There is no uni­ver­sal check­list that tells you whether you’re ready for Ama Dablam. But there are pat­terns that tend to dis­tin­guish climbers who arrive pre­pared from those who arrive with gaps.

The clear­est indi­ca­tor isn’t any sin­gle qual­i­fi­ca­tion. It’s con­sis­ten­cy. Can you move effi­cient­ly on tech­ni­cal ter­rain over mul­ti­ple con­sec­u­tive days? Do your sys­tems hold up when you’re fatigued? Can you make sound deci­sions when the options aren’t obvi­ous and the expo­sure is real?

Those ques­tions are more use­ful than any résumé of summits.

Expe­ri­ence at alti­tude mat­ters, but it mat­ters less in iso­la­tion and more in con­text. Time on mixed ter­rain, steep snow, and tech­ni­cal rock at ele­va­tion, car­ry­ing weight across mul­ti­ple days, builds the kind of famil­iar­i­ty that Ama Dablam requires. The South­west Ridge does­n’t have patience for a learn­ing curve.

The best climbers on Ama Dablam aren’t the ones who’ve climbed the most peaks. They’re the ones for whom almost noth­ing on the route feels gen­uine­ly new.

That famil­iar­i­ty is built over time through objec­tives that pro­gres­sive­ly raise the demands not just in alti­tude or phys­i­cal out­put, but in how tech­ni­cal sys­tems are man­aged, how deci­sions are made under pres­sure, and how recov­ery and per­for­mance stack across long expeditions.

If you arrive and too many things feel unfa­mil­iar, the moun­tain will let you know. The bet­ter prepa­ra­tion is to work through those gaps before the flight to Kath­man­du on ter­rain that’s demand­ing enough to be hon­est but for­giv­ing enough to learn from.

Moun­tain Mad­ness offers an alpine lead­er­ship course for exact­ly that rea­son. Eight days in the North Cas­cades, focused on the spe­cif­ic ter­rain and sys­tems Ama Dablam demands. Not a warm-up. A rehearsal.

About the Author: Lisa Thomp­son is the founder of Alpine Ath­let­ics and own­er of Moun­tain Mad­ness. She has sum­mit­ed Ever­est, K2, and the Sev­en Sum­mits through years of dis­ci­plined prepa­ra­tion. Alpine Ath­let­ics climbers have achieved an 80% suc­cess rate on Denali, sig­nif­i­cant­ly above the moun­tain’s 50% average.

Sup­ple­men­tal oxy­gen is one of the least under­stood parts of climb­ing Everest.

From the out­side, it’s often sim­pli­fied. You use oxy­gen, or you don’t. In real­i­ty, it’s a sys­tem that requires plan­ning, dis­ci­pline, and care­ful man­age­ment over time.

Most climbers begin using oxy­gen above 7,000 meters, though the exact tim­ing can vary depend­ing on the expe­di­tion and the indi­vid­ual. Flow rates are adjust­ed based on where you are on the moun­tain and how your body is respond­ing. Low­er on the route, the goal is often to sup­port acclima­ti­za­tion and recov­ery. High­er up, it becomes more about main­tain­ing pace and clarity.

What mat­ters is not just access to oxy­gen but how it is managed.

Oxy­gen needs to be staged in advance, car­ried to high­er camps, and posi­tioned where it will be need­ed days or weeks lat­er. That requires coor­di­na­tion across the entire team. If some­thing is mis­placed, delayed, or used incor­rect­ly, it can affect not just one climber but the broad­er plan.

There is also a pac­ing ele­ment to it.

Climbers some­times assume that oxy­gen allows them to move faster. In prac­tice, it tends to do the oppo­site. It allows you to move more con­sis­tent­ly. It reduces the sharp drop-offs in ener­gy and helps main­tain clear­er deci­sion-mak­ing over long peri­ods of time.

That con­sis­ten­cy is what matters.

By the time a climber reach­es the upper moun­tain, deci­sions need to be sim­ple and exe­cu­tion needs to be steady. Oxy­gen sup­ports that, but only if it has been planned and man­aged care­ful­ly from the beginning.

About the Author: Lisa Thomp­son is the founder of Alpine Ath­let­ics and own­er of Moun­tain Mad­ness. She has sum­mit­ed Ever­est, K2, and the Sev­en Sum­mits through years of dis­ci­plined prepa­ra­tion. Alpine Ath­let­ics climbers have achieved an 80% suc­cess rate on Denali, sig­nif­i­cant­ly above the moun­tain’s 50% average.

Acclima­ti­za­tion is usu­al­ly explained in straight­for­ward terms. Climb high, sleep low, repeat. It sounds like a formula.

What it feels like is different.

Ear­ly in the approach, the changes are sub­tle. Breath­ing comes a lit­tle hard­er. Move­ments take slight­ly longer than they should. Recov­ery works, but slow­ly. Noth­ing alarm­ing, just the body begin­ning to reg­is­ter where it is.

As ele­va­tion increas­es, the gap between effort and out­put becomes more pro­nounced. Sim­ple tasks require delib­er­ate atten­tion. Pace becomes some­thing you man­age rather than some­thing that hap­pens nat­u­ral­ly. The body is adapt­ing, but on its own time­line, which does­n’t always align with the schedule.

Some days, you feel strong. The next day, at the same alti­tude, every­thing is hard­er. That uneven­ness is nor­mal. It’s also the rea­son time matters.

Moun­tain Mad­ness’s Ama Dablam itin­er­ary builds in acclima­ti­za­tion time that most short­er pro­grams don’t allow for. The pre-climb trek through the Khum­bu Val­ley, includ­ing Gokyo, Cho La Pass, and Lobuche East, isn’t just logis­tics. It’s a care­ful­ly sequenced expo­sure to increas­ing alti­tude before the tech­ni­cal climb­ing begins. That foun­da­tion is what makes the upper moun­tain man­age­able rather than overwhelming.

By the time the sum­mit win­dow opens, acclima­ti­za­tion should feel less like some­thing you’re active­ly man­ag­ing and more like some­thing that has qui­et­ly tak­en hold. You’re still aware of the alti­tude; you always are. But it no longer dic­tates every step.

About the Author: Lisa Thomp­son is the founder of Alpine Ath­let­ics and own­er of Moun­tain Mad­ness. She has sum­mit­ed Ever­est, K2, and the Sev­en Sum­mits through years of dis­ci­plined prepa­ra­tion. Alpine Ath­let­ics climbers have achieved an 80% suc­cess rate on Denali, sig­nif­i­cant­ly above the moun­tain’s 50% average.

From a dis­tance, Ever­est can seem like an indi­vid­ual pur­suit. One climber, one objec­tive, one summit.

In prac­tice, it rarely works that way.

On the moun­tain, you move between camps 1:1 with your Sher­pa. That part­ner­ship defines how you climb day to day, your pace, your rhythm, and how you move through the ter­rain. But the expe­di­tion itself is still very much a team experience.

You spend weeks togeth­er on the trek in, at base camp, and through­out the rota­tions on the moun­tain. You share meals, weath­er days, and the qui­eter parts of the process that don’t show up in sum­mit pho­tos. Over time, you begin to under­stand how oth­ers move, how they think, and how they respond when things get harder.

That mat­ters more than it might seem at first.

A well-matched team cre­ates a dif­fer­ent kind of envi­ron­ment. Peo­ple sup­port each oth­er. They share obser­va­tions, learn from one anoth­er, and help rein­force good deci­sions. There is less noise, less fric­tion, and a steady rhythm that devel­ops over time.

You notice it in small ways. Con­ver­sa­tions that help clar­i­fy a deci­sion. Shared expe­ri­ence that short­ens the learn­ing curve. A sense that you are part of some­thing cohe­sive, even though you are climb­ing inde­pen­dent­ly between camps.

When that align­ment isn’t there, the dif­fer­ence is just as notice­able. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion becomes less clear. Pac­ing varies more. The over­all flow of the expe­di­tion becomes less consistent.

Ever­est ampli­fies what­ev­er is already present.

The strongest teams are not just made up of capa­ble climbers. They are made up of peo­ple who are engaged, pre­pared, and will­ing to con­tribute to the group. You are not just anoth­er climber mov­ing through the sys­tem. You have a name, a role, and a place with­in the team.

And over the course of a long expe­di­tion, that sense of con­nec­tion becomes part of what car­ries you forward.

About the Author: Lisa Thomp­son is the founder of Alpine Ath­let­ics and own­er of Moun­tain Mad­ness. She has sum­mit­ed Ever­est, K2, and the Sev­en Sum­mits through years of dis­ci­plined prepa­ra­tion. Alpine Ath­let­ics climbers have achieved an 80% suc­cess rate on Denali, sig­nif­i­cant­ly above the moun­tain’s 50% average.

Most climbers start the com­par­i­son process the same way. Price, dura­tion, what’s includ­ed, what the itin­er­ary looks like.

All of that is rea­son­able. None of it is sufficient.

What actu­al­ly shapes your expe­ri­ence on Ama Dablam tends to sit just below the sur­face. Team size, for exam­ple, isn’t just a logis­ti­cal detail. It deter­mines how deci­sions are made, how quick­ly a group moves, and how much flex­i­bil­i­ty exists when con­di­tions change. Small­er teams car­ry less fric­tion. They adjust faster. They oper­ate with more margin.

Lead­er­ship is sim­i­lar. A list of sum­mits tells you some­thing, but it does­n’t tell you how a guide man­ages pace over three weeks, how they com­mu­ni­cate when a deci­sion isn’t straight­for­ward, or how they hold the team togeth­er on a dif­fi­cult car­ry day. Those qual­i­ties show up ear­ly usu­al­ly in how clear­ly an oper­a­tor com­mu­ni­cates before the expe­di­tion even begins.

Respon­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tion before the climb is almost always a direct reflec­tion of how the expe­di­tion will be run on the mountain.

The Sher­pa rela­tion­ship deserves the same scruti­ny. On Ama Dablam, you climb with the sup­port of a Sher­pa part­ner between camps. That’s not a sup­port struc­ture; it’s a part­ner­ship. Expe­ri­ence mat­ters here: not just gen­er­al expe­ri­ence, but spe­cif­ic time on the South­west Ridge, famil­iar­i­ty with how the route changes sea­son to sea­son, and the judg­ment that comes from years of oper­at­ing in that environment.

Then there are the struc­tur­al ques­tions that rarely come up in ear­ly con­ver­sa­tions. How is oxy­gen staged and man­aged? What is the com­mu­ni­ca­tion plan when con­di­tions shift? How are con­tin­gency days used? These deci­sions are made long before any­one arrives at base camp, and they deter­mine how much mar­gin exists when things don’t go to plan.

Choos­ing an expe­di­tion is less about what’s list­ed and more about how it’s exe­cut­ed. The dif­fer­ence often shows up weeks in, when the details that seemed minor at the start turn out to be the ones that mat­ter most.

About the Author: Lisa Thomp­son is the founder of Alpine Ath­let­ics and own­er of Moun­tain Mad­ness. She has sum­mit­ed Ever­est, K2, and the Sev­en Sum­mits through years of dis­ci­plined prepa­ra­tion. Alpine Ath­let­ics climbers have achieved an 80% suc­cess rate on Denali, sig­nif­i­cant­ly above the moun­tain’s 50% average.

Acclima­ti­za­tion is often described in sim­ple terms. Climb high, sleep low, repeat. The struc­ture is straightforward.

The expe­ri­ence is not.

Ear­ly in the expe­di­tion, the changes are sub­tle. You notice your breath­ing more. Move­ments take a lit­tle longer. Recov­ery is slow­er, but still manageable.

As you move high­er, the dif­fer­ence becomes more pro­nounced. Sim­ple tasks require more atten­tion. Pace becomes some­thing you have to man­age delib­er­ate­ly, not some­thing that hap­pens naturally.

What sur­pris­es many climbers is how uneven the process can feel.

Some days, you feel strong. The next day, at the same alti­tude, every­thing feels hard­er. There isn’t always a clear pat­tern. The body adapts, but it does so on its own timeline.

That’s why time matters.

A longer itin­er­ary allows space for flex­i­bil­i­ty. It gives your body the oppor­tu­ni­ty to catch up, to sta­bi­lize, and to adjust before you move high­er again.

By the time you begin a sum­mit bid, acclima­ti­za­tion should feel less like some­thing you are active­ly man­ag­ing and more like some­thing that has qui­et­ly tak­en hold.

You are still aware of the alti­tude. You always are. But it no longer dic­tates every movement.

About the Author: Lisa Thomp­son is the founder of Alpine Ath­let­ics and own­er of Moun­tain Mad­ness. She has sum­mit­ed Ever­est, K2, and the Sev­en Sum­mits through years of dis­ci­plined prepa­ra­tion. Alpine Ath­let­ics climbers have achieved an 80% suc­cess rate on Denali, sig­nif­i­cant­ly above the moun­tain’s 50% average.

At 8,600 meters on K2, with the weath­er shift­ing and the sum­mit win­dow clos­ing, Lisa had about six min­utes to make one of the most con­se­quen­tial deci­sions of her climb­ing life: push for the sum­mit, or turn around.

She did­n’t make it on instinct. She made it by run­ning a process she’d trained hun­dreds of times — a deci­sion-mak­ing frame­work that orig­i­nat­ed, of all places, in mil­i­tary aviation.

It’s called the OODA Loop. And it might be the sin­gle most use­ful men­tal tool a seri­ous moun­tain ath­lete can learn.

Why instinct fails at altitude

Here’s the uncom­fort­able truth about high-stakes deci­sions in the mountains: 

The con­di­tions that make a deci­sion mat­ter most are exact­ly the con­di­tions that make your brain worst at decid­ing. At alti­tude, your brain is oxy­gen-starved. After days of exer­tion, you’re cog­ni­tive­ly exhausted. 

Add the adren­a­line of expo­sure, the social pres­sure of a team, and the sunk cost of months of train­ing and tens of thou­sands of dol­lars, and your judg­ment is oper­at­ing in the worst pos­si­ble envi­ron­ment pre­cise­ly when it mat­ters most.

Most climbers respond to this by falling back on instinct. But instinct under those con­di­tions isn’t wis­dom, it’s emo­tion wear­ing a cos­tume. It’s the part of you that does­n’t want to ​“waste” the climb, that does­n’t want to let the team down, that’s been dream­ing about this sum­mit for two years.

None of those feel­ings is a good input for a life-or-death decision.

The climbers who con­sis­tent­ly make good calls under pres­sure aren’t the ones with the best instincts. They’re the ones who don’t rely on instinct at all. They run a process.

The OODA Loop, adapted for the mountain

The OODA Loop was devel­oped by US Air Force Colonel John Boyd to explain how fight­er pilots out-decide their oppo­nents in dog­fight sit­u­a­tions where the con­di­tions change faster than you can con­scious­ly think. It has four stages, and it runs in a con­tin­u­ous loop.

Observe.

Take in what is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing, right now. Not what you fear is hap­pen­ing. Not what you hope is hap­pen­ing. The objec­tive facts: the wind speed, the cloud move­ment, the time on the clock, the con­di­tion of your team­mates, and the state of your own body. 

Most bad moun­tain deci­sions start here with a climber who observed what they want­ed to see instead of what was there.

Orient.

This is the stage Boyd con­sid­ered most impor­tant, and it’s where most peo­ple skip ahead.

Ori­ent­ing means inter­pret­ing what those facts mean for your spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion: your time­line, your team’s capa­bil­i­ty, your turn­around time, your mar­gin for error. The same weath­er obser­va­tion means some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent at 9 a.m. with a strong team than it does at 1 p.m. with an exhaust­ed one. Ori­en­ta­tion is where expe­ri­ence earns its value.

Decide.

Make the call — ide­al­ly against cri­te­ria you set in advance, when you were calm, rest­ed, and clear-head­ed at base camp or even back home. ​“If we’re not on the sum­mit by noon, we turn around, no mat­ter how close we are.” A deci­sion made at sea lev­el and hon­ored at alti­tude is worth ten deci­sions made in the moment.

Act.

Com­mit ful­ly to the deci­sion. Then imme­di­ate­ly loop back to Observe, because the sit­u­a­tion has already changed. The loop nev­er stops run­ning until you’re safe­ly down.

Why the loop beats the gut

The pow­er of the OODA Loop isn’t that it makes you decide faster, though with prac­tice, it does.

It’s that it gives you some­thing to fall back on when your instincts are scream­ing and your judg­ment is com­pro­mised. It exter­nal­izes the deci­sion process so that alti­tude, exhaus­tion, and emo­tion have less room to cor­rupt it.

The climbers who freeze on sum­mit day aren’t weak or untal­ent­ed. They sim­ply nev­er trained a deci­sion process. So when the defin­ing moment arrived, they had noth­ing to reach for but feel­ing , and feel­ing, at 8,000 meters, is unreliable.

The climbers who sum­mit and, more impor­tant­ly, the ones who come home have a loop.

They’ve prac­ticed it so many times in low-stakes sit­u­a­tions that it runs almost auto­mat­i­cal­ly when the stakes are highest.

How to start training it?

You don’t train the OODA Loop on sum­mit day. You train it on every train­ing hike, every gear deci­sion, every weath­er call on a local peak. 

You run the loop delib­er­ate­ly and out loud until it becomes the way you think under pres­sure rather than a frame­work you have to remember.

That’s the dif­fer­ence between know­ing about a tool and own­ing it. And it’s exact­ly the kind of thing that’s almost nev­er taught along­side phys­i­cal train­ing, even though it decides as many sum­mits as fit­ness does.

Learn the full system, live

The OODA Loop is one of four deci­sion and per­for­mance frame­works Lisa Thomp­son teach­es in her free live ses­sion, Train Your Mind Like You Train Your Body, on June 1, 2026. She’ll walk through how she’s applied each one on K2, Ever­est, and Denali and how seri­ous moun­tain ath­letes can train them before their next expedition.

It’s free, it’s live, and it’s built for climbers who already train their bod­ies seri­ous­ly and want to give their minds the same standard.

Click here to reg­is­ter for the workshop.

About the Author: Lisa Thomp­son is the founder of Alpine Ath­let­ics and own­er of Moun­tain Mad­ness. She has sum­mit­ed Ever­est, K2, and the Sev­en Sum­mits through years of dis­ci­plined prepa­ra­tion. Alpine Ath­let­ics climbers have achieved an 80% suc­cess rate on Denali, sig­nif­i­cant­ly above the moun­tain’s 50% average.

The ques­tion comes up in almost every pre-expe­di­tion con­ver­sa­tion. How fit do I need to be?

The hon­est answer is: fit­ter than you think you need to be, and in a more spe­cif­ic way than most train­ing plans address.

Ama Dablam isn’t a sin­gle-push objec­tive. The approach takes weeks. Car­ry days, acclima­ti­za­tion rota­tions, and rest days that don’t always feel rest­ful at alti­tude. By the time you make a sum­mit bid, you’ve already spent three or four weeks ask­ing your body to per­form and recov­er repeatedly.

If you’re unsure where your cur­rent fit­ness and moun­tain readi­ness stand, this Ama Dablam Readi­ness Assess­ment offers a use­ful bench­mark before com­mit­ting to the expedition.

That’s the fit­ness that mat­ters: not your peak out­put on a sin­gle hard day, but your abil­i­ty to come back the next morn­ing and do it again, slight­ly degrad­ed, at alti­tude, with­out the recov­ery resources you’d have at sea level.

The climbers who strug­gle aren’t usu­al­ly the least fit. They’re the ones whose fit­ness does­n’t hold up over time.

Tech­ni­cal pro­fi­cien­cy changes the equa­tion too. A climber who moves well who wastes lit­tle ener­gy in tran­si­tions, pac­ing deci­sions, and gear man­age­ment will con­sis­tent­ly out­per­form some­one objec­tive­ly stronger but less effi­cient. At alti­tude, inef­fi­cien­cy is meta­bol­i­cal­ly expen­sive. Every unnec­es­sary move­ment is a tax on your reserves.

The goal isn’t to arrive as strong as pos­si­ble. It’s to arrive with the kind of fit­ness that com­pounds over weeks rather than depletes steadi­ly, is repeat­able, and is paired with the tech­ni­cal sys­tems that let you spend that fit­ness where it actu­al­ly matters.

About the Author: Lisa Thomp­son is the founder of Alpine Ath­let­ics and own­er of Moun­tain Mad­ness. She has sum­mit­ed Ever­est, K2, and the Sev­en Sum­mits through years of dis­ci­plined prepa­ra­tion. Alpine Ath­let­ics climbers have achieved an 80% suc­cess rate on Denali, sig­nif­i­cant­ly above the moun­tain’s 50% average.

Fit­ness is one of the first things peo­ple focus on when they start think­ing about Ever­est. It’s also one of the most misunderstood.

You do need to be fit. There’s no way around that. The days are long, the load is real, and the envi­ron­ment is unfor­giv­ing. But fit­ness, on its own, doesn’t car­ry you very far on Everest.

What mat­ters more is how that fit­ness shows up over time.

The climb is not a sin­gle effort. It’s a series of efforts spread over weeks. You move, recov­er, and move again. You car­ry the load, then rest, then go back up. The abil­i­ty to repeat that cycle con­sis­tent­ly mat­ters more than how strong you feel on your best day.

One step at a time isn’t just a say­ing up there, it’s the whole approach. You don’t climb Ever­est in a day, and you don’t climb it in a sin­gle push of effort. You climb it by stack­ing small, steady efforts, hour after hour, day after day.

And then there’s efficiency.

A climber who moves well, who wastes very lit­tle ener­gy in tran­si­tions, pac­ing, and deci­sion-mak­ing, will often out­per­form some­one who is objec­tive­ly stronger but less effi­cient. At alti­tude, small inef­fi­cien­cies become expensive.

Breath­ing becomes part of that effi­cien­cy. Con­trolled, steady breath­ing helps reg­u­late pace, con­serve ener­gy, and keep your mind from drift­ing. When things get dif­fi­cult, return­ing to your breath is often the sim­plest way to stay com­posed and keep mov­ing forward.

Men­tal tough­ness plays just as big of a role. There are long stretch­es where noth­ing feels easy. You’re tired, the progress is slow, and the mar­gin for error is thin. The abil­i­ty to stay patient, to stay calm, and to keep going with­out forc­ing the pace is what sep­a­rates peo­ple who endure from peo­ple who burn out.

Pre­pared­ness ties it all togeth­er. Know­ing your sys­tems, your gear, your pac­ing, your habits. Reduc­ing fric­tion in the small things so you’re not wast­ing ener­gy where it doesn’t mat­ter. The more pre­pared you are, the less you have to think, and the more you can focus on sim­ply moving.

Fit­ness sup­ports the climb. It gives you a baseline.

But what ulti­mate­ly deter­mines how you per­form is how well you man­age that fit­ness over time, how steady you stay when things get hard, and how lit­tle of it you waste.

About the Author: Lisa Thomp­son is the founder of Alpine Ath­let­ics and own­er of Moun­tain Mad­ness. She has sum­mit­ed Ever­est, K2, and the Sev­en Sum­mits through years of dis­ci­plined prepa­ra­tion. Alpine Ath­let­ics climbers have achieved an 80% suc­cess rate on Denali, sig­nif­i­cant­ly above the moun­tain’s 50% average.

Most climbers under­stand the mechan­ics of fixed lines before they arrive. Clip in; move up; man­age tran­si­tions at anchors. The sys­tem itself isn’t complicated.

What’s hard­er is exe­cut­ing that sys­tem clean­ly when you’re at 6,000 meters, tired, cold, and mov­ing on ter­rain that does­n’t for­give hesitation.

On Ama Dablam, fixed lines run through the most con­se­quen­tial sec­tions of the South­west Ridge. The rock sec­tions require con­trolled, delib­er­ate move­ment. The tran­si­tions between pitch­es, clip­ping and unclip­ping at anchors, man­ag­ing your posi­tion rel­a­tive to oth­er climbers, and keep­ing your momen­tum instead of stop­ping dead are where time either accu­mu­lates or disappears.

On tech­ni­cal ter­rain at alti­tude, a sin­gle awk­ward tran­si­tion rip­ples through every­thing that fol­lows.

This is where expe­ri­ence on oth­er tech­ni­cal objec­tives pays off. Not because the ter­rain is iden­ti­cal, but because the expec­ta­tion is the same: you need to move with­out stop­ping to think about your sys­tems. Think­ing at alti­tude is expen­sive. It burns time, burns ener­gy, and burns the mar­gin you’ll need high­er up.

Effi­cien­cy on fixed lines isn’t about mov­ing fast. It’s about mov­ing with­out waste. Smooth tran­si­tions. Con­sis­tent pace. Aware­ness of the ter­rain and the climbers around you. That com­bi­na­tion, prac­ticed enough to feel auto­mat­ic, is what keeps the route man­age­able from Camp 1 through to the sum­mit pyramid.

If the lines are the first place you’re work­ing through that process, you’re already behind it.

About the Author: Lisa Thomp­son is the founder of Alpine Ath­let­ics and own­er of Moun­tain Mad­ness. She has sum­mit­ed Ever­est, K2, and the Sev­en Sum­mits through years of dis­ci­plined prepa­ra­tion. Alpine Ath­let­ics climbers have achieved an 80% suc­cess rate on Denali, sig­nif­i­cant­ly above the moun­tain’s 50% average.