Idaho woman has sights set high

BOISE — When Eva Steinwald reached the summit of Mount Borah in 2018, she cried.

They were tears of excitement, awe and, perhaps more than anything else, relief.

Climbing Idaho’s tallest mountain was how the Meridian real estate agent was challenging her fear of heights. She didn’t realize at the time that the 12,666-foot peak would be one of the smallest mountains she’d ever summit.

Steinwald, 62, is climbing the Seven Summits — the tallest mountains on each continent. Her goal is to finish them all before she turns 70. In just two years, she has tackled the tallest peaks in the Americas: 22,837-foot Aconcagua in Argentina and 20,310-foot Denali in Alaska. Everest is on the books for next April.

Steinwald said mountain climbing has been a revelation about her abilities and about how climate change is impacting the planet. She’s sharing her journey online in hopes of educating people about those impacts, and inspiring others to challenge their fears.

“You just have to go out and do it,” she said. “Don’t doubt yourself.”

‘What else can I do?’

Steinwald grew up in Germany hiking in the Alps with her parents. She has remained active her whole life, opening and operating a karate school in Eagle. But hiking and mountain climbing weren’t part of her life as an adult.

When her husband, Pat Schleibaum, died unexpectedly in 2018, her perspective shifted.

“I realized life is so precious and so short,” she said. “I want to experience it and feel it and live it.”

She started running Spartan Races, which are races that include obstacle courses. While training for those, she thought of her Borah trek.

“I wanted to come back to climbing,” Steinwald said. “I thought, ‘If I can do Mount Borah, what else can I do?’ ”

When a friend mentioned climbing Mount Rainier, a 14,000-foot peak in Washington, Steinwald started researching. She asked friend and former colleague J Miller, who has mountain climbing experience, for his tips and advice.

Though Steinwald had never used crampons, an ice axe or other climbing gear, she signed up with a guide company to summit Rainier. They added her to a waitlist and, within a month, offered her a spot when another climber canceled.

She summited Rainier in July 2021.

“I felt like I was climbing Everest,” Steinwald said.

At the summit, she found herself wondering again: “What else can I do?”

In spring 2022, she headed to the Himalayas. This time she was at Everest — hiking to base camp, which sits 17,598 feet above sea level. During the same trip, she summited Lobuche, a 20,075-foot peak southwest of Everest. It was the hardest journey she’d ever done, and looking out from the summit over the mountains on a clear day was “like an out-of-body experience,” she said.

It was also where she first noticed the drastic glacial melting that has ramped up in mountain ranges around the globe as a result of climate change. She saw the same impacts that summer in the Alps, where she hoped to summit Mont Blanc and begin her Seven Summits challenge. (Some climbers consider Mont Blanc Europe’s tallest peak, while others consider Russia’s Mount Elbrus to be the tallest. Steinwald said she will not travel to Russia because of the country’s war with Ukraine.)

Her new Seven Summits plan didn’t surprise those closest to her.

“I rolled my eyes and laughed when she told me,” said Laura Jensen, a close friend of Steinwald’s and operations manager for her real estate business. “It was kind of a natural next step for her.”

Steinwald has worked with trainers to build stamina and endurance for inclines and elevation. Miller said there’s more to mountain climbing than just physical preparation, though.

“Mountains are alive,” Miller said. “They’re not just these big structures. They groan and they creak and they move.

“They demand a lot of respect, and I think people don’t understand that when you decide to take on something like climbing a mountain, it’s not just about getting your body physically ready. It’s understanding and respecting the mountain.”

Summits and setbacks

In 2023, Steinwald joined an all-female guided trip to Denali. One of the guides from her Lobuche climb helped lead the trek. But she didn’t reach the summit. Her group turned around near 16,000 feet.

Steinwald said weather in 2023 made summiting particularly difficult. According to the American Alpine Institute, the average annual success rate on Denali is just over 50%.

“As soon as I got off the mountain, I signed up for Denali in 2024,” Steinwald said.

While she waited for her second shot at North America’s tallest peak, she set her sights on South America. Aconcagua, in the Andes, is only climbable in December and January — summertime in the Southern Hemisphere.

Steinwald flew to Chile first to meet distant relatives for the first time. Then she went to Argentina to start her trek.

The mountain was completely different from snow-covered Denali. Aconcagua was rocky, dry and arid, with breathtaking winds. As her group moved toward the summit, six of the 10 climbers in the party turned back.

The day they planned to summit, Steinwald was feeling the toll of being 19,000 feet above sea level. At extreme elevation, it becomes harder to sleep, maintain an appetite, carry a heavy pack and, of course, breathe. Steinwald’s guide worried she might not be up to the challenge of the final push. She had the same concern but gave herself one last chance to power through.

She climbed 3,000 feet, reaching the summit of Aconcagua before heading back down the mountain. Summit day took her group 15 hours. Even as they descended, her guide warned her against lying down during breaks. It was possible to lie down and never get back up.

At one point, the guide hurried her group past an object in the distance. Later, she learned it was the body of a climber who’d died on the descent.

“That drove home the reality of how serious high-altitude climbing is,” Steinwald said.

‘I can’t. I must. I did.’

In July, Steinwald returned to Denali, where she reached the summit after nearly two weeks on the mountain.

Jensen, who keeps Steinwald’s business running while Steinwald is trekking, keeps an eye on Steinwald’s Garmin inReach satellite device. Jensen said she rarely feels worried for her friend’s safety on these journeys. As long as Steinwald’s GPS locator is moving, Jensen knows everything is OK.

But she has a few reservations about Steinwald’s next adventure. In April, Steinwald will return to Nepal to try to summit Mount Everest. At just over 29,000 feet, it’s the tallest peak on the planet. In recent years, guided treks on the mountain have become more popular, leading to “traffic jams” that have proven fatal for some climbers.

“I’m not worried about her and her ability in the least,” Jensen said. “I’m worried about conditions on the mountain, inexperienced climbers — forces she has no control over that are going to affect her.”

After Everest, Steinwald will have summited the three highest of the seven summits. Mount Kilimanjaro, the 20,000-foot peak in Tanzania; Mount Vinson, Antarctica’s 16,000-foot peak; Mont Blanc, the 15,000-foot mountain straddling parts of France, Italy and Switzerland; and 7,000-foot Mount Kosciuszko in Australia will remain. Steinwald said she may also try to climb Puncak Jaya, a 16,000-foot peak in Papua New Guinea that some swap for Kosciuszko.

Though Steinwald’s goal is to complete the peaks before she turns 70, at her current pace she anticipates she’ll be done by 65. She’s not sure what her next challenge will be, but friends say it’s sure to be an adventure.

“It’s more than just being motivated (to achieve),” Jensen said. “It’s like she craves it.”

Steinwald said there’s one person she wants to make especially proud: her late husband. He was a Vietnam veteran, and she wears his dog tags on each trek. Even though she said her husband never would have pursued the Seven Summits himself, now he’s “part of the journey.”

Steinwald thinks of Pat when things get tough, and she repeats a mantra that she said helped her push to Aconcagua, the first of her Seven Summits: “I can’t. I must. I did.”