54 Candles Expedition

Getting in Shape

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 13^th of April, 2001. Allen Sherpa was invited to participate, but declined. With this letter, he’s staying in close contact with the climbing party.

I’ve been watching this thing unfold and although there’s still time for you guys to come to your senses, it’s not looking like it’s going to happen. You’re really going to the top, aren’t you? I hope you’re planning on coming down too.

Well, if you’re going to do this climbing thing, you’d at least better be prepared. I see it’s dawned on a few of you that getting to the top of the highest mountain in Oregon in the middle of a snow storm, at night, carrying heavy packs, all the while shivering, sniveling, whimpering and whining, isn’t going to be easy physically.

That’s right, boys of the mountain, you’re going to be in sub-zero temperatures and yet you’re going to be sweating. Now there’s something to look forward to. I haven’t broken a good sweat in 15 years and you guys are going to do it on a glacier. Look, you’re legs are going to burn and quiver. Your knees are going to ache. Dragging your tails up the mountain by jamming your ice-axe into the snow and pulling your body upward is going to do wonders for your arms and shoulders.

Some of you guys are in your fifties. According to my calculations, that’s roughly double your mid-twenties. You remember? That’s back when you were in shape. When you hit fifty, getting out of bed in the morning can be a personal mountain climb. Some fifty year olds need to loosen-up just to watch TV. I know one fifty year old guy that’s too weak to throw a shadow.

A few of the expedition members are really into their training regimens. Frankly, the running, hiking and weight lifting stuff (the sweat generators) don’t interest me a lot. However, a couple of the climbers thought it would be wise to polish their skills by enrolling in a professional climbing class. Based on their descriptions, I’m more inclined to call it a survival class.

It was their intent to improve their rope skills. They wanted and expected practice in rappelling and belaying (a technique where one climber works a rope to protect another climber from falls during dangerous ascents). They got all they expected and more.

The climbing instructor claimed to be human, but in the course of the two days of instruction, she offered little in the way of proof. The 54 Candles students kept a keen eye out hoping to see her prehensile tail as she hid it away from view. “There’s no way she’s human. She runs up a shear rock wall, at times hanging by a hand or balancing on a little rock half the size of a golf ball. Don’t tell me she doesn’t subsist on bananas and peanuts.”

She told the students they too would be climbing rock walls that literally hung backwards! The instructor duly noted and ignored the protests of the students as they cried that they had only wanted rope skills. “That’s what we’re going to practice belaying on”, she barked. “Now climb!”

Didn’t she understand they were noble alpinists, not rock monkeys?

The students survived after actually performing a couple of short, Class 5.14 ascents (some of the most difficult in climbing). However, they learned a few things they hadn’t dreamed of before. (1) When there is a sufficient level of fear, you can leave you finger prints in granite rock, especially if that’s all you have to hold on to when your 40 feet in the air. (2) Even though a rock wall is 40 feet high when viewed from the ground up, it is approximately 195 feet high when viewed from the top of the wall looking down. (3) Seasoned climbing pros can ignore grown men even as they cry, whine, and flail about on the ground while attempting to get out of going to dangerous places.

The expedition members seem to be pushing this thing to some pretty outrageous extremes. What will they do next? Well, I guess that’s another story.