CLEAR LAKE — After climbing to a Mount Everest base camp last year, Clear Lake’s Justin Anderson is returning to the Himalayas with other cancer survivors from around the nation to climb even higher.

“I’ve never been higher than 18,000 feet,” he said with characteristic enthusiasm. “Now I’ll be climbing 20,000 feet.”

A lot has changed for Anderson, 28, since the last climb.

For one, “I’ve got hair now,” he said.

Diagnosed with brain cancer in May 2010, Anderson had surgery to remove the malignant tumor in June of that year, followed by an aggressive program of radiation and chemotherapy that ended in February 2011.

In April 2011, he was one of 14 Iowa cancer survivors invited to participate in a 17,600-foot climb to a Mount Everest base camp in Nepal.

Dr. Richard Deming, medical director of the Mercy Cancer Center in Des Moines, and Des Moines attorney Charlie Whittmack led the group.

“It was the toughest thing, physically, I’ve ever done,” Anderson said at the time.

Then in March this year, Anderson was hired by Deming and Whittmack to serve as program director of Above + Beyond Cancer, a newly organized Des Moines-based public charity with a mission to reduce the burden of cancer across the globe.

“I help create the upcoming programs we’re going to do,” Anderson said. “I help put together the next adventures.”

As a staff member of Above + Beyond, Anderson will help handle the logistics of the trip, which runs from Sept. 22 to Oct. 12, “making sure everyone is on the correct flight and arriving on time.”

Keeping participants motivated is also a big part of his role, he said.

He also looks forward to entertaining with his guitar at the tea houses — primitive lodges where they spend their nights.

“I’ve been taking requests from the group and learning some new songs,” Anderson said.

The plan is to climb to the summit of Imja Tse, or “Island Peak” in Nepali, a mountain in the eastern Himalayas of Nepal.

“This is a bit more of a technical climb,” Anderson said. “It will require ropes, ice axes and crampons (foot traction devices). Physically it’s going to be a bit more challenging.”

Nineteen cancer survivors — 12 women and seven men — from Iowa, Minnesota, Georgia, New York, Nevada, Washington and Wisconsin, will make the climb. Ages range from 22 to 72.

The group will again be led by Sherpas, including Ang Lhakpa, one of the Sherpas’ wives, who provided care and support for the cancer survivors on the previous trip.

Lhakpa was diagnosed with leukemia after the 2011 climb. Above + Beyond arranged for her to receive the proper treatment, and she is now cancer-free, Anderson said.

“For me, it’s an opportunity to return and see my friends that I made over there,” he said of the trip. “It’s an opportunity to challenge myself. I have to remember that I’m still a cancer survivor.”

The larger purpose of the climb, however, is to show the world and other cancer survivors that cancer doesn’t have to win, Anderson said. “There is life after cancer.”