Adrian Ballinger

Who is Adrian Ballinger?

Adrian Ballinger is a fully certified IFMGA/AMGA guide, certified through the American Mountain Guides Association. Ballinger has been guiding full-time for 15 years, and has led over 100 international climbing expeditions on 5 continents. In 2004 Ballinger founded Alpenglow Expeditions, a mountaineering guide service specializing in high altitude guiding worldwide. Alpenglow Expeditions is the first American guide service to require AMGA/IFMGA certification from its lead guides, and is known for its small groups, low client:guide ratios, and top-quality logistics in all the countries they operate. From 2007-2012, Ballinger was also the lead Everest guide for Himalayan Experience —or HIMEX—considered by many as the premier 8000-meter peak guiding outfit in the world. Ballinger, along with HIMEX's founder, Russell Brice, has been featured on the Discovery Channel’s Everest: Beyond the Limit series.

Ballinger has emerged as one of the premier high-altitude mountain guides in the world, leading clients up some of the world's biggest mountains. During the 2010 climbing season on Mt. Everest, Ballinger summited the mountain twice in 3 weeks, first on May 5 and then again on May 22. On his May 5 summit, Ballinger was the first non-sherpa of the season to summit, achieved while fixing ropes, replacing anchors, and removing old ropes from the mountain in partnership with 9 sherpa. Also in 2010, Ballinger led an Alpenglow Expeditions Clean Up Expedition on Ama Dablam. This team, along with summitting the mountain, removed thousands of feet of old fixed rope from the route, along with hundreds of pounds of trash from the camps. They also provided outreach to sherpa and members of other climbing teams to teach the use of human waste disposal kits while on the mountain, and donated human waste disposal bags to many of those teams. In 2011, he repeated his feat of summiting Everest twice in only a few weeks and added his first summit of Lhotse to that schedule as well. Ballinger has led successful expeditions to more than 25 Himalayan summits over 6000 meters, including twelve ascents of Ama Dablam—a highly technical 6800m peak next to Everest. Since 2007, he has guided clients to the summit of Everest 6 times, Manaslu 4 times, and Cho Oyu and Lhotse once each. He has also led an expedition to Makalu, the world's fifth tallest peak.