54 Candles Expedition

Fashions – A Touch of Bourbon Street

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’m glad that some of you altitude fiends are taking some of the important things seriously. Things like – that’s right – fashion. I mean if you’re going to be “real” mountain climbers, you’ve got to look like “real” mountain climbers. Heaven forbid something should happen to one of you and then have the alpine rescue team show up only to find you improperly bedecked in unmatching parka and gaitors. What an embarrassment! Frankly, if I were silly enough to join this climbing team and one of the other guys fell and got hurt, I’d sure have to give it a second thought before I stayed with the victim if I knew how embarrassed I would be when rescue teams finally arrived.

Word on the street has it that one of you nearly purchased orange expedition gloves that would have clashed with your red alpine pack. Tacky! Tacky! Tacky!

I will confess that after learning about some of the things you’re going to have to wear, I was a bit confused. One mountain climbing equipment checklist I saw says you’ve got to have things like: “capilene, expedition weight, long underwear”, a “polar fleece neck gaitor or balaclava” and a “half-bod harness”. The way I see it, figuring out what they’re talking about here is an expedition in itself.

I thought capilene was a motor oil additive. I’d love to see the operating instructions for these underwear. What happens when you’re a quart low?

A “polar fleece gaitor”? What’s the difference between “polar fleece” and just “fleece”? And a gaitor for your neck? I’ll tell you a little secret rock rover. You’re lucky you don’t send these instructions to some team member in Florida. He could show up with equipment you wouldn’t want running loose in a tent.

The half-bod harness – now there’s a sight. It looks like some kind of wild garter belt with a thin waste band and a couple of straps that loop around from behind, between the legs and tie in somehow around the waste line. Isn’t that a kick? You guys are going out and dropping a king’s ransom on high fashion, color coordinated, mountaineering clothes. Then – as outer wear – you’re going to put on a harness that looks like you ordered it from a Victoria’s Secret catalog or picked it out of the display window in a book store in the French Quarter. If this is your “fashion statement”, I’m afraid I’m not speaking the language.

Picking out the right clothing has to be tough. It seems to me that if you know you’re on your way to someplace where there’s a good chance you’re going to freeze your body parts, picking out the clothes would have to be easy. For my money, give me the warmest thing in which I can still move. As far as the color is concerned, make it RED RED RED. If I fall off of a cliff and land in a snow bank, I don’t want the search and rescue crew to have any problems spotting this victim. Fashion be gone! Find me.

Red and warm. This seems simple enough. But go to a mountaineering gear catalog and peruse the clothing section. Short of using a Ouiji board, I see no humanly possible way of picking your clothes. “Red and Warm?” No! Try . . . the “Borealis” design, “FTX Ultra”, “Ethereal FTX”, the “Powerstretch Zip-T”, “Chugach” style, the “Marmot”, “Parbat”, “Arc’teryx Gamma Collection” and my personal favorite, the “Snaz Pant”. The list goes on and on, but there is no entry in the index for “warm”. Take my advice Granite Grabber – red and warm.

One other consideration before you make your final fashion statement. You’ll be high on a mountain. It will be freezing cold. The wind will be blowing so hard your shadow will get frostbite. You are a human animal and as long as you don’t fall into one of those crevasses, you will continually “metabolize” things. Are you with me so far, Sky Climber? Does the phrase “nature calls” mean anything to you?

It looks like the mountain clothing people have this matter in hand too. These are actual – no joke – quotes from your “Mountain Gear” catalog. The FX Ultra Pant has “ . . . optional suspenders, which create a drop seat system. For more minor natures calls, there’s also a front fly.” Wow! What will they think of next? The Ethereal FTX Bib has a “. . . multislider rainbow zip panel for relief operations”. A rainbow? I can’t decide if I want to see this operation or not. I’m not an expert on this stuff yet, but the catalog does offer a pair of “North Face Trainers”. It seems to me this could be the solution. I wonder if they come in 10, 15 and 20 pound sizes.

Oh, one last thing. This balaclava they’re talking about. I thought that was some kind of a Greek pastry. Well, I guess that’s another story.