Apr 02, 2026

The Mountain Before the Mountain

Before Everest becomes a test of altitude, exposure and endurance, it begins in quieter territory: grief, discipline, fear, faith and the daily decision to keep going. For Margaret Chew, this season is no longer about conquering a peak. It is about surviving loss, honouring her son, and returning home alive.

Long before Everest becomes visible in snow, rock and distance, it has already begun.

It begins in the body, in repetition, in exhaustion, in the steady accumulation of training days that ask to be completed whether strength is present or not. It begins in planning, in risk, in cost, in the practical decisions around what must be carried and what can be left behind. And it begins in the mind, where fear is rarely dramatic and often quiet, returning at night with a clarity that cannot be ignored.

For Margaret, that journey started long before the mountain itself.

She believes she is where she should be now, physically and mentally, prepared as far as she can be for both the best and the worst. There is no performance in that statement. No inflated certainty. She does not claim to know it all. Preparation, to the best of her ability, is what matters.

That humility is one of the defining qualities of her Everest season. Public images of the mountain tend to favour triumph: summit shots, bright camps, spectacle, achievement. But the parts that remain mostly unseen are the vulnerable ones. Margaret understands that well. What goes unposted is often the fear itself, and the degree to which it shapes the experience long before the climb is underway. Everest, in her telling, is not glamorous in its truest form. It is exposing.

At the centre of all of it is a single thought that continues to return: she must come back alive and well to her family.

That sentence governs the climb more than any summit ambition could. It gives the expedition its moral centre. It also reveals why this particular season carries such extraordinary weight.

Margaret recently lost her youngest son, Joseph, aged 24, in a freak accident just two and a half months before this Everest season. The grief has been immense. It changed the meaning of the expedition before the mountain was ever close.

What had once existed as a long-term milestone no longer remained simply that. She could have stepped away. Instead, the climb became something else entirely. It ceased to be about conquering Everest as a mountain and became, in her words, about overcoming her own Everest in the loss of Joseph.

That shift is the emotional truth of this story.

When Margaret first started planning for Everest in August 2025, the idea was to encourage women to overcome their own Everest, whatever formidable challenge that might mean in their own lives. After Joseph’s death, that idea stopped being metaphorical. She realised this was now her own Everest, one she was not describing from a distance but living through in real time.

The mountain, then, remains a physical objective. But it is no longer the only one. This ascent is taking place through sorrow as much as through altitude. It is defined less by conquest than by endurance.

Where restraint becomes strength

Margaret speaks about danger with clarity rather than drama. The risks she names most directly are the Khumbu Icefall, mistakes and altitude illness. These are not abstract concerns. They sit at the centre of Everest’s reality and shape the decisions she is willing to make.

Her own rule is simple. If she does not feel well, and if the weather turns for the worse, the decision to turn around will be made together with her guide. The logic behind that agreement is firm: both must still go home alive to their families. The mountain will always be there.

That belief offers a more demanding definition of courage than high-altitude mythology often permits. Courage is not only the will to push upward. It is also the willingness to stop. To turn back. To recognise that pride has its own dangerous momentum and that judgment must matter more.

For Margaret, courage can look like restraint.

Training under the weight of grief

Her training schedule is rigorous. She trains six days a week, with five days of high-intensity work combined with strength training and mobility work. In addition, one day each week is devoted to a long hike lasting between six and 17 hours, depending on where she goes. Recovery is mainly spent stretching.

The structure is exacting, but the deepest challenge is not always physical.

After GHT, and while going through pre-menopause, Margaret has had to adjust to changes in body strength, occasional fatigue and joint soreness on certain days. That has meant adding fish oil, collagen,more protein and creatine to help manage those demands.

Even so, the harder struggle often lies elsewhere. Since Joseph’s death, there are days when her strength feels drained and all she wants is to curl up in bed. The difficulty is not the existence of the training plan. It is maintaining consistency through grief, and continuing to show up for the work when sorrow has already taken so much.

Still, somehow, she finds the strength to get up, step outside and keep training.

Prayer helps. In the mountains, she says, prayer grounds her. Now, more than ever, it does.

What preparation really asks

Too often, Everest preparation is reduced to physical fitness. Margaret sees that as incomplete. One of the most overlooked aspects of readiness, in her view, is the mental and spiritual dimension.

That observation reveals a great deal about how she understands the mountain. Everest is not only a place where the body is tested. It is a place where judgment, composure, honesty and inner steadiness become essential. Muscular strength matters. So does endurance. But neither exists in isolation from the state of mind that carries them.

Margaret’s preparation reflects that wider understanding. Readiness is not simply about being fit enough to climb. It is about being clear enough to decide, disciplined enough to continue, and grounded enough to stop.

The people behind the ascent

Though the climb is deeply personal, it is not solitary.

A documentary is being produced around the expedition, and the core team includes two climbers, Margaret and another Malaysian, along with a film director, a cameraman, two Sherpa guides and her training coach, whom she credits with helping prepare her both physically and mentally.

The expedition itself is outsourced from the start. Margaret trusts the team, especially the operator overseeing the logistics of such a large undertaking. That trust is part of the structure that makes a climb of this scale possible.

And yet some choices remain entirely her own.

Her packing philosophy is direct: only what is necessary, especially to ensure warmth and safety. Basics, nothing fancy. Even within that discipline, there are two items she refuses to compromise on: her books, not just one, and her Malaysian-made 3-in-1 coffee.

They are small details, but they carry weight. On a mountain defined by exposure and reduction, they represent continuity, comfort and selfhood.

The hidden architecture of Everest

Margaret’s view of the Khumbu Icefall is shaped by respect for the people who make passage through it possible. The route, she notes, is maintained by the Icefall Doctors, a highly specialised group whose expertise is fundamental to climbers’ safety. Lives depend on their work.

It is a reminder that Everest is never only an individual test. It is also an environment shaped by skill, infrastructure, labour and systems of support that often remain invisible behind more public narratives of personal achievement.

The financial reality is equally stark. Margaret says the expedition has cost approximately USD 100,000 so far. That includes everything on the ground from the start, Sherpa and porter support, insurance, domestic flights and training. The expedition is funded by a large corporation together with several brand partners.

Even within that scale of expense, her decisions remain measured. She has spent extra where safety requires it, reviewing her climbing boots, snow goggles, summit gloves and down suit. At the same time, she has intentionally not spent on gear that is still working well and remains in good condition.

The principle is consistent: invest where it matters, avoid excess where it does not.

What remains at home

The mountain does not hold the risk alone. Part of that burden rests with the family waiting beyond it.

Margaret says the hardest reaction came from her two elder sons, who had only recently lost their youngest brother. Their fear sits within the story even when they are not physically present in it.

She promised her family that she would take good care of herself and avoid unnecessary risks. She also prepared them for the worst-case scenario.

That honesty gives the story its full weight. Everest is not merely a personal undertaking. It is a shared emotional exposure, borne differently by those who climb and those who wait.

A prayer before the first rotation

Margaret’s philosophy remains unchanged in one important respect. When she looks back and sees how far she has come, and all the lessons contained in that path, the only way is forward and upward.

Before the first rotation, the words she most wants to say to herself are simple: God, help me. I cannot do this alone.

On summit morning, the sentence she wants to hear from herself turns toward her son: My dearest Joseph, this is for you.

Those two lines hold the entire climb in tension. Faith and remembrance. Need and devotion. Surrender and resolve.

The Mountain Within

What Margaret wants the woman who comes after Everest to remember about the woman who stood before it is equally clear: how she walked through her own Everest in her lowest moment, when all seemed hopeless, and how it was possible to endure it.