I woke at 6:30 AM in Camp 2 after a sleepless night. The temperatures had finally risen as the wind died down, and the sun slowly began warming my tent. Still, I had barely slept—maybe 90 minutes total—waking every 15 minutes with violent coughing fits. My Garmin watch had died, so I couldn’t monitor my oxygen saturation. I had given Ryan my handheld pulse oximeter earlier in the week after his failed, leaving me with no way to determine whether my symptoms were altitude-related or simply the sinus infection that had worsened over the past 48 hours.
Regardless, I was in rough shape. I couldn’t swallow without pain, making it nearly impossible to drink. Even packing my sleeping bag into its compression sack felt like a monumental task. I flashed back to 2023, when I woke up in Camp 2 with pulmonary edema after a 4,000-foot ascent. That morning, my pulse ox was 56—a dangerously low number that nearly collapsed my lungs. I could barely walk five meters without stopping. Helicopter evacuation wasn’t an option due to snow, and I spent the day in a tent, on oxygen, waiting for the weather to clear. At 5:00 PM I was evacuated to Lukla and later flown to Kathmandu, ending my summit attempt.
But this morning was different. I could walk, talk, and function—just not well enough to face the treacherous six-hour descent through the Khumbu Icefall. At breakfast, I spoke with Ryan. The team planned to leave at 7:00 AM to descend safely through the Icefall before 2:00 PM. After that, the melting glacier becomes increasingly dangerous. Towering seracs collapse without warning, and twice in the last 10 days, falling ice had forced the Icefall Doctors to reroute the trail.
Attempting the descent in my condition would slow the team, increase their exposure to risk, and potentially worsen my own condition. Ryan radioed Tsering, our camp manager, who arranged a helicopter evacuation to Base Camp for medical evaluation.
As much as I hated ending the expedition by chopper, it was the right call.
At 7:15 AM, the team departed for Camp 1. Nema and I left shortly after for the helipad, 15 minutes downhill. I said goodbye to my teammates and arrived just as the helicopter appeared, circling above. At 21,500 feet, the air is so thin that helicopters must be stripped of extra weight—no seats, no cargo—to lift off safely.
I climbed into the bare cabin. Within minutes, we touched down at the helipad adjacent to our Base Camp. Tsering was waiting and helped me drop my gear at my tent. We then walked 20 minutes across the glacier to the Everest Base Camp medical tent.
The clinic, a quonset hut roughly 15 feet wide and 50 feet long, rested on a slab of ice near the center of camp. Two physicians examined me. Their diagnosis: a severe sinus infection, bronchitis, and likely pneumonia. They gave me an albuterol inhaler, Flonase, and a course of Augmentin, urging me to return to Kathmandu immediately for a chest X-ray and further treatment.
Back at camp, I rested while the rest of the team returned at 3:00 PM, visibly shaken from a harrowing descent. The Khumbu Icefall had been melting rapidly, turning the trail into a flowing river of glacial runoff. We later learned that a Sherpa had slipped and drowned in the rushing waters of the Khumbu River—an awful reminder of the hazards we had narrowly avoided.
That evening, we shared a hearty meal and a surprise chocolate cake made by our incredible base camp cooks. We also held a heartfelt thank-you ceremony for our Nepalese team—cooks, porters, Sherpas—tipping them generously for their unwavering support.
At 9:00 PM, we crawled into our tents for one last sleep on the glacier, anticipating a 6:00 AM wake-up and a helicopter ride back to the comforts of the Aloft Hotel in Thamel, Kathmandu.
