Adam Hodges, right, is pictured with one of his Sherpas at the summit of Lobuche during his quest to climb Mount Everest this past spring.

One of Adam Hodges’ passions is the Rock Steady Boxing classes at Anderson Health and Fitness Center.

In 2019, Anderson Fitness began the boxing class geared toward Parkinson’s Disease patients, and Hodges, general manager at Anderson Fitness, grew close with the attendees. That closeness led to a desire to incorporate his love for mountain climbing into raising awareness for Parkinson’s Disease.

Ascent For A Cure was born, and Hodges decided to pursue a long-time goal of climbing Mount Everest. The trip was originally planned for 2020; the COVID-19 pandemic forced Hodges to delay his plans a year. In early April, Hodges finally began his journey and made it as far as Everest’s fourth camp before bad weather forced him to turn back just before going for the summit. 

Now, Hodges is back in Meridian helping run the Rock Steady program, and he said the feedback he’s gotten from the boxers helped make the journey rewarding.

“They were thrilled by the whole thing,” Hodges said. “They were all praying for me and are happy that I’m back. It meant a lot to them that this mountain climb was connected to the Parkinson’s program, and in terms of creating awareness for Parkinson’s it was totally successful. Even now I run into people I don’t know that tell me they followed my climb (online), so we were very successful in that regard.”

FIRST ROTATION

Hodges flew out of Meridian on April 11 and arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal, on April 13, spending a couple of days there before heading toward Everest on the Nepal side. At the time, Hodges said everything was normal in Kathmandu in regard to COVID-19, but that would change later during his time in the region.

From Kathmandu, Hodges flew to the Lukla airport and began the 10-day trek toward Everest’s base camp.

“It was amazing,” Hodges recalled. “That was probably my favorite part of the climb, the trek in, because every day you’d trek to a new village and cross a lot of suspension bridges — cable-supported bridges really high up, which was awesome. Every now and then you’d get a glimpse of some of the mountains, including Everest eventually.”

After arriving at base camp, which Hodges said is at approximately 17,000 feet in elevation, he and the group he was with spent several days resting before planning out its rotations.

“The way they climb Everest these days is you do a couple of rotations,” Hodges explained. “Your first rotation is you leave base camp and go through the Khumbu Icefall, which takes about seven hours and is one of the most dangerous parts of Everest. Then you get up to Camp 1, and from there we spent the night and went to Camp 2 and spent another day or two before we hiked to the base of the Lhotse Face, which is the bottom of the face where you go up to Camp 3, then we came all the way out, and that’s rotation one.”

SECOND ROTATION

Back at base camp, Hodges said the group decided to go to the Nepalese village Dingboche, approximately six or seven hours back down the mountain. 

“We spent four or five days just resting, and at that point you go back up the mountain and do it all over again, this time hoping to go all the way to the summit,” Hodges said. “This is where things get interesting. Things are going great, and we get back to base camp and are already aware they’re having a huge COVID outbreak in India, so we’re kind of avoiding the Indian climbers because we know what’s going on in India. We start hearing rumors it made its way into Kathmandu and up the Khumbu Valley to the mountain and even into base camp, and that was true. Shortly thereafter, some of the expeditions are shutting down and going home, and we’re worried the Nepalese government is going to shut everything down.”

Instead of shutting down the expedition, the group leaders sent them back up to Camp 2 at 22,000 feet above sea level.

“If you’re going to stay at that elevation for any extended period of time, it’s pretty rough,” Hodges said. “The first of two storm systems from India’s Bay of Bengal blows in, so we’re pretty much stranded at Camp 2 for eight days in a snowstorm at 22,000 feet.”

It was late May by this point, and the group was anticipating a weather window to make the summit. After eight days at Camp 2 they climbed to Camp 3 on the Lhotse Face.

“That was incredibly difficult because you spend basically an entire day climbing up an ice wall, and you get to the top and you have a tent that’s pretty much carved out of the edge of the ice wall, and that’s not a good place to be,” Hodges said. “So you spend the night there, and the next morning you can’t wait to get out because it doesn’t feel safe at all. You have stuff above you that can fall on you, and you can fall off this ice wall. To me, it’s one of the danger zones of Everest.”

It took about 10 hours the next day to make it to Camp 4, and despite hearing for two weeks the weather would be good for a summit push, the weather is terrible with winds blowing at 70 miles per hour, Hodges said. 

“I was really confused because I had been hearing about this window, and after all this time we have terrible weather,” Hodges said. 

A DIFFICULT DECISION 

After arriving at Camp 4 around 3 p.m., the Sherpa — Tibetan people renowned for their mountaineering skills who often lead Everest expeditions — leaders said they planned to push for the summit at midnight. 

“I’m super torn because the weather is bad, and I’m hearing from some of the other Sherpas they don’t like it, but it was my opportunity and one chance,” Hodges said. “I had invested all this time, energy and money to get to this point, and that was it.”

Hodges and the other climbers opted to wait until the next day to see if the weather improved, but at noon the next day, the weather hadn’t changed.

“My Sherpa, who had summited Mount Everest four times, I could tell he didn’t want to go,” Hodges said. “He had two young kids at home in his village, and I had family at home, so the dream kind of ended for me at that moment. We decided to come down, and once we did I was like, ‘I just want to get off this mountain and get out of all these dangerous areas and get back to base camp.”

After climbing back down to base camp, Hodges remained there for several days before catching a helicopter back to Kathmandu. When he arrived at Kathmandu, the city was entirely shut down due to COVID-19, something Hodges described as surreal. Eventually, Hodges flew back home to the United States.

“I have no regrets,” Hodges said. “I don’t feel like I made the wrong decision. Up until that point the risk was a controlled risk, but at Camp 4 it felt like it was too risky. I was aware of all the stories of things that can happen higher on the mountain, especially weather-related events, and it just didn’t make sense to me. It was hard. It was a tough call.”

ROCK STEADY

Doug Hawkins was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2019 and began attending the Rock Steady classes in August that year. The class size grew from approximately 15 to 30 people before the COVID-19 pandemic started, forcing the class to be put on hiatus.

A year later and with attendees vaccinated, Hawkins and the others have returned to regular Rock Steady workouts. When he learned of Hodges’ plan to climb Everest and his linking it to Parkinson’s awareness, Hawkins said he was touched by Hodges’ dedication to him and his fellow Parkinson’s patients.

“When he came up and told us he was going to do that, everyone’s face lit up,” Hawkins said. “It’s really cool and special that he would include the Rock Steady group in his journey, knowing it was something he wanted to do and how he wanted to take us along in his journey. It has its challenges, just like all the Parkinson’s folks have challenges, so it was meaningful that he would do something like that.”

Hawkins said, though, that climbing Everest to raise awareness is just one of several ways Hodges has made a difference to him and his fellow Rock Steady attendees.

“There’s no telling what my status would physically and mentally if he hadn’t started the Rock Steady class here,” Hawkins said. “It’s meant the world to me and several other people I know. It’s really helped me out, not just physically but mentally, too. It basically helps us fight back against a disease there’s no cure for. It’s really special what Adam has done and what all of his team does for us.” 

FUTURE PLANS 

Hodges’ goal is to climb the tallest peak on each of the world’s seven continents, and he’s already done so in North and South America and Europe. Currently, Hodges is considering climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.

“I think I have a way to do that with the locals there, which will keep the cost down, so it’d be good to go ahead and get that experience and get that summit climbed,” Hodges said.

Hopefully, that will happen sometime this fall, Hodges said. 

“It’s a high mountain but nothing like climbing Everest, and the price is reasonable,” Hodges said.

While he didn’t reach the summit of Everest this past May, Hodges said he hasn’t closed the door on attempting it again somewhere down the road. In early August, Hodges said he messaged his Sherpa in Nepal inquiring about the future of climbing the world’s tallest mountain.

“I could see myself going back to Everest in two years and trying again,” Hodges said. “I do want to try. I know I can do it and know what it’s like up to the point where I had to turn back. I’d like to try it one more time.”