Jess Wedel wants to do more than summit Mount Everest. She wants to change ovarian cancer
Jess Wedel always suspected she'd go back to Mount Everest.
She went for the first time two years ago, and in many ways, the trip was amazing. She made the journey with her mom and climbing companion, Valari. For weeks, the Oklahoma women climbed and rappelled, lived and dreamed together.
But in the end, Wedel didn’t summit.
A COVID outbreak among the Sherpas kept her from making an attempt.
“There’s part of me that can’t let it go even if I wanted to,” Wedel said.
But because the trip is so intense and so demanding, returning to Everest after only two years wasn’t likely without a good reason.
Raising awareness for ovarian cancer was plenty good for Wedel.
She is an ovarian cancer survivor, and when a non-profit approached her about being part of a team that would go to Everest to raise not only awareness but also funding for the disease that tried to kill her, Wedel was in.
“I think it would have taken a lot of time without a catalyst like this for me to try and make something happen,” she said in an interview with The Oklahoman before leaving for Nepal. “It definitely may never have happened.”
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But later this week, Wedel may become the first ovarian cancer survivor to summit Everest.
Seed for her return to Everest were actually planted during her first trip. Because she had survived ovarian cancer and was trying to be part of the first mother-daughter team to summit Everest, her journey two years ago caught the eye of several big media outlets. She even did a Zoom interview from Everest Base Camp with the CBS Evening News.
That caught the attention of a group of ovarian cancer doctors, who messaged Wedel their encouragement and support while she was on Everest.
But when Wedel returned home and had time to look more through her messages, she realized one of the doctors in that group, Joanie Mayer Hope, had reached out several times on multiple platforms.
“I’d love to connect,” Mayer Hope wrote. “I have a non-profit that has mountain climbing as the metaphor to beating ovarian cancer.”
The non-profit’s name?
Any Mountain.
Wedel and Mayer Hope eventually connected, and Mayer Hope even asked Wedel, who embraced pushing limits and living large after beating a rare form of ovarian cancer in 2016, to give a talk during one of Any Mountain’s fundraisers.
But Mayer Hope had bigger aspirations, too.
“Someday, I want to take a team to Everest,” Wedel remembers her saying at one point. “I want you guys to climb, and I want to raise money and make a big splash for ovarian cancer.”
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Ovarian cancer is the fifth deadliest cancer for women in America, killing nearly two-thirds of women who are diagnosed. Unlike breast cancer (mammograms) and cervical cancer (pap smears), ovarian cancer has no early detection method, so it’s often at advanced stages before it is detected.
Wedel loved that Mayer Hope wanted to go big for ovarian cancer.
But taking a team to Everest?
“That’s probably never gonna happen,” Wedel remembers thinking.
But then in early 2021, Mayer Hope called with news.
“I’ve had these conversations with these donors, and they’re on board to support it,” she told Wedel. “I think we can really make a big difference.”
Wedel was in.
The plan: put together a group of almost two dozen survivors, caregivers and doctors to make the trek to Everest Base Camp (at an elevation of 17,400 feet, it is about 3,000 feet higher than the tallest mountain in the continental United States), then Wedel and another survivor would attempt to summit.
In many ways, Wedel is in better shape to climb Everest this time. A day after returning to Oklahoma from her first trip to Everest, she accepted a job as a mountain guide in the state of Washington. She has led all sorts of climbs on all sorts of mountains in the time since.
But this trip isn’t all about her.
“The other side of it is sort of this pressure because I want this project to be meaningful and make a difference,” Wedel said.
“It just has a lot more meaning to it.”
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The Any Mountain Everest project has raised over half a million dollars, and now, Wedel is on the verge of a summit push. She spent last week climatizing to higher and higher altitudes, first climbing to Camp 1 at 19,500 feet and spending the night, then moving to Camp 2 at 21,350 feet and spending four days. Finally she and her climbing guide went to Camp 3 at 23,500 feet before returning to Base Camp to rest and recover in more oxygen-rich air.
“Climbing Everest comes with many questions, hesitations and moments when I wonder, ‘Is this really the right thing?’” Wedel wrote on her Facebook page Monday. “But reaching Camp 3 … these moments make it worth it, to try something that mostly seems impossible on so many levels. To keep walking when every part of my body, my brain is saying, ‘No thanks,’ this is when I learn something that can’t be found anywhere else.
“These are the moments that cut through the noise and complications and grief of a climb like this.”
Wedel knows even though things have gone well to this point, she still might reach the top of Mount Everest, 29,032 feet.
“To stand on the summit means that one million things went right that were totally out of my control,” she told The Oklahoman. “Before I was very excited and very emotional and very like, ‘This is amazing!’ And I think now I’m a little bit more like, ‘You know what? It’s a mountain. We’ll see what happens.’”
Jess Wedel has already conquered so many mountains, beating her cancer, giving hope to others and helping with the fight. So even though she might not plant her feet on the summit of Mount Everest, her steps have already left a huge imprint.
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at 405-475-4125 or jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok, and support her work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
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Want to help?
You can learn more about the Any Mountain Everest project at anymountainsong.com or donate at secure.qgiv.com/event/anymountaineverest. You can follow Oklahoma native Jess Wedel's Everest journey at facebook.com/AnyMountainSong or instagram.com/jess.wedel.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Mount Everest climb more than summit for Oklahoma native Jess Wedel
