Melissa Arnot Reid (born December 18, 1983) [1] is an American mountaineer. She has climbed to the summit of Mount Everest six times. [2] [3]
Arnot was raised just outside Glacier National Park in Whitefish, Montana. After college, she began living out of her car to save money and climb mountains. She first climbed Mount Rainier in 2001 and called it a "watershed moment". Arnot began teaching wilderness medicine in 2002 and began guiding on Mount Rainier with Rainier Mountaineering, Inc. in 2004. By 2006 she was a lead guide. [4]
Since 2001, she has summited Rainier more than 90 times. She is a certified Wilderness EMT and teaches Wilderness EMT courses for Remote Medical International. [5]
In 2008, she joined Jeff Dossett and David Morton on the Everest Team Inspi(RED) to promote HIV/AIDS awareness and Microsoft and Dell products supporting Product Red. [6]
In 2010, she led a celebrity climb up Mount Kilimanjaro to raise awareness for clean water access. [7] The effort, Summit on the Summit, included actors Emile Hirsch, Jessica Biel and Isabel Lucas, musicians Kenna, Lupe Fiasco and Santigold, as well as various scientists and activists, and aired as an MTV special. [8]
In 2013, she helped defuse an assault between three European climbers and a group of a hundred Sherpas; see Mount Everest in 2013.
Her Everest summit attempts in 2014 and 2015 were disrupted by avalanches on Mount Everest. [2]
In 2016, she became the second American woman to summit Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen and the first that survived the descent having summited without supplementary oxygen; another American woman Francys Arsentiev reached the summit without supplementary oxygen in 1998 but died during the descent. [9]
She is currently sponsored by Eddie Bauer and was one of the original six mountain guides, also including Peter Whittaker, Ed Viesturs, Dave Hahn, Seth Waterfall and Chad Peele, who developed products for the 'First Ascent' brand and continues to participate in product development and testing. [10] She is also sponsored by Whittaker Mountaineering, a retail store based in Ashford, Washington. [11]
Arnot’s notable big mountain ascents include:
Mount Everest is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation of 8,848.86 m (29,031.7 ft) was most recently established in 2020 by the Chinese and Nepali authorities.
Ang Rita Sherpa was a Nepali mountaineer who climbed Mount Everest ten times without the use of supplemental oxygen between 1983 and 1996. His sixth climb set the world record for the most successful ascents of Mount Everest, which he re-set on his tenth climb. Although others have since summitted Everest more, he still holds the record for most summits without supplementary oxygen. He was also the first, and to date only, person to climb Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen in winter. He was nicknamed the "Snow Leopard" by his peers.
The Seven Summits are the highest mountains of each of the seven traditional continents. Climbing to the summit of all of them is regarded as a mountaineering challenge, first achieved on 30 April 1985 by Richard Bass. Climbing the Seven Summits and additionally reaching the North and South poles has been dubbed the Explorers Grand Slam.
The International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA) recognises eight-thousanders as the 14 mountains that are more than 8,000 metres (26,247 ft) in height above sea level, and are considered to be sufficiently independent from neighbouring peaks. However, there is no precise definition of the criteria used to assess independence, and, since 2012, the UIAA has been involved in a process to consider whether the list should be expanded to 20 mountains. All eight-thousanders are located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia, and their summits are in the death zone.
Scott Eugene Fischer was an American mountaineer and mountain guide. He was renowned for his ascents of the world's highest mountains made without the use of supplemental oxygen. Fischer and Wally Berg were the first Americans to summit Lhotse, the world's fourth highest peak. Fischer, Charley Mace, and Ed Viesturs summitted K2 without supplemental oxygen. Fischer first climbed Mount Everest in 1994 and later died during the 1996 blizzard on Everest while descending from the peak.
Edmund Viesturs is a high-altitude mountaineer, corporate speaker, and well known author in the mountain climbing community. He is the only American to have climbed all 14 of the world's eight-thousander mountain peaks, and the fifth person to do so without using supplemental oxygen. Along with Apa Sherpa, he has summitted peaks of over 8,000 meters on 21 occasions, including Mount Everest seven times; only four other climbers, Phurba Tashi Sherpa Mendewa, Juanito Oiarzabal, Namgyal Sherpa, and Ang Dorje Sherpa, have more high-altitude ascents.
Robert Edwin Hall was a New Zealand mountaineer. He was the head guide of a 1996 Mount Everest expedition during which he, a fellow guide, and two clients died. A best-selling account of the expedition was given in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, and the expedition has been dramatised in the 2015 film Everest. At the time of his death, Hall had just completed his fifth ascent to the summit of Everest, more at that time than any other non-Sherpa mountaineer.
Ali Nasuh Mahruki is a professional mountain climber, writer, photographer and documentary film producer. An all-round outdoor sportsman, he climbed to the summit of Mount Everest and was the first ever Turkish person to climb the Seven Summits.
Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at 8,849 metres (29,031.7 ft) above sea level. It is situated in the Himalayan range of Solukhumbu district, Nepal.
David Sharp was an English mountaineer who died near the summit of Mount Everest. His death caused controversy and debate because he was passed by a number of other climbers heading to and returning from the summit as he was dying, although a number of others tried to help him.
Francys Arsentiev became the first woman from the United States to reach the summit of Mount Everest without the aid of bottled oxygen, on May 22, 1998. She then died during the descent.
Andrew James Lock OAM is an Australian high-altitude 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 using bottled oxygen, only using it on Mount Everest, which he has summited three times. He retired from eight-thousander climbing in 2012.
David Allen Hahn is an American professional mountain guide, ski patroller, journalist and lecturer. In May 2013, he reached the summit of Mount Everest for the 15th time—the most for a non-Sherpa climber, according to Outside Magazine contributor and climber Alan Arnette. Among Hahn’s other notable accomplishments are his 35 summits of Vinson Massif, Antarctica’s highest mountain. He has reached the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest peak, 21 times over the course of 30 expeditions.
Garrett Madison is an American mountaineer, guide and expedition leader. Madison began guiding professionally in 1999 on Mount Rainier and has reached the top of Everest 11 times. His company, Madison Mountaineering, specializes in climbs on Mount Everest and other high altitude peaks, operates on the highest peaks on all seven continents, and also provides training programs and summit climbs in Washington State.
Ang Dorje (Chhuldim) Sherpa is a Nepali sherpa mountaineering guide, climber and porter from Pangboche, Nepal, who has climbed to the summit of Mount Everest 20 times. He was the climbing Sirdar for Rob Hall's Adventure Consultants expedition to Everest in spring 1996, when a freak storm led to the deaths of eight climbers from several expeditions, considered one of the worst disasters in the history of Everest mountaineering.
Lydia Pounamu Bradey is a New Zealand mountaineer. She became the first woman to summit Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen in 1988. She has gone on to summit the mountain five more times.
RMI Expeditions, also known as Rainier Mountaineering Inc. (RMI), is a mountain guide company based in Ashford, Washington founded in 1969 by Jerry Lynch and Lou Whittaker. It leads mountaineering, ski mountaineering, and ice climbing trips on Mount Rainier and the Seven Summits.
Mount Everest in 2016 covers events about Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth located in Nepal and Chinese Tibet in Asia. It is a popular climbing destination for extreme high altitude climbers, with several hundred climbing each year despite various dangers.