A highly skilled climber from Illinois has died while attempting to climb Mount Makalu in Nepal while raising money for a children’s charity. Alex Pancoe, 39, was suffering from a rare blood cancer himself when he experienced cardiac arrest following a practice climb to Camp III from Camp II to acclimatize himself.
He was with his three teammates when he fell unresponsive shortly before going to bed on Sunday, The Independent reports. Efforts to retrieve his body from the camp are ongoing.
Pancoe had been suffering with chronic myeloid leukemia, which meant his body had been unable to make the red bloods cells necessary to acclimate at altitude. He had been receiving treatment to manage the condition after becoming hypoxic and struggling with altitude during another Himalayan mountain climb in 2023.
Nevertheless, he was determined to scale Makalu, the world’s fifth highest mountain, to raise $27,838 – a dollar for each foot of altitude. He planned to donate the proceeds of his fundraising to Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, where he had been treated for a brain tumor in 2005.
Pancoe was a skilled climber and in 2019 had completed the Explorer’s Grand Slam, which involves reaching both the North and South poles and summiting the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents – Everest, Kilimanjaro, Denali, Elbrus, Aconcagua, Vinson and Kosciuszko. He is one of only 73 people to have achieved the feat.
He had raised many thousands of dollars in the past for Lurie Children’s Hospital, and he detailed his experiences on his website, Peaks of Mind.
Himalayan death toll reaches four
Pancoe, who was a father of two, is the fourth person to die in the 2025 Himalayan spring climbing season.
On April 26, Austrian climber Martin Hornegger, 64, went missing while descending from Ama Dablam peak after successfully reaching the summit. On April 8, two Nepalese mountain guides died in an avalanche on Annapurna. The bodies of Rima Sherpa and Ngima Tashi Sherpa were located in a crevasse using Recco reflector technology.
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