Mountain Climbers Can Take A Hike

I spent the summer climbing Mount Everest and let me tell you, it was a hellish ordeal.

I was hungry, I was tired, I was sick, I was cold. I got so cold during the final stages of the climb, I actually had to get up and put on a sweater. I called for help, but my Sherpas wouldn’t budge.

“Get it yourself, dad,” they said.

All right, so I was just reading about climbing. Do you think I’m nuts? Do I look like someone who can climb Mount Everest? Or more to the point, do I look like someone who can afford $60,000 to hire somebody to haul me to the top of Mount Everest?

I had a hard enough time just reading “Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster,” in which author-climber Jon Krakauer performs the valuable environmental service of making Mount Everest sound like no fun at all.

Yes, reading this book was a surprisingly arduous ordeal, involving page after page of intestinal disorders, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as actual climbing. In fact, one of the lessons of these books is that nothing is as bad as actual climbing. Well, almost nothing. Being forced to listen to Barry Manilow music while running the Ironman Triathlon in Point Barrow in January with eight people you hate while in the throes of dysentery while chewing up and swallowing $10,000 bills, that’s worse.

But only the Barry Manilow part. The rest of it is exactly like climbing Mount Everest.

But what a feeling of accomplishment when I finally made my goal! I had labored for upwards of seven days, and when I finally reached the end, I felt the kind of exhilaration that only comes with knowing that no matter how miserable your life is, no matter how unhappy you are in your job or your marriage, at least you’re not huddled in a tent at 26,000 feet with three people with diarrhea.

I also spent part of the summer reading another mountain climbing book, “Nanda Devi,” by Spokane’s own John Roskelley. Both the Everest expedition and the Nanda Devi expeditions were successful in the sense that people reached the summit, but unsuccessful in the sense that people, well, died. So after reading both of these books, I have developed a possibly skewed idea of what a mountain climbing expedition is like. It seems to involve these major elements:

A carefully selected team of annoying egomaniacs who all hate each other’s guts.

An arduous, nightmarish trek involving avalanches and altitude sickness, and this is only to Base Camp.

Debilitating fevers, putting the entire team in the perfect physical condition for staying home and watching game shows.

Lots of days in tents waiting for the weather to clear up, which it never does because you’re on Mount Everest, for crying out loud.

Endless hours of heavy panting, because of all the things you miss most about home, oxygen is No. 1.

Day after day of whining about the way the Sherpas are carrying your gear.

See? Doesn’t this sound like fun?

Actually, I climbed a mountain or two in my younger days. Of course, one of these was Pike’s Peak, and I climbed it in a Chevy Bel Air. But the other one I climbed with my actual feet. It was called Franc’s Peak (elev. 13,153) in Wyoming.

I like to think this was a more stunning feat than climbing Mount Everest, because we didn’t need a bunch of Sherpas to haul our lunches up for us. We carried our own lunches, I’ll have you know. Actually, this climb (walk) was so easy we might as well have carried picnic hampers.

Still it was a high peak, the highest in the Absaroka Range. I remember my profound emotions, my lofty thoughts upon reaching the summit: “Big deal. Sure, the view is nice, but I’ve seen better in a Boeing 747.”

At this moment, I realized I didn’t have a mountain climber’s soul.

Yet I must admit, I still enjoy reading about mountain climbing, if only because few things in life are more satisfying than sitting next to a cozy fire reading about someone else’s frostbite.

Many times, people have asked me the question, “Jim, why do you do it? Why do you read about Mount Everest?”

I can only quote the great Mallory: “Because it is there and thank God I’m not.”

, DataTimes MEMO: To leave a message on Jim Kershner’s voice-mail, call 459-5493. Or send e-mail to jimk@spokesman.com, or regular mail to Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review