Even throughout Antarctica’s warmest months, the temperature on Mount Vinson Massif plummets to -40°F, a chilly made worse by katabatic winds exceeding 40 miles per hour. Severe storms are widespread, and the fierce austral solar pierces the mountaineers’ eyes as they plod towards the massif’s summit at 16,050 ft. “The environment is relentless—there’s no place to shelter or hide yourself from the elements,” says Erin Parisi. “The wind is strong enough to throw your body and gear, and can make it dangerous to move on a rope team or with a sled.”
In 2021, Parisi skilled the mountain’s brutality firsthand when she headed to Vinson in her quest to be the primary brazenly transgender individual to climb the Seven Summits—the tallest mountain on every continent. On Christmas Day, she remembers a number of groups struggling to the touch the highest. All turned again besides one. That group returned “with some of the worst frostbite I’ve ever seen: black fingers, toes, and parts of their hands and feet,” Parisi says.
Still, she continued, motivated by how few trans position fashions there are within the outside. If she might attain the Vinson summit, she may very well be the inspiration for others she by no means had. “I had spent a lifetime looking for stories of trans Antarctic explorers, trans divers, trans cyclists, and I never found them,” Parisi says. “When I was growing up, I realized how much people are keeping positive trans stories out of public libraries—all these books about trans joy were being banned.”
After six days on the ice—hauling a 60-pound pack on her again and dragging a 60-pound sled, trudging throughout ice towards Mount Vinson’s apex, Parisi reached the summit on December 26. With her, she carried her trusty Petzl Summit Evo ice axe, which had turn into her fixed companion after an earlier hand damage on Denali. Even although she is an skilled alpinist and took precautions, she had suffered not solely windburn and sunburn but in addition frostbite on her lips, nostril, palms, toes and fingertips.
Even so, on the summit, she danced and yelled in pleasure: Then she unfurled the trans pleasure flag, took celebratory images together with her group, and at last sunk her ice axe within the snow.
This June, Parisi served because the keynote speaker at an worker recognition occasion at REI headquarters in Seattle. She shared her transition story with the rapt viewers and in addition opened up about her struggles—the challenges she confronted in scaling 5 of the Seven Summits to date and the abuse she has endured not solely as a trans individual but in addition as a trans individual within the outside.
At Parisi’s aspect was her trusty aluminum and metal ice axe, which she donated for induction into the Co-op Living Archive, a set of traditionally and culturally important items of REI historical past.
“To me,” says Parisi, “the ice axe is a symbol of the final thing that keeps me safe. It’s a piece of protection you carry and place to secure; it’s the way to arrest a fall from extending into a ‘death slide’; and in a crevasse fall, it’s often the piece of gear you place to anchor your rescue system,” Parisi says. For Parisi’s further security, the axe is engraved with the initials E.E. as an alternative of E.P. to guard her trans id throughout worldwide travels. “I think for me, it is often a metaphor for the mental safety that being able to properly express my authenticity has provided.”
At the induction ceremony, the viewers gave Parisi a standing ovation; among the many attendees have been her spouse and daughter, whom she proudly gave shoutouts to. “There were tears,” Jenny Avalos, REI program supervisor of inclusion advertising and marketing partnerships, says. “I was crying, and everyone around me was crying, during her speech and presentation.”
Parisi’s ice axe joins three different pioneering girls mountaineers’ ice axes within the archive: REI co-founder Mary Anderson; former REI president and CEO Sally Jewell, who went on to function President Obama’s secretary of the inside; and REI Member Catherine Perman, the primary lady to work within the Juneau ice fields when glaciology was a brand new (and male-dominated) subject of examine.
“The ice axe collection is about powerful women in the outdoors,” says Will Dunn, historian for the REI Co-op Living Archive, who’s thrilled that these artifacts carry gentle to the hidden legacy of girls and queer folks within the outside. “The cool thing about the collection, he says, is that it shows that these athletes have been here for a long time. “They exist, and this is not a new thing.” Anderson, in spite of everything, was mountaineering within the Nineteen Thirties.
For her half, Parisi is proud that REI is spreading her message of trans pleasure. “I fought tooth and nail to be recognized as a woman in the world,” Parisi says. “It’s huge to have a company that’s progressive enough to understand the challenges that I’ve faced and the struggle I’ve gone through,” she says.
Parisi grew up close to Buffalo, New York, with 4 brothers. She was outdoorsy and athletic from youth and grew to like backcountry snowboarding with a lesbian aunt with whom she shares a powerful bond. Today she ski mountaineers, snowboards, mountain bikes, rucks and backpacks. She has mountain-biked down a number of the fiercest mountains throughout the western United States, the Andes, the Canadian Rockies, western British Columbia and Iceland. While she says she’s removed from fearless, the expedition climber thrives on problem, fixed adrenaline, and conditions requiring toughness and endurance.
The Seven Summits felt like a pure subsequent problem for Parisi after she achieved powerful backcountry snowboarding routes and climbing pitches. “The challenge combines everything I want, plus a personal growth aspect,” Parisi says. “I wanted a big expedition that I could grow from in multiple ways: from training to traveling to foreign places to being roped together with a team for weeks.”
Since beginning her pursuit in 2018, Parisi has summited mounts Kosciuszko, Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Aconcagua and Vinson Massif, in that order. Only two peaks stay for Parisi to climb, and they’re huge: Denali, at 20,310 ft, and Everest, at 29,031 ft. (And she doesn’t have the funding but to climb Everest.)
Being a trans lady can add difficult, intersectional layers to outside endeavors. For occasion, Parisi skilled a lack of muscle mass after beginning hormone remedy, making it harder to climb Kilimanjaro in 2018 than it had been on her pretransition climb years prior.
“My body had changed quite a bit, and I was still figuring it all out,” Parisi says. “I didn’t have the strength I used to have, so physically I had to be smarter with how I trained and to train differently, and I had to get smarter about how I carried (weight) and the way I use my energy.”
There have been different challenges that brought about her anxiousness. Kilimanjaro is situated in Tanzania, a rustic the place homosexuality is outlawed, even in non-public. In order to guide the identical tour operator she’d beforehand used, she claimed to be her pretransitioned self’s cousin. That protecting defend labored, however then she observed that she was handled in another way as a lady than as a person. Despite these setbacks, she knew she needed to summit post-transition to finish her Seven Summits journey, although she’d already made it to the height earlier than.
Inclusion sounds fantastic, and although we might think about ourselves to be extra progressive within the United States, Parisi has been bodily assaulted twice within the U.S. “One triggered me starting the Seven Summits, and I don’t speak about it frequently,” she says. After getting back from Australia’s Mount Kosciusko, she was assaulted a second time exterior a bar in Denver, within the state that has been residence since 2002.
“The first couple peaks after [the assault], I was angry,” she says. Combine that with the truth that it was technically unlawful for her to be within the nations the place the second and third peaks are situated, and a bigger downside turns into evident.
In locations reminiscent of Russia, she has had a wierd, helpless feeling of standing on a summit, privately celebrating her feat as a trans lady, whereas understanding that elsewhere within the nation, homosexual and trans folks and activists have been being jailed and even killed.
Parisi grapples with the violence towards herself and different queer and trans folks. She discovered some solace in establishing her nonprofit group, TranSending, which not solely helps her ascents but in addition funds outside actions for gender-nonconforming youngsters, providing them the flexibility to really feel accepted and free amongst their friends.
Reaction to Parisi’s climbing has been combined. “Half the time, I get hate mail telling me how I should die outdoors and my body should never be found,” she says. “For every thousand of those people telling me to die someplace cold, I get one person sending a note about how I encourage them.”
Though Parisi isn’t positive she sees herself as a job mannequin, messages about how she’s impressed others provide her encouragement amid the unfavorable or hateful messages. “Putting my axe into [the co-op’s] archive is almost like an act of rebellion or an act of allyship that tells a powerful story,” she says. “The way that society right now is bending to try to exclude trans people and queer stories is to attack our ability to tell our stories in a positive light. REI is doing a great job with that, and that’s ultimately the best way to encourage people to feel and be themselves.”
But Parisi additionally has motivation within the type of competitors. Recently she acquired an electronic mail from a trans youth in Paris who informed her they’re going to beat her in climbing all Seven Summits.
“Please do! I want the competition,” Parisi replied. “Nothing would make me happier—I just want to see it done.”
The publish Erin Parisi’s Quest to Climb the Seven Summits and Spread Trans Joy appeared first on Uncommon Path – An REI Co-op Publication.