Sophia Danenberg certainly does not look like a rugged mountaineer.  However, intelligence, courage and stamina took her to the Summit of Mt. Everest in 2006.  Mount Everest is the highest mountain on earth.  Part of the Himalaya range in Asia; located on the border between Sagarmatha Zone, Nepal and Tibet, it is 8,848 meters or 29,029 feet.

She had a few things go wrong.  The weather turned bad, she was suffering from bronchitis,  had frostbite on her cheeks and a clogged oxygen mask. Yet, Sophia Danenberg climbed every step of the way.

Along the way she made history.  She is the first African American and first black woman to reach the Summit of Mt. Everest.  Other conquests include, among others, Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in 2001, Mt. McKinley in Alaska in 2005 and the Matterhorn in Switzerland in 2007, www.danenberg.org.

A theater buff, Ms. Danenberg also enjoys being actively involved in her community.  She volunteers her time with the Sierra Club’s environmental stewardship program, Inner City Outings; Special Olympics; The Hartford Marathon and Central Connecticut Bicycle Alliance.  She is a member of The Appalachian Mountain Club.

She has a degree in environmental science and public policy from Harvard University.  She received a Fulbright Fellowship to Keio University in Tokyo and is working toward a master’s in economics at the University of Connecticut.

(Interview with Flaimahmy, December 7, 2009)

FM:  You are in a very rare group, only around 2,500 people total have reached the Summit of Mt. Everest in fifty-six years.  What was your first thought when you reached the top?

SD:  My first thought when I reached the top was honestly just surprise that I was there.  Until the Summit day I hadn’t been as focused on getting to the top and so it was just somewhat surprising once I actually got there.  When I reached the Summit an ongoing problem I had had with my oxygen mask became a significant problem.  Basically, it had been clogging and it clogged completely once I was exposed to the wind that occurs when you reach the top and you don’t have anything else blocking the wind.

My first thought was being somewhat surprised to be there; my second thought was obviously just needing to fix this blocked oxygen mask and get down.  I don’t even think I would have taken a photo if it had not been for Pa Nuru (Pa Nuru was one of two Sherpas accompanying Ms. Danenburg on her climb), going, “Nooo, you’ve got to take a photo, you’ve got to take a photo!”  I was so focused on this mask problem.

FM:   How did you prepare for your climb of  Mount Everest?

SD:  It was a fairly last minute decision.  I only decided to go about two months before I flew to Kathmandu.  Quite honestly, those two months were fairly focused on logistics and administration, getting my gear together and figuring out what food;  I was on an unguided climb trying to do some research in terms of timing and pacing on how to go up.  Unlike a lot of people at Base Camp, I didn’t have access to a lot of information.  I didn’t take a laptop.  I wasn’t blogging.  I didn’t have internet access. Most of the information I had to get before I went.  Also, I had just given my job all of two months’ notice that I was leaving for three months.  There was a lot to wrap up and get ready at work.  That was most of my time.

I did pick up the workouts in those last few months but I didn’t have a lot of time to do it.  Quite frankly, I went to swimming class one more day a week and on Saturday mornings ran up and down some bleachers but I wasn’t able to do anything that fancy or that focused.  I had been climbing a lot the previous two years before Everest so I was already in very good shape and I was physically very near ready to go.  I had just gotten back from New Zealand and a climb in Australia; I was climbing a lot.

FM:  Which was more difficult, overcoming the mental or physical challenges of the climb?

SD:  There is a funny thing about Everest in comparison to a lot of other mountains you climb.  Up until Summit Day your days are very short relative to other climbs.  Other climbs you don’t have to spend as much time acclimatizing.  On other climbs you might be out there twelve hours or even longer for multiple days in a row.  That becomes psychologically very difficult.  But, most of the days on Everest are very short.

Psychologically I think it’s not very challenging in that sense.  It’s a very slow climb; you’re there for three months.  You have a lot of time to prepare.  The one thing that is difficult especially when you’re unguided, is making a final decision about your Summit window.  You’re looking at all of these weather reports.  You’re making an assessment of the route.  You’re making an assessment about your own condition, about where the teams are going, what will the routes look like, will they be crowded, what the weather window looks like…you’re making the decision to go for it.

The issue is from that point, you’ve been on the mountain for a few months and you’ve invested two months into climbing this mountain and it all pretty much comes down to that decision.  If you make the wrong decision about timing, you’re done, you’re going home without having gone to the top and maybe another year and another two months before you can try it again.

So, that was one of the more difficult things to do, to make the decision of when to go to the Summit, to make that assessment.  You have a lot of support on Everest.  You spend a lot of time acclimatizing.  You work your way up.  Even if you want to climb Kilamanjara, you really don’t spend a lot of time acclimatizing.  People tend to go up really fast.

With Everest you really have to take your time because mistakes and problems become fatal.  Unlike Kilamanjara you can possibly make an error and still make it down.  On Everest you really have to take your time so that you can make it a very manageable climb.  Summit Day is very very long.  In my case I started at 11:00 p.m. at night and I reached the Summit sometime between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m.  It was a long day.  A lot of people will leave at 9:00 p.m. and reach the Summit between noon and 1:00 p.m taking twelve to fourteen hours.

I wasn’t on that pace.  Psychologically, it would have been hard for me to be out there that long.  Summit Day is a very long day; it’s very difficult.  You are dealing with an altitude that you’ve never been to in your life.  At the same time, it is just the one day.  You are working off of adrenaline, motivation and enthusiasm that you are going to reach the Summit.

FM:  You carried your own gear, you pitched your own tent and you made most of your own decisions.  Were you ever afraid?

SD:  I did carry a lot of my own gear, but I was with a commercial program where it was a bunch of people climbing alone, together.  For example, our camp was maybe five tents and that was shared by twenty-plus climbers and forty-plus Sherpas.  Clearly, we weren’t all going to be there at the same time.  So, you kind of get up there and you’re all using the same gear.  It splits the effort; you don’t have to take as much stuff up with the assumption that you’re not all there at the same time.

Our team did have some Sherpa support.  The difference was that we were unguided so we weren’t actually walking with a guide and there wasn’t a guide actually making decisions for us.  That was really significant for this type of climb because this was the first time they had ever done anything like that.  It was somewhat difficult decision-making from a mountaineering perspective.

That being said, I had a moment of nervousness but I don’t think I was really scared ever because I always felt completely free to turn around and just go back.  So, whatever I did I felt pretty good about it.  I didn’t really ever feel that I was pushing it beyond the bounds of something I was comfortable with.  I think this is because it wasn’t done in a very public way.  I wasn’t blogging; I wasn’t sending out press releases.

I think psychologically it made me very careful.  If I turned around and went back really nobody would know about it.  Had I never actually gotten to the top, other than my friends, family and co-workers nobody would have even known I tried.  It wasn’t notable because I didn’t have sponsor support.  I didn’t deal with press.  I wasn’t blogging.  It meant that every one of my decisions was concretely made with no bias toward pushing it beyond what I thought I was capable of.  I actuallly felt pretty good the whole time.

Making a decision about the Summit Day was really tough and in fact, we ran into some weather.  Earlier that night we had made a decision not to go up.  The next day we were going to go down.  Between 7:00 p.m. and 10:30  p.m. the weather cleared.  At 11:00 p.m. we made the decision to go for it.  I did have a moment at the Balcony which is about half-way from Camp Floor to the Summit.

We had left with a lot of people.  Most of the people left when we did.  We managed to pass a couple of people on the way up.  We were independent so we weren’t really climbing together so we weren’t sticking together.  We got to the Balcony and up to that point I hadn’t really turned around.  At the Balcony I looked down and realized I couldn’t really see anybody.  It was dark and I should have been able to see people’s headlamps.  I didn’t see any headlamps coming up.  It made me think that everyone had turned around.  I didn’t realize that we had gotten so far ahead that we just couldn’t see their headlamps.  That seemed almost unimaginable to me.   I thought everyone else had turned around, that  maybe they knew something that we didn’t know, maybe they had heard something about the weather, a storm…so that was a little bit scary.  We did radio down to Base Camp.

They said that there was no report of a storm coming in but that we were in the middle of one.  We had basically walked out of the storm; from where we were standing it was completely clear.  We could see the stars; we could see the peaks of the mountains peeking up above the clouds and we could see the storm below us.  We knew that we had climbed out of the worst part of the storm.  There was nothing else predicted to come in.  We were pretty much good to go.  It was pretty scary for a moment but once we made the decision to keep going I felt perfectly comfortable to keep plugging along.

The good thing about the Sherpas is that you are making your own decisions about the climb, about going forward, about going back.  But, if you turn back, they are going to come with you because they are hired to be your climbing companion.  They don’t make the decisions but if you decide to go back they will go with you.  If you decide to go up and they don’t think it’s safe they can turn around and leave you.  If they think you are making an unsafe decision to go to the Summit, they don’t have to risk their own safety to go with you.  They can make the decision to leave you.  If you’re going up, they can make their own decision to go with you or not go with you based on what they believe is safe.  They believed it was safe because we all went up together.  That also helped instill a little confidence.  They did have a chance to say no and to go down and they didn’t.  They thought it was safe because we had walked out of the storm and it was clear above us.

FM:  Is there a common thread of experience that you’ve found in climbing the mountains you’ve scaled?  For example, was there a difference in how you felt climbing Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in 2001 as compared to Mt. Everest?

SD:  It is all relative.  When I think back on Everest I don’t think of it as a particularly difficult climb in terms of the actual climbing.  It is an extremely dangerous climb but I don’t think of it as particularly difficult.  A lot of it is that I had climbed a lot before I climbed Everest.  At the time that I climbed Kilimanjaro in 2001 if I had climbed Everest I would have thought that was a very difficult climb.

Each mountain I climbed added a degree of difficulty, whether it was a higher altitude or even if it was lower, maybe adding something more technical.  For example, I climbed Mt Kenya after I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Mt. Kenya is a lot more technical climb.  I didn’t actually get to the top because of a storm.  That was a climb that required a different skill set than climbing  a very high altitude hike.

Every climb is building a little bit.  When I climbed Everest it was a logical next step.  I think if it hadn’t been, then that company would not have let me go.  I think with each climb there is a building and learning new skills and getting stronger.  When I climbed Everest I had climbed in a period of two years more than I had in my entire life.  I cannot imagine climbing that much in a two year period ever again.

I was really in the best shape that I could be in, in terms of the strength you need for climbing.  I think if I had started six months before I could have been in slightly better shape and it would have made my life slightly easier.  With each one there has always been a bit more of a challenge.

The big issue with Everest  relative to a lot of climbs is it was higher than the other climbs.  I was on the mountain for an extremely long period of time.  I had never done anything that was that dangerous.  I’d never been on a mountain where even the slightest mistake could prove fatal.   The other mountains that I was on, there was something slightly more forgiving about them…things that people do all the time, for example, you drop something…on Everest if you drop something, that could prove fatal.  If you drop a glove you could end up losing that hand.  In other climbs I’ve been on that just wasn’t the case.  You could turn around, you could get off, you could do something to compensate for some things or some of the little mistakes you’ve made.                   

FM: What do you think about mainstream media not covering your accomplishment as the first African American to reach the Summit?

SD:  I didn’t send out a press release.  I always like to point that out.  Most of the people who are given coverage for their climbs of Everest, they got themselves coverage.  They were absolutely sending out letters saying, “Look at my blog…follow this.”  There are a lot of people who climb Everest who don’t do that.  In fact, most people who climb Everest don’t do that and we don’t get any media attention due to it.

It gives it a different feel when you’ve only got these few people being covered and they’re the people being sought out for media attention, especially people who are being sponsored.  They need that media attention in order to basically pay back their sponsor.  That’s why they seek a whole lot of media attention.  I wasn’t being sponsored.  I wasn’t blogging.  I didn’t send out a press release.  I guess I didn’t have any expectation of getting any media coverage.  I did one interview which started a little bit of the media coverage.  That writer and my nephew are friends and were best friends since they were little.  That’s how he heard about it and that’s how the first newspaper article got out, it was basically through my family.  If it hadn’t been for that I don’t think I would have gotten the little bit that I did.

Somebody at work was trying to get the main newspaper in Hartford to write something.   They declined, I think because one of their writers was writing a book on Everest.  I never contacted them.  There were other people who were disappointed that my local paper didn’t cover it.  In the end they did do a little article about it.  A columnist from some other paper submitted an article independently.

I was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and one of the current writers was covering the Convention, thought it was interesting and did a link that I was the first African American to climb Mt. Everest and that I was there as a delegate for Obama.  He wrote a little article about it.  There were actually a couple of little articles in the paper about it.  I never thought anything about it.  I was interviewed by nine year olds.  My friends did some things for their school papers.  I didn’t really court the attention so I didn’t think anything about not getting it.

FM: Do you feel now that you are a role model for girls and young women who would like to become mountaineers and climbers?  What would you tell a young girl or woman who was interested in following in your footsteps; how could they get started?

SD:  As far as climbing, I usually tell people that anybody can do this.  I mean this extremely literally.  I really mean that any single one of you if you wanted to climb Mt. Everest you could climb Mt. Everest.  If I’m speaking to ten years olds I say that if in ten to fifteen years you get in shape and you want to climb Mt. Everest you can.  If you can figure out how to raise the money; the money is probably one of the bigger challenges.  One of the more impressive things when I was on Everest was how many of the people came about their funding.  That was interesting.  Literally, any of you guys can do this.

Everest, especially being not a very technical mountain to climb, really has a lot more to do with preparation, endurance and strength that can be built.  You can develop it.  It’s not a type of strength you have to be born with.  So if you stay in shape and run; you’ve got to do those things.  If you’re watching video games or eating junk food it’s not going to happen.   But, if you are fairly strong you could really do this.

When I do speak to kids usually it’s a little bit less about climbing and especially after I was a Convention delegate, it was another topic where it was very similar.  Whether it’s climbing Everest or ending up as a Delegate to the Convention; all of these things, there was sort of a process to doing it.  I just kind of figured it out…if you wanted to do that, how would you do that.  The way that started was I was raised with this belief that most things are possible, that most things you can probably do.

Before I ever dismiss any idea of something that I might want to do I go and figure it out.  I have figured out that I will never be the Queen of England, I wasn’t born into the family; I’d have to marry one of those guys and that’s not going to happen.  I will never be a rock star; I don’t have any musical talent.  I’ll never be a professional basketball player.  I was really good at  basketball but then I didn’t grow and everybody else did.  I’m a little bit too short.  So I think there are more things possible than people imagine or think of.   A lot of times people stop themselves by believing it’s too big or impossible or too difficult or somehow out of their reach.

In fact, what you find is a lot of these things are within reach.  If, for example, you want to become a convention delegate then start researching it, how other people got there, what did they do, what is the process.  If you want to climb Everest just go and figure it out.  I think what you will find is if, for example, they want to be a part of Doctor’s Without Borders in Africa, to do research on satellites, they want to be an astronaut, that those things are actually very possible.  There are certain things that will make it more likely than not that you’ll become an astronaut.  Go and figure it out.  Go do it.  Don’t limit yourself with assumptions.  That’s usually the message that I try to give them.

FM:  What is it that you have not done that you would love to do?

SD:  All kinds of things!  There are places that I’d love to travel to.  There are some mountains that I’d like to climb.  There are some other mountains in the Himalayas that I’d like to climb.  I kind of think that whatever the next thing is it’s gonna be something I haven’t thought of now.  They tend to come to me.  If you’d asked me ten years ago, I wouldn’t have believed I’d be in democratic politics.  If you had asked me fifteen years ago about climbing, I probably would have said, “Not that interested.”

Something will come to me.  At the moment I’ve moved to Seattle so that I can be more of a weekend climber and settle down a little bit.   I think there are a lot of things that people have done, they’ve had children, they have families, that I haven’t done.  For me, if I do those things that would be new and exciting for me.  So, whatever my next thing is might not draw as much attention as these last couple of things.  It will be something  that’s very special and important to me.