Albuquerque man climbs Everest, completes the seven summits

After climbing the tallest peak in six continents, there was only one left for Duke Pigott to scale — Mount Everest.

After 17 years, including delays during the pandemic and mountainside illness, Pigott summited Everest last month, completing the “seven summits” challenge with the world’s tallest peak.

Unofficial lists compiled by mountaineers estimate that around 400 people have successfully climbed all seven summits since the challenge was popularized in the 1980s by Richard Bass.

Since 1953, when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first scaled Everest, there have been an onslaught of people competing for their own firsts; the first to climb the North Face, the first to climb without oxygen, and most recently the first to climb with experimental, and controversial, xenon gas.

Though it was entirely unplanned, Pigott says he acquired his own first atop Everest.

Surrounded by colorful prayer flags at 29,032 feet above sea level on May 23 on the icy summit of Everest, Pigott strummed a guitar, the first person to ever do so, as far as he knows. He didn’t set out to make history, Pigott said, the decision to take the instrument was a whim that followed him from base camp all the way to the summit.

Atop that peak, Pigott was a long way from the high deserts and mountains of Albuquerque where he lives and trains. Though the two climates are clear opposites, the Sandias were vital to his training for the summit, he said.

Pigott’s experience as a volunteer at Cibola Search and Rescue, and vice president of Albuquerque Mountain Rescue Council, gave him a leg up in training for one of the greatest feats in mountaineering. Carrying a heavy pack, maneuvering steep terrain, and hiking at more than 10,000 feet all helped prepare his body for greater heights. On the other hand, there was nothing better to prepare the mind, Pigott said, than the support of his search and rescue peers.

“Nothing that we do in life is really done alone,” Pigott said.

Though Pigott successfully summited in a month as planned, the journey was littered, at times literally, with dark reminders. Climbing what the Nepalese Sherpas call the “Mother of the World,” is dangerous and has claimed the lives of hundreds of hopeful mountaineers.

“Above camp three, if something goes wrong, there’s really no rescue,” Pigott said.

When people die on Everest, their bodies are rarely removed due to how dangerous and laborious the task is. Instead, they lay as they fell, becoming way markers for the people who come next. Additionally, many families believe that their loved ones would prefer to stay on the mountain where they died chasing adventure.

To reach the summit, Pigott passed many bodies. What he didn’t expect was to step over the body of someone he once knew.

In 2019, Donald Cash, a mountaineer from Utah, died returning from the summit of Everest. Like Pigott, he was in pursuit of the seven summits, and died just after completing the task. Pigott and Cash had met climbing Mount McKinley, then known as Denali, in Alaska together just a year prior to Cash’s death.

“It really makes the whole thing a reality for you,” Pigott said. “You know that death is a possibility, but you don’t want to really consider it. So I tried to just focus on the success of the climb.”

At one point Pigott, like most of his group, fell ill. After climbing to a higher camp, Pigott developed a debilitating cough that forced him to descend to lower altitudes for several days before returning.

Accompanying the high altitude was an unexplainable sensation of exhaustion.

“Every step is harder,” Pigott said after pondering the unique feeling.

Despite the physical toll, Pigott maintained a cheery attitude throughout his trek, he said. Sitting on the top of the world, out of breath, and surely bone-tired, Pigott gave the performance of a lifetime with his guitar, all while laughing and singing. With bright blue skies above and wind whipping around him, Pigott strummed and serenaded the mountain with a song he wrote himself called “Never Rest ’til Everest,” from the highest point in the world.

Albuquerque man climbs Everest, plays guitar and completes the seven summits