An hour with Moutain climber Robert Link

With more snow on the ground and much colder temperatures than usual, KPR presents a man who's made a career and a life of facing some of Mother Nature's most extreme conditions. I'm Kay McIntyre, and today on KPR presents Mountain Climber and Guide Robert Link, who began climbing mountains at the age of 7. 44 years later, he's climbed Mount Rainier more than 300 times, led more than 20 expeditions up Mount McKinley, and summited Mount Everest three times. Link is the president of Mountain Link, a mountain climbing expedition service based in Bend Oregon, where he's guided groups up mountains all over the world. One of those expeditions was up Pico Dorisaba in Mexico, with a group that included Bill Lacey, director of the Dolan Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. Robert Link and Bill Lacey met up again on November 18, 2009, when Link was the featured speaker in the Dolan Institute's Leadership and Globalization in Sports Series. And now here are Bill Lacey and Robert Link.

Robert, it's great to have you here. You got started when you were seven years old. How exactly did that transpire? My dad was in the 10th Mountain Division, and at that point in time, he was in Washington State, and he was a commander of the Yakima Firing Center. And Mount Adams is a peak very close to Yakima in Washington State. And he was good friends with Dave Mayer and the Mayor family, of obvious skiing. They were Olympic champions and dominated the World Cup. Some of the best skiers at the U.S. has ever put out. Anyway, they decided that they'd take me up Mount Adams. And I went with the Mayor Twins. You were seven years old. Mount Adams is how high? It's 12,325 feet. And it's snowfields and glaciers. Snowfields and glaciers, you bet.

And we went on the south side, which was mostly snowfields. So there was a great Yakima sunshine climb. And he brought me up to the lunch counter, which is about halfway up the mountain. I was cold, not doing that well, and he put me in a sleeping bag. I was laying there quite comfortably. And then he said, well, Dave's got a watermelon in his pack. And if you get out of that bag, we can go to the top and have some of that watermelon in. It was the truth. He took the watermelon on the top. That's what started this whole debacle, I guess, I don't know. That's watermelon year every eight, huh? What? Describe being a mountain guide. I mean, just having been a one relatively short trip with you. You guys do everything. You're kind of the tour guides, you're the climbing leaders, you cook, you entertain continuously, all those things. Just talk about what it's like. Well, I mean, being a mountain guide is, I think, first, you need to get your own climbing mountaineering.

Yaya is out. And then you learn that you want to bring other people into your environment that you love so much. You can teach them and watch them become successful and mentor and everything. It's very difficult because you bring people from all over the country, sometimes even all over the world, and bring them into what we call a tribal situation where nomads, we have a collective goal that we want to accomplish. We have people that come with us that are very successful in their own businesses that we couldn't even begin to perform. So a lot of different personalities and a lot of blending and a lot of education goes on in those first few days, first few hours. But the beauty is that people are good people. And you know, I get to meet people just on a first name basis. As Lou Whittaker would say, we're stripped of our social veneer. I don't need to go into somebody's reception room and meet them across a desk or their

name's Frank. My name's Robert. How's it going? Good handshake and honesty is a big part of this whole program because the mountains don't care. You can prescribe whatever story you want and if it's not true, they'll find it and they'll bust you for it. There's so much leadership involved in guiding. It's like every trip you go on, you've got a completely new group of people usually. You'll have one or two assistant guides, you'll have a bunch of new clients. Most of whom don't know each other, have never met, will probably never ever meet again after this trip. And you mold them together and get them to work as a team and what is really and inherently dangerous situation. I mean, talk about the kind of leadership skills that that takes. I think first it's communication, any good leader and this is one of the problems I think we have in the world today is there's a bunch of managers out there and then there's leaders.

So first you have to earn the right to lead, simply put. You're not placed in that position because you don't deserve to be there, they're again the mountains being harsh. You need to earn the right to have the experience and then people tend to flow with that and it's very easy to work with them and educate them. But is there doubt? You bet. It's the first time you shake their hand and they're looking at you, they're sizing you up as I'm sure all you have done when I first sat up here and I would use what's going on with this guy is he going to be able to pull it and so on and so forth. So through time and communicating with each one, each person we have people introduce themselves, why they're there. And we try to break down those social barriers immediately. And that we're all just one team trying to make it to that same collective goal. And we all have strengths, we all have weaknesses.

And I think that's for me the beauty of guiding or I hate to call it guiding. It kind of puts it in the square box. It's just being a nomadic tribe of moving around and doing great adventures. You have a without mentioning names and present company accepted like a worst client story that you'd like to share. There was a blacklist at one point. People who just do not want, you know, it's their way or the highway kind of deal and they just don't play well with others. And because they can sign the check sometimes they feel they should be able to play with anybody. And that's not always a case. And I'm talking about people that can fly G3s and take you around the world. But once you get the glacier and we used to call it the Wallet stays behind and it's just all about what's real and survival. One of the things that I noticed on the trip that we went together on is you place a lot

of emphasis on local culture and for instance, you know, checking out the local restaurants, you know, having side visits to different cultural sites and everything. How important is that when you're traveling overseas? It's huge. I mean, that's really the reason you're there is to lay the groundwork and make sure that all the logistics are going to line up so that people who come with you and that you're leading, they don't worry about any of that stuff. We just tell them, you know, we're about waking up in the morning and doing your thing and we'll take care of the rest. And so yeah, and I have a lot of good friends that I've met throughout the world that I continue to work with and we've developed great relationships and it's really what it's about anywhere. It's all about relationships. It really is. You learn about people in a good firm handshake and a look in the eye and the truth and

you learn who tells the truth and who does it very quickly in my business and that's why written contracts and such, we don't really deal with those in all the little details that, you know, you could trip up on to me that simply states that, you know, people are looking for a way out or something to go wrong and that's so much the problem with us in this day and age where, you know, man, you have to cover this and that and beauty and mountaineering is, it's very simple and it's simply trust. We tie, I tie into you, you tie into me or both our lives are on the line and if you're not true to your word, it comes out very quick. What you've been to a lot of different places around the world, what does mountaineering do for developing nations, both good and bad and adventure, tourism, all that kind of? Well, I think tourism is a big part of St. Nepal or a lot of these countries that we visit

and so we bring revenue to their country and that's a good thing, you know, if we're going to protect, you know, isolated villages and such, well, we've already intruded on that and so there's that dichotomy there whether we're doing good or bad but now it's becoming more of a world market and the world's all tied together these days, it's much different than say when we went into Cachin Junga and we were the first westerners in that valley, they'd never seen us before and they were continually planting potatoes in the same fields so they had an iodine deficiency and they'd get big goiters and some of them were dwarfed and we wanted to help. Well, then the big question was because we have physicians with us, do you help with medicine, western medicine or do you just give them that vitamin placebo and walk away because we are affecting this entire culture for anyone who follows us in so we chose the vitamins.

We can't fix what's going on with them, our effect should be minimal, hopefully. Yeah. Now, you've mentioned, we've talked about this and you said there's lots of interesting politics that you've witnessed in mountaineering so tell us a little bit about that but start with the peace climb that that's when you summon it at Everest, right? In 1990 after Cachin Junga, Ed Veecers and I were, we had climbed Cachin Junga the third highest peak with Lou Whitaker. His twin brother Jim Whitaker was the first American to climb Everest in 1963 so Jim invited us on this peace climb and it was the Soviet national team, the Chinese and the Americans. It would be the first time the three superpowers ever roped up together and the goal there was if the three superpowers can cooperate, high schools on earth can be attained and we did that and it's actually in the Guinness book and no one's ever heard of that because

it was successful. So the unfortunate part about mountain areas, it's more train rec mentality, how did you die or who died, who lost this or whatever but in dealing with the Soviets and the Chinese it was very eye-opening to me. We went and trained for a month in the Caucasus range in the Soviet Union and I found the Soviet Union like many other countries, the US is in a bubble, economically we do very well and it's obviously a while ago but it was like the Soviet Union was a second and not to be demeaning but second rate country with the first class military. They weren't the people weren't doing as well as people in the US and then we went to China, a lot different program year after Tiananmen Square, big protest in Tiananmen Square. The next year that we visited we saw the tank tracks in the steps, we saw the bullet holes

all over and the only way the Chinese were rebelling was leaving these little paper butterfly figures all over in Tiananmen Square. We went into Tibet in the loss that were under martial law by the Chinese. Well the Chinese national team became Tibetan climbers and that was huge that we first trained on Rainier, it was all Chinese climbers, well they didn't feel they were keeping up with the Soviets and the Americans so they brought in a few Tibetans and Tibetan climbers are similar to Sherpa, Sherpa are simply a tribe of people that live in the foothills of Himalayas at very high altitude and are extremely strong. As well as the Tibetans so when we went to the Soviet Union, next thing you know half the Chinese team is Tibetans, then when we show up on Everest they're all Tibetans and in fact it costs one of the Tibetans his toes because the Chinese simply gave them the

boots from the Chinese climber that he replaced and he was bigger and he lost his toes on the on the step but along those lines of Chinese just to kind of summarize it we're having a team meeting about on the first summit team who's going to carry what we don't have any Sherpa it's just us and trying to ask Jabu and Dachimi who were with myself and Steve Gaul and then Andre and Sergei who were the Soviet climbers on the first summit who's going to carry what and ask Ying Ying can you please ask those guys what they want to carry you know tent poles fuel food and ignore me and finally I said Ying can you please ask them what they think they looked at me said it doesn't matter what they think they'll think what I tell them to think so we got out and left and we figured out with Jabu and Dachimi just hand signals you know you take I take kind of deal and it worked out

much better but also in traveling through and we traveled all through China on the way to Everest that was the first time I ever ran into full on racism they were going to take us out to entertain us to this nice nightclub in Chengdu when we arrived there there was a gentleman there actually had a sword on his hip that can't go in your round eyes no westerners they don't allow him so we ended up going to this high school prom night where they fold out the metal chairs and somebody's burned this 45 vinyl found that to be pretty entertaining now you you summoned on that trip but you you summoned by the the north route tell everybody the disasters in Everest the the one that John was talking about that cracker I wrote about it was on the south side there it kind of described the differences in the roots to everyone the difference in the two routes is on the south side you have which is coming up right now the the Kumbu ice fall and also the

loads he faced those are the two most challenging parts of that route and then they occur the Kumbu ice fall occurs right out of base camp from 17 to just under 20,000 feet on the north side you don't have any of that what you have is you can drive into base camp and one of the hardest things we did was we drove into base camp on that trip with you know three trucks full of gear almost 12 tons of gear and we had to unload it and we were not acclimatized but the thing about the north side is it's much more difficult up high it's a second step which is just over 28,000 feet and it's a vertical rock there's a ladder there you bet I understand the ladders much more when we were there was like eight foot ten foot ladder and we ended up climbing the rest of it there's no rope on it at that

point in time so much more challenging up high and much more dangerous between the two I feel that I think the north side's harder but on that climb Jim was funny he put when he climbed it in 63 he put a camp at 275 on the balcony on the south side of Everest and found that to be very good for safety reasons so he demanded that we put a camp in between the first step and the second step at the mushroom rock and he said that you guys on the first summit team may burn out putting that camp in but we've got a whole bunch of strong climbers behind you at Veecers to be one he chose to go without oxygen so Jim demanded that I put the tent up or we put the tents up not just drop the gear and keep climbing we're only two hours and 45 minutes from the summit so we did and we spent the night and then our deal

was Jim wouldn't pull the plug on the whole expedition until everybody got their shot at the summit in other words big Himalayan climbs or pyramid climbs in the old day were first summit team that gets up safe expedition we're successful we leave that leaves a whole bunch of people who've done a whole bunch of climbing and work carrying loads and participating without getting the opportunity to go to the top so Jim stayed there for another four days and 20 people summited on that trip even Mark Tucker a very good friend of mine and basically saved my life and he was quoted as the cook summited on that trip describe your summit day on that trip what was it like where did you start from how long did it take you what did it feel like well we put these two tents in at 28 five which is higher

than the topic a two we didn't want to it was just so we're carrying these jansport tents and I don't know if it was familiar with the old China ever jansport tent but it was made for the north side it was made for rocks to hit it and not punctured it weighed like 16 pounds so I carried one of those up to high camp prior to our summit bid in other words on one of these trips we didn't have sure but so I did five trips of 25 five carrying loads and one trip to 27 to and then we came down for four days to base camp and then went back up well in going back up we found this Japanese tent and it was just a lot lighter but we never put the thing up and at this point we're still thinking are we even going to put this camp in so I grabbed that Japanese tent and it was like a barely a three person tent and we ended up putting four of us in it two Tibetans and two Americans

and I'm in my down suit I never got in a bag it just my feet went numb the shoulder went numb and it was beautiful because they were up there praying and chanting and it was really cool at one point and then we said we'd like hot coffee in the morning well they've got the stove over on their end of the tent so they go oh yeah yeah yeah Robo no problem and they go to bed and when I found out the next morning was you bet they made coffee that night and then it took those hot water balls and put them in their sleeping bags so they had a toasting nice night and we had Luke one coffee in the morning I just remember waking up angry which is good anger is an energy and so we got the heck out of camp and we started up and the Soviets decided to go with that oxygen which they weren't supposed to do Ed Veecers bailed off the first summit team because he knew he wouldn't be able to travel with climbers that are

you know of the same you know speed or ability if he wasn't using oxygen he'd be slow well they decided to go without so they had that camera with them there's actually a film out by Lazo Powell called three flags over Everest Robert Redford narrated and anyway they had the camera for this so I stopped at the top of the second step take the camera from them up to the summit we go it's by self Steve Gaul the other American and Dachami and Jabu and no Soviets well we get on the radio because the idea was we were going to speak to George Bush the first George Bush and we're really excited you know peace climb and whatever and in trying to set that phone call up Steve Gaul goes he's telling Jim Whitaker oh yeah we're on the summit but the Soviets are nowhere to be seen long silence Jim Whitaker comes back on the radio and says you guys will wait

on the summit or there will be hell to pay when you come back down if you come back down we're all all the countries we're supposed to be represented if the Soviets weren't there they would a lot space we sat there for an hour and a half waiting on those guys I actually changed film on the summit under a coat which that would have smoked the whole program it was a film camera there was a little Mickey Mouse ears weighed about seven ten pounds and we waited and they showed up and we all left the summit I didn't see the Soviets for a week we went down to lower camps and they went down to the upper ones and it was pretty much it what do you think Robert about kind of the the change in guiding it's gotten very commercial you have all the commercial groups on Everest you have what are kind of increasingly commercialized climbing operations starting up up now in K2 a little bit what are your thoughts on that I'm guilty first and foremost I run an expedition

company and and guide people I just the survivor the TV show survivor mentality is starting to show up in my sport and I can't stand it who's the target who's going to be the one I heard a funny comment just walking in here coming out of the train you know one thing about groups there's a individual in every group that's the one and if you can't recognize that in the first two hours it's you and that's not the most healthy you know I don't know well anyway and then now they on discovery channel they have Russell Bryce doing this TV show with a biker and jeez he's as popular as star search or I don't I don't know and they showed up on the south side Everest this year with 53 small tents plasma TVs and for me I just lost it so I got a hold of Russell man we had a little chat and uh yeah we we're not pure it's not

you know we're not purist but at the same time um jeez and then what if Russell does what if Russell he's always been on the north side what if he doesn't come back to the south side and he's employed these you know 50 Sherpa well he just jacked the whole economy out of shape they won't have work next year and their whole mantra was all about you know how hard they can beat the next person up and my business is we try to bring people along or in mountain area it's not my bit it's just mountain area you bring you you know you prop your team member up if they're spun off on the river and they've lost their pack you go get their pack and pick them up and bring them across and lifetime experience and let's keep moving um instead of trying to tear everybody down these days it's just all about tearing things down and it makes no sense to me what's your closest call in the

mountains there've been a couple the first one was on Denali 1987 the 7th of july in 87 we're on Denali and the storm had set in and we had some people having trouble and deep snow started accumulating so we pulled off just below a place called windy corner and dug in and we're going to spend the night and the whole time Mark Tucker who I just mentioned earlier and myself couldn't sleep because something was wrong and and we camped way away from the buttress but we could see the spindrift coming off the ice shoots and they would create little sloths and when it ended up happening was we were on a bad slab of snow and that vibration from those other spindriffs coming down rattled the whole slope loose and it just ripped through the valley and

we ended up under four feet of slab avalanche three tents buried one tent not buried so I remember just it was like five in the morning Mark screams and our tent collapses so I roll over and I'm trying to bridge up so I can breathe and I'm saying tuck try to get to the door so he slides his bag up or he slides up to try to get to the door he can't he ends up just chewing a hole in it and ripping it apart and while he was doing all that I was passing out his sleeping bag was in my face and I was the next thing I remember was just snowing my face and air and then we both came up out of that hole like a couple of goavers and I don't know why but we ended up with one of the shovels and we started digging the rest of the people out and we're simply in long john socks sweaters a hat and it's chilly but we didn't even notice that we got everybody out and then I've been caught in ice fall where people were knocked out and not killed

unfortunately those are my two closest times but both those times I just remember we all have a six cents and when you when you feel that stuff at least mountain air I know I do and when you feel that stuff it's just better to back off then if it doesn't you know ask a bunch of good mountain ears it's not what do you think it's how do you feel about it I don't feel good about this let's go back and so I think anytime you go out into the outdoors in such that it doesn't feel right I mean mountain you know climbing's optional the summit's optional coming back really isn't you I have a couple more questions and then we're going to see a short actually a special treat for you and then open it up to your Q&A to begin thinking about your questions you've got a lot of a lot of young people out here tonight who've expressed an interest in mountaineering at the dinner and it looks like a whole bunch more join us you've got a couple of

people who are maybe a little bit older but who just kind of started climbing if you were going to give them advice on on what course they should pursue kind of how to build themselves up how to train kind of which peaks to maybe start on to say build up to a Denali or an Akan Kagu or something like that what advice would you give them tonight I think it's really important that you start with a progression not just one knock off one peak or whatever you should start with you know okay so here we're in Kansas right now I mean options are going to the Appalachians or to the Rockies I would say probably people are going to more typically go to the Rockies very accessible and you can find out how your body does at 14,000 feet 10,000 feet is kind of break off point four when altitude will seriously affect a person's metabolism and then 14,000 feet is kind of for whatever reason it's a place where if someone goes to 14,000 feet does

reasonably well then they have they've got the stuff to go higher into the 20,000 foot range so I would say a progression is important being prepared and educated is even more important so it doesn't mean you need to go guided or whatever find some experienced people one of the reason that that I've learned over the years why guiding is successful or people tend to do that is because we commit and it's done we set a date it's over a lot of times climb start in a bar and end in a bar so it's a few beers yeah let's go climb that thing and then everybody wakes up the next day and I've had a lot of people show up on trips and say yeah three of my buddies bailed out so now I need climb Mount Rainier guided because we're going to do it together understand that anytime you tie into someone you'd better be able to trust your life to them don't trust

anybody who thinks they can lead if they can't really lead you're getting a world of hurt there so just make sure and there's a lot of good experience mountaineers out there and and after that you know they'll be that progression you'll get into the equipment just you know be educated and be cautious but not overly cautious I mean nobody wants to hear about the beautiful day where there was no wind and it was great climbing and the steps were just right and but he wants to hear more of the train wreck scenario mountaineers not about if that was all there was I wouldn't be here there's so many more days that are beautiful and a good way to get into it so I would say a definite progression and anywhere 14,000 feet is going to be in North America and then you can start Mexico is not a place to overlook the volcanoes there or Zobba's the third highest in North America beautiful peak can be done in a week close by not

expensive then you move on down into the Andes Ecuador Argentina highest peak in the western hemisphere outside of the Himalayas Mount Ocacagua one of the seven summits and a lot of people have enjoyed doing one or all of the seven summits if you're not really into doing ice and snow kill them in jarl you carry a camera water bottle and your tents are set up there's washing water so on and so forth or trek to the base of some of these mountains is similar if you're not into the faul on roping up these are great great exercises great things to train for and your company leads trips to all those locations right we do yeah we do okay um you know you're you've been doing this now you started climate seven you said you're 51 so you've been doing this for 44 years it's a real tough profession being a mountain guide it's tough job what's kept

you in it what's the appeal what's the attraction I mean you're clearly still passionate about it I think anymore I mean you bet the mountains and they still are my passion but people this is one of the best jobs to meet different people from all people interest me and from all walks of life and like I say once we're in this environment it's very simplistic we may not even go down the road of you know of where they've been or what they've done or or or any of that it's just dealing with people day in and day out and the nuances and and seeing you know the good in the bad just all right up front that's great you've got a special treat to share with our guests tonight you've got a trailer for a movie that you've been working on why don't you spend a couple minutes describing it and then we'll show show everyone the trailer yeah this is a documentary we did in the expedition was actually in 2002 a

peak called dollar gerry which is the seventh highest in the world and the unusual thing about dollar gerry we were just talking about Everest we were the only expedition on that side of the mountain in the spring that year and it was a very unique experience which is hard to come by these days so we shot this video more in the in the moment than say a bunch of interviews and and such about the client so it's it's a pretty raw documentary of an expedition we did with the good friend of mine and client who I took to this mountain we'd done 18 trips around the world before we did this particular peak and he simply didn't want to go to Everest he wanted to go somewhere more in a true mountain airing since then at least that was his opinion he thought there were too many people on too commercialized okay let's roll the trailer take a look at it

spring has arrived in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal with it the annual flock of people to the Everest region is about to begin recognition through media such as into thin air and Everest i-mats will bring to the area over 1,000 people making up nearly 55 expeditions trying to reach the summit of Mount Everest at the same time 80 miles to the west nine climbers will attempt the seventh highest mountain in the world dollar gear at 26,794 feet its slopes are verging compared to Everest and its summit has seen a mere fraction of the amount of people pushing both their

physical and mental abilities to the limits these experienced climbers will discover when Himalayan mountaineering was like before guiding an easy access allowed the average armchair climber to summit the world's highest peaks most importantly on this climb they will find out why dole gear has become more than Everest climbing culture adventure and spiritual awareness successful trip did did you have people summoning on that trip no we made about an hour and a half short the summit the conditions just became too dangerous okay and you hope to have that movie finished

when i think you told me you were going to submit it to a festival or something to this Seattle International Film Festival in fact they just finished more of the editing and it will be submitted next week okay great we're going to open up to your Q&A I've got some more questions if we don't have enough of you asking questions but Amanda has and Ryan both have cordless mics if you just raise your hand one of them will come to you yeah I've been to a last good I've seen mountain McKinley have you had experience with that mountain I've been on 23 expeditions up there yeah it's my favorite peak that's why I keep going back beautiful mountain you drive to a small town called Tolquita which actually means the three meetings of the rivers the Susitna that you live in the Tolquita River not in Athabaskin means river and it's a

popular place for fishing and tourism good views of the mountain and from there you take a 45-minute flight in a 185 sesna used to be 185 sesna the other flying otters in there and you land on skis and they drop you off with all your gear and food for a few weeks and they come back when the weather's good and one of the things that you'd mentioned to us at dinner is a lot of people maybe they don't understand the kind of commitment they're making when they go on a Denali climb because it's not like Mount Rainier where you it's a very challenging physically climb but you're right there at civilization I've seen it changes people I mean they drop you off then they fly away and I've watched people watching that plane fly away then some cloud cover comes in I look at the same people and you just you know here we go you know it's fallen right now that we're committed and that's one of the beauties I like about Denali is we're on our own we have a sled loaded with 50 pounds

of gear behind us we have a pack that weighs just about that much and that's just for the first day because we do five miles and only gain really 700 feet so it's pretty efficient to take it all in one load from there we just start carrying we carried a nine five come back next day we move carried it eleven come back we move and we keep leapfrogging up the mountain similar to that with rest days included so we can acclimatize and nobody gets beat up too much okay other questions can you talk a little bit about the training that you go through to prepare for these climbs and how you how you know and when you feel comfortable that you're able to do that physically and also the people that you're with are able to do it physically so there's and that's a really good point I mean training for mountaineering is it could be bike riding it could be skiing it's however you choose to train you have to have the right mindset and by that I mean in mountaineering

in my opinion tough beat strong and that means that you can have the best ultra marathoner and if they're that high strong and that wound up that tight the first storm the first thing that goes wrong they fall apart mentally the buying quits long before the body does so in order to train that's one of the beauties of mountaineering as you pick this goal and you should pick it a few months out not push yourself too hard and in six weeks but whatever you choose train hard so what we typically do is you know a third would be cardio a third lightweight weight training and then a third doing some sort of fun activity skiing or whatever and do it at least five times a week so you put yourself on a program and the beauty is you find a climbing partner or someone who'll do it with you but and there are so many different ways to train I just think

if you train too heavy and get strong with weights you've got too much muscle mass and the hearts having trouble oxygenating everything if you're too thin and too lightweight you're not as durable as you may be with a little more weight big expeditions we like to carry a little bit of weight in extra weight because we burn it right away we're eating a real simple diet and we're working typically you know four to six hours a day of moving that's not including rest that's just moving time okay other questions right here Andrew we hear a lot about how the environments changing have you been able to see any of the environmental shifts over the past 44 years that you've been climbing yes glaciers are receding especially the volcanoes in the northwest particularly in south america there was a peak in here that was called illinisa sewer that there was a gentleman

there on the front points and two tools it's all rocks free right now completely gone when the peak that Bill and I climbed the third highest in north america when I was looking at Bill's photos from back when we did it well now the glaciers receded another 2,500 feet above that where it started before so and rain years of classic that the glacier than the squally glacier which is on the south side of Mount Rainier from the time I was a young kid till now it's probably receded about four or five miles places where we used to repel into crevasses it would be as high as this building you're just on hard pan ice at the base the glacier they don't it doesn't exist anymore so that's what I've seen the other thing I've seen on in Alaska which is really interesting is that above 14,000 feet it's become more of a white desert not as much snow deposition up

there places we used to be able to dig into with a shovel we can't even get in with an ice saw anymore it's completely I don't know what's going on something is so yeah it's a fact and you know how that pans out in fact I it was nice enough to introduce me to a educated gentleman about the ice who studies the ice plates and such here and it's not catastrophic right now but it is going on you know and what causes that which he eliminated to me was you know a lot of it has to do with the ocean currents you know the ocean in and of itself plus other warming so it's it didn't sound like it was just us driving around in our cars but it's part of it the questions yeah I was wondering do you have a how do you call people out when they apply to go on a expedition and then also I was curious if you make special effort to pack out everything

that you pack in or that some elevation is that just not really feasible so I guess two questions I'm trying to think of where actually you know what it's different now some on Denoli for example we used to crevasse feces and everyone would go on a guard you know your camp your team would go on a garbage bag you bag it up and drop it in a caress and now we were mandated to bring it out so they've created these like bare cans or these cans that we use to bring it out so any more it's it's we do if we can especially the US were you know through the permits through the park service they're very very stringent on that these days so and you bet in some areas you just have to be reasonable and and you know so then at that point are you above treeline or you

blow treeline where are you to a water source and yeah like you say you have to deal with with the tools that you're given what and he also asked I think the first part of your question was how do you kind of look at a client potential clients we we talked to him find out what type of experience they've had and then we'll recommend you know suppose someone maybe have been hiking some in the in the Rockies on my own so on and so forth so then I would recommend you know like if they want to go international like a Kilimanjaro trip or a trek or doing something in the northwest Adams Hood Rainier and see how they do that how well they do with that being roped up I mean we asked a question if you've been roped up before with crampons on ice axe and and how did that work for you and we can really glean a lot of information because the last thing we want

to do is have someone spend a bunch of money and be disappointed by not following that progression you have to start somewhere and just because you can sign the check you can't start at the top I know we've got at least two questions right here and it seems like maybe there was one right here I got two questions what kind of equipment do you prefer like an example sleeping bags like a synthetic or down and then what kind of food do you take up like freeze dried or do you kind of just kind of choose what you want two really good questions and this is going to depend on the individual and how some people don't sleep as warm as others different metabolisms I prefer a synthetic bag anytime I'm from 14 and below I'm going to run into some rain the thing about down is it's more fragile if I'm going to be in the snow and I know this then I prefer it down for say Denali or some of the higher peaks where it's dry and snowing okay but I think

synthetic the only problem with synthetic is it doesn't you know compress as well as down but you can wash it I take right now I walk around with a 20 degrees synthetic bag and if I want to increase the warmth with it I'll drape my down coat over it put a water ball on each sleeve so it doesn't roll off at night and I can increase the warmth that way so I'm a big promoter of you know synthetic and as far as food goes the army has come up with meals ready to eat that are that are very good I think a lot of the freeze dried these days is much more palatable that it used to be if I'm on a long trip I can't do all freeze dried it's hard on your system a lot of gas and not a lot of nutrition if I'm going out just for a couple nights freeze dried is great because the weights there you know or isn't there longer trips we want pro you know we'll bring

cans of tuna cans of chicken mix them with ramen macaroni oatmeal stuff like that real mundane and real boring but it works but then when we get on trips where they're longer and we have either mules, yaks, porters for support then the cuisine goes up exponentially as far as what we can bring in because you need good food you know yeah fuel the engine I had a question of maybe your historical opinion on having summited Everest from the northern side and gone over the first and second step I'm wondering on a scale from one to ten how likely do you think it was that Mallory and Irvine made it over the second step all those years before tensing and Hillary having been there yourself yeah that's a really good question because the last one not the what what I thought about that I was on the second step and it was between myself and and Jabu who was going to go first

and Jabu said oh yeah no no I'll go you know so he in this ladder is only this high and then we've got another 25 feet or up to this rafter to go on the rock what's the exposure at this I mean you're looking at a fall it's you're gone it's like no I'm seared 12,000 feet probably by the time it's all down sloping shale and and and Mallory didn't fall there you know they fell much they found them right next to our camp six and Simon and those guys did the year after we were there I think he did I believe he could have done it because where we were with that ladder was like five six five five you know but you're climbing with crampons and an axe and Jabu went up there and you know he did there's a piece of rope that was just sticking out of the snow tied it over hand knot on it there's no loop on that rope I got up there and went man Jabu I sure have got a jug on this

thing or I would have just so could he have done it you bet Conrad did it and you know a big thing he stepped on the ladder so I mean that ladder wasn't really I apparently now the ladder is much higher I don't know I've been there a long time but there's a place where you can get part of your body in where the rock comes out so if a person was just like to jam in there you could do that pretty pretty well without any protection I think you did it personally and I think you they lost it on the way down out of curiosity well on your various climbs what animals do you encounter and what do you do about them there's rented some bears in the northwest I'd say the worst or probably the Gorax or the Ravens on Denali they're smart they've got these big black beaks and they can dig so what we do on Denali is we'll make a cache where we store food and equipment that we

don't need immediately it's for later in the trip we have our camp below then we carry everything else up to that cache and that becomes our camp again and these the birds they know when they see oh because we mark the cache with a bunch of wands so they know when they they see a bunch of wands sitting there probably food so you have to bury the food first then you put stuff sacks and people's clothing or whatever they don't need that they can leave there and then you put snow shoes or whatever else you can to protect that food and I tell you and the other thing I learned was don't make a mound and try to bury it buried below that the surface of the glacier that way when the wind picks up it won't scour it all off and they'll find a place to and all they need is one corner of one black bag and it's just a mess they'll sit there all day and pick and pull at that heckling jackal about mountain goats and other high altitudes yaks for example well we work with yaks

and true there's a yak in a zobqio zobqio is more in Nepal they breed those with cattle so they're kind of a half half breed in Tibet you run into the full on yaks and I've had some climbing partners hooked by them in other words they throw their head at them they've got sharp horns and some of them are pretty hornery so you always give them a wide berth mountain goats you know in the north west we've had them kick rocks at us before and that's really it we don't really run into too much where we are it's you know a lot of these trips we do we're above where everything else is living really but I've seen bear do some strange things on rain here I've seen him 11,000 feet go into a pervass and climb out the other side that's pretty difficult with ice tools and so how the heck he did that I have no idea and that's documented you guys it's not just me on

halluced agents do we have any other questions tonight you mentioned the names of various other I think familiar mountain climbers I think if I'm right wrong I think sir Edmund Hillary died in about 2005 or so did you ever have a chance to meet him I met him once and it was 2000 I met him in the Himalayan they introduced hydroelectric power into the Himalayan into the region you know and so all of a sudden in the Tang Boche monastery these guys had heaters that amongst it well they learned about drying their clothes too close to the heater and burn the monastery to the ground or not to the ground you know it's made out of stone but so a bunch of people from around the world had come to rebuild the monastery and that's I ran into them on our way into the mountain

that quite an individual one heck of a guy what is the like optimal size group you like to lead and does it does it very per mountain it varies per mountain in that you know long time ago when Rainier mountaineering was the only guide service on Rainier we would take 24 people and six guides we would have about a thousand feet of rope stretched out on that route that's a little unmanageable and it was hard for everybody I mean it's just yeah I mean it wasn't a good scenario but Rainier mountaineering was a what do you call it the only company in town and so that's that's what you know that was more revenue for them to and now our trips typically international trips and such are six to eight people that's about it and you'd take what two guides and six to eight people it changes once we get to eight we take three and then at that point maybe we get a ninth person

and then the trips full so it doesn't and that's pretty much 12 heartbeat and the outback is what is the norm or the max these days I wanted to ask how many of these trips have you been leading personally a year and that's my first question my second one is if somebody wants to go climb Denali how much does it cost and how long a trip is it Denali well personally still doing say four to six trips a year not the larger ones shorter trips for me these days and then I have a six-year-old son I don't like to be away as much and Denali is a three-week trip we typically put it at 22 days and perfect weather it could be 16-17 more foul weather you know people may stick it out to 24 days and it's it right around $4,000 and that covers you from you

need to get to Toketna and that covers your plane flight onto the mountain all the guiding group equipment and everything while you're on the mountain okay that's our last question Robert do you do just trekking trips I'm thinking of like Panagonia do you go down there and we haven't we're always open to doing in fact one of the ways I built mountain length was doing you know if say there's a group or three or four so that we can do it yeah we we're always we go to late coma you name it we will go anywhere people who like to go have we been to Panagonia to date no do we have a trip ready set up with friends down there to go fishing and and climb of all KNO yes we just haven't kicked that one off yet because there actually a bunch of hardware reps that wanted to do it and so we set the whole trip up and then Columbia Bot hardware and everything

fell through so we're up for doing new trips so that's one of our four chase you mentioned like coma and I saw a slider too you go up up into the range of the Alps above like coma is that yeah it's just in what we do is we go to a lot of the farmland up there we're hanging the cheese and the rafters and it's just a beautiful hike around around the mountain so it's just a hike okay Robert thanks so much for coming out to the Dole List too you've been listening to mountain climber and expedition leader Robert Link speaking with Bill Lacey director of the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas Robert Link spoke November 18th 2009 as the second in the Dole's new series on globalization and leadership in sports audio for tonight's KPR presents was provided by Lawrence Bush of the Dole Institute I'm Kay McIntyre KPR presents is a production of Kansas Public Radio at the University of Kansas