The day I met Eric Simonson damn near killed him. It was in May of 1985 on Mount Rainier, and it does seem now like that was a long time ago. Here we are lounging about Everest Base Camp, mentally gearing up for a push above 8000m in search of Everest history. Somehow though, my mind is tending to dig back in an effort to retrace how we got ourselves to this point. I grew up reading about Himalayan Expeditions... but also about aircraft carriers and dinosaurs and spaceships.

It wasn't until 1985 when I was in my early twenties and coincidentally, in search of a life, that I stumbled on people who'd actually been on Himalayan trips. I went to Mount Rainier and the guide service there to learn about big mountain climbing.

From the moment I met that mob, I was hooked. I knew right away that I was going to make myself a mountain guide. Perhaps it was the way those guys carried themselves. Maybe it was their advanced level of fitness. I laugh now to think that it might have been the nifty team patches and jackets and hats and such. Whatever. I just knew immediately that I wanted something the guides had as we headed up for five days of instruction on Rainier.

It all hit me at an impressionable time of course. I believe I was going through one of my weekly mid-life crises. These weren't all

					"Everest expeditions were legendary in those days... people didn't often get to the top, and all too often, people didn't get to the bottom..."

bad, but they sometimes kept me a bit unfocused. The particular one I was enjoying when I first saw the big, glacier-covered strato-volcano that rules the Cascades, involved some mathematical confusion. I'd passed age 21, which seemed such a big deal, and I wasn't sure of what I was supposed to do for the next 40 years. Get old I supposed, which didn't sound fun... until I met those Rainier guides and their mountain.

Those guys had been places. They'd seen things. They had stories to tell. Real stories about real life! I know that none of those guys would give me credit today for ever having simply shut up and listened to someone else's stories, but I must have. Theirs were better. It was the first time in ages that I'd wanted to be older and wiser. Older was the only way possible for going so many places, and it didn't look so scary when applied to these guides. Older looked stronger and smarter... such a novel idea.

George Dunn was leading the five day program I went on. He'd already been to Everest on the legendary '82 and '84 American expeditions — Everest expeditions were legendary in those days... people didn't often get to the top, and all too often, people didn't get to the bottom. George had already been guiding for about 12 years at that point, which was darn near an incomprehensibly long stretch of time in my mind. I just knew Geo had most of life's answers (although I figured he was going to be picky about who he shared them with).

Greg Wilson was guiding that program as well. He was another '84 Everest hero and another obvious candidate for modeling my life after. The junior guide for that week was some guy named Ed Viesturs. I don't think Ed had done anything superhuman at that point (that we knew of), but he had an obvious self-confidence that blew me away in such a wild setting.

Through our week up the mountain, Geo, Greg, and Fast Eddie didn't seem to flinch a whole lot as they dropped us in the depths of the glaciers, pulled us out, and showed how ice was meant to be climbed and clawed. The week was to culminate in a summit ascent, which I was truly excited about. Just before hitting the sack for our Alpine Start (maybe we were getting up at 1am or 2am), I heard that some other guide, Eric Simonson—Simo they were calling him—was up at our 10,000' high camp with his private clients and that he'd climb with us the next day. This was in early May, as I recall, and I doubt that there would have been much of an established route at such a stage of the climbing season.

I got assigned to the number four spot on Ed's rope (out of five), and I'm sure I had the usual troubles making my headlight and cold fingers work to do all the things I was supposed to do. But I was already used to pushing myself (on less significant mountains) and so had little trouble keeping up with the climb. I'd never encountered such endless sweeps of steepness. All the pictures and books and stories turned out to pale in comparison to actually climbing amidst the towering seracs, under starlight, with such an exciting goal as a summit in mind.

Around daybreak, we were up at 12,500' or so taking a break while that mystery guide headed up higher onto the Ingraham Glacier. I recall that George and Greg had their ropes stretched out again and moving when some yelling got our attention. Only the last two climbers of Eric's rope were visible, and they were doing ice axe arrest for all the marbles.

Turned out that Eric had crossed a substantial bridge on a steep (30°+) slope, and the bridge, perhaps 25' x 80', had collapsed under the weight of the relatively small woman tied 40' behind him. Simo is relatively large. He was ripped from the steep slope above the crevasse and launched backward into a scary trajectory. While the woman on the bridge fell with the giant blocks of ice under her feet (frightening enough), Eric was whipped with a little added speed back down into the crevasse. Falling nearly 60 vertical feet, he landed on his pack. He just missed squashing the woman. She'd been lucky enough to end up on top of the bridge debris now jammed a bit lower down in the hole.

Back downslope, Ed Viesturs was getting our rope jump-started. George and Greg had theirs going full steam to the crevasse edge (none of the action or resultant carnage was visible from below — just the last two climbers in arrest on the downside of the crack). Ed yelled as he took off to the rescue: "Come on you guys, Eric might be dead! MOVE IT!" which jolted me to the core. I looked down at the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I was trying to eat, up to the crevasse, over to the rapidly paying out rope behind Ed, and said, "but I haven't finished my sandwich... this isn't fair..." Oh well, I threw on my pack and got with the program.

					"I started my turn and out of the corner of my eye saw the guy next to me fall and start whizzing down the slope..."

Turned out that Eric was okay, and the woman was okay. But the climbing route was not in any way okay. It had this big void preventing access to the slopes above. By this point, there was a sea of clouds visible below us and one forming above on the mountaintop as well. To my untrained eyes, these two seas looked like they wanted to be one—throwing some big, furious weather at whatever lay between (us).

So when my rope team got stretched out sideways on the hill looking for a way around Eric's crevasse, I remember being a little nervous. It could also have had something to do with the hard snow surface that our crampons were just barely sticking into. I don't know, but I do remember that when we dead ended and Ed yelled back for us all to turn around and go back the way we'd come, there were a few other nervous guys on the rope.

I started my turn and out of the corner of my eye saw the guy next to me fall and start whizzing down the slope. I hit the ice full-on with the pick of my axe, my body atop that, holding for all I was worth, just like I'd been taught. All these years later, I'm happy to think that I saved the day and scores of lives by throwing that arrest, but I have to admit that the other guys arrested too. And even as we were all pressed teeth to the ice, doing battle against fear and gravity, I opened my eyes and saw Ed, slightly bored, saying, "Come on you guys, get up. We gotta go now." We did turn around then—no summit that day I met Eric.

At the next safe rest on the descent, I watched him empty the broken things from his pack... basically everything. It was all quite enough to make me start learning about how sometimes you can have a big day in the mountains without getting to the top of anything.

That was really all it took for me. I was bound then to be a mountain guide and lucky enough down the road, to be an Everest climber. I've followed Eric in a bunch of strange corners of the world now and worked for him for years. It doesn't surprise me a bit that I'm on Everest again or on it again with Simo. I mean really, if your first driving lesson was with Mario Andretti, you'd probably get more than your share of speeding tickets in life. If Ray Kroc and Dave Thomas taught me the fast food secrets, I'd probably be dropping another basket of fries into the oil right now. Had Ted Turner and Warren Buffett shared a few investing tips with me, perhaps I'd be rolling in U.S. dollars instead of Tibetan gravel, but I got my first climbing lessons from four Everest summiters... what else was I going to become.

—Dave Hahn, Climber

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