MS advocate Jen Willis knows from experience that anything can go wrong on Mount Everest. But now — almost three years later — her appetite for experience is stronger than ever and ready for her second attempt at the summit. (Image: Jen Willis)
By Mia Handley | @miaj1428
In the death zone on Mount Everest, the body stops responding.
At almost 8000 metres high, it creates the perfect storm — cell regeneration ceases, the body slips into pure depletion, and nothing renews.
Snow should be everywhere, soft peaks creating a winter wonderland, but savage winds have stripped the landscape to jagged rocks and ice.
For Australian mountaineer Jen Willis, it led to a night of total devastation.
“Mine was the highest tent in the world that night, and I was just in there on my own, crying all night,” she says.
She says her guide told her that her bottled oxygen had gone missing and there were not enough reserves to push her to the summit.
Jen was sitting in a pile of climbing gear as the tent panels flapped in the wind, and her hands ached from the cold.
A jaundiced light leaked through; beyond her shelter’s walls, her only company was her sherpa and the ghosted tents of climbers who had left her behind.
Jen at almost 8000 metres that night in the South Col. (Image: Jen Willis)
It’s hard to believe that anyone would put themselves through these conditions again, but Jen has an appetite for adventure.
We’re on FaceTime as she is acclimatising for a week in Namche Bazaar, the last major Nepalese town before her second attempt to summit Everest.
She’s staying at the Panorama Lodge and Restaurant, a wooden hotel that sits above small white houses with colourful roof patterns.
The former ski instructor apologises as she takes off her beanie.
“I just decided I’m not gonna wash [my hair] this trip because I think it’s gonna be easier than trying to keep it clean,” Jen says.
This trip is almost three years after that night at the South Col.
If Jen is successful this time, she’ll be the first Australian with multiple sclerosis (MS) to reach the summit.
MS is an incurable neurological disease where the immune system damages the brain’s ability to communicate messages.
Jen was diagnosed in 2018 after over a decade of unexplained health episodes, including burning sensations, tingling patches of skin, and a fogginess in memory.
“I guess [the diagnosis] shifts power into your sort-of control house, to go, ‘Right, do I want to do anything about it?’” she asks.
Jen’s climbing dream started early in her childhood, after her grandfather gifted her a brooch of an ice axe and a climbing boot.
After dropping out of high school at the start of year 12, she enrolled in an outdoor education course and got into rock climbing.
Her love affair with the Himalayas started on a spontaneous trip to Nepal in 1996 while staying near the Ama Dablam mountain.
Since Jen’s diagnosis, she has raised over $17,000 for MS research and led a small group, including six with MS, to Everest base camp in May 2024.
“If I were being given a medication for my MS that had a one-in-100 fatality rate, I would be like, ‘Yeah, nah. Not gonna take it,’” she says, “whereas with climbing, you could die, but most likely you won’t.”
It’s a mentality that Jen is carrying into her second attempt at the Everest summit, and one that she had to have while scaling the mountain the first time.
“Anything can go wrong in Everest; [the other climbers] could have lost their health in an instant. But I knew that I still had a health risk in my future,” she says.
One path many take through Mount Everest. (Image: Jen Willis)
There are constant reminders of mortality on Everest.
One of the most frightening is an avalanche — a mass of quickly moving snow, rocks, ice and soil that can suffocate climbers in seconds.
Jen felt the rumbling while climbing through the Western Cwm, a wide glaciated valley surrounded by ice walls that protect it from the wind.
She was stepping over an icy crevasse on a horizontal ladder when she heard snow fracturing in the distance.
“You know how you hear sort of the rumbling of thunder, and then you hear, like, lightning crack?” she asks.
An avalanche had triggered, and snow was surging towards her.
“I’m like, ‘Oh, shit. I’m on this ladder!’” she says, “so I backed up onto solid ground, and I sort of squatted down.”
The snow hit a deep crevasse and lost its intensity.
“It just came up like if you were in a snow blizzard … the snow just went, ‘Boom!’”
Visibility is a luxury on Mount Everest. (Image: Jen Willis)
Jen recognises that any mountain climbing comes with the risk of avalanches — and potentially death.
In 2014, 16 sherpas were killed in an avalanche at the Khumbu Icefall, approximately 600 metres below the Western Cwm.
The incident is regarded as one of Everest’s worst disasters, contributing to the estimated total of 344 deaths.
“We know human things over time that have been built lose integrity … you’ve got to be really wise and assess the strength before you tie yourself onto a rope,” she says.
“But with a person, there are just so many more layers to us.”
After the incident during her last Everest summit attempt, communication broke down between Jen and the climbing company owner.
The conflicting information didn’t just disappoint her; it cost her an opportunity to debrief on what went wrong.
“What do I do? What do I do in my life?” she asks.
After her initial outdoor education course in her teens, Jen went on to complete a Bachelor of Arts (Outdoor Education) and master’s degrees in education, business administration leadership, and applied positive psychology.
The mountains became a retreat during significant workplace challenges, as she focused on regaining her energy.
The original plan was to climb Everest in 2023 and become a speaker about MS, mountaineering, leadership and identity.
“When I didn’t feel like I had a story to tell at all … I just had to go into myself,” Jen says.
Lost without a path to a stable income, friends told her to get a job, but she compares the concept to being locked in a dark room without food for a year.
The lack of awareness of her MS and suggestion to work in a supermarket after her degrees and educational career felt insensitive.
“My first words ever were, ‘I want more,’” she adds with a grin.
Jen spent 2024 reflecting on her attachment to an income solution and activity that seemed to be overcompensating.
“Sometimes part of arriving at the happiest version of yourself is actually going, let’s close all the unwritten chapters in life,” she says.
Jen and six others with MS at Everest base camp. (Image: Jen Willis)
Jen started to consider reattempting Everest after her May 2024 trip to base camp.
She is climbing with Phunjo Lama, a former helicopter rescuer and the fastest woman in the world to climb Everest.
“She’s got that physical strength, but that inner strength and that wisdom to know how to navigate human complexity,” Jen says.
Phunjo and Jen will hike a longer trail to Everest base camp to reduce the effects of acclimatisation on their bodies.
However, as of last Friday, their ascent to camp one is currently stalled due to a large ice block obstructing the route through the Khumbu Icefall.
As current conditions are too risky to continue, all Everest climbers are currently waiting for the go-ahead.
Jen’s not sure how she will react if there are logistical challenges again preventing her from reaching the summit — all she can focus on is her growth over the past few years.
“If you’re still there afterwards, going, ‘Wow, I’m dealing with this heavy thing,’ how lucky are you that you’re still there dealing with it?”
When Jen gets back, she’s hoping to complete her memoir and speak at conferences and schools about her experience.
In Namche Bazaar, one week before she started her Everest attempt, perspective is key as Jen asks a waitress to reheat her breakfast of one egg and fried vegetables.
“Going back this time isn’t compensating for not summitting last time … now I’m climbing as the little girl who wanted to climb,” she says.
You can donate to Jen Willis’s Everest journey here.