Twice to the Top of the World
On May 16, Vail’s Ellen Miller stood atop Mount Everest for the second time in two years, making her the first North American woman – and one of only four women in the world – to summit the world’s highest mountain from both the north and the south sides. Overshadowed by the media hype surrounding the heavily-sponsored International Mountain Guides women’s expedition, however, Miller’s staggering achievement went relatively unnoticed.

"There were a lot of women on Everest this year, and the American women’s team got a huge amount of publicity," says Miller. "The media was really focusing on them."

No amount of media hype, however, can assure success on Everest, and not one of IMG’s team of five women was fated to reach the summit. Many who heard of the IMG team’s aborted attempt assumed Miller had been among them. But on a still morning full of shooting stars the slight redhead, accompanied by the renowned and fast-climbing Ang Dorjee Sherpa, made her own quiet bid for the roof of the world, and succeeded.

"I had promised my brother and my mom and Dawes (Wilson, fellow athlete and Vail local) that I would not make a summit attempt unless the conditions were ideal," she says. "Of course they were thinking ‘Now, Ellen, you’ve already been to the summit once – you don’t need to get yourself killed.’ But I got out of the tent at 10:30 that night, and the sky was full of stars – up there, up that high, the stars are so magnificent – and it was very warm. I could take my hands out of my gloves and put my crampons on outside the tent. And I thought, I’m going for it."
In recent years, with the cult of the extreme and its fascination for all things deadly, the Mount Everest media machine seems to have taken on a life of its own, spewing out splashy stories of tragedy and deadly mistakes. By comparison, Ellen Miller’s Everest seems to exist in a different world.

"Oh, the summit day was so beautiful," she says, grinning her infectious grin and opening her big eyes wide. "It was warm and clear - just perfect. It’s like it was meant to be."

Just days after her descent from the mountain that has killed more than 160 climbers and defeated dozens more, she is bright-cheeked and energetic. Only a telltale wiriness about her body, the result of nutrients sapped from it under tremendous duress, speaks of the weeks she has spent on the slopes of the mountain the Nepalese call Sagarmatha.

Miller is small, 5-foot-4, and slight with thick red hair and a sweet, laughing voice. Although at the age of 43 the muscles in her arms and thighs are those of a serious athlete, nothing about her screams "tough." Yet this woman has achieved what no other woman in North America – and only four American men – have been able to accomplish. How? Diffident to a fault, Miller herself will attribute her success to anything other than her own prowess.

"There’s a lot of luck involved," she has said. "We were very, very fortunate."

Asked what sort of luck makes for two perfect summits in two years, Miller shifts the focus to her expedition leaders.

"I owe it to great guidance," she says, "Both years, I’ve climbed on a New Zealand permit. I had two different expedition leaders – Russell Brice and Guy Cotter. I love working with Kiwis."

What Miller’s exuberant descriptions take for granted are the everyday hardships implicit in the scaling of a 29,035 peak – an environment that numbs thought processes, burns the lungs, and leaches nutrients from the body faster than a climber can pack them in, an environment where 180-knot winds destroy tents, and 17 below is called "warm."

"I’m concerned all the time that I might do something stupid," Miller admits. "Say I‚m not clipped into the rope for a few minutes, or I catch my crampons on my down suit. There were still people on the mountain this year with black noses and fingers, severe cases of dehydration, hypothermia. One guy fell to his death from the Lohtse Face. At this point in time, out of any summiter I have ever met in person, I don’t know one who has ever said it was a walk in the park."

When pressed, Miller admits that the current vogue of gruesome hype swirling around Everest may be largely due to the fact that wealthy aficionados can now buy their way on to an
unpredictable mountain that was once the exclusive domain of elite mountaineers.

"I think a lot of people think Everest is no big deal," she says. "By climbing standards, it isn’t a very technical mountain, so they think it’s going to be easy. People think that if they pay their money, and have good gear, they’ve got it made. But Everest has a really sharp tail. When you least expect it, the mountain can present some very interesting challenges."

Returning from the summit in May, Miller herself felt the draft, if not the sting, of the mountain’s sharp tail.

"I got back to Camp 4 at about 1:30 in the afternoon after summiting, and at about 2:00 the wind started to pick up," she says. "Clouds started to gather.

The people who came into camp later that afternoon were coming down in white-out conditions. The first thing I thought of was 1996 when all those people were killed. It made me think – oh, so this is how people get nailed. Because it can turn on you so fast."

Whatever the reason behind Miller’s success, it isn’t an accident. Her attempts on Everest have been anything but impulsive, and a glance at her resume tells the story of a lifetime’s work. Miller has summited Cho Oyu, Mustagh-Ata, Mt. McKinley, Mt. Whitney, Aconcagua, Mt. Elbrus and Kilimanjaro in addition to the volcanoes of Ecuador and all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000 foot peaks. A veteran of two Eco-Challenge adventure races, she is a seasoned endurance athlete who has competed in skiing, mountain biking, mountain running and snowshoeing competitions around the world.

As a mountaineer, Miller is a purist, climbing for the sake of climbing. She does not dispatch from the mountain, preferring to focus every fiber of her being on the moment at hand. She is also a determined optimist. Two days before leaving for Nepal in March, she was still keeping her second attempt on the summit under wraps in order to avoid the warnings and whispers of naysayers.

"I’d just prefer that most people not know," she said at the time, smiling in apology. "I don’t want to have that hanging over me. I don’t like to hear people say "but what if you don’t come back this time?"

What she does want to talk about, the subject that lights her up like a candle, is her next project, and the primary reason behind her foray to the south side of Everest. Miller begins work this spring on a book that will tell the tales of the elite women who have reached the roof of the world.

"There are some incredible stories," she says. "There are genuine world-class mountaineers. There are some women who never made it back down. There are love stories, comical stories, mysteries."

While in Nepal this spring, Miller interviewed several of the world-class female mountaineers who will make up the fabric of her book, including 63-year-old Tamae Watanabe of Japan, who this year became the oldest woman on record to summit Everest, and Junko Tabei, who became the first female to reach the top of the world in 1975. Miller also shared a summit day with Namche Bazaar’s Pemba Doma, a multi-lingual native of Nepal who nailed her own second summiting of Everest on May 16.

Miller's approach to honoring the women of Everest parallels her style on the mountain, focusing on the spirit and the beauty and shunning the snares of sensationalism.

"Most of the other books about Everest are full of stories of tragedy, and stories about men," she says. "I want to tell the other side of the story.

"The first German woman who summited – I read her description of the summit day, and it was just this beautiful day on Everest – full moon, no wind, a sky full of stars. It’s a magical story, and there are so many of them out there that have yet to be told."
By Maia Chavez
 

Miller Summits Everest Again
When Ellen Miller reached the summit of Everest last spring for the second time in a single year— by two different routes— her amazing accomplishment went virtually unnoticed. But for Miller, whose style tends to be more focused on effort than on media hype, that's just fine.
"I didn't seek publicity before I left for Everest," Miller told MountainZone.com, "even though I was confident I would make a strong effort. I just didn't want to set myself up for falling short. I know it's easy to make a mistake on Everest; I know many things are out of my control. So my style, when I get to a mountain, is to keep my head down, stay focused, and try to reach the goal at hand — the summit."

The 43-year-old Miller, who lives in Vail, Colorado, is a living inspiration for everyone who seeks a more interesting life. During the past five years, Miller has finished in the money in some of the world's toughest adventure races, set the previous women's world record for a high-altitude ski descent in the Himalaya (on Mustagh Ata), climbed in the Alps, the Himalaya, Alaska and South America, and reached the summit of Everest twice. Not bad for a former grocery story manager.


"I quit my job so I could start living and stop working," said Miller, who resigned her grocery store position in 1997. She had pursued mountaineering and adventure racing as a hobby for years before that milestone, but it was only after she focused primarily on those activities could she reach her goals.
"I wanted to start living more and working less, and I was able to leave full-time work because I know how to live simply," said Miller, who now gets by teaching at a local athletic club. "My lifestyle is manageable. And I knew I would have to leave my 'real' job if I wanted to excel in the areas that appealed to me."

Since then, Miller has participated in two Eco-Challenge races, many high-altitude marathons, and spent almost as much time in the mountains as she she has at home. But, from an impressive roster of accomplishments, her achievement on Everest last spring stands out.

Hers was perhaps the single accomplishment of truly impressive scope last May, but it was virtually lost in the large-scale media attention focused on other women climbers on Mount Everest. Miller's second ascent of Mount Everest within 12 months, by different routes, is a landmark for an American woman climber. She climbed to the summit via the South Col route on May 16, 2002, for her second trip to the summit, exactly 352 days after she first climbed Mount Everest on May 23, 2001, via the Northeast Ridge, from Tibet. That gives Miller the rare distinction of having successfully climbed two routes on Everest in one year.
"There are four of us women that have climbed Mount Everest via both the north and south sides," Miller said. "Two are Sherpanis: Lapka and Pemba Doma, one is a South African, Cathy O'Dowd, and now there's myself. But nobody else did it within one year."

In May, 2002, Miller climbed with lead guide Bill Crouse, who was working for New Zealand-based Adventure Consultants. With them on summit day were guide Dave Hiddleston, Haraldur Orn Olafsson and Sherpa climbers Ang Dorje (his eighth summit) and Pasang Tenzing (his second summit) and Lakpa Dorje.


"Ellen was a joy to climb with," said Crouse, who has been to the top of Everest twice. "There were fewer teams on the mountain last May than in previous seasons, but the route on the mountain was pretty much on par with other years. The season was a bit compressed, with only two major summit windows, and our team was successful climbing during the first weather window. Even though we hit a record for people reaching the summit from the Southeast ridge in one day, there was no drama — everyone climbed well and patiently.
"The descent didn't have delays, as the teams really didn't get concentrated at any point on the route. We had a brilliant, clear night of shooting stars, a peaceful sunrise showing the curve of the earth, and warmth through the day. It was a summit day to be remembered for sure. And climbing with somebody as focused as Ellen made our success even more enjoyable."

Miller, true to her character, left little to chance on her last Everest attempt: She ran near her home in Vail every day, practiced crossing ladders set up between cars in the parking lot, and frequently climbed short ice pitches to prepare for the Hillary Step. Miller said she knew her attempt could still be stopped by weather or snow conditions. But she was adamant that if there were to be a failure, it would not be her own.

"I tried to be careful not to do anything dumb," she said. "For instance, before our summit attempt, some people thought it would be a good idea to go lower into the Khumbu to rest and recuperate before the final summit bid. But I decided not to go down to the tea houses before the summit climb because I didn't want to risk getting sick from the tea house food, or from the trekkers there."
Her success last spring followed that of a year ago on the opposite side of the mountain. In 2001, Miller reached the summit via the north side of the mountain, from Tibet, with a group from Russell Brice's guided expedition. Miller summitted with Sherpa climber Phurba on May 23, reaching the top at 9:30 a.m.

"I got to the summit without much trouble," Miller recalled. "I had a great day, and really enjoyed myself. We got to the top at 9:30, and got down safely, no problems. I think that's why I don't get much publicity. On my Everest climbs, there's no epic, there's no trouble. My expeditions are fun. I think it's easier for me because after years of running and adventure racing and climbing, I'm comfortable being uncomfortable. And, I know how to focus."

 
Miller said that after her first ascent, she became interested in the history of women climbers on the mountain. For that reason, she wanted to climb Everest by both routes because her goal is to eventually document the history of women climbing on Mount Everest. "I couldn't legitimately do that unless I had a clear understanding of both routes, the Northeast Ridge and the Southeast Ridge," Miller said.
In retrospect, Miller said that the climb to the summit from the Nepal side seems less difficult to her than the route from Tibet.

"To me, the south side is much easier," she said. "You start using oxygen much lower. The way the commercial operations are set up on the south side is there are people there to look after you, cook for you, generally make things easier. In Tibet, you're doing a lot of the work yourself. Finally, I think the route via the Southeast Ridge is technically easier. When climbing the Northeast Ridge on the north side, there was more of a feeling that you could fall here, with your crampons scraping on down-sloping rocks."

Now that she has climbed the mountain from both sides, Miller is committed to writing a book about the women who have climbed the mountain.
"Only 75 women have reached the summit of Everest," Miller said. "I became the 64th in 2001, and only the fourth woman in history to have climbed it via both routes. For some, achieving the summit is the end of their interest in Everest, but for me, it was only the beginning. I am fascinated with Everest and the stories of other women who have climbed it. That's why I am writing a book about women climbers on Everest."

According the Miller, her book will present to the reader the factual history and truthful accounts of the women who have climbed Everest. For here, the dramatic stories of these courageous women deserve to be told.


"The stories of women on Everest are as varied as the women themselves," Miller explained. "There is triumph: in 1995, Alison Hargreave's unsupported ascent without supplemental oxygen. There is tragedy: in 1998, why did climbers on the Northeast Ridge choose to pass by Francis Arsentiev as she struggled to stay alive? There is controversy: in 1988, Lydia Bradey's ascent without supplemental oxygen —did she really reach the summit? There is eccentricity: in 2001, Claire Bernier Roche flew from Mt. Everest's summit in a tandem paraglider with her husband. There is competition: in 1988, Stacy Allison and Peggy Luce raced to place the US flag on the summit. There is technical virtuosity: Sharon Wood is the only woman to ever ascend the West Ridge. There is drive: Lakpa Sherpa said: 'I want to summit the mountain 10 times before I'm married.'"
So Ellen Miller's next big effort is not focused on a mountain, but on her book about the women who have reached the summit of the highest mountain on earth. For now, she still enjoys the success she had last year. As for publicity?

"I'm a little surprised that what I accomplished hasn't been widely reported," Miller said. "But that's okay. I had beautiful, fun, rewarding experiences climbing Everest, and not a whole lot of drama. I tend to be serious and focused when I get to the mountain, and that's one reason I didn't seek publicity before my climbs. In fact, I barely told anyone I was going back.

"It was a little frustrating when I got home to Denver International Airport," she recalled. "I was wearing my little Everest vest, and people would walk up to me and say, 'Hey, were you on the women's team?' By the time the sixth or seventh person asked me that, I felt like saying, 'No, I got to the top — for the second time!'"

Now that she has the rare accomplishment of climbing Everest from both sides in a single year, Miller says that the only endeavor that could lure her back to the mountain would be to attempt a traverse, climb up one side, and climb down the other. But for now, Miller is turning her attention to the book project.

"I think I need to work on the book project, like I climbed the mountain: keep my head down and stay focused on the job at hand. The one thing that spurs me on is that Everest women are really excited about the project, that they will have a place to tell their stories. I feel like it's becoming a group effort and that to me is the greatest honor."

— Peter Potterfield, MountainZone.com Staff