Fox News Correspondent Summits Mount Everest, Does 22 Pushups

Carrying a Fox News Channel flag, Fox News Senior Correspondent Mike Tobin reached the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. That’s a massive achievement in itself, but Tobin completed one of the world’s riskiest and most dangerous challenges by dropping and doing 22 pushups in recognition of the 22 veterans who die by suicide every day.

“You have seen some of the different events that people have done as far as the 22 push-ups in recognition of the veteran suicide,” Tobin said on Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom. “I hope that a troubled guy out there somewhere who was looking at suicide as a reasonable response to his troubles will realize that someone took the time to do that in a perilous situation and reconsider before he hurts himself.”

Tobin, an experienced climber who has reached the summits of Cotopoxi, Chimborazo, Aconcagua, the Eiger, the Matterhorn, the Wetterhorn, and Cho Oyu, says preparing for Everest was an entirely different–and grueling–experience. “We did crazy kinds of training,” he said. “Like, I take the sandbags that our cameramen use and I put them in a backpack and I ran up and down the Indiana sand dunes for hours at a time.”

But that physical training couldn’t prepare him for the unique psychological experience of reaching the top of the world–and then returning safely. “I certainly was spooked at different times on the climb,” Tobin said. “The only time I really noticed that I was spooked was coming back down the Second Step. To explain what the Second Step is, on the northeast ridge of Everest, there are three major obstacles, the First, Second and Third Step. And for whatever reason–and some of the other guys on the team said the same thing–coming back down on the Second Step, that was spooky.”

It was in Everest’s “death zone,” above 26,247 feet where the air is too thin to support human life without supplemental oxygen that Tobin stopped to complete the 22 pushup challenge. “”The only way you survive the death zone is to get in and out of there as fast as you can before the sand runs out of your hourglass or before the oxygen runs out of your bottle,” said Tobin.

“I was just trying to think, ‘Keep your head about yourself. Don’t make any mistakes, don’t turn what’s otherwise going to be a celebration into a tragedy.'”

About 700 to 1,000 climbers attempt the summit each year, with success rates ranging between 60% and 70%, according to Climbing Kilimanjaro. In 2023, 12 climbers died on Everest, and another five were separated from their teams and listed as missing.

In terms of climbing, once you’ve reached Everest it’s all quite literally downhill from there. But would Tobin want to follow his climb with another equally impressive feat? “Given the caliber of men I climbed with on this team, it will be hard to top this Everest experience,” Tobin said. “However, the very reason I became a reporter is a lust for the next experience or adventure. I won’t shut the door and declare the thrill-seeking portion of my life has peaked. In the short term, what I want now, is to be with my wife.”