Vanessa Estol: First Uruguayan Woman to Summit Mount Everest
In May 2022, at 8,848 meters above sea level, Vanessa Estol pulled Uruguayan flag from her backpack and held it high against the backdrop of the world’s most famous summit. After years of dreaming, planning, and climbing, she had become the first Uruguayan woman to stand atop Mount Everest.
But her journey to that moment began far from the towering peaks of the Himalayas, in the coastal neighborhoods of Uruguay where a young girl who “didn’t really like sports” would eventually discover her calling in the world’s most extreme environments.
An Unlikely Beginning
Born in Montevideo and raised in Lagomar, Vanessa’s childhood was filled with beach trips, camping with her parents, and biking with friends. Her mother’s adventurous spirit meant the family was always surrounded by people doing adventure races, though Vanessa herself showed little interest in athletics at the time.
At 19, life took an unexpected turn when she competed in the Miss Uruguay beauty pageant in 2005. The experience landed her a job contract in Mexico, and she made the bold decision to leave Uruguay behind. What was meant to be a temporary move became permanent as she enrolled in psychology studies, eventually earning a master’s degree and PhD.
For a decade, Vanessa lived the life of an academic, spending most of her time indoors, focused on her studies. But by 2015, she felt the need to reconnect with nature and sought weekend activities to disconnect from her intense academic routine.
The Mountain That Changed Everything
That year, a friend invited her to climb a 4,600-meter mountain – Nevado de Toluca in Mexico. Despite having no athletic background or training experience, something inside her said yes to the challenge.
“I thought I’d never reach the summit, because I’d never been super athletic,” Vanessa recalls. The climb was harder than expected – what should have been a four-hour hike stretched to five and a half hours due to bad weather and snow. She and her Colombian friend came down exhausted, battling a storm.
But that same night, fate intervened. The movie “Everest” was premiering in theaters, and still buzzing from her first summit experience, Vanessa watched the harrowing tale of eight climbers who died on the world’s highest mountain. When she walked out of the theater, she knew with absolute certainty: she wanted to climb Everest.
Her friends laughed at her ambitious declaration. “C’mon, calm down, you just climbed Nevado de Toluca,” they said. But Vanessa was serious.
Building Dreams, One Mountain at a Time
The math was daunting – an Everest expedition costs around $60,000, money she couldn’t save on a psychologist’s salary. She started knocking on doors for sponsorships, thinking that being the first Uruguayan to attempt Everest would easily attract support. It didn’t.
Undeterred, Vanessa made a life-changing decision. She left psychology and started her own company, organizing expeditions to various mountains. Her first trip to Everest Base Camp filled up quickly, then another, then another. She led groups to Ecuador and organized weekend expeditions in Mexico.
Between 2015 and 2020, she climbed more than 20 international mountains, from Argentina’s Aconcagua to Bolivia’s high peaks, from Ecuador’s technical climbs to Patagonia’s challenging terrain. Most significantly, she made three consecutive trips to Nepal’s Himalayas, where she achieved a historic milestone.
In October 2018, she became the first Uruguayan to climb an 8,000-meter peak when she summited Manaslu at 8,163 meters. “There are 14 mountains in the world that are over 8,000 meters tall,” she explains, “and at that time, there were no recorded ascents by anyone from Uruguay.”
The Long Road to Everest
By 2020, Vanessa had saved the $60,000 needed for her Everest dream and built the experience necessary to attempt it. But the pandemic canceled everything. In 2021, she launched her expedition and made it to Camp IV at 7,900 meters – tantalizingly close to the summit. Then a major storm hit, forcing her team to descend. Back at base camp, COVID tests revealed several team members were positive, ending the expedition once again.
“This mountain has been a great teacher in many parts of my life,” Vanessa reflects. “I had to become more flexible, change my job, not be defeated by all the doors that closed on me or by the lack of support, and learn to turn that around.”
The Summit Moment
Finally, in May 2022, everything aligned. After 45 days on the mountain and the grueling process of acclimatization – making multiple trips up and down to different camps to help her body produce more red blood cells – Vanessa was ready for her summit bid.
The final push to the top is the most dangerous part. Climbers must navigate the Khumbu Icefall, a treacherous path of stacked ice blocks that move one to two meters per day, leaving deep crevasses between them. Ladders are placed between the gaps, and climbers must move quickly, praying the ice doesn’t shift beneath them.
As Vanessa and her team of Latin American friends crossed the icefall, the tail end of an avalanche reached them. They were covered in snow but unharmed – just another reminder of the mountain’s power.
Wearing a red down suit designed to withstand temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius, behind yellow goggles and an oxygen mask, Vanessa finally saw the colorful prayer flags fluttering at Everest’s summit growing closer and closer.
When she reached the top, she sat down and pulled out not one, but two flags. First came the Uruguayan flag – a moment of triumph for her homeland. Then the Mexican flag, honoring the country that had been her home since 2005. She stayed for 20 minutes, taking photos and giving thanks after years of struggle.
Beyond the Summit
But reaching the top was only half the journey. The descent meant retracing the same dangerous steps, this time carrying the exhaustion of the climb. The goal was to go straight from the summit to Camp II, then once again face the terrifying Khumbu Icefall.
“At the top, I realized my limits were much further than I had imagined,” Vanessa says. “When I felt like I couldn’t go on and was about to pass out – I could actually go six or seven more hours. In the end, I don’t think it was about the summit – it was about the entire journey to get there.”
Today, Vanessa has expanded her adventures into freediving, rapidly setting national records across all four disciplines and reaching depths over 60 meters. Based in Mexico City, she continues organizing adventure tourism expeditions worldwide, inspiring others through her workshops and public speaking.
And her Everest dream? It’s far from over. There are 14 mountains in the world over 8,000 meters high, and Vanessa wants them all. Her journey from a psychology student who didn’t like sports to the first Uruguayan woman atop Everest proves that sometimes the most unlikely beginnings lead to the most extraordinary destinations.
