Mountains sing a siren song to Jess Roskelley. They lured him to become a climbing guide on Washington state's Mount Rainier. They led him to UM, where campus abuts mountain slopes. They compelled him to summit peaks across the Cascades and Canadian Rockies. And the lure of mountains led him to the top of the world.

On May 21, 2003, Roskelley, at age 20, became the youngest American ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest. The UM freshman struggled to the thin air at 29,038 feet with his father, John Roskelley, a Spokane County commissioner who also happens to be a world-class climber. They are among only a handful of father-son teams to have topped Everest.

"To climb Everest you have to be committed ... and be willing to be miserable for a couple of months," Roskelley says. "For me, between 23,000 and 26,000 feet was the hardest part. We didn't use oxygen there, and we faced 80 mph winds. Near the end you had to stop and rest every few feet. It wasn't easy."

He says the thin air at the highest point on Earth made his memories of the actual summit rather hazy. It was cloudy at the top, and they only stayed 10 minutes. But he admits he and his dad became misty-eyed when they realized they had achieved their long-sought-after goal.

Love of climbing gives Roskelley the focus he needs to overcome high-country obstacles. But in the classroom he faces a learning disability that destroys focus: attention deficit disorder.

"I've always had a really hard time with school," he says. "But I'm committed to graduating from college, and I've kind of fallen in love with The University of Montana."

After surviving high school, Roskelley attended community college in Spokane for a time before transferring to UM. Here, living with a roommate in a busy residence hall, his disability had him floundering. But then UM administrators found him his own room just down the hall, which allowed him to shut out distractions and regain his elusive focus.

"It's tough," he says, "but the people at UM were really accommodating. With my ADD, I plan to go through school a little more slowly. I also intend to keep climbing."

Roskelley trained for his Everest adventure by running up UM's Mount Sentinel and lifting weights on campus. While on the highest peak, sometimes trapped in his tent for days by howling Himalayan blizzards, e-mails from campus friends, faculty and alumni helped sustain him. And now that he's back, his trek is allowing him to earn independent study credits from UM's Environmental Studies Program. "I'm doing a project on the environmental aspects of Mount Everest — the cleanup, and what's been done on that over the years," he says.

Just starting his academic career, Roskelley hasn't settled on a major. He has dabbled in forestry recreation and environmental sciences, but he may eventually go into something technical such as broadcast video production — a skill that could be used on his alpine treks.

Now 21, Roskelley already has seen more of the world than most people ever experience. An avid ice and rock climber, he has visited high country from Montana to China and Australia. On Everest he and his father depended on Sherpas to guide them through the Death Zone — the top 4,000 feet of the mountain, which is littered with the frozen bodies of 120 climbers who didn't make it. His climbing has exposed him to myriad cultures and people.

"I'll tell you, I've seen a lot," he says. "Diversity is super important. If we were all the same color and size of people, or whatever, it would be pretty boring, that's for sure."

Boredom is something Roskelley shouldn't have to contend with, not as long as there's another ice wall to scale, another mountain to be conquered. Climbing has his attention.

Jess Roskelley | Teresa Branch | Mehrdad Kia | Sousan Rahimi | Jerry Lamb