Seven Summits (6 page)
ACONCAGUA: THE FIRST EXPEDITION
F
rank realized his best hope of getting up the Seven Summits was to get into better shape, and he knew the best way to do that was to climb. A few weeks after Elbrus he was on his annual family vacation on the island of Hawaii, and he decided to take a day hike up Mauna Loa.
He started in the morning but by late afternoon realized he had misjudged the distance and wouldn't make the top by nightfall, so he turned back. He knew he couldn't reach his rental car before it got dark, and having forgotten to take a flashlight he groped down the lava trail, tripped, and went nose first into the jagged lava rock. He held his hand over his face, feeling the warm blood gush. It took an hour back to the car, and by the time he pulled into a nearby army camp he was in shock. It took fifteen stitches and another two hours before he finally got back to the hotel.
“Oh, my God,” Luanne said when she opened the hotel room door.
“Not exactly a good start on my climbing career, darling.”
But Frank was undaunted. As soon as he got back to his office he called Dick.
“It's a question of getting in shape,” he said.
“You just need a few more practice climbs,” Dick agreed.
“And I’ve been thinking,” Frank continued, “that once I do get in shape we definitely should plan on doing all the climbs one after another in one year. Otherwise if we spread them out over a few years it'd be hard to maintain that conditioning.”
It wasn't the first time Frank and Dick had kicked around the idea of doing all seven climbs in one calendar year. It was an attractive idea for several reasons. First, as Frank just said, it would be a lot easier to maintain conditioning by climbing them back to back. Second, they would have all their gear and equipment organized, and third, neither of them was getting any younger.
“Kind of makes a nice packaged chapter in our lives,” Dick said.
Frank asked Jack Wheeler to research the logistics of the idea, to make sure the climbing seasons on the various mountains fit together; Wheeler reported it was feasible.
“Nineteen eighty-three should be the year to shoot for,” Frank now said to Dick. “That would give us next year to make all the plans, plus give me a chance to go on more practice climbs. And speaking of that, got any ideas where we might go next? How about that friend of yours, Marty Hoey? Maybe she could take us up Rainier.”
Finding Marty wasn't easy. Her movements were unpredictable, as though she purposefully threw red herrings across her path. A friend told Dick she was climbing somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, another said he had seen her recently in Alaska, high on McKinley. Dick left messages, but before any of them found her Marty happened on her own to call Dick.
“I’ve got something you might be interested in,” she said, “a way you can get to Everest.”
“Are you serious?”
“With the Rainier Mountaineering Guides. Lou Whittaker (who co-owned the guide service) has a permit from the Chinese to try Everest from the Tibet side, next spring. We're looking at the Great Couloir on the North Wall—nobody's ever climbed it. Now Lou's having trouble raising funds, and I just had this thought. What if you were to partially underwrite the expedition in exchange for coming on the climb?”
“Marty, that sounds fantastic.”
Dick then told Marty about his chance acquaintance with Frank Wells, and how they had agreed to do the Seven Summits together and that they had just gone to Elbrus.
“Maybe he could join the team, too,” Dick said.
“Possibly,” Marty replied. “I’ll ask about both of you.”
“That would be great, Marty. But listen, when you're talking to Whittaker and those guys, don't mention the Seven Summits. It might sound presumptuous, and I don't want them thinking we're a couple of blowhards. Also, we want you to take us up Rainier sometime soon.”
After hanging up, Dick broke into his uncontained smile. He couldn't believe his good fortune. First he meets Frank, and now this.
Must be God's will, Dick thought.
But things like this were typical in Dick's life. He could make a full-page checklist just to wad it an hour later because an unexpected phone call—a new opportunity—was suddenly sending him in a different direction. Over the years he had learned to keep his nose to the wind for such things because many of the major breaks in his life, such as Snowbird and the Seven Summits, had been the result of unexpected encounters. But Dick knew things didn't happen just because you had chance encounters: the trick was to recognize their potential and then do something about them.
Dick knew immediately this had enormous potential. One of the biggest hurdles planning the Seven Summits was getting to Everest, since the mountain was booked until 1990. An attempt to get on board with the Spanish team who had a spring 1982 permit for the Nepal side had come to naught, as the Spaniards weren't interested in having two Americans on their climb, no matter what they chipped in toward expenses.
And now this manna from heaven.
Dick called Frank, who was immediately enthusiastic. The only drawback was the route. It would be a major challenge for Dick and Frank to attempt the so-called normal South Col route on the Nepalese side—the one Hillary had pioneered on the first successful ascent in 1953—but the Whittaker group was proposing an unclimbed line right up the enormous North Wall.
“But even if we don't make it, it'll be a fantastic learning experience for when we do all our seven summits in eighty-three,” Frank said.
“Well partner,” Dick said, “You wanted me to find you a practice climb!”
A few days later Frank and Dick were at a restaurant near the base of Rainier to meet Whittaker and a few members of the Everest team. Lou Whittaker was fifty-two, stood six foot five, and with a lumberjack's build looked as fit as the younger guides who worked for him. Lou had climbed Rainier over 200 times. Most of the other team members were professionals with the Rainier Mountaineering Guide Service who climbed nearly every day of the season. They were deeply tanned by the strong sun off Rainier's glaciers and obviously very fit. One member, though, who was notably not a guide, was Jim Wickwire, a Seattle attorney. Wickwire was best known as one of the summit climbers on the first American ascent of K2, the world's second highest peak, and also noted as the one who made an emergency bivouac near the summit, without sleeping bag or tent. It was a severe ordeal that cost him part of a big toe to frostbite, and also part of his left lung, later removed in surgery.
“One thing to clear at the outset,” Whittaker said, “is even though you two guys will be paying part of the expenses, you'll be coming on this climb like any other member of the team. We know you won't be doing any of the lead climbing, but once the ropes are fixed you will be expected to do your share of load carrying. We want this to feel like one team, not one team plus two guys who are paying for part of it.”
Frank and Dick were pleased; the last thing they wanted was to be pampered. Both were sensitive to buying a slot on the expedition when everyone else had gained it from years of hard work. “Just treat us like the others and we'll be happy,” Frank said. There was one other item: would it be possible to bring Jack Wheeler? Here the Everest team demurred; the addition of each new person upped the logistic requirements, and everyone felt they were already at their limits.
The rest of the meeting was spent discussing those logistics: buying and packing for seventeen people for three months, ordering oxygen bottles, clothing, tents, ropes, and special oxygen regulators, and shipping everything to Peking in advance of their departure. Most of the team had experience with these types of things and there would be little for Frank or Dick to do other than get in shape and hopefully work in some practice climbs.
“Understand you've made a deal with Marty to take you up Rainier in the morning,” Whittaker said. “This is a good place to start your practice.”
It was a two-day climb, but as they left the hut on the summit day, Frank again fell behind.
“Try to get into a rhythm,” Marty suggested. “Make a step, then take a deep breath and force it out through pursed lips. Move your ice axe, then make the next step.”
Frank practiced this “pressure breathing,” inhaling and exhaling loudly, but he was still too slow to keep up. Finally Marty ordered him to turn around and go back down with one of the other guides while she took Dick to the summit.
Rainier was strike three for Frank, but again he felt far from being called out. He was convinced all he needed was yet more practice climbs. It was Wickwire who came up with the idea of going to Aconcagua. It was perfect. The mountain was in the southern hemisphere, so they could go there in December or January, two months before Everest. It was also the highest peak in South America, and even though Frank and Dick didn't make a point of it, they were attracted to the idea of getting practice on another of their Seven Summits. In addition to Wickwire, a couple of the others on the Everest team, including Marty, said they would like to go.
At 22,835 feet Aconcagua is not only the highest peak in South America but the highest in the western hemisphere. Lying in Argentina but close to the border with Chile and only a little north of the latitude of Santiago, Aconcagua is a massive volcanic peak with a complex of faces, ridges, and glaciers. They knew the “ruta normal” was easy, maybe too easy since they were looking for pre-Everest training. On the other side of the mountain the Polish Glacier route would have climbing challenges similar to Everest but on a smaller scale. It sounded like the best objective. They decided to make the climb in January 1982, two months before leaving for Everest.
There was little for Frank and Dick to do but arrange their business lives in order to take the time off. For Dick that meant trying to get as much advance work done as possible on the next development stage of Snowbird: a time-share, condominium then only in blueprints. For Frank, though, it was a different problem. There was no way to get his work done in advance, since it was a continuing process that each day needed full attention. Just to get time off for the Elbrus climb had been difficult. Now he was looking at three weeks for Aconcagua followed by three months for Everest followed by much of the following year for all seven summits in 1983. It would be unfair to ask either his colleagues at the studio or the chairman of parent Warner Communications, Steven Ross, for that kind of sabbatical. He realized he was looking at a choice: Seven Summits, or the presidency of Warner Bros. But not both.
Frank's working career spanned twenty-five years from Stanford Law School to a job in a firm specializing in entertainment law, to the other side of the negotiating table working for Warner Bros. He worked very hard, a habit begun as a student when he was at the top of his class at Pomona College as a Phi Beta Kappa
summa cum laude
political science major, at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar where he received a coveted “first,” and at Stanford Law School where he was a note editor of the law review and in the Order of the Coif. In the entertainment law firm and later at Warner Bros., Frank most days worked twelve to fifteen hours, six or seven days a week with two weeks vacation a year—unless work cancelled the ski jaunt to Vail or the beach break on Hawaii.
And Frank loved it. He thrived on the thrill of an industry that was at heart a gambler's Eden, where you risked $15 million on a picture that belly-flopped with a whack that left your ears ringing until the next quarter showed your $6 million dollar picture had grossed $45 million in its first six weeks. He enjoyed, too, the residuals that were part of the chiefdomship in an industry synonymous with glamour. It was not so much the tangible perks (he was too aligned with social welfare concerns and liberal politics to feel comfortable with too much ostentatious show of success), but the intangible enjoyments of corporate life: the authority, the pleasure of having bright associates to execute plans, the ability to make important decisions quickly and then move on to the next problem.
So in the fall of 1981 Frank Wells had a great job, a wonderful wife, two bright, athletic, and polite kids, a Beverly Hills home, a weekend beach house, condos in Vail and Sun Valley, interesting and often famous friends, a loving mother still alive, and financial security. Looking back there was nothing he would have done differently. He had no regrets. He was successful, and proud of it. In short, there was nothing in his profile that suggested midlife crisis. Yet he sensed he was about to make a decision that would be a radical life passage, a buoy around which the course bearing of his life could very well sail in a different direction. And if anyone would have asked why he was considering such a change at the height of his corporate career, all he would have been able to answer was that it just plain felt right. Furthermore, at age forty-nine, he knew it was now or never.
If Frank Wells and Dick Bass had anything important in common it was their belief in following their hunches when a choice presented itself. When it came to decisions both men shunned a brooding analysis and preferred a quick, instinctual action. They took risks on visceral hunches. It was a modus operandi that had made their careers not only successful but also fun.
When the chance came to join the Everest expedition, forcing him either to go with or give up the Seven Summits dream, he thought about it for two days. Not full-time for two days—his schedule was much too busy for that. There were no long walks on the beach. He considered the tradeoffs, when he had a free moment to think about them, and found the balance weighed in favor of climbing. He would never have a similar chance. Besides, he told himself, how tragic it would be if someday he looked back and regretted not going with the opportunity. That thought did it: He met with Steven Ross.
“The other mountains, aside maybe from Antarctica with its logistics, I can get on my own,” Frank told Ross. “But Everest, with all the problems getting permits, is a chance I can't pass. It's an American group too, and through China and Tibet, which will be very interesting and is another reason I’m doing this. And I would never think of doing it if I didn't know we had great management in place who can replace me and do it even better.”