Robert Alt’s Everest Climb Feature by His Alma Mater
Alumni Feature: Robert Alt ’98 Climbs Mount Everest
API.edu
By Jacqueline Guerrero
July 16, 2025
Azusa Pacific University has numerous alumni who have gone on to accomplish impressive feats, but relatively few people in history can say that they have successfully climbed Mount Everest. Robert Alt ’98 studied political science and philosophy during his time at APU and has made a large impact in the legal field while pursuing his passion for mountain climbing.
Photo by Griffin Kerwin, courtesy of Robert Alt.
After graduation, Alt spent a few years interning and working before pursuing his law degree at the University of Chicago. He held a variety of jobs including clerking for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, embedding as a war correspondent in Iraq, teaching at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, and working directly for a former U.S. Attorney General in Washington D.C.
Alt was recruited to take over The Buckeye Institute in 2012, a think tank founded in 1989 that now works in 16 states advancing economic and legal public policy. The institute has grown exponentially from the time of its establishment, successfully arguing cases all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, including most recently and notably the case against mandating the COVID-19 vaccine.
Although Alt has been extremely successful professionally, his true passion is mountain climbing. Alt’s father was a physics professor and endurance athlete who participated in triathlons, ultra marathons, and rock climbing. Although they had gone hiking together, Alt’s father began going on larger expeditions including to Mount Everest’s basecamp when Alt was just beginning his career and couldn’t join him. Alt’s father passed away in 2010. Since then, he has made it his goal to climb the tallest mountain on each continent. “Unfortunately, I was never able to climb a great mountain with my dad,” he said. “Since I couldn’t do the seven summits when he was around, I carry him with me.”
While there are technically seven summits of the world, one on each continent, there is debate about what counts as a continent which has led to disputes over which summits are properly part of the seven summits. To cover all of his bases, Alt has decided to climb all nine: Mt. Everest in Asia (29,032’), Mt. Aconcagua in South America (22,841’), Mt. Denali/McKinley in North America (20,310’), Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa (19,341’), Mt. Elbrus in Europe (18,510’), Mt. Vinson Massif in Antarctica (16,050’), Mt. Puncak Jaya/Carstensz Pyramid in Oceania (16,024’), Mont Blanc in Europe (15,766’), and Mt. Kosciuszko in Australia (7,310’). So far, he has successfully summited five of them (Everest, Aconcagua, Denali/McKinley, Kilimanjaro, and Vinson Massif) across five continents, spreading his father’s ashes at each peak.
On May 15, 2025, Alt successfully summited Mount Everest, the tallest of the great mountains at 29,032 feet, so high that the air at the top doesn’t support life. The climb took two months, almost completely cutting him off from contact with his family, and proving to be a more difficult climbing season on the mountain than average years. For starters, the winds were severe. For most of the year, the jet stream cuts across the summit of Everest at over 100 miles per hour, making climbing impossible. During May, the monsoon season usually pushes the high winds off the summit, allowing climbers a short window of time to attempt a summit. This year, the monsoons only partially shifted the jet stream north. Alt and his sherpa were still pushed up to five paces off of their path which is already less than two feet wide in many places, leaving little room for misstep. Besides the challenging weather conditions, a large number of people had to be rescued or turned around on the mountain due to illness. An outbreak of upper respiratory infection tore through the base camp. At about 21,500’, Alt also caught a strain of the infection on top of the Khumbu cough he already had. He was so congested that he was unable to breathe through his nose. Given his severe congestion, the oxygen mask he needed on the upper mountain actually made it more difficult to breathe, and so he had to take it off. “I had to ask myself whether I was being resilient or foolhardy by pushing forward,” he said. Alt was ultimately able to make the oxygen work and decided to continue the climb, hoping for the best. His determination paid off. He documented his preparation and journey up the mountain on his website.
Despite the isolation and challenges both physical and mental, Alt found so much beauty and strength in the climb. “It was breathtakingly spectacular,” he said. “The Khumbu Icefall is one of the most dangerous parts of the expedition with giant hanging glaciers and seracs that can fall and create avalanches, so there was great danger, but it was the most visually stunning feature in nature I’ve ever seen.” Part of the profound nature of the experience was not just the incredible views, but sensing God along the way.
“I don’t know how you could witness grandeur like the Khumbu Icefall or the summit and not view it as the handiwork of God,” Alt said. “Everest just screams out the presence of our creator.”
To be successful in a hobby such as mountain climbing, one needs great mental and physical fortitude, and Alt is determined to help others realize that whether their own goal is climbing Mount Everest or pursuing their own passion, they already have everything that they need to succeed. Alt founded PROFOUND CLIMBING™, a methodology he developed to help people challenge themselves by setting big goals and following through to success. “It’s about focusing the mind and soul whether it’s associated with outdoor activities or something else,” he said. “If you stretch and challenge yourself, you have the capacity to achieve far more than you may think is possible. Looking back to 10 years ago when I started training for Everest as someone who is deathly afraid of heights, it’s amazing to see the progress.” PROFOUND CLIMBING™ is all about creating, following, and executing a plan to achieve your goals and establishing a mindset that Alt has learned to apply to not only mountain climbing, but to his career and personal life as well.
Alt’s mountain climbing journey is far from over. His next climb is set to take place in October. He will be traveling to a remote part of Papua Indonesia on the island of New Guinea to climb Puncak Jaya/Carstensz Pyramid, one of the more dangerous of the seven summits due to factors other than its rugged natural terrain. Civil unrest, cannibalism, and kidnappings have made it historically difficult to even reach the base of the mountain. However, those challenges won’t stop Alt from achieving his dream for both himself and his father.
