Everest without supplemental oxygen, K2 without supplemental oxygen, Lhotse, Cho Oyu, First person to ski Makalu[citation needed]
Adrian Ballinger (born February 25, 1976) is a British-American certified IFMGA/AMGAmountain guide, certified through the American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA Rock, Alpine, and Ski Certifications) and a sponsored climber and skier. Ballinger is the founder and CEO of Alpenglow Expeditions, and has been guiding full-time for 25 years. He has led over 150 international climbing expeditions on six continents, and made 18 successful summits of 8,000m peaks. He is known for pioneering the use of pre-acclimatization for commercial expeditions as early as 2012, which can cut the amount of time typically spent on an expedition in half. Adrian is the only American to have made three successful ski descents of 8,000m peaks, including the first ski descent of Manaslu from its summit. He is also the fourth American to have summited both Mount Everest and K2 without the use of supplemental oxygen.
Ballinger worked as a guide for Himalayan Experience until 2012, and was featured with Himex founder, Russell Brice, on the Discovery Channel's Everest: Beyond the Limit series. In 2004, Adrian founded Alpenglow Expeditions, a mountain guiding company based out of Squaw Valley, CA, U.S.A, where he has served as the CEO and lead guide.
Since 2008, he has achieved 18 successful 8,000m summits, reaching the summit of Everest 9 times, Manaslu 4 times, Cho Oyu 3 times, and both K2 and Lhotse once. He has also led three expeditions to Makalu, the world's fifth tallest peak. In 2011 he became the first person to summit three 8,000m peaks in just three weeks, reaching the summit of Everest twice and Lhotse once.
Ballinger has led successful expeditions to more than 40 Himalayan summits over 6000 meters, including twelve ascents of Ama Dablam, a highly technical 6,812m peak next to Everest. In 2010, he led an Alpenglow Expeditions Clean Up Expedition on Ama Dablam. This team, along with climbing the mountain, removed thousands of feet of old fixed rope from the route and hundreds of pounds of trash from the camps. They also provided outreach to Sherpa and members of other climbing teams to teach the use of human waste disposal kits while on the mountain, and donated human waste disposal bags to many of those teams.
Ballinger is also ski, ice, and rock guides for the guide company he founded, Alpenglow Expeditions, in Lake Tahoe, California.
Adrian has been featured in numerous climbing and skiing industry articles and press.[1]
Alpenglow Expeditions
Adrian founded Alpenglow Expeditions in 2004, and since then has grown it to be one of the premier mountain guide companies in the United States. Based in Olympic Valley, CA. Alpenglow Expeditions leads over 30 international expeditions on 6 continents yearly. They also run a local climbing, backcountry skiing, and backcountry education program out of Olympic Valley, taking over 4,000 clients out per year.
In 2008, Adrian summited his first 8,000m peak, making the summit of Manaslu on Oct.3rd
In 2009, Adrian summited Mount Everest for the first time via the Southwest Face on May 21. In the fall he summited Manaslu for the second time on Oct. 1st.
In 2010, Ballinger summited Mount Everest twice in the three weeks, first on May 5 and then again on May 22. On his May 5 summit, Ballinger was the first non-Sherpa of the season to summit as he fixed ropes, replaced anchors, and removed old ropes from the mountain in partnership with 9 Sherpa.
In October 2010, Adrian made his third ascent of Manaslu on Oct 1st.
In 2011, Adrian again summited Everest twice in three weeks, making the summit on May 5 and May 20. A few days later on May 26, he summited Lhotse.
In the Fall of 2011, Ballinger completed the first ski descent of Manaslu, descending from its summit on Oct. 5th.
In 2013, he successfully reached the summit of Cho Oyu, making a ski descent from the summit on Sept. 25th
In 2016, Adrian Ballinger and Cory Richards were sponsored by Eddie Bauer to attempt a climb Mount Everest without the use of supplemental oxygen. They relayed information from the Everest climb using the smartphone software application and service called Snapchat in a series title “Everest No Filter”. Adrian’s summit attempt was unsuccessful.
In the fall of 2016, Ballinger made a second ski descent of Cho Oyu with his partner Emily Harrington, completing the complete expedition in a record setting 14 days door-to-door from the USA.
In 2017, Adrian and Cory Richards returned to Everest for a second attempt at climbing the peak without oxygen. On May 27, Adrian reached the summit of Mount Everest without the use of supplemental oxygen.
In 2018, Ballinger made his third ascent of Cho Oyu on May 6, and his eighth summit of Everest on May 20.
In 2019, Adrian served as the lead guide and expedition outfitter for a Discovery Channel sponsored expedition attempting to uncover the mystery of whether George Mallory and Andrew Irvine made the first summit of Mount Everest in 1924. The expedition was filmed and released as a Discovery.com documentary released in October 2020 called Everest's Greatest Mystery.
Also in 2019, an expedition sponsored by Eddie Bauer, Adrian Ballinger and fellow Alpenglow Expeditions guide Carla Perez made an attempt to climb K2 without the use of supplemental oxygen. On July 24, they reached the summit of the second tallest peak on the planet without the use of bottled oxygen. They were supported by Esteban “Topo” Mena, Palden Namgye Sherpa, and Pemba Geija Sherpa. The climb was made into a film produced by Eddie Bauer titled Breathtaking: K2 - The World's Most Dangerous Mountain.
In 2022, Adrian returned to Makalu and made the first ski descent. Skiing from the Summit to crampon point before descending back to ABC the same day. Adrian started his ski descent from 15m below the summit due to crowding on the summit. He rappelled a 60m section in the French Couloir without his skis, and descended the rest of the mountain rappelling and using the fixed lines as hand lines sparingly.[citation needed]
8,000m Summits
The North Face of Mount Everest. Adrian has summited Everest 8 times
K2 in the Karakoram Mountain Range of Pakistan. Adrian summited K2 without the use of supplemental oxygen in 2019.Cho Oyu, which Adrian has summited three times
The eight-thousanders are the 14 mountains recognized by the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA) as being more than 8,000 metres (26,247 ft) in height above sea level, and sufficiently independent of neighbouring peaks. There is no precise definition of the criteria used to assess independence, and at times, the UIAA has considered whether the list should be expanded to 20 mountain peaks by including the major satellite peaks of eight-thousanders. All of the eight-thousanders are located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia, and their summits lie in the altitude range known as the death zone.
Alan Hinkes OBE is an English Himalayan high-altitude mountaineer from Northallerton in North Yorkshire. He is the first British mountaineer to claim all 14 Himalayan eight-thousanders, a feat he completed on 30 May 2005.
Benoît Chamoux was a French Alpinist, who claimed to have summited 13 of the Eight-thousanders in the Himalayas.
Nives Meroi is an Italian mountaineer and a climbing writer. On 11 May 2017 she completed the ascent of all 14 eight-thousanders using the alpine style of climbing and without supplementary oxygen.
Andrew James Lock OAM is an Australian mountaineer. He became the first, and still remains the only, Australian to climb all 14 "eight-thousanders" on 2 October 2009, and is the 18th person to ever complete this feat. He climbed 13 of the 14 without bottled oxygen, only using it on Mount Everest, which he has summited three times. He retired from eight-thousander climbing in 2012.
William H. Cross is an American mountaineer.
Phurba Tashi Sherpa Mendewa is a Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer known for his numerous ascents of major Himalayan peaks. These include 21 ascents of Mount Everest, six on Cho Oyu, eight on Manaslu, and one each on Shishapangma and Lhotse.
Neal Jay Beidleman is an American mountaineer and climbing guide, known for surviving the 1996 Mount Everest disaster. After the disaster, Beidleman's stories were featured on the U.S. television news show Nightline and PBS's Frontline, in which his decisions and patience were credited for likely saving the lives of himself and several other less-experienced climbers along the Kangshung Face. Beidleman has reached the summit of eight-thousanders five times, Makalu (1x), Cho Oyu (1x) and Mount Everest (3x).
Nirmal Purja is a Nepal-born naturalised British mountaineer. Prior to taking on a career in mountaineering, he served in the British Army with the Brigade of Gurkhas followed by the Special Boat Service (SBS), the special forces unit of the Royal Navy. Purja is notable for having climbed all 14 eight-thousanders in a time of six months and six days with the aid of bottled oxygen between April and October 2019. This was a record at the time of climbing, although it was broken in 2023 by Kristin Harila and Tenjen Sherpa, who summitted all 14 eight-thousanders in 92 days. Purja was the first person to reach the summits of Mount Everest, Lhotse and Makalu within 48 hours. In 2021, Purja, along with a team of nine other Nepalese climbers, completed the first winter ascent of K2.
Hilaree Nelson was an American ski mountaineer. She became the first woman to summit two 8000-meter peaks in one 24-hour push on May 25, 2012. On September 30, 2018, Nelson and partner Jim Morrison made the first ski descent of the "Dream Line", the Lhotse Couloir from the summit. Lhotse is the 4th-highest mountain in the world and shares a saddle with Mount Everest.
The 1955 French Makalu expedition was the first to successfully climb Makalu, the Himalayan mountain 12 miles (19 km) to the southeast of Mount Everest, on the border between Nepal and Tibet. At 8,485 metres (27,838 ft) Makalu is the fifth-highest mountain in the world and an eight-thousander.
Subedar Major and Honorary Captain Chhering Norbu Bodh, SC, (retd.) is a retired personnel of the Indian Army, known for his mountaineering achievements while in the army. Bodh holds a number of Indian summiting records related to 8,000m peaks. Among others, he is the first Indian mountaineer to have climbed six of the fourteen 8000m peaks in the world, and the first Indian to stand atop Lhotse and Annapurna-1.
Kristin Harila is a Norwegian-Northern Saami mountaineer and former cross-country skier. During 2022–2023, she set multiple speed records for the ascent of all 14 eight-thousanders, which are the peaks in the world that are over 8,000 metres in elevation.
Dawa Ongju Sherpa- Nepali: दावा ओङ्जु शेर्पा is a Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer. He has climbed 13 of the 14 highest peaks in the world.
Tenjen Sherpa, also known as Tenjen Lama Sherpa, was a Nepalese mountaineer who climbed all 14 eight-thousander together with Kristin Harila in 92 days. He went missing after an avalanche hit on Shishapangma on 7 October 2023. He was declared dead by Chinese authorities on 8 October 2023.
Tracee Lee Metcalfe is a high-altitude alpinist, backcountry skier and internal medicine physician from Vail, Colorado. Metcalfe received her M.D. from University of Colorado Denver's School of Medicine. She first started climbing eight-thousanders in 2015. Metcalfe is the first American woman to climb all 14 of the world's highest mountains over 8,000 meters.
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