Exploration
Moving Mountains: Nelly Attar
In 2022, Nelly Attar became the first Arab woman to summit K2. In Saudi Arabia, where women have been discouraged from physical activity, she’s become a role model, inspiring millions to get moving.
You might picture serious mountaineers as a grizzled bunch, but this one grooves. Nelly Attar has danced on her way up Mount Everest, her big joyous curls bouncing wildly before reaching the summit. She’s danced on technical Ama Dablam and on mellow Kilimanjaro. She’s even danced on terrifying K2 this past summer. She’s danced when she’s happy, danced when she’s bored, and yes, she’s danced through fear. To her, “movement is medicine.”
Here’s another incongruous fact: This 5’2” powerhouse trained to climb the world’s highest peaks from a home base of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Let that sink in for a moment. That’s hot, flat desert, not mountain snow and ice. Then there are the rules, both written and unwritten, that for much of Attar’s life gave most women and girls little access to sports or fitness—not as athletes, not as spectators, not even in gym class at school. Dancing in public has also been taboo.
“I’ve learned through life there are plenty of opportunities through challenges,” she says. “You just have to be creative.”
Attar’s fitness journey reflects a trend in Saudi Arabia to get active.
© TERRAY SYLVESTER
Attar’s progression as an athlete—from teaching dance classes underground and opening a wildly influential dance studio to completing marathons and Ironmans to climbing the world’s tallest mountains—is indeed a story of challenges and creativity. But that’s only part of it. Her career trajectory, from psychologist to sports figure, tells another story, too, one that reflects how life in Saudi Arabia is changing, and how Attar is helping to change it.
“I shifted careers to work in sports because in Saudi, that’s what created more impact,” she says. “Especially in mental health.”
In a country where 60 percent of women get less than 30 minutes of physical activity a week, simply moving the body can be transformative. The physical struggle—of the climb, of the marathon, of a dance class, or an hour spent at the gym—is a way to deal with the rest of life’s struggles: the losses, disappointments, self-doubt, even the hardest thing of all, grief. “It’s the best antidepressant, the best anti-anxiety pill ever,” she says.
Which is the story she very much wants to share with fellow Saudis, with women, with the world.
Attar started teaching underground dance classes in Saudi Arabia.
© Courtesy of Nelly Attar
Attar helped open the world of dance and movement to Saudis.
© Courtesy of Nelly Attar
In the record books, Attar’s singular achievement to date is her climb of K2, long dubbed the “savage mountain” because, as one early climber said, it “tries to kill you.” It’s a grueling, weeks-long process that involves a long approach; an acclimatization rotation; avalanche, weather and rock- and icefall hazards; and a looming serac over a steep, narrow passageway that has claimed numerous lives. In July of 2022, she became the first Arab woman to reach the 28,251-foot summit. But in many ways, another first—one that won’t go in any record books—is just as significant. It has to do with dancing.
If you live in a region where dance performances and dance clubs and dance lessons are common, a place where music fans dance at concerts, then this part may be a little hard to grasp. But until relatively recently, dance and music were not permitted in public places in Saudi Arabia. Attar helped open the world of dance and movement to Saudis, which is why we’ll begin the story of her mountain journeys here.
It started with a period of personal challenges. Moving to London in 2010 to pursue a Master of Research degree in psychology, she was plagued by anxiety—throat-constricting, heart- racing panic attacks that left her feeling like the world was collapsing. It took months to learn how to cope. She started with stillness, slowing the breath and focusing on one thing, not many. Then, for a longer-term fix, she turned to movement. “My outlet was sports: running along the Thames, fitness classes, dancing. I tried everything,” Attar says. “When I didn’t train, I wouldn’t feel good. I’d feel lazy. When I’d start to train, I’d feel better, want to take care of myself more, eat better.”
Before becoming a sports figure, Attar had anxiety and panic attacks.
© TERRAY SYLVESTER
After graduating, Attar looked for work in London, then in Lebanon, where her father lived, but the job hunt went on for more than a year. In 2013, she finally found work back in her hometown of Riyadh, providing therapy for brain injury patients. But then she had another challenge. In Saudi, women like Attar had few outlets. The few existing fitness options that allowed women were mostly poorly equipped gyms connected to beauty salons. An Arab woman jogging in public was unusual enough to draw comments. So was simply being outdoors without a long black covering, called an abaya. But she knew she had to move.
So she got the idea to offer her female colleagues dance lessons after work. It was a scary prospect at first. But taking that step “changed my career and, later down the line, my life,” she now realizes.
I’ve learned there are plenty of opportunities through challenges.
As the classes became more popular, she began traveling around the city, to embassies and other private venues, teaching dance underground. Her mother and stepfather suggested another intimidating idea: opening her own studio. This was 2017, and it was a risk. That year, a 14-year-old boy was detained after doing the “Macarena” on a city street. There was no clear path to get a business license. Some conservative elements couldn’t accept the idea of women doing anything athletic. There could be trouble if she was discovered. She wasn’t even sure if she was a good-enough dancer. “I did one thing consistently right,” she said in a TEDx talk. “Regardless how it looked, I took that imperfect step forward.”
She named the studio Move. Open only to women and girls, it offered everything from Afrobeat to belly dancing and hip-hop. But learning dance steps was only part of the appeal. Women would arrive early just to bask in the warm, supportive environment. Girls would bring their moms, who would hang around to watch, learn and socialize.
In the fall of 2021, Attar announced a plan to climb "savage mountain," K2.
© TERRAY SYLVESTER
On the side, Attar was organizing other activities for the larger community, too, like hikes and running events— anything to get women moving.
“There are infinite possibilities,” she says. “Basketball, dance, playing with your kids. Movement is such a big umbrella. You have to go and try and see what works for you. Unconsciously you’ll start to build.”
She saw it in the twentysomethings who found confidence through movement. She saw it in the conservative moms who took up belly dancing at Move. “It was like a party, really,” Attar says of the scene. Students became “a tribe, a community. Their whole emotional well- being changed.”
She remembers one teenage girl who was so shy when she walked through Move’s door, she could barely speak. Through YouTube, the teen had learned some dance moves and had convinced her skeptical mother to allow real lessons. At her first class, a one-on-one with teacher Noura Al-Abdulaziz, the girl was shaking. All she could do was nod and try to follow the steps.
Al-Abdulaziz understood. She had once suffered a paralyzing depression, but “I started communicating with people through my body, through dancing, not saying one word,” she says. “That’s how I got healed.” Now, she watched her struggling student do the same. “She found her own style, her own personality,” Al-Abdulaziz recalls of the teen. Now a creative director, dance teacher and choreographer working all over the country, Al-Abdulaziz says, “Move started the idea that dance is something fundamental that we need here in Saudi. I feel like I’m truly healing the Saudi people through dance.”
To amp up her training, Attar enlisted coach Mike McCastle.
© TERRAY SYLVESTER
Only those who risk going far can find out how far they can go.” It was something Attar’s father, Mohamed, said often. When she was younger, he took her on hikes, which wasn’t common in her region, but he loved exploring the outdoors. “We’d come across a beetle, and he’d tell me about the beetle,” she recalls. “He opened my eyes to nature.” When she was 17, he took her to Africa, where they climbed Mount Kenya. They didn’t summit but a seed was planted. Climbing, Attar comes alive.
“She just blossoms,” her sister Rasha Attar Elsolh says. “She looks her best, feels her best, does her best. She’s meant to be on a mountain.”
Mohamed Attar wasn’t just her father. He was her best friend. They spoke by phone multiple times each day, and his words became a fuel behind her climbing, encouraging her to tackle harder and harder challenges.
After Mount Kenya, Attar ticked off more peaks: Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Aconcagua, Island Peak. Still, the first time someone suggested Mount Everest, Attar thought it was absurd. How do you train for the world’s tallest mountain in the desert? Then she thought about her father, how he encouraged her to push her limits. She thought about how moving through challenges is what makes you stronger. Then she took a breath and took that imperfect step forward.
Movement is such a big umbrella. You have to try and see what works for you. Unconsciously, you start to build.
Training for an arduous climb is never easy, but in Saudi Arabia, there are extra challenges. Because there aren’t snow- and ice-covered peaks, she ran intervals on sand dunes. To build strength, she dragged tires through the streets. To avoid the desert heat, she began her workouts at 3 a.m. To avoid attracting attention from the moral police, she jogged in her black abaya. Finding the highest elevation gain in Riyadh (about 500 feet), she trudged up and down for hours at a time. Her training drew some stares. But it also had a hidden benefit. “People have said to me, ‘That’s how you’re so strong mentally.’ ”
In 2019, as Attar’s group, which included other Arab women climbers, plus trained guides and Sherpas, made their way from one high-altitude camp on Everest to the next, she’d listen to encouraging voice messages from her father. After spending two months on the mountain, they reached the summit.
Not long after, she suffered a series of personal losses. First, the pandemic, which wound up crippling Move (though she has hopes to reopen one day). Then in October 2020, Mohamed Attar died of COVID. In one fell swoop it felt like she had not only lost her father but also her way forward.
“I felt my heart was open and it was leaking, a fountain I couldn’t close,” she recalls. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Seeing friends, dancing, training ... it all felt impossible. And yet she knew what she had to do: move.
Attar proudly displays the Lebanese flag from the top of K2.
© TERRAY SYLVESTER
In the fall of 2021, Attar announced a plan to climb K2 the following summer. It was a dangerous goal, as only about 400 people in history had ever summited to that point. Statistics showed that one climber died for every four who managed to stand on top. So she amped up her training routine, enlisting Mike McCastle, the U.S.-based coach who trained explorer Colin O’Brady for his unsupported trek across Antarctica. “He’s a brilliant coach,” she says, lauding the creative ways he found to push her limits, which not only built strength but unearthed weaknesses.
By this time Saudi Arabia was changing, too. The government was pushing Vision 2030, a modernization plan. In 2016, it had established a women’s branch of its sports authority. The government also agreed to license female gyms, a reaction, in part, to alarming obesity statistics. In 2017, live music was no longer prohibited. In 2018, women were given the right to drive and to attend certain sporting events. In March 2022, Riyadh had its first official marathon, where men and women ran together. Many more women were going without the black abayas that impeded physical activity. The government even began sanctioning concerts where men and women danced together.
“I didn’t think all this could be happening so quickly,” Attar says. “It’s just amazing, so surreal. The country changed, and we were part of that change.”
Attar also was becoming more widely known. Several publications had written about her. Strangers started recognizing her at running events. She had been tapped to be the first trainer in Saudi’s Nike Training Club. The Saudi Sports for All Federation appointed Attar as an official ambassador. The government had partnered with Move and Attar to provide a free boot-camp program as a public heath measure, and also to teach dance classes to schoolkids. She had tens of thousands of followers on social media.
And yet, when she sought companies to sponsor her K2 climb—a typical step for an athlete like Attar—she couldn’t get much traction. Though she had spent almost all her life in Saudi, she was a Lebanese national, which made Saudi brands less receptive. It also became clear local companies still weren’t quite sure what to do with a female fitness icon.
“I’ve had brands tell me they can’t work with me because I am Lebanese ...because I dance too much ... because I’m a woman, yet I don’t dress ‘feminine’ enough ... because I have too many passion activities ... because I can’t fit in a box ...” she posted on Instagram.
Looking for sponsors was exhausting. But she remembered how her father had taught her to keep moving forward. So Attar drained her bank account and made the plan anyway. Right before her departure for Pakistan, a gourmet dried-fruit brand, Bateel, agreed to support part of the cost of her K2 trip. Incongruous, perhaps, but her spirits were buoyed. “That’s why you should never give up,” she says. Not long after that she found another partial sponsor, digital media brand Yes Theory.
Finding sponsors was challenging, but Nelly says to "never give up."
© TERRAY SYLVESTER
As she began the seven-day trek from the village of Askole to the base of the mountain, she thought about the thousands of women and girls she had supported through dance and fitness, and how they, in turn, were supporting her. She thought about her family back home cheering her on. “I have a whole tribe of people climbing with me,” she realized. When the climbing team spent a brutal two weeks hunkered down at camp waiting out a storm, she danced away the stress and boredom, infusing strangers’ tents with her buoyant energy, even as she understood the treacherous journey ahead. Looking at the sheer amount of snow and ice above, she knew trusted guides would show the way. She also knew she’d have to take every step to the top herself.
Sometime after 10 p.m. on July 21 they began their summit push in pitch- black darkness. All the training was paying off: her legs, and her lungs, were up to the task. But as her headlamp glared against a forbidding wall of ice, she faltered. Training in Saudi, there was no way to master ice climbing, yet here she was facing an ice wall on the world’s most dangerous mountain. Struggling for purchase on the wall with her crampons, she slipped again and again, at one point swinging perilously from the wall on her rope. Suddenly, she was engulfed in a feeling she hadn’t had in years. Heart-racing, throat-closing panic, as if the world would end. Breathe, she told herself. Focus. Filter everything else out. “I’ve already been through grief, the worst thing in the world,” she realized. When her heart slowed, she kicked her right crampon into the ice and made a move. She kicked in her left and made another. Around 3:30 a.m., she cried as she reached the top.
And when the team returned to camp—around 10 hours after starting— everyone danced.
“I’m Nelly Attar,” she likes to say. “And I move for a living.”
Keep up with Nelly
Instagram @nellyattar
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