“I always loved that stuff, but I didn’t realize I could incorporate it into my professional life,” Dr. Mattingly said. “That was just like heaven for me.” Returning to Baystate Medical Center, he founded the program’s wilderness medicine fellowship.

Wanting to give his fellows unique educational experiences, he started Wild Med Adventures to organize global wilderness medicine trips where attendees could earn CME. “I wanted [our fellows] to be able to go on any trip they could imagine and be able to teach and think about the organizational aspects of an expedition,” Dr. Mattingly said. As his fellowship program and company gained momentum, they branched out into mountain biking, dive medicine, skiing, hunting, and more.

The First Six

It was with his first wilderness medicine fellow, Joseph Schneider, MD, that he reached the first of the Seven Summits, Aconcagua in Argentina, in January 2013. The owner of that expedition company was looking for someone to teach Carstensz Pyramid, the highest peak in Indonesia.

Dr. Mattingly summiting Mount Everest in May 2023. (Click to enlarge.)

“I told him, ‘I’ve never heard of Carstensz Pyramid, but I’ll do it,’” Dr. Mattingly laughed. From there, one thing led to another. While summitting Carstensz in Indonesia in October 2015, he and his wife led a Wild Med Kilimanjaro Expedition and summited Kili in March 2016. On that same trip, they put together a trip to Russia climbing Mt. Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe, through contacts on his Indonesia expedition and summited in August of 2016. He also became close friends with Chris Imray, a vascular surgeon and leading frostbite expert, on that 2015 Indonesia climb, and they reconnected to summit Mt. Vinson in Antarctica together along with Ben’s Dad, Bruce, in Jan. 2019.

“At that point I was like, well hell, I’ve done five of them,” Dr. Mattingly remembered.

The only two peaks left to climb were Denali and Everest. At this point in his mountaineering career, Dr. Mattingly’s confidence had grown, and he felt ready for new challenges. He decided he wanted to summit Denali on his own, without professional guides. His first expedition in 2017, was cut short after 30 days of being “crushed by the weather.” Despite an unsuccessful summit, terrible weather, and descending the ridge in a huge snowstorm, Dr. Mattingly said it was “still one of [his] favorite trips.” he remembered. Alaska kept calling, so Dr. Mattingly took his oldest son, his dad, for his second attempt at challenging mountain. They summited in June 2021.