Mark Bennett: Reaching the summit 'a deeply spiritual experience'

May 28—Clinton

It started with a cottonwood tree in little Lindsay Zimmerman's rural Vermillion County yard decades ago.

Her older brother climbed the rope into the family's treehouse, then teasingly pulled the rope up before Lindsay got her chance.

So she shed her shoes, gripped the cottonwood's deep-grooved bark with her hands and feet, and climbed the trunk to the treehouse — no rope necessary.

That story became inspirational fuel for Lindsay years later. It came up during her toughest stretches of med school. It came up when she took her family's passion for mountain climbing to new heights.

In moments of doubt, she'd often phone her dad for advice.

"I'd say, 'Linds, you might want to take your shoes off,'" Les Zimmerman said, referring to his daughter's gutsy ascent up that cottonwood.

Lindsay kept her shoes on earlier this month when she climbed to the summit of the world's tallest peak, Mount Everest. (Actually, she wore boots equipped with ice-gripping spikes called crampons.)

Still, the metaphorical point of her childhood feat kept her going up the treacherous, 29,031-foot Himalayan mountain on the Tibet-Nepal border.

She overcame exhaustion from low oxygen levels, anxiety after a fellow climber developed COVID-19, and an injured knee. Yet, at 3:15 a.m. on May 15, Lindsay reached the top of the world.

A nearly full moon glowed overhead. A line of lights on the helmets of fellow climbers below snaked upward. Nepalese prayer flags propped in the icy snow fluttered in the subzero wind. A golden cultural statue shone in the moonlight. The skyline looked like a black-and-white photograph.

"It was like this carpet of clouds, with the moon glinting off it," Lindsay recalled Thursday afternoon, sitting with her parents, Les and Dr. Anna Zimmerman, in the family home north of Clinton.

Upon the summit, Lindsay hugged her Sherpa guide, Mingma Dorjee. "I had to choke back a couple of sobs," she said, to avoid an iced face. "It was so affirming, because I did it."

Her accomplishment capped a series of adventures dating back 13 years to Lindsay's first climb to the top of Granite Peak, the tallest point in Montana, with her dad. At least one member of the Zimmerman family — Les, Anna, Lindsay, her brother Jeff, sister Cassie Whitsett, their spouses and children — has climbed to the highest elevation in all 50 U.S. states. And Lindsay — now a 38-year-old Indianapolis emergency room physician and wife — has reached all Seven Summits, the highest mountains in each of the seven continents.

"We've done some cool stuff," Les said, nodding his head.

A burst of determination set their course. On a phone conversation in 2006, Les informed his daughter, "I want to climb a mountain before I die — a serious mountain," he recalled. Les was 58 then and a decade away from retiring after 30 years of operating Zimmerman Farm Nursery. Lindsay was 22.

Les enlisted a guide, bought gear he knew little about and set off for Granite Peak. They prepared in a climbing school and then climbed the 12,807-foot mountain. At one point, Lindsay nervously hugged a rock, wondering if she could continue. He told her, "Get your a** up that mountain." She did, and they did.

"We've always encouraged our kids to take risks," Les said Thursday. "Risks add spice to life."

Les, Lindsay and Anna laughed at the Granite Peak memory Thursday, as they sat around the dining room table, revisiting photographs and mementos from their climbing exploits. A paperback book about the highest points in every state contains a log of their climbs. Lindsay has reached 47 of those peaks, Les 43 and Anna — who is a bit more casual about the project — 35; Jeff, Cassie, Lindsay's husband Tony and the others have summited a few each. The toughest of the 50 was Denali in Alaska — North America's tallest mountain at 20,310 feet. Indiana's peak, Hoosier Hill near Richmond, is a more leisurely 1,257-foot jaunt. U.S. Geological Survey markers indicate each state's high point.

Reaching those American mountaintops inspire them. "It is a deeply spiritual experience," Les said.

"You're in kind of remote areas, and you get to feel what that state is really like," Anna said.

"Mountains recenter me," Lindsay said. "I find being on the mountains meditative."

In their basement, Les and Anna keep a small "shrine" to the family's 50-state high-pointer quest and their other mountaintop adventures, like a vial of "snow water" collected at Denali. The shrine also features items from Lindsay's Seven Summits feats. Those include rocks from the peaks, which include Denali (North America), Mount Everest (Asia), Mount Kilimanjaro (19,341 feet, Africa), Mount Elbrus (18,510 feet, Europe), Aconcagua (22,828 feet, South America), Kosciuszko (7,310 feet, Australia) and Mount Vinson Massif (16,050 feet, Antarctica).

After topping Australia's modest Kosciuszko — "a day hike," as Lindsay put it — Lindsay had reached six of the Seven Summits. Fewer than 600 climbers, including fewer than 100 women, have completed all seven, according to recent calculations. After Australia's summit, only Mount Everest remains for Lindsay.

Anna remembered initially telling her daughter, "Lindsay, people die on that mountain." Indeed, 311 climbers have died on Everest, according to EverestHistory.com. Lindsay told Anna she wasn't considering an Everest climb, but they all warmed up to the idea later.

"I had accomplished all of those. They were difficult, but I had met that challenge," Lindsay said. "[Mount Everest] was a challenge that I could fail, but it was a challenged I wanted to try."

She planned the climb for 2020 and began training in 2018, a regimen that included running marathons. The pandemic delayed her plan until this year. Once the time came, Lindsay traveled to Kathmandu, Nepal to begin the seven-week, five-day adventure.

Climbing Everest involves a 40-mile hike to the base camp, which lies 17,000 feet above sea level. The slow process helps climbers acclimate to the thin air. The vertical climb from base camp to the peak is another 12,000 feet. The "ice fall" between base camp and camp 1 is icy and treacherous, with crevasses leading to an abyss. "And you can't see the bottom," Lindsay said.

She was paired with Mingma Dorjee, her Sherpa guide, who'd reached Everest's summit 11 times before. His experience helped Lindsay overcome her two moments of doubt.

When her oxygen levels dropped because of the altitude, she wearied. Lindsay also thought about her possible exposure to a fellow climber that had to leave Everest after testing positive for COVID-19. She'd dealt with struggling COVID-19 patients in the emergency room through the pandemic, and that memory led to doubts about her own oxygen levels.

Then, Lindsay twisted her knee on a fall from a ladder.

"Those were the hardest parts of the entire journey, because I doubted myself," she said.

Mingma reminded her she'd be getting supplemental oxygen at the next higher-level camp. It worked. She felt invigorated. By the time Mingma spotted the peak and shouted, "Oh, it's right there," Lindsay was feeling strong.

"As we were getting close, it's like, 'Oh, my God, I did it,'" she said.

She was a long way from Indiana, where she'd grown up an outdoorsy bookworm who went through Ernie Pyle Elementary School in Dana, South Vermillion High School (a 2002 grad), Butler University and Indiana University Medical School.

A tear rolled down Les' cheek as his daughter described her Everest summit. He said Lindsay's story left him "happy and awed."

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.