Melissa Arnot

Arnot’s notable big mountain ascents include:

In 2016, she became the first American woman to summit Mount Everest and survive the descent without supplemental oxygen; another American woman Francys Arsentiev reached the summit without oxygen in 1998 but died during the descent.

Her Everest summit attempts in 2014 and 2015 were disrupted by avalanches on Mount Everest.

In 2013, she helped defuse an assault between three European climbers and a group of a hundred Sherpas; see Mount Everest in 2013.

In 2010, she led a celebrity climb up Mount Kilimanjaro to raise awareness for clean water access. The effort, Summit on the Summit, included actors Emile Hirsch, Jessica Biel and Isabel Lucas, musicians Kenna, Lupe Fiasco and Santigold, as well as various scientists and activists, and aired as an MTV special.

In 2008, she joined Jeff Dossett and David Morton on the Everest Team Inspi(RED) to promote HIV/AIDS awareness and Microsoft and Dell products supporting Product Red.

Arnot was raised just outside Glacier National Park in Whitefish, Montana. After college, she began living out of her car to save money and climb mountains. She first climbed Mount Rainier in 2001 and called it a "watershed moment". She began teaching wilderness medicine in 2002 and began guiding on Mount Rainier with Rainier Mountaineering, Inc. in 2004. By 2006 she was a lead guide.

Since 2001, she has summited Rainier more than 90 times. She is a certified Wilderness EMT and teaches Wilderness EMT courses for Remote Medical International.

Melissa Arnot Reid (born December 18, 1983) is an American mountaineer. She has climbed to the summit of Mount Everest six times.