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Suzanne Hollifield

Just Keep Stepping

Por 29029 Everesting

17 de October de 2025

The first mountain I ever climbed was with my Dad in 1995.

He always picked big things for us to do together, and our first mountain was no different. That was just his style.

Mount Elbert.

Yes, that Mount Elbert.

A fourteneer.

Colorado’s tallest mountain.

We had one bottle of water and a single powerbar between us, but that didn’t stop him.

“It’s no big deal… it’s just steps. We’ll just keep stepping, and we’ll get to the top.”

Altitude headache be damned, we made the summit.

And I was hooked.

Rainier, Denali, Aconcagua, Kilimanjaro… the list grew long.

Mount Everest was the natural progression, but between some close calls on the slopes and demands of a normal life, it slipped off my radar.

Many of those mountains I’ve climbed over the years have been with my wife, Dawn, and our very close friend, Laura.

Now, when I said Everest wasn’t on my radar anymore, that was true, but Everesting was something that I was still completely enamored with.

I was working full time and in seminary to become an Episcopal priest when 29029 announced its first time hosting an event in Jackson Hole.

So even with a full calendar, I decided I wanted to sign up.

I wanted to climb the height of Everest.

Myself, Dawn, and Laura registered.

We didn’t really have a game plan when we arrived in Jackson Hole. I assumed the three of us would walk every step together, but somewhere along the way, we all started hiking at our own paces.

On my 9th ascent, my lack of training was catching up to me. Between work and studies, I had only half-heartedly completed the training program.

I came off the gondola in the evening completely exhausted.

Time to take a break.

I went to bed, until around 1 am that Dawn came into the room.

“Where have you been?”

“...Right here,” was all I could sheepishly muster to reply.

I’m not sure what happened, but I just couldn’t do it.

On Saturday, I had quit.

I stopped climbing, but got up to watch Dawn and Laura cross the finish line and earn their Red Hats.

As you can imagine, the emotions were heavy.

Happiness for them.

But regret and sadness for myself.

I’d always been an athlete.

I’d never not finished something that I started.

Until now.

After the event, I called my Dad.

I had let myself down when I quit, but it felt like I’d let him down too.

It should have been obvious what the man who taught me the beauty of never stopping was going to say.

“Just keep stepping.”

I decided that’s exactly what I was going to do, and I registered for 29029 Jackson again the next year.

This time, I still had the same time pressure as before. Work. Seminary. Life.

But I was more motivated to fit the training in. I wanted to climb that damn mountain.

On the start line, I felt good.

The desire was there.

I’d done the work.

I felt like it was going to happen this time.

I was on a mission through the first day, and things were going about as well as I could have asked until my 9th ascent.

A strange tugging censation gripped my back.

I pushed through a few more laps before finally deciding to stop for the night after my 12th climb.

On Saturday morning when my alarm went off, I could not get out of bed.

My back was seized.

Completely locked up.

I truly couldn’t even stand up.

This was it.

12 ascents was all I had to show for all my hard work this time.

It was disappointing, but I found some solace in knowing that I didn’t voluntarily give up this time.

Just keep stepping.

I wasn’t going to quit on my goal.

I'd be back.

Again.

For 2025, I ramped up my commitment to finishing.

No matter what - no matter what - I made a pact to myself to fit in every single piece of training.

I wasn’t going to miss even one.

Something inside me had shifted.

Nothing can get in the way this time.

I’m a full time police officer, and during some of the peak weeks of the training schedule for 29029, work did everything it could to get in the way.

I had a big workout to do on the day I got called to a serious crime scene.

It turned into a 24 hour work day for me, so any other time, I would’ve skipped the training.

But I could hear my Dad’s voice in my head.

“Just keep stepping.”

I finished my 24-hour workday with a lengthy training session.

When it was finally time to climb, I hadn’t missed a single scheduled piece of training.

I’d worked hard.

I showed up hungry.

And I decided I wasn’t going to stop for anything.

At the start line, things felt different.

I wasn’t even nervous.

I looked beside me, and there was Tom, my brother-in-law.

He had decided to climb too - his first 29029.

I smiled to myself as the horn went off.

Time to show what all that training has done.

In the evening of the first day, I had already finished 8 ascents.

Things were going as perfectly as I could’ve asked for.

I bumped into Dawn who was there supporting, and she gave me the update on Tom.

“He’s having a hard time…”

It brought me back to my first year at 29029. I remembered struggling, without Dawn or Laura at my side to help.

Something tugged at my heart.

I knew what I needed to do.

I was going to wait for Tom to catch up, and then I wasn’t going to walk another single step without him by my side.

I wanted us to Everest together.

Tom and I hiked together as the mountain started to get dark.

Number nine went okay, but on the tenth, the fatigue really started setting in.

Tom was slipping on the loose terrain frequently, loosing his footing and nearly falling more than once.

It wasn’t part of the plan, but I thought we probably needed sleep.

“I know this isn’t what we had in mind, but I think we both need to go to sleep.”

I thought some rest would be a good reset and give us a better chance of finishing.

But it was risky.

We still had 9 to go with less than half of the event time remaining.

It was the biggest gamble I’d taken.

At 2:30 am, we hit the mountain again.

I don’t know what happened in those couple of hours of sleep, but I felt incredible.

Tom seemed to be feeling it too, and it showed in our climbs.

When we set out for our 11th ascent, we were behind the Red Hat Pace.

But we were making that time back quickly.

Of course that incredible feeling faded, but we kept making good time as the sun rose and the second day rolled on.

I couldn’t seem to stomach much, but I could handle pickle juice and coke, so that’s what I did.

Power juice.

I was pretty sure it wasn’t the most optimal fueling, but it’s what I had to work with.

By the 18th ascent, I felt truly awful - probably not helped at all by a diet of exclusively pickle juice and coke I suppose - but we were almost there.

It was happening.

Finally.

The summit.

The 19th summit.

Knowing we were good for time, I went ahead of Tom on the switchbacks.

I wanted to take it all in.

A mountain of gratitude washed over me.

And it reminded me of a blessing I do in the church.

It goes: Life is short, and we don’t have much time to gladden the hearts of those that travel with us, but be quick to love, and make haste to be kind.

I wanted to rework that blessing to relate to the mountain I’d climbed to get here.

The trail is long and we do not walk forever, so take time to breathe in the views and beauty, encourage fellow hikers, and tread each step with kindness and awe.