t take the risk away,” she said. “Those avalanches could’ve wiped us out, too.” Metcalfe was also struck by how the deaths impacted the loved ones that Gutu and Rzucidlo left behind. “How shitty is it going to be for my family, my friends, if I end up dead doing this?” she asked herself.

Metcalfe’s relative anonymity in the world outside of mountaineering fueled her desire to return to the peaks. She’s not a climbing influencer with throngs of online followers and incentives to break records. She has just one sponsor—a Los Angeles-based orthopedic surgeon. Metcalfe has covered the lion’s share of her expedition costs out of her own pockets.

“No one is particularly interested in sponsoring a 50-year-old woman who has never achieved anything particularly remarkable and has fewer than 1,000 Instagram followers,” she said.

Pushing for the Record in 2024

So she returned to the mountains in 2024 and ascended five 8,000-meter peaks with Imagine Nepal: Gasherbrum I and II, and Broad Peak in Pakistan’s Karakoram range, and Himalayan peaks Lhotse and Shishapangma.

Metcalfe said that climbing that many mountains in one year had more to do with personal goals than the record. “I turned 50 this year,” she said. “I’m getting a partial knee replacement soon. I’m getting older. I only have so many climbs at this level left in me.”

Metcalfe reached the summit of Shishapangma on October 4. In the days afterward, a staggering number of climbers reached the top of that mountain to complete new records on the 14 peaks. Nima Rinji Sherpa, 18, became the youngest person to summit every 8,000er. A handful of women became the first of their respective nations to complete the 14 peaks: Alina Pekova the first Russian; Dorota Samocko the first Pole; Dawa Yangzum Sherpa the first Nepali; Naoko Watanabe the first Japanese; and Adriana Brownlee the first from the United Kingdom.

Grace Tseng became the first Taiwanese person, Adrian Laza the first Romanian, Alasdair Mckenzie the youngest European, and Shehroze Kashif the youngest Pakistani person.

�����ԹϺ��� asked Metcalfe about the significance of these records. “Being the first doesn’t mean a whole lot to me,” she said. Rather, Metcalfe said that the significance was deeply personal—she endured a decade of climbing, which required dizzying logistics, physical fitness, plenty of cash, and personal grit.

“Yes, it’s cool to say, ‘I’m the first U.S. woman to do it,’” she said, “but I recognize I did it guided, using supplemental oxygen. I’m just proud of this goal because it was important to me.”

Metcalfe said she learned plenty of lessons during her 8,000-meter quest, but the biggest takeaway was the importance of being motivated by internal, and not external, forces. She told �����ԹϺ��� she climbed Shishapangma for herself, and not because she sought attention from news outlets or social media followers. She believes this led her to make smarter and safer decisions during her climbs.

Metcalfe also believes her feeling of accomplishment will endure, knowing that she completed a goal for herself and not for others.

“In two weeks, no one’s going to care. If that external motivation, that fame, was driving me, it would fade,” she said. “When it’s internal motivation, when you’re proud of yourself for what you did, nobody can take that away from you.”

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