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 quote-unquote 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 very first attempt. Eric Gran, a local Eugenian who successfully summited Mount Everest in 2021. Thanks for coming in and talking to us.
Eric Gran: Yeah, happy to.
Dunne: Yeah, boy, you know, obviously congratulations. What an amazing feat. Maybe you know, talk about your experience leading up to this excursion. You know, were you an avid mountaineer? Kind of who were you before you know, got on a plane and flew to Nepal to take on the tallest mountain in the world.
Gran: I was nobody. No, yeah, it was kind of actually by accident. I mean, I I was an avid mountaineer. I just started climbing with the Obsidians Climb Club here in Eugene, just as a way to get out and meet like-minded people. And I was doing that for about four years, and along the way became climbing partners with a guy named Peter Urban, who's an actually accomplished mountaineer. Okay, and he just came up with this idea, kind of out of the blue in 2020, that we should climb Mount Lhotse in Nepal. And I said, "Great, what the heck is Mount Lhotse, and where is that? And it turned out to be the fourth highest mountain in the world, right next to Everest. So after I finished panicking and realized we only had three months before we were supposed to leave, we just started training. And then a couple weeks before we left, I just got the idea that well, 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, so you did both?
Gran: No! I switched.
Dunne: I see. Now, that to me that that brings up the question because obviously, from what research I've done and what I've heard, you know, it's a major endeavor. Just the planning and the logistics to do a huge Himalayan expedition like this. How difficult was it to sort of turn your turn your sails from the fourth highest mountain Lhotse to the one next door, Mount Everest?
Gran; Going from the fourth Lhotse to the highest Mount Everest was basically the same thing. Okay, it's just they both follow the same path. They both go to Everest Base Camp. They both go up the same path up the mountain, up onto Everest. Okay, and then you know I guess at about 24,000 feet, Everest is 29. You turn right to go up Lhotse, or you turn left to continue on up Everest. Okay. So instead of turning right, I turn left. But either one of them is a is a serious thing.
Dunne: I guess I was also wondering about permitting with the various government’s agencies. Did was that a problem to say? Oh, never mind about Lhotse. We're just going to go for the big one.
Gran: Yeah, that that was something else because we did it so we made that change so late that we had a guide out of Washington, a guide service, and he's been climbing you know Himalayan peaks for like 30 years, and 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, so and I I'm also a member of the Obsidians and I've done a few climbs and obviously you know Oregon has some wonderful mountains to climb and there are degrees of challenge. There's you know, glacial travel and rock climbing, and you know, challenges that that that that can certainly 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, you know? I can handle this, and really now it's just degrees of challenge harder. And I guess what I'm saying is, was there a moment where you said, okay, I can do this?
Gran: Oh, 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 it came up right before the trip, but for me, you know, I went to the Obsidians. I had one and one goal only, and that was to climb Mount Shasta. It's just a beautiful about half the size of Mount Everest. So I trained hard. I went to Obsidians climb school. Immediately after that, I took a five-day Denali course on Mount Shasta with a private guide, and just started climbing it. And actually, that happened to be the first mountain I climbed because I couldn't find anybody to go with me, and I just thought I'd fail and have to turn around. So, I went down and climbed it on my own, and realized you know I had some capacity for that. And so, my stretch goal was Mount Rainier. So I saw and there's another club, Santiam Alpine Club, SAC, and I saw they had to climb a mountain Rainier, so I signed up for that, and the and successfully summoned Rainier, and basically, you know, I was out of ideas, but at Rainier, I met Peter Urban, who was the leader of that, and you know, we became friends and climbing partners, and you know, eventually four years later, led to Everest.
Dunne: Talk about the training that you did to get yourself in shape. And again, for people who don't know, you know, it's one to it's one as I understand it. It's one thing to say I'm going to go climb Everest. It's another to do it, and it is one of the greatest physical challenges a human body can go through. And I imagine you might talk about the quote unquote the death zone. I believe it's above 26,000 feet, where basically your body is dying when you're there. And to be in the physical stamina to be able to do it, because you don't just hike up the mountain, it takes you know trips and trips to acclimatize and whatnot. But talk about your training.
Gran: Well, training you know all along for climbing the mountains around here, I'd say there's two halves to it. One is physical, and the other is mental. And the physical part of it just means carrying heavy packs uphill for long periods of time before you ever get out there. And I rotate, I run, I I bike, I I carry the heavy pack, I do a variety of things like that. And then throughout the year, I also rotate activities. So, in the summer, I'm surfing and mountain biking, and kind of you know they're snowboarding in the winter, and just kind of keeping overall fit. And then by climbing the mountains around here, that's where you get those 8, 12, 20-hour days of effort, and doing that with Peter was a revelation because Peter is free-willing; he'll try anything. I'm kind of his yes man, and there were some instances where, you know, I reach my absolute physical exhausted, can't take another step point, and yet a couple times that was on the top of a mountain, Mount Hood or Mount Shasta, as the sun was going down, and we have no choice but to spend the next six, eight hours getting down. And that's the mental part that really prepared me for Everest. I think is just knowing that you can do that, you can overcome it. You can go much farther than you thought you were capable of, if needed.
Dunne: Okay, obviously, you know Mount Everest has become you know a big commercial operation. Lots of people have done it, but that doesn't diminish the fact that it is one of the more dangerous things you can do in your life. I mean, it is-I forget what the stats are, but there are legitimate stats about for every person who you know for every 10 or whatever who summits people die on the mountain every single season. What was it, or kind of what was sort of the I don't know the agreement you made with yourself that I'm going to try this, knowing full well this could be something that could end your life.
Gran: Right. Yeah, that's a very distinct possibility, and it does happen, and it happens in the mountains around here, and I had no idea if I had the capacity to go that high. You know, I felt the highest I'd been up until then was Kilimanjaro. That's 19,000 feet, which is roughly the level of base camp on Everest. So, I really didn't know, and there was no way of telling until I tried it. I actually made a deal with the guide service that I would just go there for the quote unquote training and try to get to Camp Three and let's see how it goes and if I'm doing well, I'll continue and if not he had the right to tell me that's it you're going down and your trip is over and I would have accepted that so it was. Just getting there and seeing how far I could get.
Dunne: …and Camp Three is what about 22,000 or a few?
Gran: Yeah, yeah, it's about 22. Okay, it's kind of spread across the Lhotse face depending on what part you're on.
Dunne: That's another thing that I think is always extremely important in in high-risk mountaineering is knowing the limits, but also knowing okay to save myself, I need to be able to turn around. Do you feel like you could have done that if you reached your max? Would you have been able to turn to to the guide and say, "Okay, I'm good, I'm done, I'm heading back.
Gran: Oh, there were multiple times when I thought it was over for me, and it started, you know, down at Camp One, which is like 20,000 feet. And when I first went up there, I actually came out in the morning after just a horrific night of altitude illness, just you know my head in a vise and can't breathe and just feel like hell. And I actually asked him, you know, I think I might be dying. Do you think I'm dying? He asked me, well, you know, what are you feeling? I described it to him, and he said, Oh yeah, I feel the same way. So that's part of the deal.
Dunne: And I'm going to get to that, but I wanted to ask even before you're on the mountain, you know, was there a moment? I don't know, maybe on the plane ride over to Asia, and you were thinking, oh my goodness, because I've always I remember like in John Krakauer's book Into Thin Air about his plane ride over, going, gosh, I'm in a 747 about the same altitude as I'm going to need to climb, but was there a moment during the logistics or just travel over there where it became real, like, oh, okay, I'm really going to try this?
Gran: Oh, absolutely. And that moment came for me when we landed in in, I think it was Dubai on a stopover, and I had like eight hours to just hang out in the airport, and kind of had a moment of panic. Like, what the hell am I doing? This is crazy. I have no business doing this.
Dunne: So, you get there, and I imagine there's all sorts of red tape. Maybe you need to go to. But when you're finally you know heading towards the mountain, give us you know, or maybe even just take us perhaps from base camp. Talk about what it takes, you know. Because again, like I said earlier, it's not like you're just walking up. There's a lot of planning. There's a lot of ups and downs to acclimatize. Talk about what your, you know, however you were on the mountain a month or so. How long, you know, kind of what was it like? Give us the 30,000 foot, pardon the pun, view.
Gran: Yeah. Well, first of all, I I'd say a lot of people underestimate the task, and they buy into the idea that it's not really that hard, or the sure risk of carrying yourself, or whatever that is. But when you see it in person, and I had no idea, it's shocking how big and gnarly it is. Especially the first thing you see are the ice falls, which is basically a frozen river of ice, is the most dangerous part, at least in the beginning. And so, once you get up to base camp, you spend about three days trying to get to the point where you can sleep through the night and adjust to the altitude there. And then you leave at around midnight to try and get up to Camp One, and you climb up through the ice falls through the night and get there the next morning, and typically climbers will do that, and then they'll descend immediately back down to base camp, rest down there, and then climb up higher to camp two, and then go back. But we decided, and the guides especially decided they did not want to take the risk of going through the ice falls too much, so we stayed there, and that means you just have to stay up there and just suffer like you've never suffered before, and until your body starts to adjust to the altitude, and then you go up to the next camp and start that process over. Wow, and it just keeps going, doesn't it? Yeah, and then you then you get up to Camp Three, which is up on the Lhotse Face, that's about 22, 23,000 feet, and spend the night up there, and then descend all the way down to base camp, and then you spend a few days at a local village just at a lower altitude, letting your body heal from that, waiting for a weather window, and then you just go for it all the way.
Dunne: Okay. Okay. What was it like? I have seen. I've never been there, but I've seen many great documentaries and whatnot. You know, and one of the things that's always striking, and I forget if it's at the Kombu Icefall or wherever, where you basically have to, with these spiky things called crampons on your boot, traverse these ladders to go over crevasses. What's that like to do?
Gran: It's like the rest of it. You just kind of you know swallow your fear or your concern and go for it. Pay really close attention to the guide and to the Sherpas. You know, just try to mimic what they're doing and not think about disaster. And just like the rest of it, try to remain calm and be very careful where you place your foot each and every time because you've got to straddle the rungs on that ladder. And the fall, although you're roped, would not be a good thing. It would be you know you'd probably get injured. You'd be way down in a crevasse. Somebody's got to pull you out. Probably be the end of your trip if that happened. So, you just do that very carefully.
Dunne: Yeah, you mentioned the Sherpas, and obviously, you know, so much of especially Westerners' ability to climb the mountain wouldn't be possible without this professional group of people whose life is dedicated to helping people climb the mountains. What's it like working with the Sherpas?
Gran: I mean, they're just the most fantastic people you'll ever meet in your life, and not just from the standpoint of their kind of they're described as you know the NFL superstars of Nepal, both in income and in status. Their ability to climb is just phenomenal, and really, I felt like I was their guest there, and they were just giving me this gift to have that experience. The other part of it is, you know, just from a personal standpoint, they are an example of how good humanity can be. So it was a special that was that was a big part of the experience.
Dunne: Okay, take us through Summit Day. You get up at O Dark 30, and you know that this is the opportunity. Take us through how you were feeling, and then just how the day went.
Gran: Um, I didn't think we'd have a chance to summit. We climbed up in a windstorm. We got caught in a windstorm. The tents were all 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, much less to 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 that we were with felt that we might have a break in the wind overnight, so we could give it a shot and see. So, I was just waiting till about 1o'clock when Endawa, the Sherpa that I was with, came and said, "Okay, we're going to go for it. Get ready. We started getting ready about four, and we started climbing at 7p.m. And we climbed through the night, and you know that's a long story, but yeah, climb through the night in just a raging windstorm, just freezing cold. I had all the Everest gear, you know, the big the big down suit and all that, and the wind was just cutting right through it. Wow! And and we summited about six in the morning, just as the light was coming up, and it was just the most magical moment of my life outside of my children being born.
Dunne: I'm glad you said that. And as I understand it, you know, you don't get to spend a lot of time up on the summit because that's the ultimate death zone. But what you know, were you able to take a couple pictures, and is that kind of what you have?
Gran: Maybe a half hour or so, and then you got to head back down, and you're probably hoping that your battered body can make it there. You know there was some stress up there just because the wind was howling so bad, and we had to get down off the summit by eight, or we'd get caught in the next windstorm, and that would be deadly. Yeah. And so, I was trying to take pictures. The I had a little point and shoot camera. 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 mitts that I had for gloves, and got a little bit of video. And then it's like let's get the hell out of here. And then I realized I'd never gotten a summit picture. So, we sat back down, and the Sherpa, one of the Sherpas, I was with two guys, took a 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 right mid May is kind of the magic time to try and go, and there is can be hundreds and hundreds of people waiting in line to summit. That was that any of your experience, or did you were you able to bypass that?
Gran: I certainly bypassed it on summit day, and I think that and that did happen at one point, coming out of Camp Three, where everybody was rushing for that same weather window that actually never occurred at the same time, and I came out of my tenant Camp Three, and it was just like that classic lineup of people just going up the mountain in all their multicolored down suits, and I was just like, okay, this is it. I'm not getting in that. I'm turning around. I heard up, you know, heard all the horror stories about that. But Don, our guide, who's very experienced up there, he said, "No, no, just wait. You know, get in line. They'll spread out. People turn around. Things will work out. And so, I, you know, I think that that is like a lot of other things. There, there is some garbage up there, things like that. But for me, that was a minor part of the experience, and I I think it can happen occasionally if a big group goes all at once, and there's only one weather window for that season. You head back down, you go through the various camps. You don't you don't head back down to like base camp all at once. It takes time to ascend.
Dunne: What were you feeling? As you as you know, you're walking down knowing that yeah, sure, there have been hundreds and hundreds of people who've made it to the summit, but still, compared to the rest of the world's population, you've done something that 99.99999% of all human beings ever have not been able to do. What was the feeling like?
Gran: Oh, just immense gratitude. It's not something I ever thought would happen. It's not something I ever planned for. I was, you know, just in amazement that that had happened, and I felt that it was a gift, and that there had been a lot of people that had provided that to me. You know, starting with Peter Urban, my coach, Alan Arnett, Marianne of the Obsidians. I mean, the the list goes on. Endgawa, my Sherpa. You know, I it really it really felt like they had all propelled me up there. And to have that opportunity, and to have that experience, I'm still a bit in disbelief and very grateful for that.
Dunne: I bet, Eric. My last question for you is simply this: You know, if someone's out there listening, and either it's been a dream or even just a little sensation like, wow, I wonder if I could do that. What would you tell somebody who is thinking that maybe Everest is a possibility for them?
Gran: Learn to suffer. That's only half a joke, you know. You need to climb a lot. You need to be in. I was in the best shape by far of my life, even though I'm in my 50s. But I was so active on the mountains around here. I got into some situations around here that required me to dig far deeper than I ever had before. It takes a lot of physical and mental preparation. It is not to be taken lightly. I did see a lot of people up there who did take it lightly, and they either bailed out right away, lost a lot of money, or they got into serious physical trouble.
Dunne: I bet. Well, again, congratulations. That's an amazing, an amazing feat. We've been talking with Eric Gran. He's a local Eugenian 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.
