Summiting Everest Without Supplemental Oxygen with Melissa Arnot Reid

Wild Ideas Worth Living

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4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

Melissa Arnot Reid is a legendary American mountaineer, adventure guide, and author who has summited Mount Everest six times—more than any other American woman. She was the first American woman to climb and descend Everest without supplemental oxygen, pushing the limits of human endurance. Through extreme challenges and high-risk climbs, Melissa has found strength, resilience, and purpose in the mountains.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I had long thought I'll summit Everest without supplemental oxygen and I will return to a different world and I will be a different person in that world.
0:11.1	And the truth was far less satisfying, which was that I actually had to go on a pretty deep and intense journey of self-reflection and starting to heal and starting to really get down to
0:23.4	the nitty gritty of like, why was I continuously recreating these terrible experiences for myself?
0:30.6	Why was I so insistent on telling myself that I deserved for things to be hard?
0:35.5	You know, I mean, this climbing Everest without oxygen became this internal personal metaphor
0:39.5	for just being able to exist with ease in the world.
0:46.8	Melissa Arnott-R-Not-R-R-R-Reed is a well-known mountaineer, adventure guide, and author.
0:52.0	She summited Mount Everest six times. That's more than any other
0:56.4	American woman in history. Melissa was also the first American woman to successfully climb
1:02.3	and descend the mountain without supplemental oxygen. If you're unfamiliar, 98% of climbers
1:09.2	use oxygen once they get above a certain elevation, where the air is thinner and it's harder to breathe.
1:16.0	Summending Everest without extra oxygen takes longer and is far more dangerous.
1:21.8	In order to complete these remarkable accomplishments, Melissa's had to push through her share of uncomfortable experiences
1:28.3	and risky situations.
1:30.7	Still, the mountains have always been a place where she's felt capable, strong, and resilient.
1:36.8	I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an R.I Co-op Studios production
1:42.5	presented by Capital One and the REI Co-Op MasterCard.
1:49.4	Melissa recently published a book titled Enough, Climbing Towards a True Self on Mount Everest.
1:56.5	The book documents her mountaineering career, but it also details the serious challenges she
2:02.0	faced during her childhood, including emotional abuse, rooming, and time in foster care.
2:08.6	Melissa has processed much of the trauma from her youth by spending time in the mountains as an adult.
2:17.9	Melissa Arnaut-R-Not-R-R-N-R-N-Rodread, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
	...

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