Tracey Steele has just turned 48, and she plans to celebrate in a magnificent way this October.
“I will be the first African American to skydive from Mount Everest. We will be flying into Kathmandu, India, and then we’ll go to the base of Mount Everest, skydiving Above Mount Everest. The summit of Mount Everest is 29,035. The actual Everest Skydive is with oxygen, but the slow meandering, moderate grade Trek is without oxygen. (The Trek without oxygen to 12,350 feet is undertaken so that lungs can acclimatize and is completed without oxygen). We’ll gently descend to the drop zone, safe and sound in a lovely, glorious experience.”
Why did you start skydiving?
I’ve been doing birthday adventures to celebrate myself. Skydiving was my very first birthday adventure, and I fell in love with it. Every year that I can’t find a birthday adventure to do, I skydive. Skydiving is exquisite, there’s so much freedom, and I fell in love with it, and so I was looking for a location that had a better terrain, something more glorious to look at as I descend. I heard about skydiving on Everest last year.
Do you need to be fit for skydiving?
Basically, you have to be fit. There is a responsibility for you to be mentally alert, and to physically be able to cross your arms, lift your knees, so that you can have an easy, breezy, skydiving experience and landing. If you do not land correctly, then you’ll also injure your tandem master or jump master behind you.
How do you train for skydiving?
In order to prepare for the trek of Mount Everest, because I’m aided with oxygen when I’m traveling at that high altitude, [takes] a lot of health and wellness, to prevent [injury]. I hate exercise, so I always train to be preventive, I’m doing the mini trampoline, the stairs, I rollerblade along the lakefront of Chicago. I’m just kind of sticking to that program.
Why, in your opinion, hasn’t an African American skydived from Mount Everest before now?
African Americans seem to be self-regulated to certain sports. And [we] don’t dream outside the box because no one has promoted that dream outside the box, and I think that everyone has a joy that they personally can be rewarded for, and, if people around you are not giving you positive reinforcement to live outside the dream, then it’s very difficult to see it in yourself.
That’s why skydiving is so immaculate for me; seasoned adults are going to see that you can go and do something magnificent on a free day. Or your birthday whatever you want to do, you’re not defined by your environment. Be your environment.
Do your family and friends approve of your adventurous nature?
My very first skydive, my mom didn’t talk to me for the week prior and that’s when I was 21. I understand, but I’m very attentive and into reading and researching, and I follow great directions and I research everything that I do.
On a recent skydive my mom went with me and she was my official photographer on land. And it helped her to see how much fun we had on that day, and it wasn’t a fearful environment because she was able to see how much fun it was for us to have on that day.
What does skydiving feel like?
What’s really thrilling from your flight, you just go into a turbo prop plane, so it’s propellers, not a lot of engines, you go to a certain altitude and you jump out. You don’t really look at the land, you look at air, you know where you’re going to end up, and you know you’re going to end up there safely, so why don’t you play in the sky?
What I like about skydiving from Mount Everest is that you’re going to have a 40-minute airplane ride getting up to your altitude, and you can’t imagine what that’s going to look like. It’s going to be fierce. When you depart the plane it feels fearless; fearless because you’ve researched and you know what you’re doing.
Has skydiving helped you in other areas of your life?
When you land and you land safely, and you know that you did it, you don’t have that fear in your life once you do something like that. All of my birthday adventures there’s a level of fear, but mine isn’t about fear, it’s about read, listen and research, and on the day of the event I get to have a blast and take great photos of my smile.
