Highly experienced American mountaineer dies of cardiac arrest climbing 8,485m peak

American mountaineer Alexander Pancoe died, likely from cardiac arrest, while preparing to summit Mt Makalu in Nepal.

The renowned mountaineer from Illinois felt unwell late on Sunday night at Camp II after returning from Camp III, Iswari Paudel, managing director at Himalayan Guides, the expedition organiser, told The Independent.

Pancoe, 39, had completed an acclimatisation rotation to Camp III, a practice climb meant to help the body adapt to reduced oxygen levels before a summit attempt.

Pancoe aimed to raise $27,838 – the height of Mt Makalu in feet – for Lurie Children’s pediatric blood cancer programme in his hometown.

The climber had survived a brain tumour but was battling leukaemia at the time of his death.

On Mt Makalu, the fifth-highest peak in the world at 8,485m above the sea level, climbers pass through high-altitude camps to acclimatise to the conditions. Camp II is generally at 6,600-6,800m and Camp III at 7,300-7,400m.

Mr Paudal told The Independent that “Alex died possibly of cardiac arrest”.

“The cause of the death can be confirmed after postmortem only, but we suspect that it was a cardiac arrest,” he said on the phone from Kathmandu.

Mr Paudel said Pancoe had reached Nepal early last month.

On Sunday, Pancoe’s team of four, his expedition leader, was about to rest for the night when he felt unwell. The teammates tried to revive him for over an hour, but he was unresponsive, Mr Paudel said.

Pancoe’s family and the US embassy in Kathmandu had been informed of his death, Mr Paudel said, and efforts are ongoing to retrieve his body from the camp.

The Independent has reached out to the US embassy in Kathmandu for comment.

The Himalayan peak of Mt Makalu is on the border between Nepal and China’s Tibet, about 23 km southeast of Mt Everest.

Pancoe was a prominent figure in the mountaineering community.

He dedicated his adventure pursuits to supporting Lurie Children’s Hospital in Illinois where he had been operated upon after being diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2005. He aimed to raise funds for brain tumour research by completing the Explorers Grand Slam, a rare challenge involving climbs of the Seven Summits and cross-country skiing to the North and South Poles.

He had founded Peaks of Mind, a project that merged his passion for mountaineering with a commitment to mental health advocacy.

“It was a wild few years filled with adventure, a near-fatal climbing injury that required a Blackhawk helicopter rescue and lots of climbing! In 2019, upon summiting Everest and Denali, I became just the 15th American and one of 75 people in the world to complete the Grand Slam, raising almost $500,000 in the process for Lurie Children’s,” Pancoe wrote on the Peaks of Mind website.

“In 2023, while climbing Ama Dablam, a challenging climb in the Himalayan range, I became extremely hypoxic and struggled with the altitude. Several months later I was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia and learned that my body had been unable to make the red blood cells necessary to acclimate at altitude.”

Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia, he explained, was a “lifelong cancer”. “After almost two years of receiving treatment to manage it, I am going to be attempting to climb Makalu, the 5th highest mountain in the world and raise $27,838 for Lurie Children’s pediatric blood cancer programme.”

Pancoe noted that “climbing at altitude is plenty hard without a chronic ailment” but said he looked forward to “rising to the challenge”.