Exclusive interview: how Londoner Adriana Brownlee became the youngest woman to climb the world’s 14 highest peaks

Aged 23, Adriana Brownlee has become the youngest female, and the first British woman, to climb all 14 of the world's 8000m mountains. We caught up with her at her apartment in Kathmandu just days after her mission was complete to find out more.

There’s a reason why, of all the 8 billion people on this planet, only 64 people have ever climbed to the top of the world’s 14 tallest mountains over 8000m.

The chances of losing your life just on Annapurna 1, is one in three. Nanga Parbat has a death toll of 20%, K2 around 14%. So even if you do have the extraordinary physical ability required, the mountain skills, the dedication, drive and funding to face the world’s most extreme conditions, the chances of surviving it are stacked against you. It’s an extreme feat of endurance and survival.

But aged just 23, Adriana Brownlee has become the youngest female and the first British woman to achieve it.

Childhood dreams

From childhood, Adriana had set her sights on the extraordinary. Inspired by her mountaineering Dad, at age 8 she wrote in a school assignment that her goal was to be one of the youngest girls to climb Everest. At 9 she completed the Three Peaks Challenge in 22 hours with her Dad, scrambling over Crib Goch in the dark at 3am. And at 16 she was on Kilimanjaro studying for her GCSEs, because it was the only week she had off in between exams.

But her sights were always set on Everest. It was in preparation for this when she met Nimsdai Purja and spent two months with the team for their K2 winter climb. “Nims persuaded me that I should do the 14 peaks. So I called my university and my parents and I told them I'm not coming back. All of this from K2 base camp in the winter.” And so, the plan for Everest became just the first one of 14.

What are the 8000ers?

It's not about the records

On 31 May 2021, at the age of 20, Adriana realised her ambition of Everest. “It was a very powerful moment for me. It'll probably be one of the biggest and best achievements in my life, even though it's not the hardest mountain or the most technical,” she says.

“It was my childhood dream. The mountains are so powerful; you feel so alive. It's just this big adrenaline rush, when you stand on the summit. It’s also stressful, trying to take photos with all the flags, making sure you don't knock anyone else off!

"But it’s coming up to the summit – maybe 20 minutes before you see it. That's the most impactful part. That’s when you get emotional because you know you've done it. You're not stressing about the photos and getting back down yet. It's that moment of, oh, wow, I'm going to make it.”

In the 3 years that followed, Adriana summitted every mountain over 8000m – most of them with her climbing partner Gelje – breaking two further records in the process, including the youngest female in the world to summit K2 and the youngest person to summit Gasherbrum 1 without supplementary oxygen.

“It’s not about the records though,” explains Adri. “For me it’s about the personal achievement. The records are just an added bonus. It’s amazing to represent women in this totally male-dominated sport. The numbers of women are growing endlessly, which is amazing. And I think we're proving that we're just as strong or probably stronger than the men on the mountains.”

Risk v reward

While Adriana’s preparation gave her the confidence that she could look after herself in the mountains, reminders of the risks she was taking were never far away. “Coming down off Nanga Parbat from camp one to base camp it’s just ice walls. But these ice walls weren’t ice anymore. They were just like vertical rivers flowing,” says Adriana.

“And you have this freezing cold water pouring on top of you and then to add to that, there's rock fall, and the rocks on Nanga Parbat are the size of washing machines. So these things are hurtling towards you, like 200 kilometres per hour down this vertical face. And they're bouncing from side to side and you have no control of where that will go.

"And I was just thinking when I was abseiling, I still remember it clearly, if this thing hits me, that’s it. I'm done. I'm dead and there's just nothing I can do. I was playing Russian Roulette. The chances of death are so high, but you can't think about it.

"You just have to focus on one foot in front of the other and safety getting back down to base camp. That's it. Otherwise, you get into this negative spiral. And that’s when bad things start happening because you manifest it subconsciously.”

Hard work pays off

Adriana puts her drive to achieve the seemingly impossible down to her parents and her upbringing. “My dad was the one that would wake me up at 6 in the morning every weekend when I was like, 5, 6, 7-years-old to go training. I was always going to follow in his footsteps. I looked up to him and he's an incredibly, incredibly dedicated and hard-working person.

"It’s that upbringing that I've been lucky enough to have that’s made me stubborn and focused on what I wanted in life,” says Adriana. Commentators on social media have been quick to judge though. “They say, ‘she's just a rich white girl’. But actually every single trip was paid for by sponsorships, and that was harder than the climb itself. To get that funding,” Adriana explains. “But people just see a photo and they make assumptions.”

As well as grueling physical preparation, Adriana has adopted a process of mental preparation too, writing down everything that could go wrong before an expedition. “Whether it’s rock fall, or bad social media, you rate it 1-10 on how much it could impact you, and then write down what you’re going to do in that situation. So when you're on the mountain, it’s like muscle memory, and you know exactly the steps that you’re going to take. You're always calm under any pressure.”

It’s hard to imagine the mental and physical strength it has taken Adriana to complete such a difficult and mammoth task. She describes the process on the mountain as being broken up into manageable chunks: “Since I was small, it's very strange, I would set myself a goal, like I'm going to get to this rock and if I don't get there in less than a minute, I'm going to die.

"So it was extreme, but I still have that sort of superstitious mentality. I think, OK, if I don’t reach this landmark in the next 30 minutes, then something’s going to happen. And somehow that really motivates me to keep going.”

Frostbite and brain fog

The extreme altitude and temperatures have taken their toll though, “I almost got frostbite on all my fingers, but it ended up being frostnip,” she says. “So I still have all my fingers but the nerves are completely messed up.

"Also climbing without oxygen takes a big toll on your brain. You lose a LOT of brain cells and so you get brain fog and memory loss. So even trying to string sentences together is really difficult afterwards.”

Having achieved the ultimate goal in mountaineering, Adriana is now back home in her Katmandu apartment, where her brain cells and finger nerves are slowly recovering.

But far from letting any anti-climax creep in, she is immersing herself straight back into training and work, where she is focussed on creating a new generation of high-altitude mountaineering and trekking experiences to help others to achieve their dreams safely.

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