Utah Mother Sets Goal To Ascend Seven ‘Second Summits’
May 10, 2021, 6:41 PM | Updated: May 11, 2021, 6:13 pm
PARK CITY, Utah — One Park City woman has a goal to conquer seven summits on seven continents and she’s using Mount Everest to help her train for the challenge ahead.
Jenn Drummond was climbing Everest to prepare for the notorious K2.
Her ultimate goal is to ascend the seven second-highest summits on seven continents. Many mountaineers consider that goal to be much tougher.
Drummond said she’s doing it in large part to inspire others.
“We all have mountains that we have to climb. We all have boldness that we have to live,” said Drummond.
She talked with KSL Newsradio before her current trip to Nepal where she’s using Everest as a training run for the K2.
“K2’s crazy, like it’s a savage mountain!” said Drummond. “There’s a statistic out there that says more people have been in space than to the top of K2.”
Her drive to climb came after a brush with death — a car crash that Drummond said should have killed her.
“And that really made me do a time out and just re-evaluate like, why am I here? What is my purpose? What am I leaving behind?” she said.
Many people might think this an impossible goal for a mother of seven, but she said her kids are also growing through the journey, seeing that they too can do hard things.
“And if they see mom living a fulfilled life, chasing her goals and going after it, it almost gives them permission to do the same,” she said.
If she pulls it off, she will be the first woman to ascend those seven-second peaks.
She already crossed one off the list — Ojos Del Salado, in Chile.
As thousands of people have followed her adventure online, she’s learned that her journey is empowering others who, in return, keep her going.
“Because there’s dark moments, and you just have to get through them because, you know, my dark moment isn’t the same as theirs, and if I do this, it gives them power to do theirs,” she said.
If everything goes as planned, Drummond will come home for a couple of months before heading back to Nepal to tackle K2.
KSL Newsradio has done a series of stories with Drummond.
Anyone who wants to follow her adventures can do so on her website.
