Category: Interviews

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Exploring the World of Fast-Packing

Interview with Willie McBride (portlandalpinefest.org), a Portland, Oregon based ultra runner, climber, and ski mountaineer, as well as co-owner/founder, coach, and guide at Wy’east Wolfpack. He loves writing about and sharing his outdoor experiences and enthusiasm with others.
By Darrin Gunkel.
Of all your mountain activities, which achievements are you particularly proud? 
Traveling to Peru 8 years ago was definitely a highlight. I’d never been among mountains that big in my life. It was a pretty grand experience to feel extra small. We get to feel small a lot when we get out to local outdoors places, but being in that scale is a different thing for sure. I try to climb Mt. Hood a lot as well, and I’ve been trying to push myself to do it faster and faster. So this year I got it down to 3:22 round trip from Timberline Lodge. So I was pretty proud about that. 
How many marathons and ultras have you done? 
I don’t have an exact number but dozens, including a couple of hundred-milers, a hundred-and-twenty-miler and the Tahoe 200. But now, I’m really aiming towards self-planned adventures and moving a little bit more away from the racing. 
Why move away from racing? 
Well, I come from a background of self-planning adventures and being more of a climber and backpacker. So, one, a lot of it just comes naturally and two, I take joy in the process of mapping out routes and doing logistical planning, and races already have that taken care of for you. The ultra running community is very supportive, and inclusive, but still in any race there’s a clock hanging over your head. It can cause a lot of anxiety. Certain people can do the distance, but they can’t do it in the allotted time, and they have to stress out about that instead of enjoying the experience. I believe they can achieve these things, but just not in somebody else’s time frame. 
How do you motivate? 
Just setting your intention. If you really love something and you’re really into it, then hopefully you stay on course. One easy exercise—well, simple, not easy—that we do with clients is we have people stick their arms straight out at their side, at 90 degrees from their body. The goal is to keep your arms straight out, without wavering, for say, seven or eight minutes. And it is terrible! At about three minutes in—or less—your arms are screaming and it’s just terribly uncomfortable, and yet people can make it! So if your mind is screaming at two minutes, but you can make it to eight minutes, what’s the difference? It comes down to mental strength. Your mind is like any muscle in that if you work it, it gets stronger. Since starting that in classes a couple of years ago, we’ve had countless people say to us, “You know, this weekend I did this really tough hike, I got to the gnarliest part and it was beating me down, and I thought of that arm thing and it just got easier.” Micro exercises like this that tweek out comfort with discomfort can really reach into all aspects of life.
Advice for somebody thinking about taking up fast-packing? 

The only way to fast pack is to get really light gear that costs more. That can be prohibitive. Don’t fall into the trap that it’s a deal breaker. You don’t have to have the lightest of all gear. You can go a little less light but a little more expensive and a not break your bank. And like anything, start small. You don’t go from zero miles to an ultra marathon overnight, and you don’t go from day trips to week long fast packing trips overnight either. Start with a single night out. That’s all you gotta do. You don’t have to go super deep. Just get out there and try it out. 
Learn more & get tickets at portlandalpinefest.org
Come and see Willie, along with his partners Brian Donnelly and Nick Triolo at Base Camp Brewing Company on Nov. 16 for “True Motivation: Fast-Packing the Cordillera Huayhuash.”
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BCEP Leads to the Arrigetch Peaks

Interview with Katie Mills, mechanical engineer, peak bagger, and 2016 Portland Alpine Fest athlete. Katie fondly remembers the old days when there used to be an off season. Now the off season consists of the week between rock climbing in Red Rocks for Thanksgiving and hitting up the Bozeman Ice Fest the next weekend. By Kevin Machtelinckx.

Photo: Jed Brown.
What made you join Mazamas and start the Basic Education Climbing Program (BCEP) in 2006? Did you continue with the Intermediate Climbing School (ICS) as well? 
I moved up here from Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina destroyed my apartment. Like everyone else who moves here, I wanted to climb the iconic Mt. Hood staring in my face every day, but I also wanted to do it safely so I asked around and people told me about BCEP. I’m the kind of person who learns things by taking a class and can’t teach myself anything. So BCEP was perfect. After BCEP I climbed for a year, got some more experience, then went back and took ICS. 
Was there a defining moment in your early climbing career that stands out to you as one that ‘sealed the deal’ on climbing? 
I knew as soon as I climbed my first mountain, Mt. Hood. I was so giddy with happiness after doing the climb that I couldn’t sleep the following night. I had never planned on becoming a technical climber though. In ICS, I shied away from rock climbing and proclaimed it too dangerous. Scrambling and snow slogs were for me! But five years after BCEP, I had climbed all of the major mountains by their non-technical routes, and there was nothing else to do, so learning the technical climbing skills was the logical next step. 
You and your team received the Bob Wilson Grant in 2015 for a 2016 expedition to the Arrigetch Peaks in Alaska. Can you talk about the experience of putting together and organizing an expedition of such scale? How did it differ from your other trips in terms of logistics? 
Photo: Mandy Barbee
I had attempted Aconcagua with two friends on a previous expedition, but I wasn’t the leader so I had all the logistics handed to me and was unable to appreciate what being a leader entails. All of the gear was carried on mule to basecamp so weight was less of an issue. For the Arrigetch trip everything depended on me. From coordinating flights and figuring out which lake I wanted the bush plane to land us on, to deciding which valleys and mountains to hedge our best bets on, to helping my team decide which gear to take. Organizing food you have to carry on your back for 24 days is also a very big task (I took 80 granola bars, and that was just lunch!), not to mention the fact you have to fit it all into bear containers. I also researched every AAJ journal entry ever concerning the Arrigetch back to 1965.
What advice do you have for people who would like to make the jump from mountaineering locally to expedition-style climbing? 
Getting mentally used to the remoteness of alpine climbing and having to be self-sufficient is key. Practice climbing alpine rock because it is very different from cragging, especially when you’re out for weeks at a time. I think routes on Mt. Stuart are an excellent training ground because it is so big you really have to practice your navigation, routefinding, and multipitch ropework skills. But sadly if you want to climb over 5.8 you have to go cragging too! Get your trad skills dialed in by crack climbing at places like Trout Creek or Indian Creek, which is what I did all year before the trip, and is the only reason I was able to succeed on the FA we did. For remote places, I recommend two-way texters over satellite phones. Way cheaper and lighter too.
Photo: Kai Waldron
You’ve climbed on some women’s only teams. Can you talk about the significance of this? What does it mean to you and why is it important?
Often when women go out climbing with men, the man feels societal pressure that he has to ‘lead’. Even if the woman is more skilled, he may be braver. I’m not one to arm wrestle over a lead and will gladly hand it over. But when I’m climbing with only women, it’s nice to not have those pressures and stereotypes. You just woman-up or proudly watch your friend woman-up and get it done. Don’t get me wrong, I know quite a few women who will slap that lead out of a man’s hands cuz they want it and I admire the hell out of them, but not all of us are that assertive.
There are, undoubtedly, a lot of engineers and other science-based professionals that make up the climbing community, including yourself. The engineering mindset can have many advantages out in the mountains. Can you think of any disadvantages? 
I think the only reason I am a good alpinist is because I am excellent at problem solving, which is also why I’m an engineer. Sometimes I do miss the colorful artsy people that are less common in the climbing/engineering world. Perhaps a disadvantage of being an engineer is being data driven,
Photo: Cigdem Milobinski

focused on the summit/pushing the grade/accomplishing an achievement and missing out on the more subtle rewards, like appreciating the beauty of the approach hike or the silly banter with your teammates when you epically fail. For me, who I climb with is more important than what I climb. I’d rather climb something easy with someone I know I am going to form a lasting friendship with than have a random ropegun stranger I have nothing in common with get me up something awesome. But to each their own! You gotta do what makes you personally happy because that is the point.

Most outstanding memory of your climbing career so far?
One of my favorites is climbing the Red Dihedral on the Incredible Hulk with Rebecca Madore in 2014. We were planning on climbing a much more chill route on the Grand Teton, but it was snowing so we chose the Incredible Hulk instead. It was my first climb where we didn’t know if we could pull it off. So we had to push ourselves to do it. The feeling of accomplishment after that was amazing. “Send of the Century,” I called it!
Future goals or expeditions? 

Ruth Gorge girl-power mixed/ice climbing with Rebecca in the spring! I’d also like to go back to the Arrigetch because I saw some pretty stunning unclimbed peaks that I was unable to attempt because I did not have the proper equipment. It seems not a lot of people venture back there a second time, but I definitely want to go back as an experienced veteran instead of a floundering first-timer!

Hear more about Katie’s expedition, along with her partners Todd Torres and Nick Pappas at “Into the Arrigetch” on Nov. 15 at the Mazama Mountaineering Center.

Get More Info & Tickets at portlandalpinefest.org.

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Climbing Life: An Interview with Scott Bennett

Photo Credit: Garrett Grove

Interview with Scott Bennett, 2016 Portland Alpine Fest athlete. With first ascents, from Alaska to the Waddington range, the Cascades to Patagonia, Scott has established himself as one of the most active alpinists of his generation. By Joe Fox.


You said you were climbing yesterday? What was going on? Where were you guys?

Yesterday, I was kind of unintentionally climbing. We went for a ridge run-scramble. My friend, Jon Frederick, and I went up to Red Peak which is in Summit County, kinda near Vale in the mountains of Colorado. And scrambled up the peak, which is I think low 13-er, and tried to traverse this long ridge of towers and buttresses and such, and it was one of the chossiest things either of us has ever been on. Actually Jon grew up in Washington, so he’s climbed a bunch in the Cascades, and he was like this

Photo Credit: Cheyne Lempe

is Cascades-quality choss up here. So, we got pretty scared running around in running shoes for a while. And eventually found a way to bale off it down some gully. We meant to go swing tools for the first time of the season, but it was too hot. It was like 80 degrees in Denver.

Can you pinpoint a moment perhaps in time or in your own thinking about the sport of mountaineering, where you took a conscious step away from being a hobbyist and toward being a true professional, expert, master?

That’s a really good question. The question of mentality, of intention with it. The moment for me where I started to think of myself as accomplished, or more capable, as someone who had a unique skill set. It was probably my first trip to Patagonia, which was in January of 2011. I went into that trip and I had never done any first ascents. I had never set foot onto a glacier. I grew up in the Midwest and I learned to climb mostly in Colorado and Utah, in warm dry places. I hadn’t really ice climbed at all. But a climbing partner, Blake Harrington, who is another Northwest guy, we rock climbed a bunch in Denver, in Colorado that year, and he suggested we go. And obviously I was pretty intimidated by that idea. But he convinced me it was a good idea and so we went down there. And, I don’t know, just right away felt at home there, in those wild big granite mountains, sticking up through the glaciers. The photos had seemed really intimidating, but when we actually got there it just felt like rock climbing, which is what I’d been doing anyway. So that was the moment for me, where I was like, “I’m really comfortable in this environment.” And I know not everyone is or can be, so I think I have something unique going for me here that I should really focus on. So that trip was the first of a whole series of more alpine-

Photo Credit: Colin Simon

focused expeditions for me. Going to back to Patagonia the next year, and going to Alaska the next year, going to the Waddington Range in British Columbia. And at that point my climbing really moved away from just going on a road trip to Indian Creek … which is super fun—I’m going there next week actually—it’s something I still love doing. But it’s more of a social, recreation thing, and when I think of making progress in my own climbing, it’s expeditions, its big trips, it’s first ascents, and something with an exploratory element as well. So, yeah, that first trip to Patagonia opened up my eyes, I guess, to the fact that this was possible and that I had a lot of the skills necessary and I had the right kind of desire and boldness to go do those things. That’s really when my focus shifted.

On where he learned to climb…

I grew up in Michigan. And I did learn to climb when I was in college in Ohio. I was involved with the outdoor club at my little liberal arts school in rural Ohio. And there wasn’t much to do, so I was in the outdoor club, to go on backpacking trips, and we would do weekly trips, also, to a makeshift

Photo Credit: Blake Herrington

climbing tower that this farmer had built in his field, fifteen minutes away from campus. So we would go there every week and climb indoors, in what looked like a silo, it wasn’t actually a grain silo, but that’s sort of what it looked like. And he had a mix of actual gym handholds, and some were just rocks and pieces of wood that were bolted onto the walls. It wasn’t a public gym. The farmer would let us climb there; the guy who owned it, he was also a climber, and he gave us keys for it and let us climb there. And, we’d go in the winter and it wasn’t heated. It had a propane heater, but it wouldn’t be on. So we’d have to go and start the generator, and start the propane heater, and get the lights turned on and get it heating up, before we could start climbing. So it actually, in hindsight, was good preparation for alpine climbing. Because you would frequently get “the screaming barfies” on your first climb of the day. Because it would just be Ohio in January. It would be freezing.

Wow. The Ohio farmer who converts a grain silo into a climbing gym. Sounds like an interesting character. 

Yeah, totally. Tom is his name. I’ve been meaning to climb with him again. I know he comes out to Vegas pretty often to climb at Red Rocks. So I’ll have to get in touch with him and climb with him now, because it’s been, what, 9 years, 10 years since I graduated from college? So I haven’t seen him in a while.

So for kind of all four years of college we climbed there, and then my senior year, me and the few other people that were really into climbing, we found a professor that had at one point climbed at The Gunks, and had been a climber in his youth, and still had a trad rack, and we convinced him to take
us out climbing at the New River Gorge. And that was the first time I went outside. And he taught us how to place hexes, and whatever. This was like easy cracks at the New River Gorge. But it really progressed super quickly for me from there. Because this was my last year of college and I was climbing outside for the first time, but then within a couple years, I was climbing, almost full time. I mean I wasn’t doing anything else. Working, waiting tables so I could make enough money to pay rent and buy food, and just climbing a 100% of the remainder of the time. I had moved out to Colorado at that point. So the progress came really quickly. In terms of getting out to Yosemite and climbing on El Cap, probably, within a year of first climbing outdoors.

My next question is a little bit darker. But I did all the interviews last year for the Alpine Fest as well. And among the folks I interviewed barely a year ago was the late, great Scott Adamson. Scott was a truly brilliant climber and a great friend to the Mazamas who was lost this past season in the mountains of Pakistan. And as I was sitting down to make some new questions for this year and trying to figure out which of the old questions would still work, I felt particularly focused on risk, and in particular the risk of death in alpine climbing. And just the fragility of human life, you know? I still have the audio recording of Scott talking about how he took a 100 foot whipper in the dark and thought he was going to die, you know what I mean? And then he did. And it’s just kind of, hard to stomach. And I was just wondering how you regard your own mortality. Do you think about death, since you’ve taken it to this next level?

Photo Caption: Matt Van Biene

You know, it might be a self-protective thing, but I don’t really think about my death in the mountains. I mean, intellectually I know that there are certainly a lot of risks with what we do. But, yeah, the possibility of my own death isn’t something I am emotionally connected to. It doesn’t seem vivid. I don’t have nightmares or anything. But what I do think a lot about is friends dying in the mountains, because that’s happened to me. And it sucks. I guess my own safety feels like it’s in my control. I mean, obviously, it’s not fully in my control. If I’m climbing in the Karakoram underneath a serac, you know? That’s an objective hazard. But that’s something I can deal with and mitigate. But friends dying … Kyle and Scott were friends. I didn’t climb with either of those guys, but I certainly knew them and respected them. And they were heroes of mine, and friends as well. That’s something that I do worry about. And again, I guess maybe from a self-protective standpoint, I think I’ve intentionally kept my circle of really close climbing partners fairly small. Like I really only do big trips with a handful of people, really two or three actually. And folks that, obviously, whose judgment I trust 100%. So I can feel pretty good about them going out on trips without me, that they’re going to come back safely. Because that’s the fear that gets to me the most, I think, is having friends leave and not come back. I’ve been lucky enough, that none of my truly close climbing partners or friends has died in the mountains.

But with Kyle and Scott… I was climbing in the Karakoram last summer, which is going to be subject of the slideshow that I give in Portland, is that trip. And we were climbing at the same time as Kyle and Scott, in a different place, in a different valley, but we were well aware that they were over there and we were thinking about them pretty often. And we did actually find out about Scott’s big fall and injury while we were in the mountains, at our base camp. We had a sat phone and we were in contact with friends back in the States and so we found out about it through them. And it really did kind of color our experience for the remainder of our trip. I think it made us more conservative with what we were willing to do, and just a little wearier. It was a strange season last year, I guess this was 2015, because it was quite warm. It was unseasonably warm all summer. The snow was not super well set up. A lot of the ice was coming apart. And I suspect that’s what led to their accident last year, the 2015 accident. So those things were in our minds when we were climbing on K6 which was our big objective on that trip.

On big wall speed climbing and it’s applications for alpine climbing….

I’ll set myself sort of arbitrary goals, whether it’s here in Colorado or in Yosemite. Trying to do multiple walls in a short time period or trying to do a specific route really fast. Stuff that can kind of seem silly and arbitrary, but which really forces you to develop a new creative skill set. That you can then apply in the mountains and apply onto bigger routes, where moving fast is necessary to be safe and to actually finish the climb.

Photo Credit: Garrett Grove

There’s a local climb here at the wall that’s the five pitch route, up the middle of the wall. Its a 5.11, so it’s kind of the classic, moderately hard route that people aspire to do. And I’ve done it a bunch of times, so over the years I’ve tried to whittle it down to faster and faster and faster. And I’ll time it from the base up to the summit, and back down again. And over the course of a couple years, I took my own personal time from over an hour, like an hour and half, down to now less than half an hour. So I took this climb that most parties would approach as a full day climb, and that in the past I’d approach as, at least, two or three hours if you’re moving at a normal pace, and just ruthlessly making it more efficient and dialing in your systems, so you can climb it really fast.

Mountaineering legend, Reinhold Messner, has often been quoted comparing mountaineering to a creative pursuit, and the climber to the artist. Does this idea resonate for you at all in your experience?

I mean definitely, this is something that’s been said many times, but doing a first ascent, you know, looking up at a wall, and painting in that line in your mind, “we’re gonna link this feature with this feature.” I mean it’s partially a logical pursuit. “Ok this crack looks good. This crack over here looks good. We’re going to avoid that section because it’s got rock.” So there is a very analytical side to that. But I do think that there’s also an aesthetic sense, “this is where the line should go. This is going to be the most rewarding way that we can get up this mountain.” My friends and I often talk about trying the line of strength of the mountain, the proudest line we can find. That obviously has an implicit aesthetic judgment. Part of the reward of climbing is getting down and then drawing that line onto a photo, and being like, “yeah, that’s beautiful. That’s something that I created and its beautiful. It’s art.”

Get Tickets & More Info at portlandalpinefest.org

Scott Bennett’s Portland Alpine Fest Schedule

  • Alpine Fast & Light (Clinic) Nov. 16, 8–11 a.m. at PRG (FULL)
  • Intermediate/Advanced Ice/Mixed Climbing (Clinic) Nov. 16, 1–4 p.m. at the MMC
  • Into the Karakoram (Clinic) Nov. 16, 7 p.m. at the MMC
  • Intro to Ice/Mixed Climbing (Clinic) Nov. 17, 6–9 p.m. at the MMC (FULL)
  • Big Wall Techniques, Nov. 18, 8–11 a.m. at PRG

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Geeking out on the Mountains

Interview with Colin Haley. Colin credits most of his success in climbing to this early apprenticeship in the most rugged mountains available in the Lower 48. He strives to maintain a relatively high level in every discipline of climbing, from bouldering, to El Cap routes, to highly-technical alpinism, to high-altitude slogging. While Seattle is still technically his home, he spends much more time in his three favorite towns on three separate continents: El Chaltén, Argentina, Squamish, BC, and Chamonix, France. By Joe Fox.


Can you pinpoint a moment perhaps in time or in your own thinking about the sport of mountaineering, when you took a conscious step away from being a hobbyist and toward being a true professional, expert, master?
Pretty much ever since I was 12, 13, 14 years old I wanted to make climbing my life and I wanted to raise my skills as high as I could and do the hardest climbs I could. It’s not like I was a climber for a long time who wasn’t ambitious, and then all of the sudden decided “ohh, I’m gonna start taking this seriously.” I’ve always been ambitious with climbing, it’s not something that happened at any one point.

My relationship with climbing, in terms of what it means to me and how seriously I take it has pretty much always been the same.

How did you get into it so early?
I’ve been backpacking and skiing and backcountry skiing and all that stuff since I was super young. Like I have no memory of learning how to ski, for instance. So I’ve always been doing stuff in the mountains. And then around when I was 10 years old my dad started taking my brother and I mountaineering.

How do you regard your own mortality? Do you think about death, given the extreme risks involved in this sport?
Yeah, I do. I’ve had a lot of friends and climbing partners who have died. Some of them quite close, people I’ve climbed with a lot, and some of them just acquaintances. And I think it would be delusional to do the type of climbing that I do, with the frequency that I do it, and not realize that that inherently exposes me to a lot of risks in the mountains, regardless of how careful I am and how smart of decisions I make. I mean, I accept that. Everyone accepts risk at some level for the climbing they do. I really don’t want to die climbing. I’d like to live to get old. And so I do everything I can to minimize those risks, which is of course a balance with trying to achieve the things you want to do. But I know there’s a possibility that I would die in the mountains. And I accept that. Someone who claims otherwise is not being realistic and conscious.

What motivates a climb like your remarkable recent free solo, 12 hour and 29 minute, ascent of the Infinite Spur on Mount Foraker in Alaska?
Well, I had been scheming to solo the Infinite Spur for at least five years. Climbing it with Rob Smith, beforehand, kind of confirmed for me that it was something that I wanted to do. But … I don’t really think that deciding to solo the Infinite Spur has any great difference in motivation from anyone going and climbing mountains. Because I’ve dedicated my life to climbing mountains, doing something that puts me in a place where I feel really challenged and really excited about the goal, is going to of course be a different sort of scenario than someone who has much less climbing experience. But I think that the general search for this challenge, and this intensity of experience in an extreme environment, is the same whether it’s a beginner going up The Tooth, or me trying to solo the Infinite Spur.

There are a lot of different esoteric fields of knowledge that help the mountaineer’s lifestyle. What do you geek out on the most? What’s the “shop talk” conversation that you could have with any climber in the world, no problem?
Hmm … tons. I’m a total geek in general. And I can say very confidently that that aspect of alpinism, the fact that there’s such a mental side to it, and such a geeky side to it, in terms of logistics and scheming how to go about things, is definitely one of the biggest reasons why I like alpine climbing. It’s not just running a hundred meter dash, or sport climbing, which are very distilled athletic activities. But it also has this very big mental component to it. It’s a very big part of why I like climbing mountains.

In terms of what I like geeking out on? Tons of things. Everything from how to train efficiently, to what to eat while on a climb, to how to use your stove in the most fuel efficient way possible, to how to make your gear lighter, to how to use different belay techniques to be more efficient. I mean, the list could go on and on and on. But everything from using knowledge of chemistry, to physics, to physiology.

What’s something that you’ve been turned onto recently or learned recently that has helped you?
I mean this will get pretty geeky pretty fast. But have you used isobutane stoves much in cold weather?

Umm … yes not with a lot of luck, but …
Yeah, they don’t work that well in the cold, because of pv=nrt—you know, decreasing pressure in the canister causes the canister to get colder, which lowers the pressure even more, and, you know, your stove just stops working very well.

About 20 years ago, the canisters that we would get for these kinds of stoves were pure isobutene, and then about 20 years ago or 15 years ago, they started making them a mix of isobutane and propane. And the reason they do that is because propane has a higher vapor pressure than butane. So it creates more pressure in the canister and helps the stove function better in cold weather. But they can’t make it all propane because then there would be too much pressure in the canister when it’s warm out, and you would risk having the canister explode. And so it’s this balance. But one thing you might have noticed sometimes is you put a fresh canister on the stove, and it works really well for a while, and then all of the sudden it starts working really poorly. It’s not like this slow gradual taper, it just sort of falls off a cliff at some point. And I just recently learned why, and it’s because when the canister is sitting upright, the propane is mostly in a gaseous form at the top of the canister, and the butane is mostly in a liquid form at the bottom of the canister, and so basically you burn off all the propane first, and then all of the sudden the pressure inside the canister drops because it’s mostly butane that’s left.

Wow, and can you mitigate that effect by shaking the canister up, or something like that?

Umm, shaking it up wouldn’t work, but that is why turning the canister upside down can be helpful. Which I had heard years ago, and I had tried turning the canister upside down, and I was like well, it doesn’t really seem to get much better, so I thought that must be wrong. And that’s because when the canister is full, having it upside down or right side up won’t really make much of any difference, but having it upside down should theoretically make a difference over the longevity of the canister because when it’s upside down you’re mostly exiting butane out of the canister because it’s in liquid sitting at the bottom, and the propane higher up is maintaining that pressure inside the canister to help push the butane out, and so by turning the canister upside down you’re not getting rid of the propane straight away, you’re keeping it in the canister for longer. I told it would get geeky fast, so …

Wow. Yeah, I love it. I love it. That’s great.

But that’s something that I learned recently, that I thought was very interesting, and I thought could have a positive effect on my ability to climb mountains.

So, did you discover that when talking to somebody else, or did you just read about that?

I discovered that when talking to somebody else. There’s a guy who I met because he’s in the Alpine Mentors Pacific Northwest Program and I volunteered a couple days for that, a couple of years ago. His name is Alex. He’s doing a PhD in some field of chemistry and we were talking about this stuff, and he explained that to me.

On bringing his iPod shuffle up the Infinite Spur …

I don’t listen to music when I’m doing properly technical climbing. At that point I want to hear, you know, how my crampons sound when I’m putting them on a hold, and all these little things. But when I’m doing less technical climbing like just pounding up a 50 degree ice slope, or just walking up a glacier, or ski touring or something, I love listening to music. And I feel that if I’m listening to music, I can be putting out a really high cardio effort and it doesn’t feel as much like an effort, it’s just so much fun.

What are you listening to on those trips? What is some of your “high energy” music?

A few examples of some of the artists that are on the Shuffle, some of it’s guitar like Tool and Alice in Chains, some of it’s electronic stuff like Sub Focus and Knife Party, some of it’s dark in between stuff like Nine Inch Nails, some of its techno, some of its dubstep, some of it’s drum and bass, some of it’s metal, some of it’s grunge.

Do you ever think of doing a “Snow Slog Playlist” a la Barack Obama?

Haha Not really. But yeah I could some time. That’d be a cool idea. Maybe I should. I’ll make a blog post about it.

On his goals for his presentation at next month’s Portland Alpine Fest?

My general guideline is that I try to put together a slideshow that I know I would be psyched to watch. So probably, I think that most of the people at my slideshows whether they are beginners or not will enjoy it, but I think the people that like my slideshows the most are the ones who are like me – climbers who are fully in the grips of the alpine climbing addiction, just can’t get enough, and are super excited about it and dream of all these things they want to do. Yeah, I think my slideshow is catered more to them than anyone else.

I love giving slideshows in the Northwest because it’s my home turf as a person, and also because the audience is full of people that really love the mountains, and really know the mountains, and that just makes for a fun energy.


Learn More & Get Tickets at portlandalpinefest.org

Colin’s Schedule at the Portland Alpine Fest:

  • Moving Fast in 5th Class Terrain (Clinic) Nov. 18, 9 a.m.–noon at the MMC (Full!)
  • Beyond Waterfalls (Clinic) Nov. 18, 1–4 p.m. at the MMC
  • Beyond Waterfalls (Clinic) Nov. 19, 9 a.m.–noon at the MMC
  • Ski Mountaineering: Mixing Skis with Ice Axes (Seminar) Nov. 19, 12:30–2 p.m. at the Mountain Shop
  • The Summit: An Evening with Colin Haley & Sasha DiGiulian, Nov. 19, 5–10 p.m. at Revolution Hall
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John Frieh: Q & A

In November 2015, John Frieh participated in the 3rd annual Portland Alpine Festival, offering clinics, seminars, and an evening presentation on climbing in Alaska. Several weeks prior to the festival, Joe Fox interviewed him about his thoughts on climbing and the origins of the Portland Ice Comp.


On the origins of his passion for the outdoors
I definitely grew up in a family that recreated outside. Spent a lot of summers camping. Though I love climbing, I think, at its core, I love being outside. And really there might come a day where climbing is no longer an option or a pursuit, but I don’t ever imagine a day where I won’t be getting outdoors.

My parents stuck me in the Boy Scouts at age twelve in hopes of instilling good moral fiber, I don’t know if that was successful. But during that time I climbed Middle Sister at age fourteen. And it was pretty rad. My experiences in the Boy Scouts allowed me to somehow talk my way into a gear shop job at 16, at a local shop in Eugene. Everyone else who worked there was a student at the University of Oregon, in their outdoor program, so there was always somebody willing to drag me along on the weekends. So I did a lot of climbing. I kinda grew up at Smith Rock. That led to me completing a NOLS course right out of high school.

On his “smash and grab” style of climbing
I only got three weeks of vacation a year at Intel. And, if you flip through any Alaska guide book—I remember I got the red one, the Joe Puryear one that everyone gets, when that came out in what ‘07? I think it was?—I remember buying it, flipping through it and just being depressed because every suggested time was two weeks, suggested time one month. I remember thinking I either have to leave Intel or I’m never going to climb in Alaska.

And then in 2007 Colin Haley, over his spring break, climbed Mt. Huntington. He happened to be up there, he thought he was going to ice climb, and the weather looked good, so he flew into the Central Range. And I was like, if Colin can do it, you know he just happened to be there when the weather got good, why couldn’t I watch the weather from Portland and fly up when the weather got good? And that’s what we’ve been doing ever since.

On the climb that convinced him to start training
In the Mid-2000s, I was using Jim Nelson’s Selected Climbs in the Cascades, an excellent guide book. I was just going through there and ticking everything off that I could. I would go down the bookmarks, and think “where was the weather good” “what routes are near here that Jim says are good,” I’m going to do one of those.

And there’s one on Mt. Stuart called the “Girth Pillar,” and it’s actually one of the few “true” alpine routes in the Cascades where you actually have to climb up snow and ice, up to water/ice 3 (WI3), to get to the base of this rock climb that’s 9 pitches, up to 5.11 and then you’ve got to scramble to the summit, and then descend the other side. You have to carry over. It’s a pretty committing objective for the Cascades. And we did it. I think we planned on one bivy. We bivvied somewhere on the rock, and then we went up and over the next day. On the way out we were literally two hours to the car, and I remember I was so wrecked I had to lay down and sleep on the trail. And this route was put up in the ‘80s, you know, it was not some cutting edge route. I realized that if I want to do harder routes than this, and maybe do first ascents someday, I need to get my s**t together. Because up to that point, all I really had done was trail run and go to the rock gym, which is, what everybody does in the beginning.

On his long time ties to the Portland Alpine Fest
If you really go back, nine years ago or so, my climbing partner and I, Marcus Donaldson, wanted to find more people to carpool with us to Bozeman, because it’s the closest place to climb ice in the winter that’s “in” all winter. We started talking about having a party, and Marcus was like well you have that woody in your garage, we’ll have a bouldering competition, or something like that. We got to talking and one thing turned into another, and I probably got a little carried away, but I said, “we should just see if the Portland Rock Gym (PRG) will let us do an indoor dry tool comp in their gym.” So we went and saw Gary Rall (owner of PRG), and he’s a really nice guy, but he thought we were crazy when we said we wanted to bring ice tools into his rock gym. But somehow we talked him into doing it. We called it the Portland Ice Festival, and made it a fundraiser to give back to the local community. We had over a hundred people show up! It ended up being one of the biggest days at PRG all year. We raised a bunch of money, and a lot of people who had never even touched ice tools tried it for the first time. So that summer, Gary called me and said, we’re doing it again this year right? And I was like, I guess so.

We did it for seven years. I would hassle the local shops for donations, I’d hassle my contacts, people I know that worked at different companies, and every year it would be crazy. Every year I’d be say this is the last one because it was just Marcus and I doing it, and I was getting burnt out. Then Lee Davis, Mazamas Executive Director, approached me and asked what I thought about the Mazamas helping out, and taking it over? I told him that as long as they stayed true to why we organized it in the first place, which was to get the community together, hopefully get them excited about ice climbing, and raise some money for local organizations, then fine with me. So I handed it off. The Mazamas obviously have a lot more resources at their disposal than I do, and they’ve incorporated the the Ice Fest into the Alpine Festival, and now it’s this giant week-long celebration. They’re doing more with it than I ever could, and it’s just great to see.

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Jim Whittaker: Q & A

Jim wearing a Balti hat, 1978.
Photo: Dianne Roberts collection (used 
with permission from the photographer)

On November 21, 2015 Jim Whittaker spoke at The Summit during the 3rd annual Portland Alpine Fest. Several weeks prior, Joe Fox had the opportunity to interview Jim and learn more about his incredible life.



I was hoping you could talk a little bit about where your passion for the mountains and adventure came from originally when you were younger?
I tell a story about my brother and I. We were identical twins, ten minutes apart, very competitive. We’d be wrestling in the house, when we were just young, playing, and scuffling. And our mother would say just go outside and play and we would go outside. And when you’re outside you’re in the trees, and clouds, and sky, and if there’s a beach nearby, you walk to the beach. So, my introduction to the world of nature was outside in vacant lots in Seattle where I grew up. There were beaches we could walk to. We’re lucky here in the Northwest that nature is pretty close, and that’s how I was first introduced to it.

My first climbing was on smaller peaks, very close to Seattle that you could just hike up. I was in the Boy Scouts, and I began to do a little bit more technical stuff then I had a chance to join the Seattle Mountaineers as a junior which had really good people, who knew how to climb. They were my mentors. Then we did Olympus, we did Glacier Peak, and then we began to do all the other major peaks. I was lucky to be guiding on Mt. Rainier, climbs up to the summit, through college, so that was my best climbing experience, where I really learned a lot about mountaineering.

You were only 24 years old when Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay made the first ascent of Everest. A decade later you became the first American to do it and it gives you a perspective on the world of alpine climbing that’s far removed from what most of us today grew up understanding about mountaineering. What is it about mountaineering that makes it a competitive pursuit, in your view?

Jim Whittaker on the summit of Mt. Everest.
Photo: Whittaker family collection.
Used with permission.

I go back to my friend James Ramsey Ullman who wrote a book Americans on Everest, and he came up with a pretty good analysis of all of that. He said that, “Challenge is the core and mainspring of all human activity. If there’s an ocean, we cross it. If there’s a record, we break it. If there’s a wrong, we right it. If there’s a disease, we cure it. And, finally, if there’s a mountain, we climb it.” It’s sort of the nature of man to meet those challenges. I see that as both good and bad. My own love of the mountains and the natural world is the reason why I climbed. It wasn’t to break any records, or anything, it was merely to be in nature. And nature is a wonderful teacher, a place where you can test yourself against many things. It’s a magical planet, we’re lucky to be on it and people like to break records, and that’s ok, but you don’t want that to take away from the beauty of the planet and the magical place that it is.

That resonates with me quite a bit. I think that’s the way I feel about it too. So then what did motivate you to climb Everest in those early days?
Well, we were over on the mountain and we had been invited to go over and climb it and I was a climber and I had guided on Rainier, so I knew quite a bit about it. I felt the need, because we were halfway around the world, to climb it, because we were there, and because IT was there. Then Jake, a member of our team, was killed in the ice fall. That made it even more of something that we should accomplish because, at that point, it would have been such a waste to have lost Jake and not have achieved our goal. I felt, was pretty important to reach the summit. At the same time, I’ve been turned back on a lot of other mountains and wisely so, because to reach the summit is optional, to get down is mandatory.

Climbers descend from the 1975 Camp I with a sled full of
oxygen cylinders to be cached for a later expedition.
Photo: Dianne Roberts collection (used 
with permission from the photographer)

You go up there to climb and to see what you can do, and you test yourself in that manner, but it’s all about rational testing. I used to speed climb up Rainier to see if my party would be the first to get up, and do stuff like that. It’s just human nature to do something the best you can. And to be as good at it as you can.

As you know, the Mazamas have a long history of leading climbs and expeditions.Our members take this role of leadership seriously and there is a great depth of experience and specialized training that leaders are required to have. I know you’ve spent a lifetime being a climb leader, essentially. What have you taken away from such a broad depth of experience as a leader? What advice can you offer to our younger members who are just starting to lead climbs?
I remember leading 80 to 90 climbers up Mt. Baker a couple of times. That was when we didn’t limit the number of climbers that went up. There would be a huge chain of people that would head up Mt. Baker, and then we began to limit the number of people on Rainier.

When you lead you need to, of course, know the mountain, know the route, know yourself, but the thing that I felt was important is you need to know the client, you need to know the people that you’re leading. And so we’d take people up that had never climbed before. Climbing Rainier, as you know, you go to Camp Muir and it’s just a walk to that point and it gives you a chance to measure the people that you’re with. Their stamina and what kind of shape they’re in. But it also gives you a chance to understand their mentality and why they’re climbing. And that was the good part of leading—you learn a lot about the people.

Jim teaching “John John” the snowplow, in front of the 
Roundhouse at Sun Valley; (L to R) Jim with Jacqueline, 
Caroline and John Kennedy, Jr., about 1966. 
Photo: Whittaker family collection/Look Magazine.

Then as I guided, I realized that you had better know a lot about these people because the people you’re climbing with can kill you. You are roped up to people who have never climbed before, if you’re guiding. It’s important that they know you’ve got to have good communication, that they do what you say, that you’re prepared for a backup in case something goes wrong and. When you’re leading, one of the most important things is to listen to your clients or your partners, whoever it may be, and to try and figure out if they’re on the same agenda as you are.

Leading climbs is difficult. Leading expeditions is very difficult because people have their own ideas. It’s hard to hold everybody together when things are going to hell and it looks like you’re not going to get the mountain and other people want the chance to try. It’s a very complicated issue.

On superstitions in climbing…
You do get superstitious, there is no question about it. If something works you’ll take it with you the next time. I’ve taken the same poetry book up on Everest and K2.

You say you’ve taken the same poetry book up there? What book is that?
Oh it’s just a book by Robert W. Service, The Spell of the Yukon.

A lot of the time you are trapped and up in the tent in a storm and you want to read stuff. If you’ve read a book a few times you’ve sort of gotten the message, but if there is a whole book of poems you can begin to memorize the poems, and so that’s kind of fun. You can spend time memorizing poems and doing stuff like that, so I found poetry to be an interesting read. You know you get trapped for five days in a storm up on a mountain and you’ll end up reading the labels on your coat and the food labels on the packages. You’re desperate to read something.

On the magic of the mountains… 
When you come off the mountain after a climb you’ve learned so much, not just about yourself, but about the natural world. But also, if you live long enough then you can reflect on some of the magic that’s out there and you can begin to think that every day is a gift. I’ve lived long enough to believe that every day is a gift and still an adventure … life is a mystery. There’s a lot we don’t know and it’s fun to explore and find out as much as we can.

You’ve become something of a legend in the world of American mountaineering yourself, Jim. I’m sure you’ve given numerous talks and presentations. Do you set goals for yourself in these talks? Is there something you want to impress upon the folks who are going to be there to hear you speak this month at The Summit during the Portland Alpine Fest?
What I hope to impress is that there should be an effort to get people outside, to get them out into nature. If we can get them into nature and they learn about it then they’ll love it. If they love it then they’ll take care of it, and if they take care of it they’ll pass it on to their children. So, that’s my goal now when I talk to most people, is to emphasize how lucky we are to know nature and how we should make it a point that there is no child left inside. We gotta get them out and then maybe we can save the planet. Then maybe we can recognize that there is global warming. We can recognize that we do need clean air and we do have a right to clean water and so forth.

We’ve learned slowly about the environment. When we first started to climb there was wasn’t hardly anyone out there climbing. You began to get up on top of the peaks and you’d have your lunch sack and your orange peels and your can of juice, then you lift up a rock to hide this stuff under. Then, you find out that the next time you were up there, you lift up a rock and hell there is already so much garbage under it that you can hardly hide your stuff under it. Then, that’s when at REI we started to do these different programs. In 1955, we said, “hey if you pack it in, you gotta pack it out.” And so we began to do different things like that. But, we were dumb to start with. I can remember throwing juice cans off the cliff to hear the noise as it went down. And we used to cut switchbacks and then the switchbacks would erode and ruin the trail and so then we learned not to cut switchbacks. Then we began doing clean ups. We used to float tin cans out and sink them in this clear alpine lake and I took a Governor from the State of Washington out to clean up one of those lakes back in the early 60’s. It’s an educational process and we’re smarter than we were a hundred years ago and I think the newer generation is smarter than we were. There are still things that we can do to continue to make life pleasant for our children and their children.

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Dawn Glanc: Q & A

Photo: Fred Marmsater

In November 2015, Dawn Glanc traveled to Portland to be a part of the 3rd annual Portland Alpine Festival. Dawn taught clinics, gave a breathtaking presentation on climbing in Iceland, and even participate in the Portland Ice Comp. Several weeks prior to the festival, Joe Fox interviewed her to learn more about her climbing career.

What you think of the trend towards competition as a mode for climbers? Do you feel a sense of competition with others to do things first, or faster? 
Well, I’m no longer one of the few women out there doing big things. There are a lot of women who have come on the scene lately. And I feel like there is some urgency on some of the things I want to do now. Of course I want to climb things before other people. That’s my goal. There’s a little bit of urgency with that. But luckily we’re all good enough friends, and we all talk to each other. So, if anything, it just stokes you up.

If you had to put a number on it, the amount of ladies out there doing mixed climbing at your level, how small of a group are we talking about? 
Under 10.

Can you talk a little bit about your new business venture? It’s not called “Chicks with Picks” anymore is it?
It’s called “Chicks Climbing and Skiing” because we do more than just ice climbing. We do rock climbing, ice climbs, and skiing.

You ladies bought the company from Kim Reynolds? And it seems like Kim was running it by herself for a while. Now it’s shifted to this cooperative crew of women. Is that correct?
Correct. We are called the “Pentagon of Power.” Colin Haley gave us that name.

Can you talk a little bit about being a business owner and what you hope to bring to this project?
Being a business owner is a ton of work, but the reward always comes when we actually run the clinic and we just see how stoked these ladies are. That’s what feeds us. That’s what feeds this whole company. And that’s why we bought this company because we didn’t want that avenue for ladies to go away. If we’re not there, then where do they go for this advanced instruction? Where do they go for these kinds of trips?

Is there something that separates folks that climb at a high level from other people?
I think that the sacrifice that some people are willing to make is greater. Because I’m 40 now, and I think about all of the time that I’ve been climbing. And you know, in my 20’s and 30’s, I wouldn’t have come to your birthday party. I probably would have missed your wedding. I would have missed any family function I needed to, in order to go climbing. I didn’t have a real job. It was paycheck to paycheck, guiding day to guiding day, with huge chunks of time where there’s no money coming in. Living in my van, with my dog—that’s a lot of sacrifice that some people just aren’t willing to make. I definitely know that there was a time in my life, when I was just so completely self-absorbed, and it was all about climbing. It was all for climbing.

There definitely was this wake up moment that recently happened—my parents were in a bad motorcycle accident, and some other things have befallen us too. I’ve realized that I’m losing this precious time with people, because I had to be tied into a rope. That was more important to me than being tied to my family, if you will. It was a real eye-opener that I’ve got to start thinking of other people. I can’t just be completely self-absorbed my whole life.


Can you talk a little bit about the fitness element, the training? What do you do to be in top form for these big climbs, when you are tackling M11 & M12?
I spend a lot of time in the weight room. I spend 3 to 4 days a week in the weight room. I’ve been lifting weights since I was 13. But I’ve been following my own program now for about 5 years, and I see huge results. I have a few exercises that are very climber specific, and they are specific to the moves that I’m trying to make. In general, it’s just an overall fitness plan, that includes weight lifting, and doing some aerobic activity a couple days a week, and also climbing as much as I can.
Dawn is about to begin filming a new documentary about the rise of mixed climbing by women in North America. It will be titled “Mixtress.” It’s a story that’s never been told about one of the most exciting new chapters in climbing history. Look for more info and a Kickstarter campaign soon!