photo credit: Courtesy of Nicole Santiago
Nicole Santiago climbing in the Himalaya in May 2026.

Have you ever imagined what it’s like climbing to almost 30,000 feet?

A Napa Valley mountaineer did just that as the first Puerto Rican woman to summit Mount Everest.

Mariah Gragg speaks with Nicole Santiago. 

GRAGG: With a 29,000-foot summit, how do you prepare for a trip like that? What does your backpack look like? What are you carrying? What are you wearing? 

SANTIAGO: So preparing for a trip like that, there's a lot of physical training. There's a lot of gear that you need to make sure that you have. I mean, if you're starting from scratch–which you shouldn't be starting from scratch if you're climbing Everest–but the amount of gear that you need is probably about $15,000 worth of gear alone, which I've accumulated throughout the years. So there wasn't too much new gear I needed. And the amount of stuff that you bring with yourself is…I had two large duffel bags full of gear, because mountaineering gear is big, it needs to be able to withstand up to negative 50 degrees below. And so  I have lots of big parkas and sleeping bags and duffels that just are full of really warm, resistant gear that keeps me safe in extreme temperatures. 

GRAGG: For the ascent…how much of it was you're walking up versus you’re ascending?

SANTIAGO: Mountaineering skills on ropes and whatnot? So the climb to Mount Everest actually starts in Lukla with the trek and the trek starts at about 7,000 feet. And so you can't just go into base camp and climb Everest because Everest base camp is at 17,000 feet. And if you started there, you would immediately get altitude sickness. So you have to start at 7,000 feet and slowly trek your way into base camp. And that took me about two weeks. The trek, you're ascending about 2,000 feet every couple days and then you, whenever you get to that higher altitude, you need to take an acclimation day and just let your body, let your blood cells acclimatize to that new altitude. So then once you get to base camp, it doesn't feel as strenuous and as hard on your body.

People still get altitude sickness even when they do that, but it's giving your body the best chance of being able to withstand it. So once you're at base camp, then you start to do acclimatization climbs up and down the mountain so that you feel even more comfortable being at 29,000 feet. This year, the mountain was closed 19 days longer than it normally takes to open, which basically meant that the mountain was only open for like two and a half weeks to, to summit Everest. And because of that, it, I mean, this was the longest in 25 years it took the mountain to open. And so I ended up going to two different mountains to do all my acclimatization climbs so that when the mountain finally opened, I was able to just go straight for the summit.

GRAGG: Why was it closed that long?

SANTIAGO: So one of the first parts of the climb to get to the top of Everest is the climb from base camp to Camp 1. That portion is called the Khumbu Icefall. And when you go through the Khumbu Icefall. it's actually one of the most dangerous parts of the entire climb. The very beginning. Yeah. And it's so dangerous because you're going over glaciers that have cracks that are 100, 200 feet vertical in between those cracks. There's seracs, which are basically like these big massive ice towers that are hanging over the route that you're going. And so the route was closed because there was this massive ice tower that was right in the way of where the route needed to be placed. If that ice tower was there, it could fall at any time and people would die. And so they were waiting for it to fall before they created the route..

GRAGG:  I remember when you were talking about the Khumbu Icefall, that there's like a ladder portion. Can you explain that ladder situation?

SANTIAGO: Yeah. So there's tons of glaciers and in those areas where the glaciers are, sometimes it's just a small crack where you can just jump over it a couple feet wide. But there's other areas where the crack is the size of your entire garage, or even wider. And if that's the case, the only way to pass it is to attach ladders together horizontally and put them across the crack so you can walk across the ladders to get to the other side. And so the largest crack took five ladders all attached together in order to pass that area. So it was very dangerous. And then when you're on that ladder and you're walking, you just look down and it's just nothing. I mean, it's just complete, you know, hundreds of feet of looking down into nothing. Yeah. So, um, super dangerous. And I actually didn't know this until I started training on a ladder course, but I wear a size six shoe.And so from one ladder  to the other, the posts, my feet were not big enough to be able to step onto the ladder like everyone else, because most people can just like step. I actually had to go across the ladder on my tippy toes because the back of my foot didn't fit on the back of the ladder.

GRAGG: You're surely tied into something?

SANTIAGO: They have two horizontal ropes on both sides of the ladder. But if you fall, I mean, you're just gonna be dangling. I mean, you won't hit the bottom, but it's not gonna be easy to get back up.

GRAGG: I saw this video of you walking from your tent to the bathroom and you had to start doing these breathing exercises because it was literally just hard to do that. Is that what the oxygen mask is for so that you don't get winded just trying to go from point A to point B?

SANTIAGO: When you're walking from your tent to your bathroom and you're winded just doing that, you can imagine how hard it is to actually just climb. Yeah. And so, um, part of what I started doing when I was training is even though I feel like I'm gonna hyperventilate and I don't have enough air to breathe, I just tell myself there's enough air, just breathe as slow as I possibly can. 'Cause the faster you breathe, the less oxygen you're actually getting. But it makes you feel like you're breathing. You know, it makes you feel psychologically like, oh, I'm getting more breath if I just breathe faster. But the opposite is happening. So I try my absolute best to take super deep breaths even though I feel like I can't do it. That really helps, especially trying to breathe through my nose as much as I can as well.

GRAGG: How do you cope with really intense feelings of discomfort and especially when you're climbing like, “I don't know if I can breathe right now.” How do you get through that?

SANTIAGO: I would say the hardest part wasn't the physical climb. It was the mental and spiritual shift I had to make. I remember I was lying in my tent at base camp right after breakfast. My feet were my sleeping bag. From my tent window, I can see the Khumbu ice fall. And I was surrounded by these posters from all the local schools that had drawn pictures that said like, "You can do it. We believe in you." And I just, it was so strange because I didn't feel like that at all. I just broke down sobbing and it wasn't that I didn't think I could do the physical part. It was that I didn't mentally think that I belonged there, that I was worthy. And I just started sobbing and I remember thinking, "I'm gona waste all my toilet paper if I don't stop crying." Um, but it was my biggest fear that, you know, I was around all these other people who I thought were better than me. I felt so alone. And I was surrounded by people in tents all around me, but they all had their headphones on. And in that moment, I realized that I was carrying this deep, like, deep belief that I wasn't worthy. I didn't belong. So I forced myself to say it out loud. I'm worthy. I'm deserving to be on top of the world. And I just kept saying it until I finally believed it, like, deep inside. And in that moment, my whole body felt lighter because I just released that, that something that had really been holding me back my whole life.

GRAGG: You had a moment on ‘Everest Live’ where you had said you felt like you didn't belong, you're the only woman. Were you the only woman in the entire group?

SANTIAGO: There were 22 climbers in the company that I was with, and there was only one other woman. 

GRAGG: Do you have any words for people struggling with imposter syndrome? 

SANTIAGO:  You know, it's interesting because it's something I've struggled with my whole life. And it took me being in nature alone, away from all the noise of the world for two months for me to finally get to a place where I could battle those demons inside me. You know, when I summited, it was like 2:00 AM pitch black. I couldn't see a single thing. It was negative 20 degrees. And I was afraid of frostbite, so I had my gloves on and, and every inch of my face was, like, covered. And I had this realization when I was on the top…the first thing I felt was the accumulation of 16 years of thinking, could I possibly do this? And that maybe I could, but it was just overwhelming. And I pulled out my Puerto Rican flag and the United States flag. And holding that at 29,032 feet didn't feel like it was just me up there. It felt like I was every single person who had believed in me, supported me and had reached out with a kind word. I didn't feel alone. And that's what the summit really was about for me, was changing who belongs there. Fewer than 0.4% of people that are Everest summiters are women over 40. And so being the first Puerto Rican woman to stand on the mountain to hold that sign, that was the way of me challenging the assumptions we make about age, about gender, about ethnicity, about what's possible, because if I can do it, anyone can climb their mountain too.