The first Iowan to ever climb Mount Everest spoke to 4-H members at the Iowa 4-H Youth Conference on Wednesday.

Charlie Wittmack told his story at Stephens Auditorium about the challenges he faced as he climbed to the world’s highest peak.

“I spent three days without food or water, and one day without supplemental oxygen,” Wittmack said.

It took three months for Wittmack to climb to the summit of Mount Everest. This was after seven years of rigorous training.

“For every five people who climb Everest, one doesn’t come down,” Wittmack said.

He said he had climbed mountains on several continents, including North America’s highest point, Mount McKinley. But ever since he was young, he’s always wanted to scale the mountain. Wittmack called it his “Everest dream.”

He said the biggest challenge was to trust his fellow climbers and capture fear.

“There’s two reasons we feel fear: when we’re doing something that we shouldn’t be doing,” he said, and “[when] we feel fear when we’re on a new path that we haven’t been on.”

The high altitude of Mount Everest has about one-third the oxygen Iowa has. Wittmack said the first thing to go is your brain.

“If you said five words to me, I couldn’t repeat them back,” Wittmack said.

The lack of oxygen also takes a toll on a climber’s physical ability.

“It takes 30 minutes to tie your shoes,” Wittmack said.

The mountaineers started their journey at base camp. Yaks helped carry the food that would be eaten on the trek. Wittmack and his small group were also joined by local Sherpas.

“There’s only a week’s worth of days where you can stand on Mount Everest’s summit,” Wittmack said.

Initial plans set Wittmack’s team to try to reach the summit on May 10, 2003. The Sherpas’ fear of bad weather forced everyone back down to base camp. May 10 turned out to be a horrible storm on the cliffs of Everest. All but two of the climbers in Wittmack’s team left for home after they failed to scale the mountain, but Wittmack wasn’t one of them.

Wittmack decided to take one last chance to climb the mountain with just five tanks of oxygen left.

“The last three miles takes 30 hours,” he said.

Wittmack said he would take one step and then collapse on the ground for three minutes before he would gain enough strength to get up and take another step.

Charlie Wittmack stood on top of the world on May 22, 2003, to become the only Iowan to ever climb Mount Everest.

President Gregory Geoffroy was also at the conference to welcome the 4-H members to Iowa State, and said many leaders at Iowa State were involved with 4-H in the past.

“We encourage our students to get involved in leadership roles in our over 700 clubs,” Geoffroy said.