Ronan Murphy with Sherpa Mingdorchi. Everest has been conquered by just over 4,000 climbers in ... [+]
Shortly before 9am on May 23, 2021, Ronan Murphy, a London-based investment banker, fulfilled a dream he’d been harboring most of his life.
Exhausted, dehydrated, windswept and sunburned, the 40-year-old scrambled the final feet up to the summit of Mount Everest. Overwhelmed by an entirely unique and extremely potent cocktail of pride, relief, gratitude and humility, tears stung the Irishman’s eyes as he embraced Mingdorchi Sherpa, who had accompanied him on the final leg of the 29,035-foot journey. “Amazing, amazing” he choked into the thin mountain air. Beyond that, words failed him.
Summiting had proved an ordeal. The weather had been treacherous in the days leading up to the final push. At Camp 4—where Murphy had spent the night before reaching the peak—he’d laid on his back for 30 hours in a tiny tent, face-to-face with one of his fellow climbers, Seattle-based Andrew Hughes. Both men had been forced to stay as still as possible, not only to preserve energy but also for fear of being swept off the mountain and into the icy oblivion.
In the early hours of that Whit Sunday morning, as his team leader—veteran mountaineer Garrett Madison—announced that the time had come, Murphy drew on every ounce of determination he could muster. Placing one heavy foot in front of the other, he set his withering body in motion, sucking on his oxygen tube in regular intervals and telling himself over and over again, through the howling wind, that he was doing just fine.
“Those last 20 minutes of climbing—when I knew I was going to make it—were everything,” Murphy recalls. “It wasn’t just a culmination of an expedition to the top of the world’s tallest mountain, but it represented a personal milestone: enduring the losses associated with the pandemic and coming to terms with turmoil in my personal life,” he adds. “I was just so grateful and it changed me forever.”
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Though Murphy had always known he wanted to climb Everest, it wasn’t until the middle of 2020 that he started making concrete plans for the expedition. He’d just turned 40 and the milestone birthday had inspired a moment of intense self-reflection.
A lifelong hobby athlete, he initially set his sights on climbing the 14,692-foot Matterhorn, in the Swiss Alps, before the unfurling pandemic scuppered those plans. But after a conversation with British mountaineering legend Kenton Cool (who in 2021 summited Everest for the 15th time), Murphy was introduced to Garrett Madison, a ten-time “summiter” who claims to have personally led more clients to the top of Everest and K2 than anyone.
Madison was planning to take an expedition team up Everest the following year and the prospect of joining proved too compelling for Murphy to resist. By the end of September he’d officially been invited to join the team, paying the tens of thousands of U.S. dollars in expedition fees, and negotiated a three-month sabbatical from work.
“I’d been at the bank for 10 years by that point and this was something I really wanted to do,” he says. “We sometimes struggle to disconnect from work, but the pandemic and turning 40 had given me this new sense of drive to pursue my passions. So I just decided to go for it.”
Having spent his career in financial markets, Murphy had a firm understanding of navigating risk, but not necessarily the kind that came with so much downside—the one that potentially carried a cost far greater than any monetary value.
Everest has been conquered by over 6,000 climbers since it was first scaled by Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953. But well over 300 are believed to have perished over the years. In 2019, nine climbers lost their lives on Everest, making the season the deadliest since 2015, when an earthquake that killed at least 18 people.
“I knew that I had so much to learn, but I was willing to put in the work,” Murphy says. “And I knew that the most dangerous thing I could possibly do was underestimate the challenge.”
In February, having recovered from an ill-timed ankle injury, sustained while innocuously crossing the road in Dublin, Ireland, where Murphy grew up, he flew to Ecuador where he scaled several volcanoes, exposing his body to the pressures of performing at the extremely high altitudes. Finally, at the end of March, armed with fitness, confidence, a steely resolve and 180 pounds of duffel bags full of gear, Murphy set his corporate email out of office and boarded a flight to Kathmandu.
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The expedition lasted over two months. Murphy’s team of 19 climbers arrived at Base Camp—at about 17,700 feet—in mid April. To prepare their bodies for the ultimate challenge, they spent several weeks climbing to the higher camps and then returning for some small home comforts, like a hot shower, that helped their taxed bodies to temporarily recover.
The 2021 season only presented two so-called weather windows in which to summit and on May 11 and 12 around 100 climbers did so before conditions deteriorated significantly. Nepal had been forced to closed its peaks in 2020 because of the pandemic, so demand for the chance to climb this year was higher than usual. In the middle of May, Garrett Madison started preparing his team for the push but poor weather hampered progress and Murphy and his colleagues got stuck at Camp 2 and Camp 3 for much longer than planned.
Murphy was one of the first in his team to reach the top, followed by team mates from Ireland, ... [+]
“Under ideal conditions, from Base Camp, it should take six days to get to the top of the mountain and two to get down,” Murphy explains. “It took us 11 for the whole thing so we were really pushing it in terms of our reserves.”
If the human body spends an extended period of time at extremely high altitudes—and particularly above 23,000 feet—it begins to deteriorate rapidly. Especially above 26,500 feet, which is known as the death zone, the pressure becomes almost impossible to sustain.
Ten of the climbers in Madison’s team made it—six men and four women—with the remaining nine either choosing to turn back or being ordered to do so, for health and safety reasons. Murphy was one of the first in his team to reach the top, followed by team mates from Ireland, Estonia, Norway, Canada and the U.S.
Back in Base Camp on May 25, Murphy nursed four frost nipped fingers and one badly frostbitten one on his right hand but sustained no other notably injuries. In the weeks on the mountain he lost about 11 pounds of muscle from the physical exertion but also because the extreme conditions made the bland food— lentils and rice, predominantly—increasingly difficult to stomach.
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On Thursday, July 1, still ensconced by the sensation of standing on top of the world, Murphy logged back onto his computer in his apartment in West London, and resumed remote work for Société Générale’s investment banking division, selling corporate bonds.
“It’s definitely not easy coming back to the real world after an experience like that,” Murphy says. “But what I’ve realized, is that even if you do something in life that profoundly changes you, you have to live in the moment and you can’t let that experience define you and your identity.”
Before returning to the corporate world—and perhaps in homage to that precise sentiment—Murphy cut his long hair and trimmed his shaggy mountain beard that had become unwieldy during his time away. He read up on the news, on what was happening in markets, what had happened to U.S. inflation, currencies and interest rates around the world.
A lifelong hobby athlete, Murphy initially set his sights on climbing the Matterhorn, in the Swiss ... [+]
Recent press coverage of Richard Branson’s and Jeff Bezos’s missions into space has featured frequent references to the so-called Overview Effect, a cognitive shift in awareness that some astronauts report to experience during spaceflight. The effect makes them acutely aware of the vulnerability of the planet—the fragility of human life, the fleeting nature of everything—leaving them more conscious of their place and responsibility. Murphy’s trip to the zenith of the Himalayas may well have given him a taste of this.
“The comedown is certainly not going to be easy and I know I’ll need a long time to adjust and get back into some kind of routine,” he says, “but I’m also deeply aware of how climbing Everest has made me a stronger person with a healthier perspective on life.”
“One thing I’ve noticed is that people allow the corporate world and their jobs to envelope them and while of course it’s important to do well and enjoy your career, there’s way more to life than that,” he explains.
“Through the expedition I’ve learned so much about myself; lessons that I will certainly apply to everything I do from now—and all of the challenges I may encounter. I’ve learned to be more patient and more empathetic, but also a bit more relaxed about certain things and more confident in my own abilities and potential,” Murphy says. “The perspective that I’ve gained is priceless and I know that will serve me well regardless of what I do next, in work, life or elsewhere.”
He’s kept up a rigid exercise regime, lifts weights, runs in London’s parks and takes classes on his Peleton. Depending on Covid-19 travel restrictions he’s hoping to run the New York Marathon in the fall. But he’s not done with mountains yet either. “I don’t know when I’ll return,” he says. “But the adventure’s certainly not over.”
