Tracee Metcalfe Becomes First U.S. Woman to Climb the World’s Highest Peaks

On Friday, Tracee Metcalfe, 50, became the first U.S. woman to scale all of the world's 8,000m peaks.

Tracee Metcalfe on the summit of Dhaulagiri, 2022;Photo byTracee Metcalfe

Metcalfe’s final summit on the list of 14 8,000m peaks was Tibet’s Shisha Pangma, the lowest of the 14 at 8,027 m (26,335 feet).

This story originally appeared on ExplorersWeb.

“It was magical,” Metcalfe told ExplorersWeb. The internal medicine physician from Vail, Colo., added some details about the summit day.

“Conditions were much different than last year,” Metcalfe said. “We did get a heavy snowfall last week and had over one meter of fresh snow in Base Camp. But this year, the snow was very heavy and wet, which bonded nicely and made avalanche risk much lower than last year.”

Metcalfe noted the last meters before the summit were the most intense.

“We reached a false summit that required traversing a cornice for about 180 meters,” she said. “Mingma G (Sherpa) led the way on that part, [fixing] the rope as he advanced.”

Last year, a fierce competition between two American women, Gina Rzucidlo and Anna Gutu, to become the first U.S. woman to climb all 14 ended in tragedy. Both had only Shisha Pangma left to complete their list. Both pushed on in unsafe conditions and died with their guides in two separate avalanches on the same day.

“I climb for the joy of climbing and have never been interested in records,” said Metcalfe at the time. She, too, was on Shisha Pangma that day but did not attempt to summit then. At the time, she had climbed nine 8,000m peaks, making her the third most successful American woman on the 8,000’ers after Rzucidlo and Gutu.

Metcalfe recently told ExplorersWeb that the area between Camp 1 and Camp 2, where a slide caused Naoko Watanabe and Sanu Sherpa to fall, was solid and stable this year.

“Mostly, I fly under the radar, but once in a while, I get to soar,” she declares on her Instagram page.