Everest Lightning Ascent – A letter from Adrian Ballinger

Climbing Everest is hard; taking time away from family and work to climb Everest is harder.

Time is one of the only things in life we can’t make more of. At the beginning of my Everest career, expeditions were 60 days, and ~30% of my clients would fail because of something that had to bring them back home. Then in 2011, @Alpenglowexpeditions developed the Rapid Ascent Program, cutting the time by half and climbing Everest in 35 days, becoming the first commercial operator to run this type of expedition on 8,000m peaks.

In 2019, we wanted to go even faster. We ran the first Lightning Ascent of Everest, summiting in a 14-day round trip from San Francisco, using only Hypoxico for pre-acclimatization and oxygen to get it done. We ran it in a private setting, testing out new strategies, and came away with a system that allowed Everest to be climbed in just two weeks.

Now, we want to bring that system to an open enrollment trip – Alpenglow’s North Side Everest Lightning Ascent.

15 days, increased oxygen support, and fully certified IFMGA guides who have led groundbreaking expeditions on Everest before.

I’ve spent two decades of my life innovating on Mount Everest, trying to make the best, fastest, and highest-chance-of-success program on the mountain, and it’s all culminated in this program. If time is your biggest limiting factor for climbing Everest, this is the way to squeeze it in and do it from the better, safer side of Everest.

Reach out to the Alpenglow team for more info.