The High-Altitude Journey of the World’s Most Famous Adventure Cat
Had JJ Yosh, an adventure content creator based in Boulder, Colorado, simply taken his cat, Simon, on a handful of hikes and posted the videos online, I would have dismissed it as a pet-thetic social media stunt. But a decade after adopting the black Bombay cat, the duo—better known to millions as Backpacking Kitty on Instagram and TikTok—has built something far more remarkable. Together they’ve hiked the Austrian Alps, whitewater rafted California’s Sacramento River, climbed a volcano in Guatemala, and traveled to more than 15 countries and four continents. They’ve flown on over 100 flights, including on a seaplane, and kayaked some of the most remote waterways in the world, taking an audience of 11 million followers along with them, and making Simon less of a novelty and more like a bona fide field companion. Now Yosh has something even more ambitious in mind. He’s preparing to take Simon on a multi-year Seven Summits spree.
“I’m positive he’s the only cat who has summited a dozen of Colorado’s 14ers,” Yosh says of Simon who he rescued from euthanasia in 2016. Yet even those accomplishments, and, arguably, the title of one of the most famous cats in the world, pale beside this latest odyssey. Over the next three years, they plan to tackle the tallest mountain on every continent: Denali, Mount Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, Mount Elbrus, Vinson Massif, Puncak Jaya, and the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest.
A Push for the Seven Summits with a Cat in Tow
Before you picture a cat being hauled into Everest’s notorious Death Zone—a place so hostile to life it contains only about a third of the oxygen available at sea level—rest easy.
“I’m definitely not taking Simon to the summit. I’m not risking his life,” Yosh says. While Yosh makes his push for the top, Simon will be living the considerably cushier life at Everest Base Camp with a dedicated pet sitter, people he already knows and trusts. Yosh is emphatic that Simon’s health and safety come first.
“How high he goes depends entirely on the mountain,” Yosh says. That means, for Everest, Base Camp is his ceiling. “Nothing above it, no exceptions.” For Kilimanjaro and Aconcagua? Those are non-technical walk-ups, so there is more room. “He could go higher than base camp on those, and how much higher gets decided on the ground rather than promised in advance.” As for everywhere else, Yosh will assess each peak one at a time, and veterinary opinions will inform each decision.
Yosh says, “ If the answer is that it is too high for a cat, that is the end of it. He does not go.”
It’s all part of the careful balance Yosh has spent the past decade striking with his feline partner. Simon may be born for adventure—while he does trek via leash, he’s happiest riding Yosh’s shoulders through forests and across alpine trails, even snowboarding—he’s still a cat, with very real limitations. For example, while Yosh was on a Mount Baker crevasse rescue training ahead of his Seven Summits bid recently, Simon wasn’t practicing self-arrests. Which begs the question: How do you prepare a house cat for extreme altitude? After all, Everest Base Camp sits at a breath-stealing 17,598 feet.
The answer starts at home.
A Cat Who’s Climbed Colorado’s 14ers
In Boulder, where the pair live at roughly 6,000 feet above sea level, acclimatization is woven into everyday life. Yosh’s home—playfully known as “the house his cat built”—is tucked into a rocky cliff and outfitted with an indoor climbing wall scaled by both owner and pet. Outside, Colorado’s high country is Simon’s natural conditioning ground, where regular mountaineering outings have gradually exposed him to thinner air—one might say the purrfect conditions—long before the Himalayas come into view. Yosh has even taken Simon on technical rope climbs, securing him a small-dog harness. And when it comes to gear, Simon is just as outfitted as his owner: Yosh has assembled a wardrobe for Simon to rival any serious adventurer’s, with specialized gear for seemingly every climate, condition, and expedition.
Add to that the deep relationship these two have built. Even talking about the possibility of something happening to Simon makes Yosh visibly shaken.
The depth of that bond was forged early. Not long after Yosh adopted Simon, he left the cat with a friend while filming a commercial in Bolivia. What Yosh didn’t learn until later was that Simon had gone missing for three days.
“Thankfully, they didn’t tell me at the time,” Yosh says. “They’d put up missing posters everywhere, but I had no idea.”
Even now, the memory rattles him. “If that happened today and I found out while I was on a mountain, I’d turn around. I wouldn’t be able to finish the climb,” he says. “You have to be in a good mental place to climb a mountain, and I wouldn’t be.”
That’s how close they are. For Yosh, adventuring together is as much about having his kitty companion weigh down his pack during the most challenging parts of the journey as it is about having him as a support animal when the expedition day is through.
“This work can be so taxing and draining. You question why you’re doing it over and over again,” Yosh says. “That’s where having Simon is such a huge emotional pillow. The hardest moments usually aren’t the scary, high-adrenaline ones. They’re when the weight of the whole expedition catches up with you.”
Whether he’s just finished an ultrarun or a grueling climb, Yosh knows there’s one constant: Simon, curled up in the tent ready for a cuddle at the end of the day. In a life all about relentless forward motion, that ritual has become the reset that keeps him going. It will be tested during their next challenge.
But first, there are the logistics to work through. Namely, the travel concerns of hop-scotching the planet with a cat. Fortunately, this isn’t Simon’s first rodeo. He has a U.S. ID card and an E.U. pet passport that allows him to easily cross borders, and he doesn’t fly cargo. “But of course he has to get all of these health certificates for each country,” Yosh says.
Then there’s the tricky reality of lengthy flights and layovers. Naturally, I had to ask, does Simon get jet lag?
“Simon gets so excited every time we reach a new hotel or destination,” Yosh says. “He’s like ready to go.” Apparently, when you’re an international adventuring cat of mystery, the only thing tougher than Everest is waiting for room service. That, and then clawing your way into mountaineering history.
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