Page 9 - AMA Summer 2023

My name is Adriana Brownlee, and I am probably not your average 22-year-old woman. But what is it that really makes me different? Is it just the fact that I was incredibly lucky to find my passion at such a young age? Or a mindset that grew to something quite unique over time?
When I was 8 years old, my father told me the story of his Aconcagua summit. Vastly over exaggerating every moment of course, I was hooked on every word he said, and I knew instantly I wanted to do exactly what he had just done, albeit not to summit Aconcagua, but to summit Mt Everest. I wanted to be a superhuman like him. I wanted to feel that sense of achievement that you hold onto for a lifetime, feel what it’s like to be clinging onto every breath and really push myself to the limits of human capability. A lot for an 8-year-old... but from that moment I dedicated all my energy into achieving this dream. At 9-years-old, I completed the Three Peaks Challenge and as the name implies, it was certainly a challenge. Our first attempt saw me on the verge of hypothermia on Ben Nevis and having to decide between finishing our last summit or turning back and avoiding a disaster. I made the incredibly wise choice to turn back and sacrifice the summit, a true mountaineer’s mindset. Two months later we came back, determined, and hungry for success, and completed it in 21 hours. It was gruelling. I still remember the car ride to Snowdon, our last peak, praying that we hadn’t reached Wales yet; the whole way!
Today I am incredibly honoured to call myself a mountaineer and adventure athlete. So far, I have summited ten 8000m
peaks and taken part in 14 expeditions across the Himalayas. Upon summiting K2, the second highest mountain in the world, in July of 2022, I was awarded with a Guinness World Record for becoming the ‘Youngest Woman to Summit K2,’ I now hold three Guinness World Records to my name and am the only British woman to have summited this many 8000m peaks. Really, I don’t know how it all happened so quickly.
Let’s rewind a little. After completing the Three Peaks Challenge, I took a sabbatical from climbing and focused on Taekwondo for 10 years. This kept my fitness in tip top condition, but I reached a plateau in my progression and knew that I had to do something different, something bigger and something a lot more challenging. At age 15, I decided to put my mountaineering
cap back on. I sat my father down during Christmas of 2016 and mentioned the idea of doing the Seven Summits together. The Seven Summits is a challenge where you climb the highest mountain in each continent (Aconcagua, Elbrus, Kilimanjaro, Carstensz Pyramid, Denali, Vinson, and Everest). We were both as excited as each other to embark on this mission and re-ignite that love for mountaineering. So, we started right away by climbing Mt Elbrus in Russia followed by Kilimanjaro and then Aconcagua. By the time I was 18, we had smashed through these three peaks and knew that Mt Everest was going to have to be the next one. To get to this point meant huge sacrifices in my teenage life. On Mt Elbrus I missed my middle school prom which was a hard pill to swallow for a social and fashion loving teenage girl, not to mention with a boyfriend!
On Kilimanjaro I was studying for my GCSE maths exams at 5000m, and on Aconcagua I celebrated the incredibly Important 18th birthday by straggling 50km out of base camp to the closest town post expedition. But there is not one ounce of regret in all that, once you get older you realise that these events, although seemingly important when you’re a teenager, aren’t ever going to be as important as achieving your biggest dream and ambition. Sacrifice was a huge lesson I learnt during my journey and what it really means to follow an ambition no matter how hard the journey. We all must make sacrifices in life, but we must also always remember why we’re making them and how impactful and incredible the result will be.
Adriana and Gelje Sherpa
ARMY MOUNTAINEER / 9