On anniversary of becoming first American woman to summit all 14 8,000-meter peaks, this Vail doctor is looking ahead to her next mountain

Tracee Metcalfe wouldn’t have considered herself a mountaineer at the beginning of it all. Growing up in the suburbs of L.A. and saddled with a crippling fear of heights, who could have predicted she’d one day become the first American woman to summit the world’s 14 tallest peaks?

But the Vail doctor’s story is all about the unexpected.

“When I started this, my dream wasn’t to do 14 8,000-meter peaks,” the 51-year-old said on the anniversary of her Alpine accomplishment earlier this month. “It was following that voice in me that was curious.”

That voice originally brought her to Breckenridge after high school, where a summer of delivering pizzas and exploring the Rockies made her realize UCLA wasn’t a good fit. She ended up going to Colorado College and later med school in Denver. In 1993, the girl who “did all the nerdy things growing up” instead of sports, hiked her first 14er, albeit one of the state’s easiest: Mt. Democrat.

“And I just fell in love with it,” she said. “I thought, ‘I want to climb all of these.'”

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It took two decades, but eventually, she checked off all 58. After residency in Seattle, Metcalfe moved to Vail in July 2006 to work for Colorado Mountain Medical. Her climbing gradually became more intense: she summited Denali in 2012 and met well-known Vail mountaineer Ellen Miller — the first American woman to summit Everest from both the north and south approaches — at local skimo races shortly after. The pair became friends over their shared climbing interests, but truly bonded over something else.

“She had both her hips replaced at a pretty young age and at 39, I found out I had to have my hip replaced after Denali,” Metcalfe said. “Ellen was so kind to me and such a good mentor … she’s climbed mountains with two artificial hips and done all these amazing things.”

Miller also introduced Metcalfe to Everest guide Russel Brice, who brought Metcalfe to Nepal as a base-camp physician in 2014. For the next few years, Metcalfe worked full-time at Vail Health and saved all her vacation for trips with Himalayan Experience, Brice’s company. She summited Everest in 2016. Unlike most of the nearly 8,000 individuals who’ve reached the top of the world’s highest peak, however, Metcalfe’s itch for big mountains hadn’t been satisfactorily scratched quite yet.

“I’ll be honest, I always was kind of like, ‘oh everybody does Everest,'” Metcalfe said. “So, I think in my mind I was more intrigued by lesser-known 8,000 meter peaks because it’s kind of who I am: I don’t like to always do the same thing everybody else is doing.”

Metcalfe returned to Nepal as a climbing doctor in 2017 and 2018, but failed missions — due often to other climbers’ illnesses and her respective medical responsibilities — made her rethink the cost-benefit analysis of leveraging her profession for Himalayan opportunities. In 2019, she returned to Makalu, this time without doubling as a base-camp doctor. After reaching the summit of the steep, 27,838-foot peak, she decided to go after all of Nepal’s eight 8,000-meter peaks. Her finish line continued to move.

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“I am a person who likes lists and roadmaps in terms of what I’m working towards,” she said. “I will say, in parallel to that, I’ve always been interested in K2.”

Metcalfe studied the exploits of women like Wanda Rutkiewicz, the first woman to summit the world’s second-tallest mountain. Unlike the Pole, who climbed eight 8,000-meter peaks before disappearing on Kangchenjunga in 1992, Metcalfe used supplemental oxygen during her expeditions. But risk wasn’t eliminated entirely. For example, while descending Annapurna in 2021, Metcalfe ran out of oxygen in the death zone.

“I pushed way past where I should have. I took a while to think: Do I even belong on these peaks?” Metcalfe told 5280 writer Devon O’Neil, who wrote a detailed feature highlighting the trials and tribulations Metcalfe endured on and off the peaks. Struggling to suppress self-doubt also occurred when her oxygen tank emptied along Everest’s exposed final summit ridge.

“I was able to keep moving through it, but it was not fun,” Metcalfe told the Vail Daily. Even after getting help, it was humiliating — particularly as a medical professional — to “go from being the strongest one on the team to the last person to arrive back at camp 2.”

“It wasn’t a super smooth experience,” she continued. “None of them are.”

Perhaps the roughest part of the road came on Oct. 7, 2023. Metcalfe was at 25,100 feet on Shishapangma — going for her ninth 8,000-meter peak summit — when disaster struck. Anna Gutu and Metcalfe’s friend, Gina Rzucidlo, were racing up ‘Shish’ to try and become the first women to complete all 14. The developing dual convinced both to cut across the more hazardous northeast face instead of sticking to the ridge. Both triggered separate avalanches. Both died, along with two sherpas.

“Initially I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to Shishipanga. In all seriousness, I was like, maybe I’ll do 13 peaks. Because I wasn’t trying to gain fame or notoriety,” stated Metcalfe, who continued checking off peaks by summiting Lhotse in May 2024. She went up Gasherbrum 2 on July 22 and Gasherbrum 1 11 days later. On Aug. 8, she straddled the border of Pakistan and China atop Broad Peak. After three 8,000-meter peaks in 17 days, only Shishapangma remained.

When the opportunity to return to the site with friends who’d been there a year ago surfaced, Metcalfe committed. On Oct. 4, 2024, she reached the summit alongside half-a-dozen others who were also finishing their 14 peaks projects. For Metcalfe, completion was “personally rewarding” in large part because of how her project goal had “evolved over so many years.” In the end, the obstacles — physical, personal and professional — she overcame became the story within the story.

“It’s reminded me I’m not defined by my mistakes,” she said. “I’ve made mistakes in life and worked through a lot of things and was still able to finish this in a way I was proud of.” 

Metcalfe’s next mountain

Metcalfe’s next mountain isn’t physical, though she does want to try and climb Colorado’s Centenniel peaks and intends to race the Leadville 100 MTB next year. Her main mission now, however, is to give back. 

“Climbing, the project — it really is quite selfish,” she said. “So, anything I can do to use my story to inspire other people to find their own hard thing they want to do makes me feel better.”

Metcalfe opened her own internal medicine practice in June and said she’s still learning how to operate a business. In the face of setbacks, she holds fast to a new-found, altitude-acquired perspective on what it truly means to trust the process. She reminds herself she’s done hard things that “make life’s little aggravations minuscule by comparison.” After all, patience takes on a new meaning after enduring multiple climbing expeditions that are often years in the making. Plus, passions pursued with an open mind often transform the project as much as the person.

“It’s like, ‘OK Tracee, you don’t know where this is going to take you. You didn’t know when you first went to Denali or Everest, like, that you were going to accomplish this big thing with all 14,'” she said. “(I) try to take the lessons I learned from climbing where you just focus on the next mountain or the next right thing to do and try to have faith that things will work out.'”

In addition to her business, Metcalfe is facing down her fear of public speaking. She’s speaking at the Chautauqua Community House in Boulder on Nov. 12 at 7:30 p.m. And even though she admits not knowing how to write a book, she plans to put her story on paper to share the lessons she’s learned with others. In other words, she’s staying true to her ethos: Step beyond what feels safe and watch what unfolds.

“When you just keep trying to do hard things and believing in yourself, sometimes you have no idea what the outcome is, but it could be something really cool,” she said. “I want to encourage people to keep pushing themselves in the things they’re interested in.”

In a world where cookie-cutter careers and stepwise progressions are sought-after securities, Metcalfe’s message is to be OK veering out of the comfort zone. While the world says to stay in our lane, she said she wants people to know a rarely-discovered truth: The real magic happens when we continue to place ourselves in challenging situations, knowing all the while that our original goal sometimes morphs into something else. And that’s often the best part: New mountaintops are only reached by pushing the envelope.

“I really believe the universe, when we’re quiet and contemplative and looking at what doors are opening and closing, there’s really cool things that can happen,” she said. “But you have to be open to other ideas.”

“I do consider myself a mountaineer,” Metcalfe added. “Definitely — at this point.”