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She scaled Everest, K2 and Annapurna, and escaped avalanches: 'I feel alive in the mountains'
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The highest point on earth, Mount Everest has long been a symbol for the triumph of the human spirit. Many climbers spend years training for it, and six to nine weeks climbing it, including the trek to base camp and the time required to acclimatise to the altitude.
This is because the final summit push from base camp at 5,364m to the peak at 8,848m covers close to 3,500m. And anything above 8,000m is known as the Death Zone – oxygen levels drop to 33 per cent of that at sea level and temperatures dip to -40°C.
Against howling winds, mountaineers cross a narrow ledge, a knife-edge ridge, and a vertical rock wall with spiked boot attachments, ice axes and fixed ropes.
Experienced climbers take four to seven days for this final summit push. After extensive training, one young Singaporean woman did it in 36 hours, in 2023. The mountaineer is 33-year-old Vincere Zeng.
GETTING TO THE EVEREST SUMMIT IN 36 HOURS
In the mountaineering world, making a straight push to the summit is known as a speed ascent. Zeng had prepared relentlessly for it, focusing on endurance training such as running, trail running and climbing stairs, as well as technical training such as rock climbing.
But one thing Zeng did not anticipate was being stricken by bouts of illness during her climb.
On the trek up to Everest base camp, Zeng caught influenza. Then, at base camp, two weeks before the summit push, she caught COVID-19. She still had a sore throat and a slight lingering cough when it came time to summit.
“At 5,300m, your body can never recover from any illness. Any respiratory or any lung related sickness is very dangerous because high altitude sickness also affects the lungs,” she said.
However, Zeng could not wait any longer – the small window when weather conditions were suitable to summit was fast closing.
“Every night, I would ask myself if I should do this? Finally, I asked myself if I would regret it if I never tried. The answer was ‘yes’. So I decided to try,” she told CNA Women.
Her training paid off. Zeng made a remarkably rapid ascent.
She was forced to pause for several hours because of diarrhoea from something she had eaten. Then, she continued to push forward, reaching the Everest peak in pitch darkness at 3.30am on May 18, 2023. Her summit time: 36 hours.
Zeng did not linger to bask in her triumph. “On the mountain, when you say ‘summit’, it is not about going to the summit. It is about getting home. In high altitude climbs, 70 per cent of the deaths or more happen during the descent.
“You are very motivated when you are going up. But a lot of times, once you summit, suddenly all the energy is gone and it’s very easy to make mistakes. Descending is actually the more critical part of the climb,” Zeng noted.
Just below the summit, one of Zeng’s contact lenses blew away in the savage winds. Severely shortsighted at 800 degrees, she had to hold on to her sherpa to descend the world’s highest mountain in half-blindness.
She made it down, and undeterred, moved on to scale Lhotse, the world’s fourth highest peak, the very next day, a feat that many elite mountaineers aspire to because this 8,516m mountain is connected to Everest at 7,906m altitude.
On May 19, 2023, Zeng became the first Southeast Asian woman to summit both Everest and Lhotse back-to-back during the same expedition
AN ACCIDENTAL MOUNTAINEER
Zeng never set out to be a mountaineer. The young woman, who is currently a strategy and transformation program manager at a software company, climbed her first mountain, 5,895m-high Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, as part of her graduation trip in 2015.
She surprised herself by how well she did. “My African guide said I was even faster than some of the porters,” she laughed, adding that she had never excelled in sports before.
“I like the way I pushed myself and achieved something. It sparked something in my heart,” she said.
My African guide said I was even faster than some of the porters.
Two years later, in 2017, she scaled the 6,476m high Mera Peak in Nepal without training and also completed the climb faster than most.
Spurred on by her success, that same year, she attempted the 6,961m-high Aconcagua in Argentina. Unfortunately, this time, her summit day coincided with her menstrual cycle and she felt weak. “My body just gave up. I just could not move my legs anymore and had to turn back,” she said.
It was in failure that Zeng found her fire. She set her heart on the 7,134m Lenin Peak, on the border of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
For the first time ever, she threw herself into training. She hiked, did rock-climbing, and began trail running in forests and hills in Bukit Timah, MacRitchie Reservoir, as well as parts of Malaysia and Indonesia. In August 2018, she ascended Lenin Peak smoothly.
