USC Dornsife school member embarks on journey to the top rated of the Earth > News > USC Dornsife

As a boy scout developing up in Maine, Ray Stevens nurtured two cherished desires: to run throughout the Sahara Desert and to climb Mount Everest.

Stevens, Provost Professor of Biological Sciences and Chemistry at USC Dornsife University of Letters, Arts and Sciences, reached his very first objective 10 several years back when he accomplished the legendary Marathon des Sables — a 156-mile, six-day ultramarathon across the scorching sands of the Sahara that brought on him to lose his toenails. Now 57, Stevens, director of the Bridge Institute at the USC Michelson Centre for Convergent Bioscience, is making ready to satisfy his next desire by conquering Everest — practically particularly a single yr soon after his original ideas had been set on hold by the advent of COVID-19.

Ray Stevens runs the 2011 Marathon des Sables in southern Morocco. (Picture: Courtesy of Ray Stevens.)

Stevens ran the Marathon des Sables to elevate consciousness about the exceptional metabolic disease phenylketonuria (PKU). He finally investigated and produced a new drug to take care of PKU.

His enthusiasm in climbing Everest is also to elevate awareness for unusual ailments — an issue that remains shut to his heart. Not only has Stevens’ scientific job been largely focused on comprehending and managing rare conditions, his daughter, Sophia, was diagnosed with Kawasaki illness when she was four decades previous.

“Many of these illnesses go undiagnosed, even by many trained physicians. Folks have indications but generally don’t know the specific problem,” he suggests. “I was previously doing the job on exceptional ailments, but I’d under no circumstances read of this a person. With Kawasaki illness, the immune procedure decides that the circulatory technique is foreign, so it assaults it. Thankfully, Jane Burns at the College of California, San Diego was performing a scientific trial with an experimental drug. It saved my daughter’s lifestyle.”

This knowledge spurred Stevens to dedicate to raising recognition for exceptional diseases by teaming up with the Nationwide Organization of Scarce Disorders.

“Rare conditions are one thing that folks really do not generally imagine of. It is commonly cancer, cardiovascular condition, diabetes, or today Covid-19. But uncommon illnesses influence people today in the identical way and we ought to be conscious of them,” Stevens states.

Stevens is also climbing to raise awareness of the Pulmonary Hypertension Association.

Climbing Everest, he states, is equivalent to getting pulmonary hypertension.

“As you climb, your lungs can’t get enough oxygen. The coronary heart is truly taxed, and so climbing Everest is the equal to acquiring that ailment.”

A household affair — but not this time

Stevens remaining Los Angeles for Kathmandu, Nepal, on March 31. He will then fly to the small airport of Lukla in northeastern Nepal. From there it will take 9 days to hike to Everest Foundation Camp at 17,500 feet.

“The complete excursion will just take about two months and most of that time is expended acclimatizing to the quite substantial altitude,” Stevens states.

For the duration of April and Might, he will do “rotations” — climbing progressively more up Everest, sleeping there and then returning to foundation camp. Once acclimatized to the altitude, the ultimate thrust to the summit can take about a 7 days.

To get ready, Stevens has been on a regular basis climbing Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States, positioned just a few hrs northeast of L.A.

“I slumber up there, then occur down the future morning,” he says. “What’s great in winter season is that generally there is nobody else up there, so I generally get the entire mountain to myself.”

On his most recent ascent, he encountered temperatures of 5 degrees Fahrenheit and six inches of refreshing snowfall overnight. Even so, that pales in comparison to what Stevens will face at the summit of Everest, wherever predicted temperatures are minus 40.

Ray Stevens climbed Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro with his spouse and children (from remaining) Nikolai Stevens, Aleksandr Stevens, Sophia Stevens, Ray Stevens and Vivian Urena-Stevens. (Picture: Courtesy of Ray Stevens.)

For the previous 5 many years, Stevens has been steadily operating toward his objective of climbing the seven maximum peaks on the 7 various continents. Accompanied by his two sons, the elder of whom, Nikolai Stevens, is a senior majoring in psychology at USC Dornsife, Ray Stevens has climbed Europe’s highest peak, Mount Elbrus, involving Russia and Ga Argentina’s Mount Aconcagua, the maximum mountain in South America and Vinson Massif, the maximum mountain in Antarctica. To climb Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, the best free-standing mountain in the globe, the trio were being joined by Stevens’ wife, Vivian, and daughter.

This time, however, Stevens is on his own.

“After Antarctica, wherever we had to snooze outdoors for a month, my sons made the decision that was more than enough,” Stevens states. “I’m likely to pass up them really a great deal simply because every thing that I have climbed has been with them, but my wife is extremely content that the boys aren’t going.”

“Just struggle via it”

Stevens says the mental planning necessary to climb Everest commenced with managing ultramarathons.

Requested about how he specials with discomfort and exhaustion, Stevens says, “You just fight as a result of it.

“When I was managing across the Sahara Desert, people today had been losing the skin on the soles of their ft for the reason that we were managing in deep sand at temperatures above 120 degrees Fahrenheit. I dropped all of my toenails, and it wasn’t a extremely fairly sight and it was not comfy, but you just continue to keep going.”

Stevens states he is drawn to intense sporting activities in common and mountain climbing in individual since of the solitude and inspiration he finds in the attractiveness of the environment around him.

“It’s actually because I get pleasure from the journey so substantially. The journey of it. It is a thing wherever you come across interior peace.”

Stevens says he feels ready for the ascent. In fact, just after many years of education, he was completely ready to climb Everest final calendar year. His luggage were being virtually packed and stacked by the front door, when his goals have been briefly thwarted by COVID-19. Now travel to Nepal has opened up and he has been given the vaccine, Stevens is equipped to travel. Nevertheless, he is beneath no illusions about what is experiencing him.

“Everybody suggests it’s very tough to do, and even although there’s a ton of things in the media declaring that it’s easier, it is not less difficult. But it is safer for the reason that there are improved weather conditions prediction tools readily available and superior devices to check out to stay away from frostbite when the temperatures fall underneath minus 40.”

Asked what are the largest issues he expects to deal with on the climb, Stevens states his to start with issue will be keeping healthful in a distant space at significant altitude. Second is the very first stage of the climb from foundation camp to Camp A person by means of the perilous Khumbu Icefall. 3rd are the difficulties posed by the sheer number of people today on the mountain. In a standard year, the weather window where one can summit lasts 7 to 10 times, but in a lousy calendar year it can be only three times and everybody is striving to summit at the similar time.

Stevens’ enjoyment about the climb is palpable.

“When I was 1st recruited to USC, I remember talking with then-Provost Elizabeth Garrett. She explained, ‘Ray, are you critically contemplating of climbing Everest?’ And I reported, ‘I’m fired up to appear to USC, but at some place I will have to have to just take some time off mainly because I have seriously been seeking to climb Mount Everest my total everyday living.’’

Now, Stevens is lastly obtaining the likelihood to make his aspiration come accurate — and get the word out about exceptional illnesses.

“For men and women who have any illness, including the unusual kinds, lifetime is one particular stage at a time, just like climbing a mountain,” Stevens suggests. “And no subject what mountain you climb, the advice is constantly the very same: A person step at a time.”