The British adventurer, who overcame personal tragedy to scale K2, attributes the recent spike in novice climbers attempting Everest to societys quest for attention
Adrian Hayes’ journey to the summit of K2, the 28,251ft beast nestled between Pakistan and China and largely known in mountaineering circles as the most challenging peak in existence, took over two years. Yet when the world renowned British extreme adventurer finally reached the summit, he didn’t spend much time relishing in his accomplishment. Hayes didn’t snap Instagram selfies, chug beer or really even relax. He paused for about five minutes to give his mate a bear hug and call his family. Then he began the perilous descent. Hayes would finally exhale when he reached base camp, a celebration of conquering both the mountain and his demons.
In One Man’s Climb: A Journey of Trauma, Tragedy, and Triumph on K2, Hayes details his two attempts at summiting what is known as Savage Mountain because of the brutal rock falls, vertical ice bands and avalanches that have claimed the lives of 85 mountaineers. Only 379 have ever reached the summit. Meanwhile, Hayes interweaves his narrative with a lens into his calamitous personal life which includes a lengthy divorce battle and the grueling quest to have in-person contact with his daughter.
Hayes’s first attempt at K2 in 2013, a climb for which he had considered for 18 months and trained for half a year, ended in despair. Hayes’s team, along other seven others representing countries spanning the globe, were thwarted by extreme weather conditions and made the exasperating decision to return to base camp. But Marty and Denali Schmidt, a beloved team attempting to become the first father-son duo to scale K2, were the sole outliers. They continued. They would never return.
Two days later, upon hearing the news of the Schmidts’ death, Hayes sat on a rock as tears formed in his eyes. The Schmidts were gone. He had failed to summit K2. He was returning to a shaky personal life.
“As I sat back on that rock, in a way it gave me purpose, it helped me understand that would have happened to me,” Hayes says. “Mountaineers look at death differently. It happens in the sport all the time and you have to learn the lessons on why it happens and decision-making. I felt more sadness than grief.”
Hayes didn’t know it yet but he would return to the same spot a year later a man so driven no barrier would detract him.
For Hayes, the quest to be an all-around adventurer started at a young age, largely to escape a struggling childhood. Hayes grew up in a family-run hotel in the New Forest district of Hampshire, England, climbing trees and wading down rivers like other kids. But he dreamed of what the rest of the world might offer and became consumed with the variety of places and terrains he could explore. His walls were adorned with a bevy of British explorers and figures like Naomi Uemura, a Japanese adventurer who was the first to reach the North Pole solo. As a preteen Hayes could name and point to every island in the Pacific on a map. At age 16, he became so fascinated with the American Antarctic Survey, a national research station located in Antarctica, that he wrote a letter to then-US president Ronald Reagan begging to join the program. His request was denied, though he did receive a nice letter from the White House.
Hayes would soon start scaling mountains like Rainier in Washington state and building enduranceby pulling heavy sleds on polar ice caps. His addiction to extreme adventures embedded, Hayes continued to push toward riskier activities. In 2007, he joined a handful of adventurers who have achieved the Three Poles Challenge: reaching the North Pole, South Pole and summiting Mount Everest.
So why would a human being constantly want to risk his life scaling dangerous mountains or partaking in other inherently death-defying activates like polar exploration, sky diving and trekking through deserts?
Hayes admittedly thinks about death more than the average person, but he doesn’t often consider himself in danger, crediting what he calls his “risk v reckless threshold” as the secret to his success. In fact, the worst injury Hayes has ever suffered was a bent leg after being tackled in a rugby match.
“Putting yourself in the face of death is stupid,” he says. “Too many adventurers believe in their own immortality and when we believe in that, we end up arrogant.”
When he’s not scaling 25,000ft mountains, Hayes works as a speaker or leads trips. He is an extrovert who loves storytelling and socializing. But he also deeply cherishes the inner sanctity that comes with his universe: the deep reflection, the exhilaration. Hayes often looks up at the sky to get a sense of calm in a world he considers increasingly chaotic.
In Hayes’s view, the modern mountaineering world is a microcosm of that chaos. He believes the sharp increase in novice climbers attempting Everest in recent years is more attributed to society’s quest for attention than the intricacies of mountaineering.
“We climb for many reasons. The freedom, the nature, setting a goal. These big goals we do them for internal significance. All these internal drivers have been taken over by social media.” Hayes says, “Look where I am. Look what I’m doing. Look what I’ve achieved. It’s became about that Insta shot on the top of Everest or at an Ironman triathlon. We are in a massive epidemic. We’re striving for recognition and respect and yes, fame.”
This past climbing season on Everest was particularly mired in tragedy as 11 climbers died. The Nepalese government had issued a record 381 permits to climbers who met the main requirement of paying an $11,000 fee. After intense criticism a Nepalese high commission last month announced that it would institute new rules for climbing Everest, which include a certificate of good health and fitness and proof of scaling another Nepalese mountain of at least 21,325ft.
Still, Hayes is skeptical that amateur mountaineers looking to strike that perfect mountaintop pose will be weeded out. He hopes by spotlighting what he calls a “deeply disturbing selfie trend” in the expedition world, readers of One Climb will reexamine their own priorities when in nature and life.
For Hayes, the most difficult aspect of writing the book were the ghosts of that first K2 attempt. When he returned home, he suffered from deep emotional pain, the most significant stemming from missing his daughter whom he hadn’t had seen in too many months as his five-year battle with his ex-wife continued. He was in a dark vortex and making bad decisions. He felt stuck. In the depths of despair, a sense of purpose came over Hayes. Almost like a higher power. He had to go back to K2. Nothing else mattered.
“It was self-survival,” Hayes says. “We’ll do anything to thwart pain.”
For the next several months, Hayes trained like a possessed man worthy of his own soundtrack. He scaled mountains in the United Arab Emirates with 11,000ft elevations and rugged terrains. He cycled, ran and weight trained. He prepared his body for the extreme altitude of K2.
Hayes says that after training for the second attempt at K2, he was the fittest he had been since Everest in 2007, and that his mentality was perfect. His long-time chiropractor said that Hayes was emitting a level of energy he had never seen in his quest to avenge his first K2 failure. For a sliver of time, nothing else mattered to Hayes.
He summited K2 on 24 July 2014.
One Climb was originally pitched by Hayes as a personal development opus to a US-based book editor he knew named Sequoia. She said no but had another idea, one far more personal to them both. She wanted Hayes to write about his failed attempt at summiting K2, the same expedition that claimed the lives of Hayes’s fellow adventurers and friends.
Marty and Denali Schmidt were Sequoia’s father and brother.
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