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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. Climbing mountains is hard. It's exhausting, cold, and at times dangerous. Here in Oregon, there are plenty of peaks that will test the mettle of even the hardiest souls. Yet the most difficult summit attempt in the Pacific Northwest, under the most adverse conditions imaginable, would be a day at the beach compared to an attempt to reach the top of the world's tallest point, Mount Everest. More than 320 people have died trying to reach the summit, an average of about four per year. Frostbite, hypothermia, and acute respiratory ailments aren't just risks, they're guarantees. Today, on Oregon on the Record, you'll hear from a Eugene man who braved all that and suffered pain and discomfort most of us can barely imagine to ultimately stand on the summit of Everest in 2021. You'll hear his story and how this self-described average Joe made it to the top. Eric Gran lives in Eugene and really began climbing mountains later in life. He first summited a real mountain, Mount Shasta, in 2017. Yet from that humble beginning, he achieved one of the rarest accomplishments in nature: summiting Mount Everest on his first attempt. Eric Gran, a local Eugenean who successfully summited Mount Everest in 2021, thanks for coming in and talking to us.
Eric Gran: Yeah, happy to.
Dunne: Yeah, congratulations. What an amazing feat. Talk about your experience leading up to this excursion. Were you an avid mountaineer? Who were you before you got on a plane and flew to Nepal to take on the tallest mountain in the world?
Gran: I was nobody. Well, it was actually kind of by accident. I was an avid mountaineer. I started climbing with the Obsidians Climb Club here in Eugene, just as a way to get out and meet like-minded people. I was doing that for about four years, and along the way I became climbing partners with a guy named Peter Urban, who's an accomplished mountaineer. He came up with the idea, out of the blue, in 2020, that we should climb Mount Lhotse in Nepal. I said, ‘Great, what is Mount Lhotse, and where is that?’ It turned out to be the fourth-highest mountain in the world, right next to Everest. After I finished panicking and realized we only had three months before we were supposed to leave, we started training. Then, a couple weeks before we left, I got the idea that if by some magical event I was able to summit Mount Lhotse, and Mount Everest was right next to it, why not go for the whole thing?
Dunne: So you did both?
Gran: No. I switched.
Dunne: I see. That brings up a question, because from what research I've done and what I've heard, it's a major endeavor, just the planning and logistics for a huge Himalayan expedition like this. How difficult was it to turn your sails from the fourth-highest mountain, Lhotse, to the one next door, Mount Everest?
Gran: Going from Lhotse to Everest was basically the same thing. They both follow the same path. They both go to Everest Base Camp. They both go up the same route onto the mountain. At about 24,000 feet, Everest is 29,000, you turn right to go up Lhotse, or you turn left to continue up Everest. So instead of turning right, I turned left. But either one is a serious undertaking.
Dunne: I guess I was also wondering about permitting with the various government agencies. Was that a problem, to say, ‘never mind about Lhotse, we're just going to go for the big one’?
Gran: Yeah, that was something else. We made that change so late that we had a guide out of Washington, a guide service, and he's been climbing Himalayan peaks for about 30 years. He has a staff in Nepal, and he had a guy at the permit office, as they were closing, say, ‘wait, wait, wait, we need two more,’ and was able to get us the Everest permit right at the deadline.
Dunne: Okay. I'm also a member of the Obsidians, and I've done a few climbs, and Oregon has some wonderful mountains to climb with varying degrees of challenge. There's glacial travel and rock climbing, challenges that can tax anybody. But it's a different league than what you did when you started climbing with the Obsidians. Was there a particular peak, or a moment, where you felt like, ‘okay, I can handle this,’ and it's really just degrees of harder challenge from there? Was there a moment where you said, ‘I can do this’?
Gran: There was a moment when I said I could climb the peaks around here. I never once considered climbing Mount Everest. That was never even in my mind until it came up right before the trip. When I joined the Obsidians, I had one goal only, and that was to climb Mount Shasta. It's about half the size of Everest. So I trained hard. I went to Obsidians climb school, and immediately after that I took a five-day Denali course on Mount Shasta with a private guide and started climbing it. That actually happened to be the first mountain I climbed, because I couldn't find anybody to go with me, and I thought I'd fail and have to turn around. So I went up on my own and realized I had some capacity for that. My stretch goal became Mount Rainier. There's another club, the Santiam Alpine Club, and I saw they had a climb of Rainier scheduled, so I signed up and successfully summited. At Rainier, I met Peter Urban, who was the leader of that climb, and we became friends and climbing partners. Eventually, four years later, that led to Everest.
Dunne: Talk about the training you did to get in shape. Again, for people who don't know, it's one thing to say, ‘I'm going to go climb Everest,’ and another to actually do it. It's one of the greatest physical challenges a human body can go through, and I imagine you might talk about the death zone, above 26,000 feet, where your body is essentially dying. To have the physical stamina to do it, because you don't just hike up the mountain, it takes trips and trips to acclimatize. Talk about your training.
Gran: Training, for me, breaks into two halves: physical and mental. The physical part means carrying heavy packs uphill for long periods before you ever get out there. I rotate, I run, I bike, I carry the heavy pack, and I do a variety of things like that. Throughout the year, I rotate activities too. In the summer I'm surfing and mountain biking, snowboarding in the winter, just keeping overall fit. And climbing the mountains around here is where you get those 8-, 12-, 20-hour days of effort. Doing that with Peter was a revelation, because Peter is free-willing, he'll try anything. I'm kind of his yes man. There were times I reached the point of absolute physical exhaustion, couldn't take another step, and a couple of those times were on the top of a mountain, Mount Hood or Mount Shasta, as the sun was going down, and we had no choice but to spend the next six or eight hours getting down. That's the mental part that really prepared me for Everest, just knowing you can overcome it, that you can go much farther than you thought you were capable of, if needed.
Dunne: Okay, obviously Mount Everest has become a big commercial operation. Lots of people have done it, but that doesn't diminish the fact that it's one of the more dangerous things you can do in your life. I forget the exact stats, but there are legitimate numbers about how many people die on the mountain each season for every person who summits. What was the agreement you made with yourself, knowing this could end your life?
Gran: Right, yeah, that's a very distinct possibility, and it does happen, in the mountains around here too. I had no idea if I had the capacity to go that high. The highest I'd been until then was Kilimanjaro, 19,000 feet, roughly the level of base camp on Everest. I really didn't know, and there was no way of telling until I tried it. I made a deal with the guide service that I would go for the training and try to get to Camp Three and see how it went. If I was doing well, I'd continue, and if not, he had the right to tell me that was it, I was going down, and my trip was over. I would have accepted that. It was just about getting there and seeing how far I could get.
Dunne: And Camp Three is about 22,000 feet?
Gran: Yeah, about 22,000. It's spread across the Lhotse face, depending on what part you're on.
Dunne: That's another thing I think is always extremely important in high-risk mountaineering: knowing your limits, but also knowing when to turn around to save yourself. Do you feel like you could have done that if you'd reached your max? Would you have been able to tell the guide, ‘Okay, I'm good, I'm done, I'm heading back’?
Gran: Oh, there were multiple times I thought it was over for me. It started down at Camp One, about 20,000 feet. The first time I went up there, I came out in the morning after a horrific night of altitude illness, my head in a vise, couldn't breathe, felt like hell. I actually asked the guide if I might be dying. He asked what I was feeling. I described it, and he said, ‘Oh yeah, I feel the same way.’ That's part of the deal.
Dunne: I'm going to get to that, but I wanted to ask, even before you were on the mountain, was there a moment, maybe on the plane ride over to Asia, when you thought, I remember in Jon Krakauer's book “Into Thin Air,” he describes his plane ride over, thinking, ‘I'm in a 747 at about the same altitude I'm going to need to climb.’ Was there a moment during the logistics or travel where it became real, like, ‘okay, I'm really going to try this’?
Gran: Oh, absolutely. That moment came when we landed in Dubai on a stopover, and I had about eight hours to hang out in the airport. I had a moment of panic: what am I doing? I have no business doing this.
Dunne: So you get there, and I imagine there's a lot of red tape. But when you're finally heading toward the mountain, take us through it, maybe from base camp. Because again, it's not like you just walk up. There's a lot of planning, a lot of ups and downs to acclimatize. You were on the mountain a month or so. What was that like? Give us the 30,000-foot view, pardon the pun.
Gran: Yeah. First, I'd say a lot of people underestimate the task and buy into the idea that it's not really that hard. But when you see it in person, it's shocking how big and gnarly it is. Especially the ice falls, which are basically a frozen river of ice, the most dangerous part, at least in the beginning. Once you get to base camp, you spend about three days trying to reach the point where you can sleep through the night and adjust to the altitude. Then you leave around midnight to try to get up to Camp One, climbing through the ice falls overnight, and arrive the next morning. Typically, climbers will do that and then descend immediately back to base camp to rest, then climb up higher to Camp Two and go back down again. But we decided, and the guides especially decided, that they did not want to risk going through the ice falls too many times, so we stayed up there. That means you have to just suffer like you've never suffered before, until your body starts to adjust to the altitude, and then you go up to the next camp and start the process over. It just keeps going. Then you get up to Camp Three, on the Lhotse Face, about 22,000 to 23,000 feet, spend the night, descend all the way to base camp, and then spend a few days at a local village at a lower altitude, letting your body heal, waiting for a weather window. Then you go for it, all the way.
Dunne: Okay. I've seen many great documentaries, and one of the things that's always striking, I think it's at the Khumbu Icefall, is that climbers have to cross ladders over crevasses wearing crampons. What's that like?
Gran: It's like the rest of it. You swallow your fear or concern and go for it. You pay close attention to the guide and the Sherpas, try to mimic what they're doing, and try not to think about disaster. Like the rest of it, you try to remain calm and be very careful where you place your foot each time, because you have to straddle the rungs on the ladder. And a fall, although you're roped, would not be a good thing. You'd probably get injured, you'd be way down in a crevasse, and somebody would have to pull you out. It would probably be the end of your trip if that happened. So you just do it very carefully.
Dunne: You mentioned the Sherpas. So much of, especially Westerners', ability to climb the mountain wouldn't be possible without this professional group of people whose life's work is helping people climb. What's it like working with the Sherpas?
Gran: They're just the most fantastic people you'll ever meet, and not just because they're described as the NFL superstars of Nepal, both in income and status. Their ability to climb is phenomenal, and I felt like I was their guest there, that they were giving me this gift of the experience. On a personal level, they're an example of how good humanity can be. That was a big part of the experience.
Dunne: Okay, take us through summit day. You get up at oh-dark-thirty, knowing this is the opportunity. Take us through how you were feeling, and how the day went.
Gran: I didn't think we'd have a chance to summit. We climbed up in a windstorm. The tents were being shredded, people were descending like crazy. The night we were supposed to go up, I was too exhausted from getting to Camp Four to continue anywhere, let alone the summit. So it got called off. I thought we were going down. The next morning, the entire Camp Four had basically packed up and was descending, but the Sherpas we were with felt we might have a break in the wind overnight, so we could give it a shot and see. I waited until about 1 o'clock, when Endawa, the Sherpa I was with, came and said, ‘Okay, we're going to go for it, get ready.’ We started getting ready about 4, and we started climbing at 7 p.m. We climbed through the night, in a raging windstorm, freezing cold. I had all the Everest gear, the big down suit and all that, and the wind was cutting right through it. We summited about 6 in the morning, just as the light was coming up, and it was the most magical moment of my life outside of my children being born.
Dunne: I'm glad you said that. As I understand it, you don't get to spend much time on the summit, because that's the ultimate death zone. Were you able to take a couple of pictures? Is that what you have?
Gran: Maybe half an hour or so, then you have to head back down, hoping your battered body can make it. There was some stress up there because the wind was howling so badly, and we had to get down off the summit by 8, or we'd get caught in the next windstorm, which would be deadly. I was trying to take pictures. I had a little point-and-shoot camera, and the batteries would freeze almost immediately, so I'd have to fish around and try to get a new battery in with my big oven-mitt gloves. I got a little bit of video, and then it was, ‘let's get out of here.’ Then I realized I'd never gotten a summit picture, so we sat back down, and one of the Sherpas took a picture.
Dunne: One of the stories about Mount Everest over the last couple of decades is how, because of such a compressed climbing season, most people, I believe it's mid-May, that's the magic time to go, there can be hundreds and hundreds of people waiting in line to summit. Was that any part of your experience, or were you able to bypass that?
Gran: I bypassed it on summit day. But it did happen at one point, coming out of Camp Three, where everybody was rushing for that same weather window that never actually occurred at the same time. I came out of my tent at Camp Three, and it was that classic lineup of people going up the mountain in all their multicolored down suits. I thought, ‘okay, this is it, I'm not getting in that, I'm turning around.’ I'd heard all the horror stories about it. But Don, our guide, who's very experienced up there, said, ‘no, no, just wait, get in line, they'll spread out, people turn around, things will work out.’ I think that, like a lot of other things there, there is some garbage up there, but for me that was a minor part of the experience. It can happen occasionally if a big group goes all at once and there's only one weather window for the season. You head back down through the various camps. You don't go all the way back to base camp at once. It takes time to descend.
Dunne: What were you feeling as you were walking down, knowing that, sure, hundreds and hundreds of people have made it to the summit, but compared to the rest of the world's population, you've done something 99.99999% of all human beings have not been able to do? What was that feeling like?
Gran: Just immense gratitude. It's not something I ever thought would happen, not something I ever planned for. I was in amazement that it had happened, and I felt it was a gift, that a lot of people had provided that to me. Starting with Peter Urban, my coach Alan Arnette, Marianne of the Obsidians, the list goes on, Endawa, my Sherpa. It really felt like they had all propelled me up there, to have that opportunity and that experience. I'm still a bit in disbelief, and very grateful for that.
Dunne: I bet, Eric. My last question: if someone out there listening has had even just a little sensation like, ‘wow, I wonder if I could do that,’ what would you tell someone who's thinking Everest might be a possibility for them?
Gran: Learn to suffer. That's only half a joke. You need to climb a lot. I was in the best shape of my life by far, even though I'm in my 50s, because I was so active in the mountains around here. I got into situations here that required me to dig far deeper than I ever had before. It takes a lot of physical and mental preparation. It's not to be taken lightly. I saw a lot of people up there who did take it lightly, and they either bailed out right away, lost a lot of money, or got into serious physical trouble.
Dunne: I bet. Well, again, congratulations, that's an amazing feat. We've been talking with Eric Gran, a local Eugenean who summited Mount Everest in 2021. Thanks for coming in.
Gran: Thank you.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at klcc.org. Tomorrow on the show, you'll hear from the editor-in-chief of the Nugget Newspaper in Sisters, to get an in-person account of how that community is dealing with intense wildfires. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
