On Top of the World: Julie’s Seven Summits Journey
In the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, there’s a woman who embodies the spirit of adventure and resilience: Julie McKelvey.
With the 2024 Mount Everest season in full swing, we wanted to take a moment to look back at Julie’s monumental achievements. Last year, Julie stood on the summit of the world’s tallest peak—Mount Everest—and just a few months later, she completed her journey to climb all of the Seven Summits with a celebratory jaunt up Mount Kosciuszko with friends, family, and a bottle of non-alcoholic bubbly in tow.
Julie’s journey stands not only as a testament to her own physical prowess but also as a narrative of personal transformation. Flooded with emotion, she reflects on her journey from addiction to standing on top of Mount Everest. Julie knows firsthand the power of the mountains and their ability to turn ordinary people into extraordinary achievers.
Like many of us, Julie wasn’t a born mountaineer. Her dream to summit each continent’s tallest peak started unexpectedly on the slopes of Mount Fuji just as the sun rose above the clouds. Her dad’s gentle nudge to climb Mount Fuji sparked something in Julie that grew into a grand goal to climb all Seven Summits in just five years.
However, as you might imagine, there were a multitude of expected and unexpected barriers and challenges for Julie to overcome.
- Climbing Mount Everest, let alone all Seven Summits, is expensive, but as Julie pointed out, “If you go on the cheap, you might not be alive.” Julie personally funded all of her expeditions through sheer hard work and perseverance. Beyond funding her own dreams, Julie also saw this as an opportunity to give back and garner more support. Thus, she launched a “Summit for Sound” campaign in conjunction with her Seven Summits journey. This campaign supported the Miracle-Ear Foundation and raised more than $250,000, giving hundreds of families the gift of sound.
- The team dynamic is just as important as your training plan. Julie attributes climbing with CTSS as one of the major keys to her success. During our conversation, Julie often remarked that she was taken aback by what she heard from other guides and outfitters on the mountain, which serves as a reminder of why CTSS has a No D*ckheads Policy. Going with the right company matters and Julie felt confident in choosing CTSS because she knew her teammates had been vetted and her guides were not only professional but also some of the best in the guiding world. We were honored to be the right fit for Julie and to have been part of her Seven Summits journey.
- Progress, progress, progress. You don’t wake up one day ready to climb Mount Everest, or at least most of us don’t! Julie understood that progression climbing was a key piece to her success, but she also had to trust the process. Julie notes that if she had tried to figure it all out before starting her Seven Summits journey, she wouldn’t have done it. When it came down to planning and preparing, Julie was open to advice and taking it one climb at a time, continually training between climbs and slowly building her skills and experience base to move onto progressively bigger and bigger objectives. Here at CTSS, we specialize in individualized progression advice that is tailored to fit our climbers’ lives, experience levels, budgets, and work/life balance, and we are committed to helping them find a realistic pathway to their goal rather than offering one-size-fits-all advice.
- Being a woman on the mountain in a male-dominated sport is still a struggle. Climbers like Julie are demonstrating that representation in the mountains matters. They are shattering false narratives and showcasing that women, minorities, and other marginalized communities belong in the mountains. Julie’s attitude was to show up – just like any of her male counterparts – prepared, having put in the training and ready to perform. She held her own amongst the best of them. At CTSS, we recognize that having a space for women to grow and learn in conjunction with other women is empowering, which is why we offer both of our Alpine Academies in an all-women’s format in addition to our coed offerings.
At the end of the day, Julie overcame each and every obstacle and reached her dream.
Let’s take a little trip down memory lane and recap Julie’s Seven Summits journey.
In 2018, Julie climbed Mount Kilimanjaro (Africa – 19,341 feet), and it was during dinner when one of her guides suggested that she should climb all Seven Summits. She was already well on her way to tagging the first of the seven peaks! When Julie returned to the States, she took to Google, plugged in climbing the Seven Summits, and quickly arrived in the inbox of Mike Hamill, owner of CTSS.
With a progression mentality front of mind and the support of the CTSS team, Julie was off to climb Mount Elbrus (Europe – 18,510 feet) alongside Mike. During this 2019 summit climb, Mike and our team at CTSS showed Julie the ropes, quite literally. Julie learned to use crampons, how to navigate fixed-line climbing, and (one of our specialties at CTSS) techniques to climb efficiently and take care of yourself.
In 2020, Julie’s pace started to pick up after her summit of Aconcagua (South America—22,841 feet), where she received the advice to “get in the groove, train, and GO!” And that’s exactly what Julie did. In 2021, Julie trained with Mark Postle from Evoke Endurance and worked with Rebecca Dent from High-Performance Dietitian, who helped set her up to summit Denali (North America – 20,310 feet ) and Vinson (Antarctica – 16,050 feet), but two weeks before her 2021 expedition to Denali, Julie badly hurt her foot during training. As you might have guessed, it’s pretty hard to cancel such a big trip and commitment at the 11th hour, so Julie pushed forward. However, between Camps 2 and 3, Julie couldn’t move her foot effectively on the steep ice. Her guide did what any great guide would do and turned her around. When Julie reflected on this moment, she smiled, knowing this was exactly the experience she needed to go through to remember to put safety above summits and to get to where she is today.
With plenty of time for her foot to heal, Julie had a successful expedition to Vinson in 2021, where she met Tendi Sherpa, who is widely regarded as one of the most respected guides in the world. During their 2021 Vinson expedition, Julie climbed right behind Tendi, and she remarks on how Tendi calmed her down and led with grace and strength. Julie learned one of the most valuable lessons that we hope all mountaineers discover: it’s not about conquering anything. It’s about finding a place within yourself where you are emotionally and physically ready to be one with the mountain. The mountain simply grants you passage, if you’re lucky! Your job is to make sure you are ready.
By 2022, Julie had completed four of the Seven Summits, leaving a second attempt on Denali, Mount Kosciuszko, and, of course, Mount Everest on the table. With much joy, Julie summited Denali in 2022 and used this peak to springboard her training for a summit bid on Mount Everest (Asia – 29,032 feet) in 2023. The story that unfolded on Everest in the spring of 2023 is a true testament to Julie’s spirit of adventure and resilience.
In March 2023, Julie caught her flight to Kathmandu, Nepal, where she came back together with Tendi Sherpa, her guide on Vinson, who had been such a powerful influence on her.
Along the Everest Base Camp trek through the Khumbu Valley, Julie felt sick but pushed through to the summit on Lobuche East with ibuprofen and rest. However, at altitude, a simple cough can turn any mountaineer around. By the time Julie reached the high camps on Everest, her cough had worsened significantly. Tendi helped Julie make a decision to call it off and head back to Everest Base Camp and eventually Kathmandu for further treatment. Julie came down with a laundry list of problems, including pulmonary edema and multiple infections in the lungs.
For many of us, this would be the point where we start making plans to head home and consider another attempt in the future. But as you’ve learned, Julie is resilient. She was ready for this, she trained, she prepared, and this was her season. With the support of CTSS to try again in the same season, and under the care of the doctors in Kathmandu, Julie was patient and let her body recover. While the doctor warned there was a 60% chance that her lung issues would come back at altitude, for Julie, those were good enough odds to make a second attempt. After more than a week in Kathmandu, Julie lost some of her valuable acclimatization, so the process started over again. But summit day finally arrived, and Tendi (who had also just fought off the same illness as Julie) was by her side. They left Camp 4 at 10:30pm facing the ferocious cold and wind. Julie recalls this moment with a hint of worry in her voice, but ultimately, knowing and trusting Tendi was her ticket to push forward. About halfway through the climb, she realized her Garmin had frozen, and it was just her, Tendi, and the summit.
Julie shared, “A calm came over me, and I thought… oh my God, I am doing this!”
And Julie sure did. On May 23, 2023, Julie stood on top of the world at the summit of Mount Everest. The journey from Camp 4 to the summit and back took 15 hours,tent door to tent door, a testament to the training and the preparation Julie had done mentally and physically. And now, all that stood between Julie and the completion of her Seven Summits journey was a celebratory ascent of Mount Kosciuszko (Australia – 7,310 feet) with her family in tow.
On December 29, 2023, Julie stood proudly on the summit of Kozi in the midst of 50-mile-per-hour winds with a giant smile plastered on her face. Julie had done it in five years; she had summited the tallest peak on each of the seven continents. Julie’s Seven Summits journey was not just a culmination of physical training but a testament to her resilience in the face of adversity. It was a journey of self-discovery, where the true measure of success lay not in reaching the peak but in finding the courage to confront the unknown and embrace the challenges that lay ahead.
As wild as this might sound, Julie’s journey didn’t stop there. Like many climbers, Julie grappled with one of the most debated in the mountaineering community: Is Carstensz Pyramid or Mount Kosciuszko the true Seventh Summit? This debate raises the broader question of how we define a continent: culturally or geologically? While both viewpoints have merit (you can read more here), climbers like Julie embody the spirit of embracing challenges and possibilities rather than being confined by definitions. Since climbing both peaks always an option (and it’s our favorite option), Julie doubled down, and on October 26, 2024, she added another extraordinary chapter to her mountaineering journey by summiting Carstensz Pyramid (Oceania – 16,024 feet).
This elusive peak, nestled in the heart of West Papua, Indonesia, reopened in 2024 to select operators, including CTSS, after being inaccessible to most climbers for more than five years. Julie’s achievement underscores not just her unwavering dedication but also her role in reigniting interest in one of the Seven Summits’ most debated peaks.
As we reflect on Julie’s Seven Summits journey, it’s clear that her legacy extends far beyond the peaks she’s climbed. It’s a story of resilience, community, and the transformative power of adventure. Congratulations, Julie, for continuing to inspire us all!
To all those aspiring mountaineers, Julie wants you to know…
There are so many things out of your control once you start an expedition, so controlling everything I could beforehand was a huge part of my success. Regardless of the busyness of my life, training was a priority, and I worked the rest of my life around that. Achieving this kind of goal requires an incredible investment in both time and effort, and because of how badly I wanted it, I had to become very efficient with my time, how it was spent & make sacrifices. My goal was to show up on each expedition as fit and ready as possible, and if it didn’t work out due to one of the million reasons trips come unraveled, it wouldn’t have been because I wasn’t fit enough. Throughout the journey, I’ve seen countless people on the mountain who simply weren’t trained or ready to be there and ended up having to turn around because of that. Being a business owner, wife, and mother doesn’t leave a lot of room to re-do any of these big trips where I’m away from so many people who depend on me. When I started this, I had absolutely no knowledge of climbing—zero. So, surrounding myself with the best people I could find who had more experience than me and who I trusted was critical – and through the CTSS community is where I met all of them who in some way helped me achieve this goal and, in the process, I’ve made lifelong friends which is a huge bonus!
Also, the summit only matters if you get home safely! On Everest, Tendi kept reminding me of the “true summit,” which is when I safely get back home to my family. That requires expert-level guides and the attitude of whatever they say goes, even if that means no summit.
This journey has transformed my life in ways I never expected, and after each expedition, I came home a better version of myself. There is something so powerful about the mountains and what they have to offer when we get quiet enough to listen…
