by Staley White
Utah Valley University reached a new height when an adventurous supporter honored the school’s name at the height of the world.
Martin Frey, a member of Woodbury School of Business National Advisory Council at UVU, summitted Mt. Everest on May 20 and planted the UVU flag at the peak to symbolize the school’s potential. For a moment, the green and white logo waved proudly beside mementos for Frey’s friends and family.
According to a UVU press release, “Martin Frey’s gesture is symbolic of UVU’s rapidly growing reputation in higher education,” UVU President Matthew S. Holland said. “More than ever, Frey and other UVU community constituents are impacting their communities and professions well beyond the scope of Utah Valley.”
Frey’s love for endurance sports started around 15 years ago with ironman races, ultra marathons and adventure races. He and friend Steve Gasser took their love for the outdoors to the next level when they decided to climb the seven summits.
“I guess Mt. Everest came about because I wanted a significant challenge, and it’s one of the seven summits, the tallest mountains on all seven continents,” Frey said. “It seemed like a great goal and a great challenge, so I went for it.”
Gasser climbed two of the seven summits with Frey until his sudden death while biking in a century race last October. Frey brings a photo of his friend on every climb, and on his blog teamendurance.blogspot.com Frey wrote, “we planned to hike Everest together. And we did.”
Training for the grand climb started in January. After reaching the top of Mt. Acancagua in Argentina, his third of the seven summits, Frey felt adjusted to the altitude and ready to defeat the tallest mountain in the world.
The team hiked from camp-to-camp, and recovered each night from elevation changes. Frey said the most difficult terrain was in the acclimitization climbs through the Khumbu Icefall right after base camp.
“The icefall is where a glacier gets stuck between these two sections of the mountain, and as a result it makes these ice formations,” Frey said. “The ice is always falling over and moves up to 15 feet a day, and a lot of the deaths happen there.”
They embarked through the icefall at 2 a.m. because the ice is more stable at night. From Frey’s journal entry posted on his blog, he described the five-hour hike through the icefall as winding and strenuous.
“All I could see was a line of headlamps rising in the night sky and what was directly in front of my own headlamp,” Frey wrote. “At one point, we had to crawl through a slot tunnel of ice, then cross a large crevasse on a ladder that was made up of 4 full extensions that were lashed together. Very wobbly!”
After crossing 29 ladders in total, Frey completed one of the most dangerous challenges of the Mt. Everest climb. He reached the summit and returned home after 51 days.
Although Frey was physically prepared to reach the summit, he owes most of his achievement to being mentally prepared.
“I didn’t expect it to be so mentally challenging,” Frey said. “I would say three out of the four climbers who dropped out, did so because they didn’t have the mental fortitude.”
His wife, Kym Frey, may be the reason why Frey could keep that mind power. She decided to climb to the 17, 200-foot base camp just weeks before their departure.
“The hardest day was going into base camp because it was really cold and it was really slippery terrain,” Kym said. “I didn’t have very much training, but Martin and I just said we would be a team all the way up to base camp.”
After the feat, Kym returned home to many friends interested in Frey’s adventure. She started a blog to keep their friends informed and ended up with around 300 followers a day. Kym said the blog became “an adventure novel in the end.”
