54 Candles
Expedition
By Allen Sherpa
Ten men – most from the White Mountains of Arizona
– will launch an assault on the summit of Mount Hood, Oregon’s highest
mountain, in the early morning hours of Friday the 13th of April,
2001. Allen Sherpa was invited to
participate, but declined. With this
letter, he’s staying in close contact with the climbing party.
The surprises never
seem to end. I’ve listened to a story
from one of your climbing partners about his climb of the third highest mountain
in North America, Pico de Orizaba. It
seems Orizaba is nearly 19,000 feet high and despite the fact that it’s located
in central Mexico, it apparently offers all the joys of high altitude climbing. Things like wind chill temperatures of minus
fifteen degrees and the potential to fall five thousand feet down one of its
glaciers. In fact, I was stunned to
learn that already this climbing season, twelve climbers have been killed on
this mountain – more than have ever been killed in any one year on Mount McKinley.
Despite the horror
stories he told me, I was intrigued by something I really hadn’t given much
thought to in the past. What happens
when (if) climbers reach the summit of some great mountain?
It struck me a
being similar to questions like: “What
are the manager and pitcher really talking about on the mound in the ninth
inning?” “Hey, Lefty. Did you see the one sitting up there in row
5 behind first base? I wonder if she’s
married.” Or “What’s really going on in
the huddle in the football game?” “No,
Bubba! Rock breaks scissors.”
Nonetheless, I’d
never really given much thought to what happens on a summit at 19,000
feet. I just assumed they smiled at the
camera, signed autographs and yelled, “I’m going to Disneyland.”
After talking with
your compatriot, I was amazed. It seems
he climbed Orizaba with two professional climbers and a dentist from
Illinois. (Think about the irony of
suffering through ten days in an alpine environment and doing it with a
climbing mate that specializes in root canals – pretty well tells the story
doesn’t it?) The dentist has tried to
reach the summit of this mountain for three straight years. This attempt was his first success.
Now as your buddy
was telling me this story, I’m starting to question a guy that’s this dedicated
to not only administering punishment, but receiving it too. I then learn that the dentist’s “buddies”
back in Illinois have also be tormenting him about not having the good sense to
give up on this seemingly unconquerable mountain. They teased him for three years about being too old or too
out-of-shape or not tough enough.
Whatever buttons they thought they could press, they were pounding. Well, the tooth carpenter desperately wanted
the last word.
I learned that
after ten days on the mountain, these guys finally get to the summit alive,
dehydrated, exhausted, and freezing cold.
They’re happy, but tired.
They’ve got thousands of feet of glacial ice between them and their high
camp and they’ve got to get down.
They spend maybe
fifteen minutes on the summit, take a few pictures, rest for a couple of
minutes and then your friend hears the dentist say to one of the guides, “Here
take my picture” as he hands the camera to the guide. Your friend wheels around to discover (and this is no joke) that
while standing at the top of the Jamapa Glacier in icy, 30 mile per hour winds,
this most respectable dentist has dropped trow and was having his picture taken
in an age-old, but less than “formal” pose.
I’ll let your imagination be your guide, but let’s just say that despite
the fact they were standing on the edge of a crater, it was not the only lunar
feature on the summit at that moment.
After nearly three
years of taunting by his friends, the dentist wanted a bit of memorabilia to
give them something that would make a “statement”. Who would have guessed?
It really makes me wonder what else goes on when climbers reach high
summits. Well, I guess that’s another
story.