A little video, some music, arms wide open at 19,347 feet — something to make you all smile. (I’m a performer!)

I had my sleeping bag dialed, my gear organized, my layers perfect. At the Refugio I slept like a sailor, which I am — ten thousand ocean miles will teach you to sleep through anything, through rigging banging, doors opening and gear clanging and people whispering in the dark. I woke up ready. First day of school energy. Let’s go.

Cristian set our order as we headed out into the night: he leads, Faith in the middle, me last. I’m the pace dog — too fast, so I bring up the rear. For two and a half hours we climbed pulverized volcanic rock toward the glacier, and I was so close to Faith that my helmet kept tapping her ice axe. I could have gone faster. That wasn’t the point.

We strapped on crampons and crossed the glacier without issue. Then came the snow. More than a dozen years of backcountry skiing and snowboarding and living in Jackson have taught me how snow works under your feet — when to go straight, when to sidestep, how to find purchase on an angle. I sidestepped. Solid, efficient, not sliding. I noticed Faith going straight up, sliding more than she needed to, burning more energy than she had to spend. I tried to help. The mountain had its own ideas.

Partway up she stopped. Head hurting. And I’ll be honest with you — my first thought was we’re going to have to turn back. My second thought was shame about the first one. We are a team. That is not a sentiment in the mountains. It is a fact. You do not leave your team.

Cristian checked her over and found the problem — her hood was pulling on her helmet, creating pressure. He adjusted it. We kept going.

Meanwhile, nine other clients with five guides — all of whom had started after us — passed us on the way up and passed us again on the way down. Eleven of them descending while we were still climbing. I won’t pretend that didn’t sting. I let it sting for a moment and then I let it go, because the only mountain that mattered was the one directly under my feet.

We made the summit about an hour and forty five minutes later than planned. Sunrise had come and gone at 5:45am. The wind was ferocious. We could not see the caldera. There was no dance party. No picnic. No views. Just wind and ice and the three of us standing at the top of one of the highest active volcanoes in the world, trying to breathe.

The descent was where it got serious. What I had attributed to fatigue was something more — Faith was struggling with her vision at altitude, which explained everything. She wasn’t descending with poor footing. She was descending a glacier barely able to see. Now I was in front, talking her down step by step — left foot, right foot, here, now, stay with me — while Cristian managed from behind. Eventually he made the call: glissade. We positioned her on the snow and I took the front rope to pull while Cristian controlled from the rear. When I couldn’t hold the load we switched. He pulled. I tailed. We got her down.

All of us. Together. Safe.

I was wrecked yesterday — shin bangers, no sleep, and somewhere on that glacier my playlist got stuck on repeat. It’s a great playlist — Dua Lipa, Chappell Roan, the works — but after hearing it loop for hours with hands too cold to change it, I am done with every single song on it. Forever. Don’t ask.

And I would do every single second of it over.

That is what the mountains give you when they take away your dance party. Something truer.

Summit of Cotopaxi - 07:30 5/25/26

19,347’/5,897m

This post is part of my “Unsmallable 60 Project.” It’s my misogi, and let it be your permission slip.

Subscribe below — I want you here for all of it.

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Whatever your edge looks like — the trip you haven’t booked, the conversation you haven’t had, the life you keep meaning to start — you’re not done.

Neither am I.

— Susan

Today was training day on Cotopaxi. We started at the Cotopaxi Car park at 15,157 feet then we hiked to the Refugio at 15,958. Then to the glacier and our altitude was 16,998 feet. ~1,841 vertical feet gained.

Today we strapped on crampons for the first time on this trip, practiced self-arrest, and learned how to move on a glacier. All the things you’re supposed to do on a training day. Check, check, check.

But the real lesson happened before any of that.

We were leaving the car park into a massive wind. I didn’t have my rain cover on my pack. Cristian and Faith started walking. I dropped to the ground to wrestle the cover on in the gale — pack straps everywhere, wind whipping — doing my best. By the time Cristian turned around to check on me, the cover had blown off entirely. Gone.

I felt terrible. Embarrassed. And then I just hiked — head down, heart racing, trying to close the gap.

What I didn’t do: ask them to wait.

That’s the thing. I knew I needed a moment. I could see exactly what would help. And I said nothing.

Here’s what I teach my clients every day: the nervous system doesn’t care whether your stressor is a difficult conversation or a windstorm at 15,000 feet. When you get flooded, your heart rate spikes, your breathing shortens, and your capacity shrinks. At altitude, that’s not just uncomfortable — it’s a performance issue.

The antidote isn’t toughness. It’s a simple sentence: “Hey, can you wait for me?”

That’s the permission slip I need to write for myself before the summit push. Which may come sooner than expected.

We don’t know yet how tomorrow unfolds. Cristian may decide we go for a daytime summit — unusual, but possible. Or we do it the classic way: leave after lunch tomorrow, sleep at the Refugio by six, and let him decide whether we start our ascent at 10, 11, or midnight. Six hours to the top if we’re moving well. Either way, the mountain decides.

What I do know: I got my first altitude headache today around 16,000 feet. I’m skipping the Diamox and managing with ibuprofen and as much water as I can drink. Staying ahead of it. Staying calm. Practicing asking for what I need — even if just from myself.

Can’t wait to summit!

We drove up to the car park below the Rifugio — the staging area for the Cotopaxi summit — to get our bearings before Sunday night’s actual attempt. It was midmorning, which meant the fog had moved in, and it rained on us the entire way. A dry run that was anything but.

I also had my gear completely wrong.

Cristian has been guiding for twenty years. Faith has summited more mountains than I can count. They were dialed in — layers precise, gloves right, rain pants on, warm and ready. And then there was me. Wrong socks. Wrong gloves. No rain pants of my own, so I borrowed Cristian’s. Underneath them, my hiking pants — the ones I love, the ones that absorb moisture — were soaked through within minutes. I had the wrong everything.

There is something humbling about being the beginner in the room when the room is a parking lot at altitude in the rain. I felt frustrated. I felt behind. And then I did what I have been practicing all week: I chose a better thought.

I looked out at the landscape — red volcanic rocks scattered among pulverized lava and black basalt — and something clicked. The red comes from iron, oxidized over centuries. The same iron that makes blood red. The same iron in my red blood cells that have been quietly doing their job all week, carrying oxygen up into the thin air of these mountains. The iron in those rocks and the iron in my blood came from the same place — a star that died so we could exist.

My boots are extraordinary. My jacket is extraordinary. And my red blood cells — built from years of living at 7,000 feet in Park City — are doing their job beautifully up here. I am moving at pace at altitude, and I do not take that for granted for one single second.

The run was short and miserable and I am so glad it happened. Now I know. Wrong socks, wrong gloves, borrowed pants — none of that happens on Sunday night. That is the whole point of a dry run, even a wet one.

We go back tomorrow to do it again. Faith and I are going to ask Cristian at dinner to guide us 2.5 hours up to the glacier (it has receded) so that we can trek in our crampons and learn the way we’ll be climbing in the dark. Sunday night, we begin our summit attempt of Cotopaxi — 19,347 feet, one of the highest active volcanoes in the world. Cotopaxi last erupted in 2015 — nine years ago. Its most catastrophic eruption was 1877, when lahars reached both the Pacific Ocean and the Amazon basin. It is not a sleeping giant. It is a resting one.

I am nervous. I am ready. I am deeply grateful for the lesson today handed me in the rain.

The mountains do not care if you are prepared. But they will always show you whether you are.

This post is part of my “Unsmallable 60 Project.” It’s my misogi, and let it be your permission slip.

Subscribe below — I want you here for all of it.

Subscribe to The Unsmallable 60 Project

Whatever your edge looks like — the trip you haven’t booked, the conversation you haven’t had, the life you keep meaning to start — you’re not done.

Neither am I.

— Susan

Our guide Cristian turned to us on the approach this morning and said something I haven’t stopped thinking about: life has to be a little challenging for you to really feel alive.

He wasn’t just being philosophical. He was also being accurate — as I would discover on our climb of Rumiñahui.

We woke up at Hacienda Los Mortiños, climbed Rumiñahui, and came back to the same hacienda for dinner — 6.5 miles and 2,625 feet of vertical — a day that sounds simple on paper and was anything but. Rumiñahui stands at 15,190 feet, and today was the first time in my life I have ever been above Mt. Elbert — 14,440 feet, the highest peak in Colorado and the highest I had ever climbed until this morning. I didn’t fully register that until I was already on my way down.

The mountain earned its name today. It was dark from the start — cloud covered, moody, and dramatic for nearly the entire climb. It was also our first day with rain in Ecuador, and as we made our descent the weather turned hard, chasing us down with the threat of snow. We moved fast. The dark knight was not interested in lingering goodbyes.

It was the first time since arriving in Ecuador that we shared a mountain with other people. Until today it had just been the three of us — me, Faith, and Cristian. But this morning there was a group of about ten people in the parking lot when we arrived, staying at Tambopaxi Lodge inside the park, and they set off right alongside us.

We started first, stopped to adjust our gear, and they passed us. I felt that familiar competitive sting — and then I let it go. Because on a mountain, you have to. You find your pace or the mountain finds it for you.

The terrain on Rumiñahui moves through you in stages. First a long open field, then a ridge walk, then the volcanic face — soft at first, the kind of slope where you traverse in long diagonal switchbacks the way you would skinning up a backcountry ski mountain, and then gradually it turns to volcanic rock as you near the summit, steep and exposed enough to require real scrambling. Cristian ran a rope for the final section, which by then was slick with rain. I was glad for every inch of it.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the couple from California who appeared just below us on the rocky section — no helmets, no gloves, no rain gear. And we were above them. Every step I took, I was aware that a misplaced boot could send a rock tumbling directly onto them. I felt the anxiety rising, the catastrophizing beginning, and I had to make a deliberate choice: Cristian has seen this a thousand times. He would say something if he needed to. Trust him and stay present.

That is the thing about climbing that keeps bringing me back. It does not allow you to be anywhere but here. The mountain is not interested in your worries about yesterday or tomorrow. It asks only one thing: are you paying attention right now?

We made the summit. I took the obligatory photo — feet at the edge, crater dropping away below, steep and raw and beautiful. Something my son Steven taught me to do.

And then we descended, and the pulverized volcanic rock at the bottom was so fine beneath my boots that I skied it. Pure instinct, pure joy, moving fast as the weather moved in behind us.

On the drive back to the hacienda, the clouds finally broke. A single rainbow appeared over the valley — wide and complete and the only light we had seen all day. After hours inside the dark knight, it felt like the mountain’s way of saying: well done.

Yesterday I said I intended to approach the dark knight with softness and strength. Today I did.

That is what climbing at 60 feels like. Not fearless. Just present. Choosing the better thought, over and over, all the way to the top — and then letting yourself fly.

This post is part of my “Unsmallable 60 Project.” It’s my misogi, and let it be your permission slip.

Subscribe below — I want you here for all of it.

Subscribe to The Unsmallable 60 Project

Whatever your edge looks like — the trip you haven’t booked, the conversation you haven’t had, the life you keep meaning to start — you’re not done.

Neither am I.

— Susan

(Note: I publish my posts for the next day so you’ll get this on the day after my birthday.)

Last night, I slept fitfully. I dreamt of my mother and my sister, both of whom are deceased, both of them vivid and close in the way that only happens when a dream is less of a dream and more of a visit. They were younger and happy and I felt celebrated by them in my dream. I woke up at Chilcambamba Hotel at 11,417 feet, still feeling them near me.

My group — Cristian, our local Ian Taylor Trekking guide, and Faith, a fellow client from Miami — set out on our transit hike through the Valley of the Pita River to our next hacienda, 8 miles away. Along the way we came upon a scenic waterfall that took my breath away.

Water has always been a teacher — it doesn’t force its way, it finds its own level, and it moves around what it cannot move through. I took in its beauty while working on refocusing my mind to the next good feeling thought as my mind had spent a few hours in the morning in bad neighborhoods of rumination on “things that are adverse” (the details don’t matter). I looked at my watch and it was 11:39 am and I realized I had to stop the rumination. I’ve done a lot of meditation so I know I have to I gently refocus it by choosing the next good thought. It took a while of walking silently and staying present to the wind, the views, and my breath, then slowly my energy started to shift. After lunch, I felt light, at peace, and resolved to love what is. Not, what I want it to be. And then, I saw a feather and picked it up.

I’m not religious, but I am spiritual and I believe finding feathers is a sign. This one turns out to belong to a Caracara — a raptor native to the high altitudes of the Andes and a true survivor of this unforgiving terrain. Its feathers once adorned the crown of the Incan royalty. So I thought, “true survivor” and didn’t really know what to make of the royalty part until later.

Eventually we arrived at Hacienda Los Mortinos, a lodge so beautiful in the Spanish style.

The staff carried in my 2 enormous climbing duffles (I have a lot to learn to pack less and smarter to be able to do future summits), and gave me the best room in the hotel. Then it hit me: the feather, queen energy. It all makes sense. Queen energy is what I believe my 60s are going to be about.

My 50s were a decade of extraordinary masculine energy — I built things, I pushed hard, I led with my will and my relentless forward motion, and I needed every bit of it. But something has shifted. Everything in my life right now is pulling me toward the feminine — toward soft strength, toward stillness, toward being rather than becoming. Even the places where I have had to find my voice recently — and I have — I found it with kindness and with boundaries that finally feel like mine. For that I am deeply grateful.

This hacienda is named for the mortiño — the wild Andean blueberry that grows on these volcanic slopes and has never been successfully cultivated or domesticated. It only grows on its own terms, at altitude, in its own time. My room at Chilcambamba was also called Los Mortiños. The wild berry that cannot be tamed, that does its thing apologetically, keeps finding me before I knew what it was. More signs of what’s to come!

Today, friends from every corner of my life — every country, every chapter, every face of who I have been — reached out to celebrate this birthday with me. I felt every single one of their messages and feel incredibly grateful for their kindness and support. Thank you all for making me feel remembered and so special.

Tomorrow I climb Rumiñahui — 15,190 feet — my third summit in Ecuador. It’s our first technical ascent and Faith calls it “the dark knight” so it feels formidable and a bit fierce.

I intend to approach it with my softness and strength. I’ll lean into its volcanic rock and borrow its crevices and foot holds to achieve my goal to summit

It’s getting spicy and can’t wait to share more as I continue climbing, writing, sharing and growing.

(Photo of my feet on Pasochoa - my son Steven always takes this angle of a photo to show how badass his summits are - so here’s mine)

This is part of my ongoing project, 60,000 Feet for My 60th — four 6,000-meter peaks across four continents.

This post is part of my “Unsmallable 60 Project.” It’s my misogi, and let it be your permission slip.

Subscribe below — I want you here for all of it.

Subscribe to The Unsmallable 60 Project

Whatever your edge looks like — the trip you haven’t booked, the conversation you haven’t had, the life you keep meaning to start — you’re not done.

Neither am I.

— Susan

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Today is the last day I am 59 years old.

I’m spending it in Ecuador — which, if I’m being honest, is exactly where I should be.

I came here to climb. Cotopaxi. Chimborazo. Two giants rising from the Avenue of the Volcanoes, dressed in ice and entirely indifferent to my ambitions. I came for the vertical, for the aliveness of it. What I didn’t expect to find, before I’ve even set foot on either summit, was this: I was lonely for my people. And I found them here.

Which made me ask a question I’ve been quietly carrying: where does community go?

I know the answer. It goes where life goes. When I divorced, the married couple friends drifted. When I sold my company, the overland world moved on without me. When I stepped away from the Rebelle Rally — maybe for now, maybe forever — that sisterhood went quiet in ways that still sting a little. I’ve moved again, away from the neighborhood where I had my parent community, the school-gate hellos, the people who knew my kids’ names.

So many chapters. So many beautiful people who belonged to a version of me that no longer exists.

This is a big community moment in my life. And I think that’s okay to say out loud.

What I know is this: community doesn’t maintain itself. You have to keep calling it in. So that’s what I’m doing — actively, intentionally, with both hands open.

I’m calling in new climbing friends. Modern Elder Academy friends. The people I cowork with, the ones I stand up in front of at Toastmasters, the neighbors finding me up my mountain in Park City. I’m calling in every curious, restless, alive person who stumbled onto this Substack — the writers, the thinkers, the passionate mid-lifers who are living big and refuse to stop.

Here in Ecuador, I found a group of strangers who chose the same hard thing. The 3 a.m. alarms. The altitude. The cold that finds every gap in your layers. That’s enough. You don’t need decades of history to feel fellowship. Sometimes shared purpose is the whole foundation.

Our guide, Christian, told us there’s a brotherhood running from Mexico down through Bolivia — people held together by the Andes long before any border existed. The mountains don’t just divide. They gather.

Tomorrow I turn 60. The summits are still waiting. So is everything I’m building.

If you’re someone who keeps choosing aliveness — I’m so glad you’re here.

Tell me: where have you found your people?

This is part of my ongoing project, 60,000 Feet for My 60th — five 6,000-meter peaks across four continents.

This post is part of my “Unsmallable 60 Project.” It’s my misogi, and let it be your permission slip.

Subscribe below — I want you here for all of it.

Subscribe to The Unsmallable 60 Project

Whatever your edge looks like — the trip you haven’t booked, the conversation you haven’t had, the life you keep meaning to start — you’re not done.

Neither am I.

— Susan

The climb is steep. 2600 feet of vertical over five miles. The trail is a slick, rutted mess. A good start. Our group of 3 (just one other guest and me) moves like a single unit. We made a slow but steady push to the ridge line and then the summit.

All along the way, we met so many stray dogs. They have a unique place in Latin American culture and are regarded as communal pets. We met the nicest stray dogs at the summit (welcoming committee) and fed them little pieces of our snacks. They seemed so grateful.

The descent is my background with snowboarding and skiing came in handy. I got to help my partner from Miami get her weight forward so as to avoid slipping and falling. Weighting your feet gives you more traction.

Transit to our lodging for the night. I’m expecting a hostel. It is a palace. It’s Hacienda Cotopaxi Pungo with views of Cotopaxi (tonight in clouds) and neighboring volcanoes. (By the end of this trip, I hope to learn all of their names.) A fireplace in my room. An en suite with three hot pools and a cold plunge.

I feel so lucky to be here. This is a really special trip and it’s turning out to be five stars!

Thank you Ian Taylor Trekking for this awesome trip!

This post is part of my “Unsmallable 60 Project.” It’s my misogi, and let it be your permission slip.

Subscribe below — I want you here for all of it.

Subscribe to The Unsmallable 60 Project

Whatever your edge looks like — the trip you haven’t booked, the conversation you haven’t had, the life you keep meaning to start — you’re not done.

Neither am I.

— Susan

Not with voices. With visual noise. A thousand desperate booths, each a plea for attention. A physical reaction to sensory overload.

This is what it feels like when you try to sell everything. This is what happens when a brand tries to be everything to everyone and ends up nothing to anyone. It’s not a business problem. It’s a somatic problem. Your nervous system can’t process the input. The machine stalls.

Then, the internal negotiation. My partner donates to his high school charity. Mine, I realize, is not going to the mat with market vendors in Quito. I will fight with realtors. I will demand competitive bids on construction. But here, something shifts. A reluctance I can feel in my body. They need the money, my limbic system says. My son still roasts me over the “$24 for 2 earthenware espresso cups” incident in Cozumel. Maybe he’ll be right about the hummingbird necklaces.

The point isn’t the price.

It’s what we choose to fight for, and what we choose to let go.

Getting up early, I found myself on the TelefériQo. At the top, a decent espresso—a shocking rarity, even in the poshest American mountain lodges choked with Cisco-grade food. Then, a hike to Ruca Pichincha. Horseback, a private guide, a canter through the fields, a slow ascent to the ridge.

This was a plan. A clear heading. Execution with direction.

My next stop: Old Town.

This is where the map ran out. I hadn’t played it right. No specific destination. I was dropped into a Sunday throng in the colonial district. Street merchants. Strollers. A man sweating inside a Transformer costume.

It was movement without heading. Execution without direction. Speed in the wrong direction is just efficient loss. You don’t feel lost. You feel busy.

Eventually, I landed at Casa Ilayaku, a luxury lodge outside the city. My only fellow expeditioner is a woman named Faith, a climber with a lifetime of experience.

More to learn from her, I suspect. About what to hold onto. And how to find your heading when you’re unmoored.

This post is part of my “Unsmallable 60 Project.” It’s my misogi, and let it be your permission slip.

Subscribe below — I want you here for all of it.

Subscribe to The Unsmallable 60 Project

Whatever your edge looks like — the trip you haven’t booked, the conversation you haven’t had, the life you keep meaning to start — you’re not done.

Neither am I.

— Susan

What nobody tells you is what happens when you go off the map.

You follow it perfectly. The career. The sale. The milestones. Then you look up, and the road is just… gone. People call this slowing down. They retire. They shrink. They don't know what to do next. They hand themselves a smaller life and call it wisdom.

I’ve seen their faces. It is not peace. It’s grief mixed with confusion.

I decided a long time ago I would not pay that price. This is my answer.

I’m writing this from Quito, Ecuador. I turn 60 in four days. There will be no party trip to Cabo. I’ll be at 12,000 feet on the flanks of Chimborazo — the farthest point from the center of the Earth — acclimatizing. Getting ready. On May 27th, I will attempt the summit.

This is not a midlife crisis. It’s a practice.

The practice is called misogi. (Thanks, Jesse Eitzler, for the inspiration to have a misogi!) One deliberately chosen hard thing with a real chance of failure. Not a stretch goal. A strategic intervention for your nervous system. Something that could break you, that you execute anyway.

This climb is the start of The Unsmallable 60 Project. Before I turn 61, I will climb 60,000 feet of vertical gain on summits new to me. If I’ve stood on top before, it doesn’t count.

The anchors are set. Chimborazo in Ecuador. Aconcagua in Argentina. Mera and Island Peaks in Nepal. Woven between them: Cotopaxi, the Haute Route, the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim, Orizaba.

I call it Susan's Summits — a riff on the Seven Summits, the highest peak on every continent. I looked at that list and decided I didn't need to lose fingers, a nose, or my life to prove the point. Four 6,000-meter peaks. Non-technical. Hard enough.

This is the journal, not the highlight reel. You will get the altitude headaches. The midnight summit starts. The honest accounting when the heading is wrong, and I have to turn back. The view from the top when I do.

I’m a growth advisor and writer. A former founder who has learned that the real work happens just outside the comfort zone — well above the hard deck.

This isn’t a mission for permission. It’s a model for what’s possible when you refuse to be made small.

If you’ve ever stood at the edge of something and not gone — this is your front row seat. Watch what happens when someone does.

My misogi is your permission slip.

Come with me. Subscribe below — I want you here for all of it.

Subscribe to The Unsmallable 60 Project

Whatever your edge looks like — the trip you haven’t booked, the conversation you haven’t had, the life you keep meaning to start — you’re not done.

Neither am I.

— Susan