Last ski season Sun Valley’s 59 year old Mark Pattison skinned up Bald Mountain 45 times as part of the training regimen of his quest to become the first NFL player to reach the top of the highest summits on each of the seven continents. He had already climbed the first six and his intention was to finish the endeavor with Everest and within 24 hours summit its neighbor Lhotse (4th highest mountain on Earth), a twofer that fewer than 40 people have accomplished. He left Sun Valley for Nepal in March and spent two months of preparation and acclimation on Everest.
Covid has had a serious impact on Nepalese society, both rich and poor, including former king Gyanendra and his wife Komal. And Covid seriously impacted climbers on Everest last season. Though for political and economic reasons Nepal’s government has denied it, trekking guides say at least 100 people climbers and guides tested positive at Everest base camp last season. Garrett Madison, who guided Pattison’s team, told the Seattle Times, “Most of our team of foreign climbers were vaccinated, but not all. None of our Nepal staff was vaccinated — our Sherpas and cooks and porters. (Vaccines are not widely available in Nepal.) We had to be very careful for them.”
Pattison was extremely lucky early in the expedition when he fell 10 feet off a ladder on an ice wall and was uninjured. Still, the whole experience took a toll on his health. He lost between 20 and 25 pounds because of the low protein freeze dried diet necessary on such climbs. He told the Times, “On summit day, I just had a little thing of granola and then I was throwing down candy bars the rest of the day. That’s just not the breakfast of champions to take on something like Mt. Everest.”
Nevertheless, on May 23rd Pattison left Camp 4 for the summit at 12:30 a.m. with Madison and the 10 members of his team composed of climbers from Norway, Ireland, Russia and Canada, including two females. Ten reached the summit. Along the way 75 year old Art Muir (no relation to John) joined their team and became the oldest American to reach the summit of Everest. Each had a Sherpa helper and several oxygen tanks. A 40 mph west wind blew tiny ice crystals left to right into Mark’s face and within an hour one of them had slashed his left eye and he was blind in that eye. (Fortunately, his eye recovered.) “I couldn’t believe how steep it was and how hard I was struggling because I hadn’t been able to eat enough that morning. Many times I considered quitting and turning around, and each time I thought about all the people who had been inspired (or had inspired) and been affected by my journey and got re-engaged to keep going. I knew I couldn’t quit as I know my daughter Emilia will never quit trying to overcome Epilepsy.
“As I slowly moved up the mountain, I kept hitting these famous points which have been documented in movies. As I climbed past dead bodies, it was a sober reminder that life is fragile and to focus on each step. Although my energy was low, my bigger concern was that I couldn’t see out of my left eye. On Everest you are connected to fixed lines, not other people. My ability to clip on and off became difficult and my Sherpa didn’t speak good English so he didn’t understand my need for help. At the end of the day I was able to summit, but not without the help of everyone who supported my goal and believed in me. As I was descending back to Camp 4 the idea of climbing Lhotse, the 4th highest mountain in the world suddenly didn’t matter as I knew I would have put my life in jeopardy. I completed what I set out to do.”
It took him 9 hours and 40 minutes to reach the summit from Camp 4 and 8 hours to get back down to Camp 4. He started the day with four oxygen bottles, and, he said, “I ran out of oxygen an hour before getting back to Camp 4 and then spent the night at 26,000 feet without supplemental oxygen. The next morning we started down and it was really hard to keep moving.”
He told the Times, “I knew that there could be a fatal outcome if I took on Lhotse. The goal was to get the record, to be the oldest guy to do that. (The twofer.) But at the end of the day, not only are my kids (Claudette and Emilia) important, I want to come back. My goal is to go up there and live and do it, not die trying to do some stupid record. It just didn’t become important in that moment. Before I went up there that morning it was very important, and as I was coming down it just became irrelevant and I didn’t care.”
Mark Pattison’s life has always been filled with physical, mental, emotional and spiritual struggles of lofty intentions and high achievement. Born, raised and schooled in Seattle, Washington, Pattison was an All American wide receiver as a junior at Roosevelt High School and as a quarterback his senior year. He was inducted into the High School Football Hall of Fame in 2005. He was an All American football player at the University of Washington under legendary coach Don James, playing in 2 Rose Bowls, 2 Aloha Bowls and 1 Orange Bowl in which he made the winning catch. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2016.
After college he played in the National Football League for five years, the first three with the New Orleans Saints and the last two with the Los Angeles Raiders. He described the move like this: “I had gone from New Orleans where I was playing, I was well-liked, I was a vital part of that team, and I went into free agency deals. I got double the money and signing bonus and I went back to Seattle. I thought that would be a great move, that was my hometown and that turned out to be the worst move ever. It just killed my spirits in terms of my love for the game. If I would have stayed in New Orleans, I know I would have played another two, three years for sure. It just didn’t play out that way.”
While growing up in Seattle he climbed extensively in the nearby Cascade Mountains, including Mount Rainier. He was also a lifetime skier like many Seattle skiers who eventually put down roots here after hundreds of visits to Sun Valley. Mark has been seriously physically active his entire life, and that did not end when he retired from football and moved back to Seattle with his wife and two daughters.
With the same energy he had devoted to football, he started three multi-million dollar businesses, guided by several old college friends who had stayed in Seattle. He said, “Mentorship from existing business guys in the Seattle community helped guide the way. My major in college was Political Science which was not much help, but I was able to ask, ‘Hey, am I doing it this way or that way.’ I kind of bounced around from people to people until I found my way, they were the guiding light.” His three businesses are a venture capital named Front Porch Classics, a marketing firm called Pattison Group and a tech company called Maven which will soon go public and owns Sports Illustrated where Mark is an executive. Those businesses took him to Los Angeles where he was living when, about ten years ago, he broke up with his wife of 24 years, the mother of his two daughters, and his father died. He said, “It was a very lonely existence. After a couple years of walking around the block, and just asking myself ‘how did I get here?’ one day I decided I needed to change my whole mindset and get unstuck. Since I stopped playing football, I never really stopped working out. Growing up in the Northwest, I climbed literally hundreds of times up in the mountains, various peaks like Mount Rainier, and most of the major mountains in the Northwest. I started to think about climbing. I had always been intrigued by the guys who had come before me, those that had been on Everest and some of these other crazy mountains. I did some research and I came up with the fact that no NFL player had ever climbed the Seven Summits. So, I said, ‘I’m going to be that guy.’ It really helped me get out of my fog.” As part of his climb out of the fog Pattison moved to Sun Valley, and the rest is history. Mark and his ex-wife Rene have two daughters, Claudette, who is 25, and Emilia who is 23. Emilia has epilepsy and Mark has written “….her journey to overcome epilepsy and live her life to the fullest has been 10 times harder than anything I have ever done.” A friendship with Ketchum’s Gary Vinagre, who is deeply involved with Higher Ground, led Mark to partner with Higher Ground to raise $56,972 (the combined height of Mt. Everest and Lhotse) to build awareness about epilepsy. He said, “In early 2020, we raised over $29,029 (the summit of Mt. EVEREST) to build awareness for the National Epilepsy Foundation so they can find cures to this disorder that for many, seem insurmountable.” Higher Ground and Mark Pattison are still raising money for and awareness of epilepsy and much more. The reader can follow Mark at https://www.markpattisonnfl.com