Home

10%

George & Stacia Williams

A Couple's Triumph

By 29029 Everesting

August 4^th, 2023

George Williams: At an Advisors Excel event in 2021, a colleague enticed me with tales of an event named 29029. Even though he was vague about what it entailed, I was intrigued by the promise of a challenge that would test both my physical and mental limits.

I signed up for 29029 Snowbasin on a whim, without fully understanding what I was getting into.

The reality of the event hit home when I climbed. Knee pain struck early on, and worsened with each climb. Colin’s speech about the temporary nature of pain played over and over in my head.

But my pain didn’t feel fleeting. It was constant, agonizing, and all I could focus on.

I called my wife, Stacia, almost looking for her permission to quit.

“George, listen: if you can look at yourself in the mirror and be 100% fine with completing five and going home, then do it. But I don’t think you can do that," she told me.

That kept me going.

Despite her faith in me, the mountain eventually won. I quit after ten ascents.

In retrospect, I see how I gave my pain the power it needed to halt my progress. I surrendered to the vicious cycle of noticing pain, focusing on it, and allowing it to grow to dominate my attention.

Stacia Williams: If I had been there, I know George would have finished. I was an athlete in school, and I knew how to make failure not an option.

Leading into 2023, it was time for redemption. George was going to Jackson Hole to get his Red Hat, and I was going to be alongside him making sure it happened.

We have five kids, so imagine two parents trying to balance the full training plan… it was a challenge, and I didn’t always get the training done.

My goal was to support George, so I knew in the absence of time to allow both of us to complete 100% of the training, I might have to forego the physical preparation and rely on my mental grit to climb the mountain.

George: When I got home from 29029 Snowbasin, I hung the medal I earned with 10 ascents in my office.

I had to look at it every day, and if I’m being honest, it kind of pissed me off!

It was a reminder of what happened.

It was a reminder of what needed to happen differently next time.

I looked at it every day as I waited for my chance at Jackson Hole.

George: I felt more confident going into Jackson Hole than I did in Snowbasin. I knew what I needed to do if I wanted to finish. I was ready.

The morning of the event, as we walked over toward the mountain, we were both silent.

Stacia: Completely silent. Nervous, but ready.

George: And just like that, the event started, and we were climbing.

The first three felt too easy. Not easy in the sense of climbing - it hurt of course - but I wasn’t suffering.

At least not yet.

We finished the first 4 within 4 hours! We were knocking them out.

Bang, bang, bang. Ascent, ascent, ascent.

Stacia: The 5th ascent was when things started to get hard for me. My heart was racing and my head was aching. I was anxious, almost panicking, and pretty dehydrated.

I’d take ten steps at a time before keeling over to take a rest.

It was a slow-going.

We made it to the aid station, and after a bit of rest, some water, and a quick check-in with the medic, I was ready to keep going. It was hard, but I needed to push through because I knew it would get easier if I just stuck the course.

George: That 5th ascent was the first glimpse of the struggle for us. The whole time you’re wondering when it’s going to get hard, and now we knew.

It started now.

Ascents 6 & 7 were slower.

It was hot, it was hard, and it was steep.

We didn’t talk a lot - we just keep going - one foot in front of the other.

Stacia: Around midnight, we started our 11th ascent, thankful for the cooler temperatures, although tired from the 12 hours of climbing behind us.

George: As hard as Jackson Hole was in the daytime, it was even more challenging at night. The steps cut into the steep, dusty terrain changed with each footstep, and at night, with limited visibility, it became even harder to find stable footing.

Then I started hallucinating.

I truly thought I was going to fall off the mountain, but we didn’t have the time to be able to stop. The clock was ticking, so I pushed through.

One step at a time.

Before Colleen had packed it in for the night, I had checked in with her to ask what ascent we had to get to before we could pack it in for the night and come back for the morning.

“13” was her answer.

Stacia: We knew we had to go through the night - we didn’t have the option - so aside from a very short nap in the recovery room, we kept climbing.

George: At 6 am, we sumitted for the 13th time and hit the branding boards at the bottom.

Right on schedule, except we didn’t get to take that break… No sleep to be had.

George: The new light - that second sunrise - was like new energy. The cool weather overnight had been a welcome change from the heat and sun the day before, and we continued climbing, layered up to stay warm.

Then between 8 and 10 am, the temperature jumped. It went from 40 to 80. We were back to climbing in the heat.

From that point on, I was literally dragging my body up the mountain.

George: I had one headphone in, and sometimes I would play music to help keep my mind off the struggle of the climb.

Ascents 15 to 17 were hard. Our plan had been to be done at noon, and here we were, with a handful of ascents still left to go.

My body was failing. My mind was tired.

That’s when I knew I needed a certain song - a song that had been featured in the event recap video at Snowbasin in 2022. The song, “Mount Everest,” featured a chorus that included the line Mount Everest ain’t got shit on me.

I found it and put it on repeat.

It was my reminder that I knew it was going to be hard. This was normal. The song was my flashback to last year when, on another 29029 mountain, I sat in a chair while watching everybody else don their Red Hats and collect their Mount Everest medal.

This year, I was getting that Red Hat too.

Stacia: On ascent 16, I realized we were starting to run up against the clock. The first two-thirds of the mountain were steep, but the final stretch mellowed out slightly with some switchbacks to lessen the grade. Compared to the climb below, it was almost easy, but with time running out, I knew we had to use that mellower terrain to move faster.

I told George that, and he looked at me and said, “Stacia, I’m not going to go any faster than I need to go.”

George: Those switchbacks were almost like recovery earlier in the event, but after almost 30 hours out there, they just felt like another hard part of the climb.

And there’s Stacia, telling me I should try to run them!

Stacia: I didn’t say run!

But I wanted us to go faster. We were slowing down while people were speeding up, and I wanted us both to get that Red Hat!

Stacia: When we got to the bottom, I bumped into Coach Brent, who asked how we were doing.

“At this point, I don’t think George is going to listen to me. I think he’s getting frustrated, but I know we need to get moving faster if we want to finish. You have to push him.”

Brent didn’t even hesitate, he just said, “I’ve got him.”

And from that point on he rode George’s ass!

George: For the 17th and 18th ascent he would not let me stop. He was right there, right behind me. You’ve got to keep going. You’re not going to get it if you don’t get moving.

Even at the aid stations, he only gave me 30 seconds.

“Are you tired?” Coach Brent asked me.

“Are you kidding? I haven’t slept, I’ve been climbing non-stop… of course, I’m tired!” I told him.

“No, you’re not tired. When somebody asks you if you’re tired, you say I’m not tired.”

I started saying I wasn’t tired.

And I know how it works, but I’d never experienced it to that extent before.

By the fourth or fifth time I’d told somebody I’m not tired, I actually started to feel it.

I didn’t feel tired.

I marched up my 17th ascent.

Stacia: The entire journey had been about George. I was there to ensure he got that Red Hat. Full stop.

But as we neared the end, I realized I wanted to test myself. I wanted to see what I could do while going up the mountain.

I wanted to do the 18th ascent alone, to see how fast I could go.

I went up to Coach Brent and asked him if he could look after George while I was gone.

“Make sure he keeps going because I want to do 19 - our final ascent - together.”

Ascent 18 was all about me, but it also gave George some time to reflect on whatever it was he needed to process alone. This journey was about us as a couple, but we both needed a moment - a single ascent - to see our own true selves when nobody was around.

George: Somehow, when my body was breaking down and I was struggling just to keep going, Stacia had all this energy. When we had that single ascent apart, she was flying.

I watched her get sick on ascent 5. We’d napped next to each other in the recovery room. We’d climbed step by step together. I saw how exhausted she was.

But at that point, when I looked at her speed away, I realized that everything that embodied what we were all supposed to be on this 29029 mountain Stacia had just become.

Watching her do that allowed me to dig down deep inside to fuel my finish. I wanted my Red Hat, I missed it in Snowbasin, and now I was going to get it, alongside my wife!

Stacia: Ascent 19 was magic.

It was the completion - the end of a chapter and the beginning of another in our book as a couple. Completing this challenging task together meant a lot. We’d never physically done something like this together.

To endure, to persist, to keep pushing, and to challenge ourselves, side by side, was such an amazing experience for us as a couple.

George: Finishing 19 was emotional.

Coming back after not finishing last year, it felt like a breath of fresh air: true relief.

It had nothing to do with the Red Hat, but it’s what that Red Hat symbolizes.

We did all these things a couple would do in a lifetime together. In a marriage, you cry, you struggle, you get sick, you have to lean on each other, and you have to find this inner deep thing to keep going for the marriage to thrive.

We just did all that in 36 hours together, and now we both proudly had earned a Red Hat to our name.

It was more impactful than I could have ever imagined.

George Williams: Aside from the growth of my relationship with Stacia that came from our experience at 292029, there’s one other lesson that really sticks with me from 29029, more than anything else.

My dad got cancer in 2017, and immediately his mind went negative. When your body gives out on you, it’s near-impossible to not go negative.

It was heartbreaking to see.

We might be able to put ourselves into a positive mindset for a couple of hours, or a couple of minutes, but if your body keeps giving up on you, you’re going to end up back in that negative place.

We don’t have practice as human beings that forces us to be in a positive state when everything else is breaking down.

Physically, when your body is breaking down, your mind wants to follow.

You need the ability to stare down that physical breakdown and force positive things into your mind, or you won’t be able to finish whatever it is you’re trying to finish.

On that last day on that mountain, I walked away with that.

Things are going to happen in life. Whether it’s physically, mentally, or both, you’re going to struggle. And if you don’t spend time in a dark place putting your mind in a positive place, you’re never going to be able to do it when you need to do it.