Have you ever been to Mount Washington Cemetery? It’s located right at the base of the Mount Washington Water Tower, and it’s kind of a hidden gem. It’s a cemetery, but it’s one of those cemeteries with so much history and character that its charm outshines its sacredness, inviting locals to explore its grounds rather than circumvent it.
I found myself there after I got a tip about a local man who trains in the graveyard to prepare for an upcoming expedition to climb Mount Everest.
“One loop in the cemetery is exactly a quarter mile,” Tony Ranieri told me. He said he used to run there when he went to McNicholas High School in the early 2000s.
Meet Tony
“I leave in two weeks,” Tony said. His ascent to the summit of Mount Everest will take him 60 days. Tony expects to lose about 15-30 pounds during the climb.
These final two weeks will be the culmination of ten months of rigorous training for Tony. “No stone has been left unturned in my preparation for this climb,” Tony assured me.
When he’s not running above the old bones of Mount Washington Cemetery, his training consists of breathing classes and physical therapy. He also swims, performs acceleration and circuit training, and undergoes cryotherapy. Tony even hired a nutritionist specifically for the climb. So what does a Mount Everest climber eat? “It’s a high color diet,” Tony said. “You want to have as much color on your plate as possible.”
Ten months is a long time. “It’s been a slow-go,” Tony said. He considers the turtle to be his spirit animal for this climb.
In fact, Tony said he painted a picture of a turtle on a wall in a secret (but public) location to kind of let the challenge leave its mark. The location of the turtle is a secret though because it’s where he does his stair climbing training and those who are aware of the secret spot don’t want a lot of people showing up.
So if you are in the market for a good place to climb stairs, or you just like a good scavenger hunt, be on the lookout for the turtle. Then if you find it, Tony challenges you to beat his personal record of 40 trips up and down the stairs with rest in 1 hour and 59 minutes. Good luck.
The adventurer
Interestingly enough, Mount Everest won’t be the first mountain Tony has climbed. In fact, it’s one of the last on his list. Tony is attempting to accomplish the Seven Summits, a mountaineering challenge to climb the highest summit on each continent. As far as he knows, no one from Cincinnati has accomplished this.
So far, Tony has scaled Denali (North America), Aconcagua (South America), Elbrus (Europe), Kilimanjaro (Africa), and Kosciusko (Australia). After Mount Everest, Tony will still need to climb Mount Vinson in Antartica. And due to some discrepancies in the mountaineering milieu about whether Kosciuszko is actually the highest point in Australia, Tony will also climb Carstensz Pyramid just for good measure.
In case you didn’t think that the Seven Summits was enough, Tony has his sights on the Explorer’s Grand Slam, which is the Seven Summits challenge PLUS skiing the last degree of the North and South Poles.
If everything goes as planned and Tony stays healthy, he should have the Explorer’s Grand Slam completed by April 2022 and be one of only a few hundred people in the history of the world to accomplish that.
Why
Yeah so why, right? Well, if you look at Tony he just looks like one of those guys who climb mountains; he’s sporty, high energy, and confident. But not with the my mom told me to look people in the eye-confidence, but in the I actually did things-confidence.
When he talks, it’s very direct, with purpose and clarity. Very rarely does he say something only because he thinks he has to say it. And he stands completely square to you with his hands on his hips, totally open like someone with nothing to hide, or Superman.
For Tony, it’s not necessarily about the summit. “You discover what you are personally capable of in your preparation for something as much as for the journey itself,” Tony said. He talked about deathbed ethics and how we should all strive to become the best version of ourselves we can, but there was one thing he said that really struck a chord with me, and it was this:
“Between the time that you say you’re going to do something and the time that you try, your life has an authentic purpose in that space.”
I liked that. We don’t talk enough about purpose anymore. Understanding purpose is one of those secrets of success everyone clamors for.
Big energy
I wasn’t too surprised to learn that Tony is the CEO and President of a speedily growing local company, Solar is Freedom. It’s a company that installs solar power systems on homes and Tony tells me it’s currently the largest residential renewable energy company in Ohio and Kentucky.
Tony describes Solar is Freedom as democratizing energy, which basically means that he’s giving people the power to generate their own energy, rather than fully depend upon the grid. He said they do about 20 installations per week.
Tony attended Catholic school at St. Veronica on Mount Carmel Tabasco Road before he went to McNick where he graduated. Subsequently, he went to Ohio State University and graduated with a BA in Philosophy. Ironically enough, Tony never took a business class in his life.
Today he has about 100 employees and almost 20% of which are McNick graduates. Sure, he’s keeping things local, but I think there’s also a smart strategy at play here. Team building is easier and the end result is more effective when people with shared backgrounds come together. This may be why Tony boasts about their customer satisfaction and overall company wide cohesion.
It will be interesting to check in with Tony’s company in five years to see how much it’s grown. The guy’s highly motivated and his enthusiasm is inspiring. It didn’t surprise me to hear that he never took a business class. I’m a firm believer that if you put in the work and take the risks, you will find success — or at least get yourself off the ground, and then you can learn the details later.
It doesn’t hurt to be passionately driven as well, for one reason or another.
“I’ve always been someone who has a real chip on my shoulder,” Tony made clear. “I take things personally. I remember intimately the day, the time, and the moment when someone said they didn’t think I would accomplish something. I remember every one of them. I care very deeply for people who have helped me, but I always have a special place in my rolodex for people who have told me I wasn’t going to get to where I was going and I’ll never forget them.”
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Did you miss my last article, All the World’s a Stage? If so check it out right here.
