Ben Mattingly, MD, tries to live by the adage, “One should be adventurous and daring, but not reckless.” The challenge is that the line between adventurous and reckless is often paper-thin. Take, for example, his recent expedition to Nepal to summit Mount  Everest. When he arrived at the base camp, he found out three rope-fixing sherpas had just been killed in the famously dangerous Khumbu Icefall. When he began his acclimatization climb, he and his guide kept getting stuck in long lines of fellow climbers, and his feet were on the verge of frostbite. Later, when another climber who was attached to his same fixed line slipped, Dr. Mattingly was also yanked off his feet and slammed into the ice, narrowly avoiding a broken leg. Risks are everywhere, and it’s enough to make anyone second-guess the quest.

Stranded by the excessive crowds of fellow climbers waiting to summit, Dr. Mattingly was considering giving up and turning back toward the base camp. Suddenly, the weather cleared, and his sherpa convinced him to keep going. Resolute, he committed himself to finishing the climb. After six weeks in Nepal, he reached the peak of the highest mountain in the world. Dr. Mattingly checked off the last peak on his quest to climb the Seven Summits and entered an elite club—only about 500 people have achieved this feat since it was conceived in the 1950s.

Starting Small

For Dr. Mattingly, climbing the Seven Summits wasn’t a lifelong goal. His first true adventure started when he and his wife, Jenni, had their first child when he was only 16 years old. This only fueled their desire to succeed and to “prove everyone wrong.” He first cultivated his love of climbing at the Red River Gorge in his home state of Kentucky while in college. They have always managed to incorporate their young children and family into their adventures from the very beginning. By the time he was in medical school, he and Jenni were proud parents of three children, and Dr. Mattingly used to promise his friends, “One day I’m going to travel the whole world.” Dr. Mattingly eventually made good on his promise, and now his children Jared, Adam, and Amber are old enough to join him on his global adventures.

It wasn’t until he started his emergency medicine residency at Baystate Medical Center in Massachusetts that he learned all about winter activities and reignited his love for extreme sports. When he had the opportunity to take his family to New Zealand for a year, he found himself teaching for the first wilderness medicine program outside the United States.