Masha Gordon, mother of two, broke the record for Fastest Woman to Complete Explorer’s Grand Slam with a little help from Sharpie Extreme. After discovering her knack, or passion, for mountaineering while on maternity leave in her mid-30s; years later she would transform that passion into an ability that would help her break a record participating in an excursion less than 50 people have ever completed.
Not even two-weeks later [the excursion was completed June 11th and we met June 23rd] we got together to chat about her life climbing the highest peaks, going from failing P.E. to setting a world record, and how the durability and high-contrast ink of Sharpie Extreme that resists fading in the most dire weather conditions maintained the familial mementos that provided constant encouragement during her journey.
Why are you doing this, is the first thing?
I was completely non-sporty, growing up. I was never an athletic, I failed PE at school. I remember freezing in front of gym horse, thinking, “Oh my god, what is that?” I couldn’t run, I couldn’t do anything. I worked on Wall Street for many years, behind the desk, but in my mid-thirties I tried out climbing in the Alps and I loved the feeling of attainment. I loved the feeling of freedom. When you rock climb, you can’t think of anything else but the next move up and it’s actually switching to an activity that’s very, very intense, but away from what you do liberates you. It’s like doing a move in yoga.
I also fell in love with adventure. When you do mountaineering, and you do climbing, or you’re just outdoors, you feel very free. You wake up during the moonshine, at 2 in the morning you walk on a glacier, you’re at the summit and you feel you’ve achieved something, although what have you achieved? You’ve climbed a mountain, right, but it’s a feeling of just this happy hormones going through your body.
I worked full-time, but I had the dream of climbing Everest, but it seemed very daunting. I was never athletic. I remember admitting to a guy in a work function, who climbed as well, he was like, “What do you to do?” “Oh, I want to climb Everest.” He looked me up and down and was like, “You better start soon,” and I thought it was such a misogynistic thing but in a way it was audacious, right?
To get to climb Everest, you had to break the problem into pieces, and the pieces were high altitude, cold, endurance. I went on the first expedition, which wasn’t complicated technically, but it was a 24,000 peak in Argentina. I discovered that I was actually the only one who summited and I was actually good. When you fail PE at school and that happens to you, you feel like wow, that’s cool. I was with this American guide, who said, “Oh, you’re bad ass.” I was like, “What is bad ass?” I need to look it up.
It’s actually amazing. You never know when you’re going to get your confidence boost from, but someone cool gives you a compliment that is completely outside of your comfort zone, you think, “Wow, I can do that. What should I do next?” Inspiration arose throughout the way of this journey. In the fall of last year, I never obviously thought of myself as an endurance athlete, but I thought, if I ski to the South Pole, which sounds daunting, but I was doing a peak there, and if I do the North Pole, and if I repeat three peaks, boy, I can beat the world record for becoming the fastest female.
Again, from someone who was not athletic, the very notion that you can have a Guinness Book of Records endurance challenge was amazing. Part of it I think is just doing something you didn’t expect yourself to do, but I think that you enjoy doing. By that time, I really enjoyed climbing. Then I have two kids and to be able to do something remarkable in the world of adventure that my 6 and 8 year old could relate, it was amazing as well. I guess a combination of all three, but I probably, during my work life, was competitive. Once you get in that spirit, it’s a competition against yourself; can I do this?
What were the seven mountains that you climbed?
I climbed the highest peak in every continent, so in Africa, Kilimanjaro. In South America, it will be Aconcagua. Here in North America, it’s Denali, or used to call McKinley. Everest in Asia, Carstensz Pyramid in West Papua in Indonesia, Elbrus in Russia. These were the peaks. Then I did the last degree, so I skied from the 89th degree to the 19th degree, which is about 60 nautical miles, to the North Pole and South Pole.
Oh, wow! How long did it take you to do all? In what span of time?
Previous record, for a female it was 11 months, and I did it in 7 months and 19 days, so I cut the record by 3 months.
That’s insane.
It was actually less insane than it sounds because some of those mountains I did when I was already pre-acclimatized, so I was able to do for example, Kilimanjaro in 24 hours. Normally you’d say a weeklong expedition, but I was acclimatized, so it’s a walk up, but I enjoyed it. The same with Elbrus. I did a winter, but I was pre-acclimatized where the window for the right weather was just for 48 hours and that’s what I did. Everest, we did within 3 weeks, which again is very fast, but again, I was acclimatized. With all of these high altitude peaks, the key is to have your body already stressed for altitude and then it is about just putting one foot in front of the other.
I feel as if this is actually quite daunting. I feel like you’re doing the Iron Man where it all happens at one time, or during Tour de France. What kept you motivated?
I’m competitive, so for me it was … Again, it was a competition often just with yourself; can I do it? I love mountains, and throughout the past year and a half, I developed a community. You arrive to a base camp and you know you have people there, because it’s guides and friends and people who are doing the mountains. In a way, it became seeing your friends and enjoying doing stuff that you do. There were points I broke my wrist in the middle of the challenge, and there it was just … I was incredibly upset and bitter, but I said well, the next mountain I was doing I’d done it before, I can do it with a cast. It’s not a big deal and if I go with the right partner, I’m going to be all right.
Was someone there to fix your wrist, or did you keep going?
I broke it completely. I had a Colles fracture.
You just kept going until you were done?
I broke the wrist off those mountains.
Okay, good. Not good, but you know.
No, it was not during the challenge. It was in the time when the challenge was.
Did you take any sort of mementos with you? I don’t ever really get homesick, but there are certain things that I have to have with me to remind me of my mom or my sister.
My mementos are there. These guys at Sharpie Extreme gave me this great opportunity. I’ve inscribed it; I’ll show you. Inscribing my trucker hat. My son inscribed my trucker hat with this amazing, “I love you mummy,” and it was a helicopter because he’s dreaming to be a helicopter pilot. He wanted me to know that he could come and rescue me should there be a problem. I had my [inaudible 00:07:18] picture that was in a pack that I opened on the summit of Denali, which was amazing and that kind of felt gosh. My kids inscribed my boots. Your boots will freeze and be covered with snow but seeing the love heart there, that was very good. That was sweet. You take pictures. The thing is also when I did social media back, like Instagram. My kids could see their object in my Instagram and feel that they were part of the journey.
This may be stupid on my part, but I feel as if in cartoons, whenever they get at the highest peak, they leave something to be like, I was here. Did you ever do anything like that?
You actually can’t do that. On Denali, it’s leave no trace. You just have to take everything off the mountain. I took a few stones from Everest. “I’m here, it’s pretty amazing wouldn’t that be great for my kids to have?” Obviously I gave it to them and they lost the stones. He was like, “Yeah. I left it in the pottery class.” Average people bring Para flags or they bring mementos to leave it there. In a way I may have lost these live down traits because the key point is about keeping the moment and keeping that memory and that’s what you really keep. To be honest, by the time you’re on the summit, you’re so cold, you’re so knackered, you just want to get down. People talk about this great summit moments.
I remember arriving to Everest summit. It was a very crowded day because it’s a weather window and 200 people go up. We took over a lot of people on the way up. You crank up oxygen flow and you’re able to go a bit faster. All I could think about was it’s going to be really dangerous coming down. 80% of accidents occur on the way down. You just think, “I just want to get the hell out of here and go to a place where there’s more oxygen and where I’m safe.” You realize that your life could just slip away.
That’s quite scary. Can I ask about your training? What did you do to get in shape for this?
It was continuous. I didn’t do anything specific for this, but I remained active with doing very long walks either on skis up the mountains or in the mountains.
Do you live near mountains?
I spend part of the year in the French Alps. I would drop off my son in the rugby game in London, and that’s a two-hour rugby practice on a big hill in a park in Hampstead Heath and I would go running and walking for the full two hours. In UK, it’s bad weather most of the time, so kids would play in this horrible rain and I would force myself, instead of going to a coffee shop, to go in and walk. The key skill you have to have in the elements is being able to cope with bad weather. The great training is that low intensity, long duration walks that you do and then you can extend.
A big aspect of that is also quite in your mind because it is about your mind telling you, you can’t do it, but you can’t. I started listening to podcasts. Podcasts are great. There are amazing podcasts that interview climbers and adventurers. You wouldn’t have mentioned, before I started listening to them, what people do for the challenges. There are lots of crazy people. You think, “Wow. This is really cool.” They all recount questions are what’s the hardest point? How do you overcome that? Actual listening to those stories helps you then deal with your own points of, “I can’t do it anymore.”
Once you’re done, you know like the recovery period, what did you do during that recovery period?
Recovery period is very important and it’s actually very important not to do anything to be honest, because you need to allow you body … So when you come off the mountain, your body swells. It’s probably been beaten up; it has been dehydrated or denied of water. You need to allow your body to flash out toxins and to come back to normal way of no water retention. Your feet often are, not covered with blisters as such, but they are beaten down so it’s important to actually do very little – hydrate, eat. You retake your activities a week or two later.
How did you juggle doing this and also spending time with your kids? They obviously seem very important to you.
This year I took my kids out of school in London and I put them in school in Chamonix in the French Alps. They’ve been exposed to French but I thought, if I put them in a school which is a town where there’s a lot of English Speakers but it’s a French town, they could pick up the language, they could pick up culture. Sure they did. They now demand cheese as a course. In a way, I put my kids in a zone of discomfort for being covered, but I was with them so I could train in the mornings while they were at school and then do fun stuff, ski with them or snowboarding, it was the winter, or so walks. That was a way of not being away from them that much because I used Chamonix as a base to go back and forth.
It’s about discipline. Before I go, I make sure that all the checks are paid, the birthday parties that are upcoming we have presents for them. It’s about having good health. We have fantastic childcare. The person who’s been with us for 8 years and again, I owe it to her as much as I owe it to my husband and having a supportive partner. My husband understood that it was once in a lifetime thing for me, it was important and he went with that.