34 |^5280 |^ MAY 2018
James StukenbergRESUMÉ
NAME: Tr acee
Metcalfe
AGE: 44
OCCUPATION:
Internist at
Vail Health
and Himalayan
expedition
doctoring IVs. It’s also taught me
how to triage things better
and understand how hard it
can be to evacuate some-
one. A lot of times, we can’t
fly someone down to Denver
because the weather in Vail
just won’t cooperate.
Have you ever had to
evacuate someone during
an expedition?
I have. When I was on Ever-
est, at Camp 2 [around
21,000 feet], I evacuated a
person with high-altitude
pulmonary edema. On De-
nali and Everest, I’ve also
treated people with butt
boils [perirectal abscesses]—
basically infected pimples
where the backpack rubs, at
the top of your butt crease. It
can actually be really serious,
because you need to open it
up and administer antibiot-
ics. I had to have someone
evacuated once because it
was so severe.Any plans to return to
the Himalayas?
Definitely. This fall, I’m hop-
ing to work as the expedition
doctor on a trip to Cho Oyu,
which is a less technical
8,000-meter peak on the
Nepal-China border. But I’ve
also slowly been trying to
climb all the peaks in Colo-
rado’s Gore Range. I think
after being away so much,
you realize how satisfying it is
to live in Colorado and have
the Gore Range right here.5280: When did your career
as a doctor merge with your
passion for climbing?
Tracee Metcalfe: I’d been
hiking fourteeners in Colo-
rado for a few years, but in
2012 I took a monthlong trip
to Denali, volunteering with
the National Park Service as a
climbing ranger/doctor. I did
that for two summers and I re-
ally liked it, so I started look-
ing into mountain medicine.
In 2013, a good friend of mine
put me in touch with Russell
Brice, who hired me.What makes you a good fit
for a team like Brice’s?
Internal medicine is actually
really good preparation for the
kinds of issues we see while
climbing. I see chest pain all
the time. I know the top 20
causes of it and whether I need
to be scared or not. I’d say
70 percent of the problems I
see—like coughs, acute moun-
tain sickness, and high-altitude
pulmonary edema—are more
suited to internal medicine as
opposed to trauma or other
types of medicine.How does your job at Vail
Health prepare you to treat
mountain medical issues?
Vail’s at 8,000 feet, and we
see high-altitude illness fre-
quently here, so I feel really
comfortable managing it.
Working here also allows me
to brush up on skills more
suited to the emergency
room, like suturing and start-PROFILE
Mountain MD
Vail physician Tracee Metcalfe on
doctoring near Everest’s Death Zone.
When Vail Health internist Tracee Metcalfe summited
Mt. Everest in May 2016, she didn’t pause long to savor
the view. Instead, with her oxygen mask only partially
working and fatigue setting in, she took one good look,
then turned around and started to descend—for her own
sake and her team’s. “When I’m climbing, I don’t want to
be so tired I can’t be a doctor,” Metcalfe says. hat medic-
irst mentality explains why Metcalfe has spent ive
seasons as an expedition doctor in the Himalayas, most
recently as the mountain medic for expedition outitter
Himalayan Experience, led by legendary guide Russell
Brice. As Everest summit season reaches its peak this
month, we talked with Metcalfe about what it takes to
practice medicine above 20,000 feet. —JEFF WARANIAK