The View From the Top of the World : Achievements: Stacy Allison was the first U. S. woman to climb Mt. Everest. She parlayed that success into a career as a motivational speaker.

Life at sea level agrees with Stacy Allison. It’s a wonder, considering that two years ago she reached the summit of Mt. Everest, making her the first American woman to scale the tallest peak in the world.

Fueled by the same clarity of purpose and precision that took her to the top of the 29,108-foot summit, the 31-year-old residential building contractor from Portland, Ore., has been giving motivational talks recently to corporations in Los Angeles and other major cities “using mountains as a metaphor for our struggle.”

She also has joined with Nike shoe company in making a national television commercial that advocates her conditioning program of cross-training. Allison skis, swims, climbs, kayaks, runs and plays the piano--”a variety of activities that complement each other.”

A rock-climbing expedition to Zion National Park in southern Utah during Allison’s first year of college transformed the next 13 years of her life.

“Rock-climbing is like ballet on a vertical plane,” she says. “Each movement is controlled, very deliberate. You have to conserve energy. It’s very graceful. I enjoyed the control I had to have not only over my body but over my mind--learning how to relax my mind under real stressful situations.”

Completely hooked, she dropped out of Oregon State University to devote more time to her new-found passion.

Mastering mountains, which requires both snow and ice-climbing skills, was slow in the beginning.

“I took it a step at a time. Then I started climbing in leaps and bounds,” she says. “I went through some really hard failures I could have avoided if I had taken it step by step.”

Allison had been climbing only three or four years when she began to think about climbing Everest. In 1981, after coming down Mt. McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America, she considered the possibility. Then she dismissed it. “I thought, ‘No way. That is for the big boys.’ I was almost embarrassed by my thought.”

But as she gazed at the mountain during her first trip to Nepal in 1982, the wheels were set in motion. “It was right there,” she says. “That is when I knew I was going to climb Everest someday.”

In 1987, Allison failed in an Everest attempt from the Tibetan side. Retreating from severe snow storms and waylaid by high winds, she relied on her mental toughness to weather eight days in snow caves before pulling back.

“I did a lot of daydreaming,” says Allison about coping with the confinement. “I was with three other people, and usually climbers have real intense personalities. But I was able to calm myself. It was definitely mental.”

The use of visualization is a basic part of Allison’s design for making personal plans happen.

“When I stand at the base of a climb, I mentally prepare myself by following the route I’m going to take up to the top. Then coming back down. Looking for objective dangers, possible problems. Just looking at the whole picture.”

In 1988, Allison and 10 other members of the Northwest American Everest Expedition Team with a group of Sherpas (Tibetan support personnel) set up four base camps on the mountain.

Good weather was on Allison’s side this time. So was the considerably easier South Col route, which lacks the steepness Allison had confronted on the Direct North Face a year earlier.

But nothing prepared Allison for her confrontation with the Khundu Icefall.

The team spent 10 days finding their way through the enormous crevasses and ice towers formed by a glacier--a moving mass of ice and snow. Route-finding--without a compass but guided by a knowledge of how glaciers move and flow--was a matter trial and error.

“You’re in the icefall and everything is huge. You can’t see over the next ice tower. We would start out and get across some crevasses. All of a sudden you would find yourself in a place where you couldn’t go any farther. You would have to backtrack, taking out all your ropes and try to go another way,” says Allison.

Finally, at midnight on Sept. 29, 1988, three Americans and three Sherpas made a summit bid. To offset the drain on their oxygen supply, two Americans had to turn back. A lottery was held to determine which climber would continue. Allison picked the lucky number. Wearing spikes on her boots and carrying a backpack, water, ice ax and oxygen bottle, Allison reached the top of Mt. Everest at 10:38 a.m. the following day.

Would she have tried again if this attempt failed?

Without hesitation Allison replies: “Yes, I would have gone for a third. I’m very persistent, stubborn person. And I don’t give up easily. If I have a goal, then I’m going to achieve it.”

Allison’s Everest adventure has its place in her hierarchy of values. “I went to get to the top of the mountain. I didn’t care whether I was a man or woman. And once you’re over there, it doesn’t matter either. You climb as partners,” she says.

Ironically, it isn’t her experience at the top that Allison shares most during her lectures about the climb. Her 45-minute stay at the summit, which was spent waiting for the Sherpa and photographing herself with the logos of corporate sponsors, was anticlimactic.

“The summit is not the most important point. It is the entire journey getting you there. And when you stand at the summit, it is just very brief.”

Instead, she draws upon the tale of the icefall to make her point.

“It is easier to stand at the bottom of your icefall and just look at it,” says Allison.

“But if you stand at the bottom and just look at it, you’ll never reach the top of your mountain.”