Megan Rath ’98 has always been an athlete. She was on the field hockey, swimming, and lacrosse teams at Loomis Chaffee and played lacrosse at Penn State her junior and senior years. She has done triathlons and Half Ironmans, a grueling swim-bike-run combo of more than 70 miles; and is an avid golfer. 

But she never envisioned she would climb not only Mount Everest, but each of the Seven Summits, the highest mountain on each of the continents. It’s a quest she began in 2018 and completed this fall. 

“I always wanted to see Everest, but hadn’t thought of climbing it,” she said in an an interview in October. “I think I had a poster of Everest in my dorm room my senior year, ironically. But I can’t tell you I knew I was going to climb it. If you had told me in high school that I was going to climb Everest, I would have said, ‘Really, huh, that’s interesting. Really? OK.’” 

It’s real, all right. Not only Everest (Asia), but Kilimanjaro (Africa), Elbrus (Europe), Vinson (Antarctica), Denali (North America), Aconcagua (South America), and Carstensz Pyramid (Oceania). That is more than 142,000 feet of total elevation. That’s about four times higher than airplanes fly. There are no exact figures, but only about 500 people in the world have scaled the Seven Summits. About 100 were women. 

Megan did five of the seven climbs after multiple knee surgeries. She basically has no cartilage left in her kneecaps, she said. At some point she will need transplants, but more than once she has said, “Today is not that day.” Yesterday wasn’t either. After all those surgeries — one in 2020 and four in 2022 — her doctor gave her two years to complete the Seven Summits. So, she did five between December 2022 and October of this year, two each in 2023 and 2024. 

“It has been the journey of my life,” Megan said. And all because one day in 2016 she met a woman from New Delhi while hiking into the base camp of Mount Everest. Megan was between jobs, so she decided to do the hike while she had the time. Hiking from Lukla Airport, known for its high altitude, short runway, and unpredictable weather, to base camp and back takes about two weeks. The woman told Megan she was doing the Seven Summits. Megan had never heard of it. But that got her thinking. Why not? The uphill battle would begin. 

“If I hadn’t met her, my life would be completely different,” Megan said. “She fundamentally changed my entire life, so it was pretty incredible to have a chance encounter on some random day, and you start chit-chatting with someone, and they change the trajectory of your life.” 

As Megan said, each of the mountains was challenging in its own way. Everest and Denali were the most challenging, but Denali especially tested her. Denali, which she climbed in 2023, took about three weeks; there were four on her team and two guides. 

“After each one you learn and you get better, and you go on to the next one that is more challenging,” Megan said. “It’s one of those lines you learn along the way: ‘It never gets easier — you only get stronger and faster.’ But Denali, that mountain, it changed me. It literally took everything I had to get that done. Everything is so heavy ... you have 50 pounds on the back ... 75 in the sled.” 

Nearly all Denali climbers bring along a sled to help them move heavy loads of food and equipment on the lower glacier. The backpack and sled contain such things as clothing layers, food and snacks, group gear, tents, cooking equipment, gas, and group food.   

“Day in and day out you’re moving, the weather’s fierce,” Megan said. “Denali is hard, and it is high, around 20,000 feet, and I ended up with frostbite. It’s real; it’s not for the faint of heart."  

That year, only 31 percent of attempts to climb Denali were successful. "And we were one of those teams,” she said. “That alone, we feel like we hit the lottery. It was pretty amazing.” 

About a week after climbing Denali, Megan came to Loomis for her 25th Reunion, no worse for the wear. Imagine the look on classmates’ faces after they asked her, “So what have you been up to lately?”  

Training for the climbs was intense. Megan lives in Philadelphia, so she does much of her training indoors. For Denali, she worked out six days a week, doing a combination of biking, swimming, strength conditioning, treadmill training, walks outside. Oh, and sometimes more than four hours on the stair-climber set on the toughest level with 50 pounds on her back. Try that one some time. 

Megan has had success in her professional career, which has allowed her to work the climbs into her schedule and pay for them. If climbing these mountains is not for the faint of heart, neither is the cost of doing so.  

All of the climbs allow a select few to see things most of us can only imagine. 

“You’re in the most remote places in the world, so to be so remote, in the middle of nowhere, is pretty amazing, wild and free,” Megan said. 

Everest, she said, is “nothing short of wow. ... once the sun comes up and you can see the ridge line — you are humbled and full of gratitude. So much of the experience has to do with your guides and the people on your team.” 

A climb of this magnitude also is an emotional journey. There is the satisfaction of overcoming the odds, knowing you put the time in for a reason. 

“The self-respect, the discipline, the consistency, the meaning, you actually find it on the way, not at the top,” Megan said. “It's like the journey-is-worth-the-destination conversation. ... Can you thrive and not just survive? Can you hang with the best in the world? And that was exciting for me.” 

The final summit, Carstensz, was satisfying not only because it completed the seven, but also because it had been closed for five years because of political unrest in Western Papua. “They opened it literally for a month, and I got it done,” she said. “I got the call on a Thursday — we’re doing it — and I left on a Monday. It’s on the other side of the world.” 

She stays in touch with the woman she met that day while hiking into the base camp on Mount Everest eight years ago. “I have called her after each climb,” Megan said. “I just talked to her after I came back from Carstensz. I told her this summer how rich my life is and how she changed the trajectory of my life with our chance meeting.” 

Megan said one of the best things about climbing these mountains is that you have to be 100 percent present in the moment. “If you start thinking about something else and you’re not focused, you can make a mistake and you can get hurt or die,” she said. “You have to really stay in the moment, no distractions, so I think that piece is incredible. ... Every step — you're focused on that step ... Every moment you have to think about where you are putting your feet, where your hands are, and every step takes so much energy because you’re carrying so much weight.” 

As rewarding as climbing these mountains is, there’s an added benefit. 

“The people you meet along the way. ... My life is so rich now because of the people in it,” Megan said. “I feel like the richest girl in the world, literally, to have everything I’ve ever searched for in my life and to have incredible people in my life.”  

When Megan thinks back to her Loomis days, she said she believes “everything builds on itself.” For her, she says, so much of life is about consistency and discipline. Motivation might come and go, she said, “but for me it’s always discipline. ... At Loomis there are times you don’t want to go to practice or you might not want to go to class, but sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do to get to where you want to go. It’s really that simple.” 

A mindset that you can climb every mountain. 

The dates of Megan’s climbs: Kilimanjaro, January 2018; Elbrus, July 2019; Vinson, December 2022; Denali, May 2023; Aconcagua, December 2023; Everest, May 2024; Carstensz Pyramid, October 2024