It began with a small notice on a campus bulletin board. A rock climber, Curt Haire, was looking for a ride to Zion National Park in southern Utah in exchange for climbing lessons. Stacy Allison, a first-year student at Oregon State University in the late 1970s, was intrigued. She and a girlfriend decided to go.

“It was a fluke,” Allison said. “I had no idea that people climbed shear rock cliffs. He taught us very, very basic rock climbing, and that’s when I fell in love with climbing,” she said. “That’s when I knew that this is what I was meant to do.”

Climbing in Zion National Park, Allison encountered the first turning point in her life. She also met her first mentor, Haire. He was a graduate student who worked as a supervisor in Allison’s college dormitory. “He believed in me, and took me on climbs I really had no business being on,” she said. “But I learned a tremendous amount.”

Beyond the natural beauty of rock climbing, Allison was electrified by the physical and intellectual challenges of the sport. “I don’t think it’s necessarily about the summit,” she said. “It’s about the process. It’s physically pushing myself beyond my limits, making my body do more than I knew I was capable of doing.

“It’s mental control too, mentally figuring out — like in rock climbing — how to get from point A to point B. When I’m on a rock face or a mountain, I don’t feel like I should be any other place. I feel at home. I feel that is where I belong. I am part of the rock; I’m part of the mountain. Together. Time stands still. Everything is perfect and in its place.”

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has spent much of his professional life studying the mental state Allison describes. He calls it “flow,” and explains it as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time stands still. Every action, movement and thought follow inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. You’re whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

Over the next year Allison, then 21-years-old, made increasingly more difficult climbs with Haire, topping Alaska’s Mt. McKinley (20,320 feet), the highest peak in North America. Next, she was part of  the first team of women to climb Ama Dablam (24,600 feet), known as Nepal’s Matterhorn. Then in 1986 she became the first American woman to summit Pik Communism (24,600), the tallest mountain in Central Asia in southern Tajikistan.

Her Biggest Weakness

By now Allison and Haire had been living together for several years. Still, she knew he wasn’t a lifetime mate and eventually they broke up. Later, she met and married Mark Meinert, a fellow rock climber and general contractor. “If you had asked me before that marriage, if I would ever get into an abusive marriage, I would have said, ‘Of course, not. No way. Not me,’” Allison said. “But as it turns out, it happens.”

Ironically, Allison said her strength turned out to be her biggest weakness. She thought she could survive and rescue an abusive marriage the same way she overcame a treacherous mountain. “I thought I had so much control mentally and physically over what I could withstand,” she said. “In climbing you actually put yourself into abusive situations, so I thought I could handle it. But I learned you can’t always do it by yourself. In order to rebuild you need to accept help from others.”

When Mark served her with divorce papers, their marriage of four and a half years was all but over. One gloomy night Allison was so despondent she thought of suicide. It was only a thought but it shook her. Fortunately, for the first time in her life, she retreated to friends and family for comfort and support. “They helped me see that we all deserve the very best in our lives,” she said. “That was a huge turning point.”

Eventually, Allison resumed her life’s passion. “The only thing I had to move on to was my climbing,” she said. “The only place where I could not be touched, that could not reach my soul, was in that space of climbing.”

First Attempt at Everest

Allison signed on with a group of old and new climbing friends to summit Mt. Everest (29,035 feet). She threw herself into the adventure, convinced it would transform her low self-image. “Even if being the First American Woman on Everest didn’t mean I was the best climber in the nation, I knew being the First American Woman would give me permanent stature, a title I could take to my grave, like a Medal of Honor. I saw it just like that — a medal, a crutch, a shield. Once I had it, I believed I would be immune to my own insecurities.”

After two years of fundraising, planning and training, the group began its ascent in the summer of 1987. All was going well until they encountered a fierce snow storm at 23,000 feet. Taking refuge in an ice cave, they waited out the storm for five days! When climbing resumed, Allison and her teammates scaled to 25,500 feet, within striking distance of the summit, only to be turned back by 100 mph winds. Hunkering down in an ice cave, they emerged each day for the next three days to find the winds growing ever stronger. Begrudgingly, the team decided to call it quits.

Later, they learned that it was the most violent snow storm to slam into Everest and the Tibetan plains in more than 40 years. Still, it was small comfort.

Returning to Seattle, she learned within days she would be heading back to Everest the following summer. Her friend and teammate Scott Fischer heard of a group of Seattle climbers going to Everest and signed up both of them. Sadly, Fischer would die in 1996 in what is considered the worst climbing accident in the history of Everest. Jon Krakauer described the ordeal in the bestseller “Into Thin Air.”

Second Try

Before making a second trip to Nepal, Allison sought the approval of her mother. Ironically, her mother thought climbing was a dangerous, selfish activity. “She’s always been there for us, for me, except, when I decided to climb,” Allison said. “At lunch one day I asked her if she thought I should go back. She looked at me and said, ‘Of course, you should go back to Everest. Climbing is how you express yourself.’” With her mother’s approval, Allison was once again prepared to climb to the roof of the world.

The original team consisted of 11 members. By early fall Allison, two teammates, and three Sherpa porters had climbed to Camp 4 (26,200 ft.) and would the first team to attempt the summit. Starting out in the early-morning darkness, they got within a thousand feet of the peak by mid-morning. Then, incredibly, two of the Sherpas turned around and headed down the mountain. No explanation was offered. This was no small desertion. Carrying two oxygen tanks with them, the deserting Sherpas threw the first team into crisis.

They had enough oxygen for only one climber to get to the summit. The team drew straws. Allison won. Despite the risks, Pasang Gaylsen, the remaining Sherpa, decided to join her. The other two climbers choose the safer course, and began their descent.

After several more hours of arduous climbing, Allison and Gaylsen made it to the summit. She arrived about 10 minutes ahead of Gaylsen. It was September 29, 1988.

In her book “Many Mountains to Climb” she described the welter of emotions and sensations she experienced atop Everest: “I felt it now, everything I’d kept bottled up as I came up the ridge. It billowed up from my core, a blinding wave of emotion. I could finally let go of the months of controlling my thoughts and channeling all my energy toward one purpose. Behind my glasses my eyes blurred. I was wide open now, and I was aware of everything. The wind in my hair, the sweat on my back, the blood washing through my wrists and ankles. I made it. For myself, for Steve and Jim [teammates], for everyone.”

Before she departed, she left several tokens behind, including a Susan B. Anthony silver dollar.

K2 Tragedy

In 1993 Allison led an expedition to climb K2 (28,250-feet), the world’s second highest and most dangerous mountain located in northern Pakistan. It has a summit-to-fatality ratio of about 1:3.8 or more than 26 percent, about twice as lethal as Everest. Three of the seven climbers made it to the top, but one of them fell to his death while descending. Allison, who was prepared to summit the next day with her team, chose to suspend the expedition.

Today, Allison, a 51-year-old wife and the mother of two sons, owes and operates Stacy Allison General Contracting, a residential building company in Portland, Oregon. She is also a professional public speaker, addressing about 50 organizations a year on topics ranging from leadership to peak performance to teamwork. In addition, she serves on the Board of Trustees of National University and chairs the American Lung Association of Oregon’s largest fundraiser, “Reach the Summit.”

How will history remember Allison? Like Florence Chadwick, the first American woman to swim the English Channel, and Joan Benoit-Samuelson, the first American woman marathoner to win an Olympic Gold Medal, Allison will be remembered for her courage, physical stamina, and mental toughness in overcoming one of the most insurmountable obstacles in the natural world — Mt. Everest. She is an exemplar to anyone whose reach exceeds their grasp.

Ironically, when you ask Allison how she would like to be remembered she doesn’t mention Mt. Everest. “First, I want to be remembered as a very loyal, committed, caring, loving mother, wife and friend,” Allison said. “Then, someone who lived a full life and who found her passion in life.”

Copyright © 2009 by Vince Reardon

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