Enough: Climbing Toward a True Self on Mount Everest by Melissa Arnot Reid
World-renowned climber Melissa Arnot Reid shares her story of becoming the first woman to summit Mount Everest without the use of supplemental oxygen in her new memoir, “Enough: Climbing Toward a True Self on Mount Everest.” In response to a traumatic childhood, mountains became Reid’s refuge, proving ground, and way to distance herself from relationships when they threatened to reveal her inner brokenness.
Reid first attempted to summit Everest when she was 27, but accepted oxygen at Camp Two as, without it, her slow pace would have jeopardized the summit attempt. As she struggled toward the tent at Camp Two, feeling defeated, her oxygen-deprived thoughts replayed words spoken by her mother: “You are a liar. You are selfish. Nobody wants you around. No one trusts you.”
Reid’s parents were young and had limited resources when they started their family, living in a trailer at the edge of the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in Colorado. A self-described wild child, Reid was not sure if her mother (who sometimes locked her in her bedroom) wanted to control or ignore her. Heartbreakingly, she wonders, “Was I even loved? Or was I just tolerated?”
Seeking love and acceptance outside the family structure began early. When Reid turned 12, a wildly inappropriate relationship with a police officer assigned to her school resulted in her turning in her parents for smoking marijuana. Because she told the social worker she felt unsafe at home, she was sent to a foster home in a neighboring town, and her parents were arrested.
After Reid was returned to her parents’ home, the family moved to a remote corner of Montana for a fresh start, but resentment and betrayal created fractures that would not heal. When leaving for Montana, her mother told Reid, “I am only taking you with us because the law says I have to.”
Reid quit high school during her junior year, got her GED, and packed her belongings into a 1991 black Nissan pickup. When she began climbing with a boyfriend, she found that mountains felt like home: “Not so much like my home, but more like what I thought home should feel like. Cozy and comfortable — a place where you could be messy and vulnerable and know you are still loved.”
In 2004, Reid joined a group of mostly men (and one other woman) for a two-day “evaluation/job interview/torture-fest” to become a climbing guide on Mount Rainier. She made the cut and was invited to join the elite guide group but quickly learned that women were not taken seriously as equals in the rarefied atmosphere of mountain guiding.
Men with power offered her opportunities in the outdoors and she used these transactional relationships to advance her career; at the first sign of any perceived threat or difficulty, however, she “threw a grenade at the relationship and destroyed any chance of it surviving.”
After several guiding trips to Everest, Melissa was climbing a lesser-known Himalayan peak, Baruntse, with her friend Chhewang, a well-known and respected guide, when a corniced ridge collapsed and swept Chhewang thousands of feet down the face of the mountain.
The aftermath and heartbreak of Chhewang’s death surfaced Melissa’s habits for dealing with grief, loss, rejection and fear, and her avoidance of looking into the darkness she was holding inside. This loss, more than any other, spurred her to address her fear of being unlovable and the avoidance behavior of “running away disguised as adventure.”
While serial romantic entanglements detract from the story of Melissa’s mountaineering successes, one cannot help but cheer her on in her search for her true, authentic self and quest to find a place of belonging. Reid now makes her home in the Cascades and has guided more than 100 climbs on Rainier as well as continuing to guide internationally.
Find “Enough” in print, eBook or eAudio format at your library — or you can meet Melissa Arnot Reid and hear about her climbing success at the Chuckanut Radio Hour on Tuesday, Oct. 14 at the lovely Lairmont Manor in Fairhaven. Local mountaineer and guide, Alyssa Young, will interview Reid. Seating is limited for this ticketed event; visit the Village Books and Paper Dreams events page to reserve your seat. Info: villagebooks.com.
Lisa Gresham is the collection services manager for the Whatcom County Library System, wcls.org.
(Originally published in Cascadia Daily News, Monday, October 6, 2025.)