> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # “It's Game Over”: How Alex Staniforth Survived Everest's Two Deadliest Disasters– and Outgrew the Mountain - URL: https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/blog/its-game-over-how-alex-staniforth-survived-everests-two-deadliest-disasters-and-outgrew-the-mountain/ - Published: 2026-08-14T16:15:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-14T16:14:59.000Z - Description: Alex Staniforth survived Everest's two deadliest disasters before turning 20. His story of adversity, resilience and letting go, on The BEYOND Podcast. - Author: Elliott King - Tags: insight, Alex Staniforth Most people's worst day at work does not involve standing alone at 6,000 metres, listening to an avalanche come for them through fog too thick to see it. Alex Staniforth's did, and he was 19 years old at the time. On this episode of The BEYOND Podcast, [Alex Staniforth](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexstaniforth)– record-breaking ultra-endurance athlete, author and founder of the mental health charity [Mind Over Mountains](https://www.mindovermountains.org.uk)– sits down with host Aleksandra King to tell the story behind a statistic that still sounds impossible: he survived the two deadliest disasters in Mount Everest's history, in two consecutive years, before he turned 20\. You can [watch the full conversation on YouTube](https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/what-surviving-2-everest-disasters-reveals-about-mental-health-alex-staniforth/). What makes his story worth an hour of anyone's time is not the danger. It is what the danger revealed. ### The Boy Who Felt "Born to Fail" The Everest story starts nowhere near a mountain. Alex developed epilepsy at nine, which became a trigger for anxiety and panic attacks. He was badly bullied for being different, and a lifelong stammer meant he could never quite say what he wanted to say. "I never felt good enough," he tells Aleksandra. "I always felt like I was a victim, like I was born to fail." Then, at 14, came a first hill walk in the Lake District, and with it a feeling school had never given him: freedom, achievement, and a kind of safety where he could be himself. The same day, a question arrived that would redirect his life: where is Mount Everest? "I became absolutely obsessed, fascinated, captivated," he says. "It just seemed like the ultimate challenge, the ultimate goal, to prove myself and to prove those bullies wrong." Four years later, he was there. ### Two Years, Two Disasters His first attempt, in 2014, ended before it began: an avalanche in the icefall killed 16 people, and the expedition was cancelled before the team reached Base Camp. He came back in 2015\. On 25 April, roughly half an hour from Camp 1, the earthquake that killed more than 9,000 people across Nepal shook loose the mountains above him. He never felt the quake itself. What he heard was a massive crack overhead– ice breaking off 7,000-metre peaks over the Western Cwm– and then a distant boom, coming straight at him. ![Alex Staniforth and host Aleksandra King in conversation on The BEYOND Podcast set](https://storage.ghost.io/c/5e/74/5e74ba0c-c249-4586-8ce5-03deb56fdf93/content/images/2026/08/02-two-shot-alex-staniforth-aleksandra-king-2.jpg) The fog hid everything. When the pressure change hit, it hit "like a snow cannon". "First time in my life, at 19 years old– I'm thinking, this is it. It's game over. And there's nothing I can do but stand and take it," he says. The wall of freezing air was deafening, but the debris never came; what reached him was a huge blast of dislodged powder. "I was dusted in snow, I was shaking, the ropes had gone, but I was still here." He got on the radio to his teammates. "No response. Try again– no response. So I assume that my teammates are gone." With the fixed lines buried and crevasses hundreds of metres deep on either side, he moved half-blind to Camp 1, in shock, in survival mode. ### Failure Is About Your Response Here is the part of the conversation that business audiences should sit with. Alex had been raised, like most of us, on the promise that hard work buys results. The mountains disagreed. "In the mountains, they don't give a damn how hard you've worked or how much you spend," he says. What the 2014 disaster took from him, strangely, was not his confidence but his fear of failure: "Now I know that even if I fail, it's not the end of the world... I wouldn't have done 75% of the things I've done, had I not failed." That reframe powered a second act that arguably eclipses Everest. He became the fastest person to climb the highest point of all 100 UK counties– 5,000 miles by bike, foot and kayak in 72 days– and later the first and fastest to climb all 446 mountains in England and Wales by human power. Along the way came a seizure at mile 78 of a 186-mile run, hypothermia and a night in hospital after 27 and a half hours on the Bob Graham Round, and, in his own words, the lesson that "only if you're willing to risk going too far can we find out what's really possible". ### The Charity That Nearly Broke Its Founder The cost of all that resilience arrived quietly. It took long Covid– "the worst year of my life"– and burnout at the mental health charity he founded to teach him that endurance is not the same as strength. "It's ironic that the charity burnt me out, because I cared too much, and I gave too much of myself," he admits. "You can't help anyone, you can't lead, when you're burnt out." Admitting that to his team, handing on the day-to-day and staying on as founder and trustee was, he says, the hardest and most important leadership decision he has made: "If I go down, the whole thing's going to go down." (The moment lands hard for Aleksandra too– she shares her own story of pushing through burnout until Graves' disease forced her to stop.) ![Host Aleksandra King smiling during the conversation on The BEYOND Podcast set](https://storage.ghost.io/c/5e/74/5e74ba0c-c249-4586-8ce5-03deb56fdf93/content/images/2026/08/04-aleksandra-king-beyond.jpg) ### Letting Go of the Mountain The quietest twist comes at the end. At 30, Alex realised he could go back to Everest– but that he would be going for the wrong reason. "I'm chasing validation. I'm doing this for something external, rather than for myself," he says of the light bulb moment. "Along the journey I realised I had nothing left to prove." The boy who went to the mountain to silence his bullies has put the poster away, and found that the ambition underneath it was finally his own. ### Actionable Takeaways for Ambitious Professionals - **Redefine failure as your response, not the outcome.** The objective can be taken from you by forces you don't control; how you learn, regroup and go again cannot. - **Ask "what could happen if I don't?"** Alex's advice for anyone stuck at the foot of their own Everest: motivation away from regret is often stronger than motivation towards a goal. - **Audit who your goal is for.** If the honest answer is validation– an audience, a scoreboard, old bullies– it will never be enough. Choose goals you would still want with nobody watching. Listen to the full conversation with Alex Staniforth on the [Aleksandra King YouTube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVYPj9w8h3M), and browse more episodes of The BEYOND Podcast at [the episodes archive](https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/episodes/). If this one stayed with you, hear Aleksandra's conversation with Derrick McManus, the special-operations officer who survived being [shot 14 times](https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/insights/derrick-mcmanus-shot-14-times-the-beyond-podcast/).