The Man and the Mountains: Paul Petzoldt

In early dawn, in aching cold, we stopped a moment to behold the sun and saw it paint in rainbow glow, endless mountains, ice and snow, in caraclarum, winds whipped on. He went where others feared to tread, helped redefine humankind's relationship with the power of nature, and in the wilderness served as guide, teacher, and mentor for three generations. Now, Paul Petzolt reflects on a life beyond description of self-discovery at the top of the world, and a struggle that places humankind and nature in the balance.

In 1924, a 16-year-old boy hitchhiked into Jackson, Wyoming from Idaho, wearing cowboy boots and bib overalls, he announced he was prepared to climb the sheer cliffs of the nearly 14,000-foot peak known as Grand Teton. The resident cowboys laughed, since arguments persisted over whether the peak had ever been climbed by anyone, let alone could be climbed by this kid. Four days later, the teenager stumbled back into Jackson. He was

alive and had been to the top of the world. It was hard to tell which fact more impressed the locals, and it was the birth of the legend of Paul Petzolt. Petzolt was soon regarded the premier climbing guide of the Northern Rockies. He climbed year-round, even in winter, and soon was developing new techniques for climbing and communication on the mountains, and he became the stuff of tall tales in the brotherhood of early mountain climbing. His exploits led to hobnobbing with British royalty, which led to even greater exploits. He climbed the Matterhorn, us-dunning two times in a single day, and in the process became a hero to the Swiss climbing guides. In 1938, he teamed with a group of Americans in the first attempt at the Himalayan Peak known as K2. He nearly died of dengue fever in the month-long hike to base camp. And then, with virtually none of the climbing gear now considered essential, Petzolt climbed over 26,000 feet without portable oxygen, a remarkable

act of human endurance. Bad weather in dwindling supply stopped the expedition short of the summit, but thousands of feet higher than any American had climbed before. After a stint orchestrating wartime lend lease aid to the Soviet Union, Petzolt was pressed into service with American military units struggling with the prospect of fighting in the European mountains. He assisted in developing equipment and techniques for mountaineering and survival, and for years, the advancements represented the state of the art in winter clothing and safety. After the war, Petzolt returned to guide climbing and hiking parties in the mountains, and started to turn his outdoors experience into a teaching tool. But the legend had been built on the mountain, and Paul Petzolt would add to the legend by continuing to climb in defiance of passing years. In the summer of 1994, we caught up with Petzolt on the campus of the Teton Science School outside of Jackson, Wyoming. The location has significance not only for the outdoors education mission of the

school, but because some of the buildings date from a dude ranch, Petzolt operated at the site years before. Under the watchful gaze of the grand Teton, Petzolt was preparing at 86 years of age for yet another ascent of the peak. This time to mark the 70th anniversary of his first climb of the grand Teton in 1924, a fitting topic and a fitting location to begin a conversation with a man who has seen so much of the world from so many different angles. 1924, you do the second documented ascent of the grand Teton. 25 years had lapsed from the first ascent by Billy Owen in 1898, and you were 16 years old, you're wearing bib overalls of blue denim work shirt and a pair of cowboy boots, I believe. What did you learn from that first ascent of grand Teton when you were 16? That was a damn fool. Yeah, the sheriff was going to send this back from Jackson,

and Billy Owen was in Jackson. The first time since 98, I believe, he was visiting there and he met us and he told us the way we went up, he didn't discourage, he told us the way he'd gone every foot and even took a car and took us up there to the foot of the mountains to start out. But we didn't want to go way around the west side where he told us climb, I'd been climbing on the walls of Stake River Canyon where we had our potato farm and ranch there twin falls Idaho, and I knew how to scramble, and I had four older brothers that taught me how to scramble. So I could climb, and it looked so easy, just it was like today. It was clear, you could see the east ridges, didn't look any steeper than the walls of Stake River Canyon. So why go around there? So we zoomed right up towards the east ridge, and then it got tougher and tougher and tougher climbing and pretty soon we'd roll off a rock and then fall a thousand feet down and they kept on climbing.

We just dropped our stuff at a little lake up there that we called Amphitheater Lake, it's still Amphitheater Lake. We dropped our home password quilt there that we had for sleeping bags. We left our Levi type jacket there and with our bib overhalls in our blue shirt, zoomed we took right up the east ridge. You should have died. We did. We did. So pretty soon we started to get dark, but a little after dark we heard this booming over in Pierre's Hole, which is on the other side, and then we saw these black clouds roar over the teetones, and we saw the lightning hitting the peaks here and there, and we heard the thunder bouncing back between the cliffs. It was a symphony. And then we had a little cloud burst. A little cloud burst? A little cloud burst. And that went right through our blue shirts. And then it started to hail a little bit and then it snowed. And it snowed all night.

In mid-July. In mid-July. The rain froze on the rocks, made them slick. Then the snow got on top of that and made them slicker. And how we survived that night I don't know. We hugged each other, we cried, we tried to exercise him to keep warm. But you didn't quit. What do you mean quit? You didn't come back there. Well how could we come back down? We couldn't come back down until the snow melted off. There was ice on the cliffs, there was snow on top of that. We couldn't move. And then we almost died there because we started down new way and we slid down a little ice. And then we come to, and then the cloud was breaking. I didn't know it then, but I know it now. The storm was breaking because the some of the clouds were below us. And we thought we get down from this ledge. And you know it looked like a feather bed down there like it does from Airplane now. It was clouds down there. But we threw a rock out there like that to see how it hit

a long way down. So we were getting some judgment. Now we started developing judgment. We do, that was too far to jump, right? And then the miracle happened. The only reason I'm here today is that Wyoming weather changes very rapidly. The clouds parted, the sun came out, it was warm, the snow started to melt, the stream started to gush down, the ice went off the rocks and before dark we were able to climb back to our quilts. And each sardines and go to sleep. But we didn't want to go back to Jackson and face all those cowboys. By God, I lost them up there. Only damn fools and dudes go up there, you know. And they thought people were crazy to climb mounds. With that was true in the 80s of all parts of the world. They never climb mounds. The Swiss didn't climb till they even just come there and

gave them money to climb. But we just didn't want to go back to Jackson and face all those people. So hope springs eternal in a human breast, especially 60 year olds. And that night, ate our last food. And the early the next morning started up, that snow shoot that was around the south to join your own route. We finally came to this place where we now called a belly roll where we had to take a hold of things slide around and then this crawl, which is about that wide comes out way above it like that so you can't stand up and you look down on top of the pine trees 2,000 feet below it. You called across there and that was a secret to their first climb. No ropes? Oh yes. Oh yeah. Yeah, we took it along. We had a laryette rope. A laryette? That old laryette rope. Yeah. It was strong, but it was stiff, you know, to like that. But it was a rope and it hold us. Yeah. Were you born to climb? Who knows? You would. No. You started to

climb when you were barely out of knickers. Well, but then I climbed for a purpose. When we moved out from highway to the banks of the Snake River Canyon, I think we owned a place where evil can evil jumped. So we had the canyon and we were trapped by older brothers were trappers. They were hunters. They were fishermen. They were sportsmen as well as ranchers and farmers. And I had to follow them as a kid while lucky could a young kid be to have that there with the neighbor kids to run down there and fish and swim and and do all the things the kids like to do. And that's where I learned to climb. See my mother raised nine children so she let me do things. I don't know why, but she did. And she sort of encouraged me about doing things like that.

What is it about a mountain that touches you in such a special way? Well, it's a very interesting things on mountains. And I hope it storms because I love storms. I love the lightning. I like to see it hit on top of the peaks and I like to see the wind come up and tear it to your hair and the rain. I'd even enjoy another hail like we had one time where we had to try to get under the rocks because we had hail about that big, you know, and that hurts. But I love all those things and I love the challenge of getting up there and but I love companionship. When you come down from your first descent of the Grand Teton, 1924, yeah, it's obviously clear to you that climbing is something very special, but you also learn

some lessons up there about the need for good judgment. Well, actually, why don't you tell me what did you learn from that ascent in 1924? I learned that you had to think about things before you did them. You just couldn't go blind climbing up a mountain. I didn't know about Wyoming mountain storms. I didn't know how much the temperature changed up there. I didn't know that you could look at a mountain. It looked like you'd just have nice easy walk up there, but when you got up there's full of pinnacles and canyons and all sorts of things. You can't surmount. But I just didn't think. Was that the start of developing your own climbing ethic? Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I come back from that thinking if I make another climb, I'm going to know what I'm doing and I'm going to have the equipment and I'm going to turn back

of this storm comes up and I'm not going to get killed on a mountain. By the 1930s, that knowledge base that you start accumulating grows to the point where you're regarded as probably the outstanding climbing guide for the T-tons in western Wyoming, and it's broadening beyond that. That creates a lot of opportunities for you. One of the first is to travel to England. How did Paul Pessolt of Idaho and Wyoming come to become close associates with the Prince of Wales, Prince Edward? When this rancher who had a ranch here, who was president of a big bank on Wall Street, had a person coming to visit him, they didn't have VIPs in those days, but he was a special person like many of his guests were. He was Sir Alfred Bailey, Dean of St. George's Chapel at

Windsor Castle, and Private Chaplain to their Majesty's, the King and Queen of England. And so when this person was coming, he liked to walk every afternoon. He was used to going on long walks. So he hired me to take him on walks, which I did. And he was used to having a drink in the evening. And Jackson hole at that few times, it was pretty dry. But Ben, I'll not say the last name, had a little still-up cash-crick out of Jackson, made some good stuff, and I had him give me some stuff that didn't have fused the oil in it. And I took him a curved fruit jar full of moonshine whiskey, and we argued all the time. We argued and talked, but sometimes we disagreed. And we went through all that, and when he left the day he left to go to Hollywood,

I had a brown bag with another quart of bed goes best, had gave it to him. So we ended up great, great friends. And unknown to me, or surprised to me in a month, I got a letter, encouraging me and inviting me to come to Windsor Castle for a year to study under his direction. While you're in Europe, at Windsor Castle, you travel throughout Europe. One thing you do during your stay is this legendary double traverse, literally a double climbing of the Matterhorn in one day. We didn't plan it that way. We wanted to go up the Swiss side on a partially new route, or a little bit different from the regular route, and go over and then go down the tad inside, where we're going to stay at the hut way down there, or camp out or something. And we rushed up to the top of the Matterhorn, and it was day after a big storm, and there was a dead man on top,

who could have been caught in the storm, and we passed him and went down the Swiss, the Italian side. And we rushed down there, we climbed fast, and looked like a storm coming up, so we wanted to get off. So we got down the Italian hut and people had been in that Italian hut caught in this big storm, where the man died. And they were caught in there, and they'd gone to the hut on the floors, instead of going out. And so it was so bad, it was unsleepable. Wasn't the place you wanted to spend the night? No. So it was pretty early in the day, so we said, let's go back. So, zoom, we went back up and down the Swiss side, and it was getting late, but the hell we had to trail, and so we just ran on down the desert at that night. And when the guides found out about what we were doing, and they found out my name, they recognized my name, because their clients, some of them, were climbing the teetons, and

maybe bragged a little bit about me. So that really catapults you to international acclaim in the climbing community. Well, it was written up in the London Alpine Journal. In the 1990s, a sense in the Himalayas are, if not commonplace, they're becoming more and more frequent. But in 1938, they were anything but frequent. And that's when Paul Petzolt and a group of climbing friends had out for the Himalayas, and what really is an expedition? Why the Himalayas? Well, that's a big leagues. I wanted to go there. I always wanted to go to the Himalayas, of course, that's like going from the miners to the big leagues. I'd read all about the English climbs there, and they know something about their French climbs, and it was a nationalist thing.

Big competition. Each one was trying to get to the top of a 26,000 foot peak first, but they never tackled K2, because it was considered the unclimable mountain, so they couldn't climb the easier one, so they tried to climb the toughest ones. It really is an expedition when you go over there. A month in the making. True. Heavens, when we went over there, yes. I think it took this 33, 35 days of hiking to get to base camp, it was like walking from here to Denver. On trails, no roads. Over the top of the Zogy Lai in the spring, over the glaciers, and then over to the Indus River, right on the edge of the Nepal, near the dock, and then down that Indus River for days on days, and days. During the climb, didn't you become rather seriously ill before the climb? Just before the climb.

At one of the last villages, I got violently ill, and the group went on without me, and Dr. Houston stayed there with me, and I think they expected me to die, but they didn't know what I had, but I was violently ill, and I had a very high fever. The story is told of that time that you send instructions to the group. If I die, bury me here, but if I don't die, I'll catch up with you. I don't know about that, but I was ill, and I was in great pain, and symptoms I've seen have had doctors I know now seem to think I had dengue fever, and down south in the early days where they knew what it was, they called it breakboat fever. Well, that was a good name for it, but I recovered very quickly, and in a couple of days, I was overt, and could start out, and we raced up and caught the other people on the baltor

or glacier. During that climb, you set a record, which I believe even today still stands for for climbing without an assistive oxygen. Well, I've been for years and years. I'm not into records. I don't care about records, but we had, I had some advantage on that climb, because I had learned rhythmic breathing and climbing, even in hand and foot climbing. Nothing new, it was used at marathon, but I converted it to climbing and walking, and with rhythmic breathing, you can control your heartbeat, and I learned how to eat and develop the maximum amount of energy, and to use that energy not to get tired, but to go as fast as your energy and your breath, oxygen intake would allow. So you never got tired, you never

got exhausted, but if you get exhausted above 20,000 feet in trouble, you don't want to get exhausted, so I had big advantage on that score. You travel halfway around the world. It takes you 35 days just to get to the base camp. You do the assent, you begin the assent, you make incredible progress, and yet the summit is not reached. Is that a great personal disappointment? It was at the time, it was a great disappointment, and I suppose it was a selfish one too. I wanted to get to the top, because we had planned and everything, and before we started that climb, I, house and I climbed a little bit on broad peak, and I studied that route all day through classes, and I knew the route would go. I think I was the best route picker in the world, because I saw something over there, to some people looked like a man, and I knew it was 40 feet high,

and I picked out that route up there, and I knew that it would go. I knew that it would go, but we didn't know the weather, so there was a variance of opinion. What would the man Zoom go to do on K2? Would it be blown off the mountain? And the more conservative, I suppose, members of the party, were not for going on. You wanted to. I wanted to, and house wanted to. He wanted to go on, but some of them wanted to turn back at camp 3, and maybe they were thinking about the danger, maybe they were homesick. We'd been away a long time. So there was a disagreement. When an expedition breaks into groups that say, climb, don't climb, should the don't climb, voices always win? You can't make rules like that.

Judgment should obviously win, and that takes in a lot of various things. How much chance you want to take, and why did you come there in the first place? All the things that go up to make judgment. You can't make decisions about things when you're away from there, because when you get to reality on the spot, you have all those realistic things that come in to make an decision. It's not long after your return, a couple of years, but the world goes to war. Where did you feel yourself called to? Where was your duty to be found? Well, I wasn't sure. I was unsure. I was on a lecture tour. I knew I had to do something, because no longer a lecturing. That was done. So I went to Washington DC, and I had some friends there, and so I knew something about agriculture, so I went in the Department of Agriculture.

And you actually got involved in the Lendley's program with Russia? At a time when many people were saying you couldn't work with the Russians? Well, that's the reason I was chosen to work with the Russians. Because you were as difficult as they were? No, because I was from Wyoming. Those Yale and Harvard boys, they hadn't traded horses. They didn't know how to talk to the Russians. They were like Americans. I mean, I could talk to them, and I could tell them, look, you're hurting yourself if you ask for this much bacon. There's other things we can give you. There's other things, and don't insist on going to the, having your ambassador go to the President and raise help, because he's going to call a, he's going to call the Secretary of Agriculture, and then they're going to come down here. I said, let's work together. You're doing our job. You're fighting the Germans, and I'm going to give you all we could give you,

but I'm going to tell you how to do it. And pretty soon, I wanted to go to the ski troops, and I had a chance to get a commission in the group troops, as advisor to one of the generals, and that the Department of Agriculture wouldn't let me go, because I got along with the Russians. So they got me a presidential deferment. You eventually do join the 10th Mountain Division at the ski troops. You find an organization that's being trained to fight, but probably isn't as well advanced as they should be in survival. They were outdoor idiots. Perhaps a more direct way to put it. Well, they didn't know much about the outdoors. They had good clothing, but they didn't know how to wear it. They didn't know how to use it, because some of their men down there in the lower ranks had had a lot of experience, but not much winter camping experience. And I was practically the only one in the United States

that had been climbing teetones in the wintertime. And really, and really knew the old trapper philosophy out here of how to keep warm when it was 50 below, out there in the camp. I had all that knowledge. But you've had to go out to know in the morning, stand in front of the barracks, and wait a little while till head sergeant come down. Well, you had to stand out there so you put everything on you could think of, including cotton sweatshirt underneath your woolen underwear. Well, that was death. And then you stood out there, and then you'd wait a little further till the captain came. And then he double-timed me out to the rocket, I mean, the rifle range. And when you got out there, you were sweating. And that old sweatshirt underneath there

it collected all the sweat that it was wet. And it was like putting a wet dish towel on you in the wintertime. It was just awful. And so one of the things I did beside working out the standard operating procedure for mountain evacuation and having a spatial train group that bought like a rotted guy down who had penicitus up on top of a peak when it was 20 below zero, we had to go up and bring him down. But I was assigned to give lectures to company by company through 10,000 troops of how to dress. How did you get along with the military leaders? Did you, did they listen to what you had to say? They sure did. They sure did. They certainly did. Shortly after I got there, their officers, their under officers were all just wrecked for a moist point. And what did they know about the Colorado Rockies and Winter? And we had one guy

made a big mistake. He didn't like those big shoes. So he had him shine up all their regular army shoes and took him out on an overnight bivouac. And he got a big storm came in. They got to 10 or 12 below zero. Before he got him back, half of went to the hospital with those tight army shoes. And there was some toe cutting and foot cutting. There were more casuals and ski troops that there weren't in some of the front lines, I'm fairly sure. You're ultimately credited with saving hundreds of lives with the winners. Oh, whoever done that was uh, that's a little strong, don't you think? Well, I don't know. Well, it, uh, it changed him. With the end of the war, Petzelt returned to a rapidly changing American West. Highways crisscrossed the nation and waves of new visitors flocked to wilderness and mountain locations.

The Rugged West was recognized as a special learning laboratory for young and old alike. A means of testing character and endurance. But many of the visitors had no idea of how to survive in the wilderness. And Petzelt bristleed at what was being offered is outdoor instruction, much of it sloppy, unproven and even dangerous. Beginning in the 1960s, he joined a fledgling effort to build programs that would fashion outdoor instruction based on experience, research and leadership, with the goal of developing a new ethical standard for living on the land. First came outward bound based in Colorado, then the National Outdoor Leadership School, or Knowles in 1965. Finally, the Wilderness Education Association and its nationwide mission of certifying trained wilderness leaders. In each, Petzelt was a driving force, sometimes controversial and often opinionated. Dedicated to preservation of the wild lands, Petzelt at the same time

could be sharply critical of environmentalists. As in his climbing technique, Paul Petzelt marched to his own rhythm and shunned labels. His mission, he once said, was to help mankind get in sync with nature while there was still time. With the end of the war, some time passes, but you start moving very clearly into the realm of education, outward bound, eventually the National Outdoor Leadership School. That's right. What convinces you that there's a need out there for these programs? Because here, even in the early days, I realized that we were hurting the beauty, we were hurting the ecosystem, we were leaving our trash around, we were polluting the waters, and now the wilderness bill was being talked about vociferously. And, you know, the big fight between the Sierra Club and the various interests and various interests. And I got very interested in that, but I knew

that the wilderness bill, even when passed, was not the answer. Because people had to be educated to go out to the outdoors and still protect its environment, its beauty, its ecosystem, and they had to be taught that because we didn't know how to do that. It wasn't in our old time ethics. We had to develop a new ethic, and we'd had to develop how to do that. And I knew there was a fallacy for people to think that when the wilderness bill was passed, if they loved the outdoors, they could go out there and not harm it. And so, when they went out there, they started to harm it. Even those that loved the outdoors. And we developed that expression they're loving at the death, which they're doing today. And we've got to get them leaders trained. We have to have people who are going out without leaders trained or educated. We have to

educate people to go various places. They all want to go to the same place. We have unlimited wilderness and wild country and back country out there to use. That's not used. Thousands of square miles here in Yellowstone and every place that are not used. Everybody wants to go to the same place. Go up Moran Canyon over here, beautiful climbing, beautiful peaks, not three people go there in a year. Because it's kind of hard to get there. And everybody comes here. They want to climb the Grand Teton. I mean, if they go back to their office in New York with a picture of Mt. Moran. That is going to get them any Las Vegas juice. They want to say, here's a picture of the Grand Teton. Because everybody knows where that is. They climb the Grand Teton. So everybody's going to the same place. And we got to do things about that. But the Forest Service can't do it. Their Rangers haven't been educated in this type of stuff. And now, if they were all educated, they don't have enough money to pick up the trash at the

road end. Let alone supervise the Forest Service. So we've got a lot of change to do. And we're going to do that change since we have the curriculum. And I started, which is an advanced curriculum from Knowles into 30 or 40 different colleges and universities now. And we're getting education where it belongs. It's going to spread like a flood over the United States. So I guess that makes the natural next question the direct one. Are you an environmentalist in the context of what that means in the 1990s? Well, I'm not environmentalist has so many meanings like love. But Knowles, and now the wilderness education association is changing in the United States and will change maybe even the world. Very quickly, on the right kind of environmental, I hate to use the word right, but on the kind of environmental education that'll let us use our wild outdoors and our parks and our official wilderness areas. And everything

else with little or no harm to the beauty of the ecosystem, we know how to do it. We knew how to do it in 1973 when we went through all the experimentation at the National Outdoor Leadership School. We can do that. And now with the wilderness education association promoting the curriculum that I started in the universities, the things the next 10 years, the things are going to change very rapidly. And you're going to change. You won't in the press be making heroes out of these goons that go out there in the middle of winter. In spite of the radio is saying stock warnings in Colorado. Get your sheep in, get your cattle in. These goons start right out in the middle of a storm. And you've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money and wrist helicopters, lies and so forth and so forth. And you make heroes out of these people. And they get movie

contracts. You people who got to change too. WAs got to educate you. And I wrote Tom Brokall and I said, you're a wester. You're from mountain. You're got common sense. You're from Dakota. And why don't you tell the truth about these awful people that takes such chances and rest the lies or rescuers and talks cost the taxpayers all that dough, hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars. We've got to educate those people. And we've got to make it unpopular for those people to go out there. As long as you make heroes on them, you're just encouraging more people without judgment. You have been very frustrating for a lot of people to deal with because you're not easily categorized. Although you speak about having light impact on the land and not doing any damage, environmentalists get frustrated because you say the land should be used. You've got a long

history of proud history associated with guiding for hunting. And yet on the other side, in terms of those people who advocate for use of the land, they say that, well, he's an environmentalist. So it seems like you're your champion. And at the same time, the object of ridicule by by both sides of the environmental debate. Well, I said, environmentalists like love. You don't know what it means. It means different things to different people. And we have those awful environmentalists who hurt our cause because they do these awful things. They take the law in their own hands. They put spikes in trees. And that's going to kill some innocent guy who's got his own saw or something, 50 years a month. So he's got children home without food. You got to think about that. Is there room for the logger and the hiker on public land? Room for the logger. What are you going to build houses out of?

I got these wonderful environmentalists who were built in a house they went to before, but don't cut one tree. Crazy. People without any judgment without being able to put things together. I had this gal in California or her grandfather made lots of money. So she don't write her congressman. She phones him every day. And I was down to visit her. Here's a big Cadillac sitting out there and they're building her a new guest house or something. And she doesn't want to cut a tree. She don't want to drill an oil well. Nothing. So we get in a big argument. And I said, well, why don't you get you a mole pad or something? Don't you know every time you drive up with that Cadillac to a gas station, they got to drill another well off Santa Barbara in the ocean.

You go away and leave your TV and the lights on all day. And don't you know that every time you turn on the light, they got to burn more coal over at that power plant in the four corners and take smoke on those poor Navajos. And I just was out to this new house. And you think every redwood is sacred. Do you know these are good contractors out there? And you tell them, do you know to use the best stuff they are? Your flora and your underpinning is made of redwood. It's going to last forever. That's the best thing to use. You are legendary for your willingness to mix it up that you went when you believe in something you don't give ground. And it's been characterized that Paul Petzel says it's my way or the highway. If you don't agree with me, you're out of here. Don't know, sir. I'm a compromiser. I'm a doer. You know the things that I'm

done. I'm a doer. I'm not a talker. I get things done. But you never get anything done without compromise. I'm a compromiser. You bet. But I compromise to get things done. I had to be very careful when I went in the universities by what we said. Because you see, we got people there who are talkers. They're talkers. They're talking environmentalists. They're not doers. They just talk. And they educate people. What do they educate them? They have to memorize till they pass exam. They don't know how to do anything. Our educational system is all wet in that way. We're training people for jeopardy. Who in the health cares what King died in 1842 to win the $5,000. We want people of action who can put this educated into practical consequences.

And that's what we're doing. But I'm a compromiser. I have never, I have obviously listened to other people. I'm not one of these people that say my way. I'm against those people because these people don't change. You can't educate these old people I told you about. My wonderful old guides who've been making the same mistakes for years. But they were, they were, as they say, Missouri, sought in their ways. They weren't going to change. I tried to, theirs years got so cold that they hit a twig with break them off, but they're still running their tests. Stetson. Could I get them to wear a stocking hood over their ears? No, no way. And if they wanted to get warm, could I take off their leave eyes and put some good clothing on them? No. They just put on another pair of leave eyes. Now they did know how to dress. And that brings us back to judgment. It seems to me that the life of Paul

Petzolt may ultimately be capsulated by saying it was the pursuit of the best, if not pure, close to perfect judgment. Heads of departments came to me this summer and PhDs and teachers and guys who were running things for corporations where they take them out and try to change them. One of them was here yesterday just left. And they were going up Mount Washington, which is the most dangerous mountain in the world, although it's not as high as we are right here, where they have those violent storms and those violent winds. And we talked about it. You're making a decision to go climb Mount Washington. That's the decision you make and you plan on that decision. And then when you get out there, things aren't quite like your plan. The weather is different. So you've got to modify your decision. You've got to change it. You may even have to

give it up. And as you go further, other things changes. So you've got to modify your decision again. And we call that, you've got to make the judgment decisions. And when it's time to go back, you make the judgment decision to go back. Is that something that's true, not only on a mountain, but in our lives that we live, maybe in the city, on the job? It is if you're going to make success. People are sauthing their ways, don't make a success. How can they? Because every day is different. Every new deal is different. Every situation is different. That's why when they give people rules for the outdoors, you go out there and you do this and you do that and you do this. Well, you do this if the weather's all right. If the weather changes, you don't go on to the top. You're supposed to do this. You're supposed to climb it. You better turn around and go home. That's a judgment decision. The same thing in business,

the same thing in everything. A statement is attributed to you from a number of years back. And it's this. Rules are for fools. What does that mean? Rules are for fools. Well, I said that to get attention so people start thinking about it and they did. But all our education universities with the Williams Education Association, which is having more influence than anybody else in the United States on outdoor education, is based upon that because you think that you couldn't take a group from, from Poe Drunk High School or from Huchi Kuchi Camp out there and they tell you got to do this and you got to do that and you got to do this. And the Forest Service says you have to do this and you have to do that. And those are things you're supposed to weigh. But what if a big storm comes up? You're not going to keep that up. You've got to change your decisions.

So suppose somebody has a heart attack. You have to change that. You have to violate those rules. You got to get those guys out. So judgment comes in. Judgment comes in. So you can't go out there and be just by rules. Because that's going to harm the environment and it's going to harm the people. It's going to make for more accidents. It's going to make for more rescues. Because out there you're under reality. The sun doesn't obey and stay up. The storm don't stay back because you got rules. Out there there's reality. And you have to make your decisions on those realities. Not on myths, not on faith, not on myth can't happen to me stuff. You've got to base those decisions on real, real, stark reality. Because you've got people out there who are under your care and you can't make mistakes. You've got to have good

judgment. So you can't have good judgment and make decisions on rules. One day I got a call from a television station, New York. Would you come to New York and be on a show? We'll put you up at the Waldorf Astoria. We'll pay all your expenses. We'll give you passes to the shows and we'll give you a couple of thousand bucks. I said, I'm on my way. She said, well, what we want to do, there's this person's written a book and we want you on to tell us what you would do if you were way out there with the group and you had a bad accident. What would you do? And she said, you're well known so we're going to give you three or four minutes. I said, I don't know what I would do. She said, you are Paul Petzolak. I said, yeah, I'm Paul Petzolak, but I wouldn't know what to do. She said, you wouldn't? I said, no. Well, she said, that's that then isn't. I said, yeah, that's that. Goodbye, call again. Of course, I wouldn't know what to do. A million

things run through my mind. And with all my experience and all my life, I've got to make a decision. I've got to make a decision. And how can I tell them there what decision I'd make? Do you take a better measure of an individual outdoors than maybe in the city? On a mountain, then sitting over a bar stool or something like that? You see the real person, they're exposed. They're exposed under danger. They're exposed under thing. You see the real person. Lots of times, that's the only time you ever see their real person. They hide it. And it reminds me of the time that I was on what's my liner to tell the truth. I've forgotten which. But I was there and I was supposed to be the famous mountain climber. Well, I was a little heavier in those days, you know. I was sitting there and they had these two guys then with crew

haircuts where they were, you know, a popular then. And they were in their tweed suits. And they were lying about all these things that they'd climb sea. And they had to find me. And if they didn't, if they didn't guess the right one, these two guys there got a thousand dollars more for being on the program. So, of course they didn't guess, they didn't guess me, you know. And I always think of that to see the real person because at the end they said, will the real pill pulp petrol stand up, you see? But that's where you learn really, learn about people. And that's why it's so wonderful to get people in the outdoors especially young kids away from their environment, away from their peers, away from their parents who won't let her make a decision sometime. And you get them out there in the outdoors where they don't have all that thing under real environment, real things. And you can see the real person come out and you can help develop that

real person for a little bit better, I hope. With all that's going on concerning young people these days, drugs, sexual activity, crime, gangs making their presence felt. Do you think a little outdoor experience would do those kids some good? It's according to what kind of outdoor experience. It's not just getting out there. Oh, heaven's no. Heaven's no. You've got to have people like I've trained or other people who really know what to do when you get them out there. Well, you have that the worst thing that I've had to fight all my life is the old expression that experiences the best teacher. What kind of experience? I had hunting guys up here. Been hunting for 30 years. Still making the same mistakes. They've had a hell of a lot of

experience making mistakes. So you have to have the experience that can change them the way you want them to change. What do you hope will be the surviving influence of Paul Petzolt for many years to come? I don't care. I don't care. After I die they can say anything they want to. I don't care about that. I don't care about being a legend. I do care and I'm very pleased when I get letters from really hundreds of people now. I never say them. I never save anything. But if they say that guys you made a difference in my life, you made a big difference in my life and thanks. Those things I like. But the legend stuff, that doesn't buy any Jack Daniel.

In the summer of 1994 a special gathering took place near the base of a grand teton. From throughout the nation former climbing partners and students gathered for a final ascent with the master. Paul Petzolt had announced his intention to climb the grand teton one final time. He would climb at age 86 on the anniversary of his first climb of the grand 70 years ago. Well it's an occasion. It's sort of a closing of a book. But then think of what's happening here. There's maybe 75 or 80 of my old pals from all over the country. People I've climbed with. People who've helped me develop my educational systems. Every one of them has had anything on my life. Nice isn't it wonderful that I'm going to meet so many of them again

and that I'm still healthy enough that maybe I can get to the top. On July 17th the group began the ascent. A demanding hike would break through the tree line leading to the challenging exposure of rock climbing. Nearly lost amid the enthusiasm is the knowledge that Paul Petzolt has lost much of his eyesight due to glaucoma. He will literally feel his way up the mountain. At 86 why do you climb? Since the first time I climbed it's always been the same reason. I enjoy it and if I don't enjoy it I'll turn around and come back. Cossets of the man in the mountains Paul Petzolt are available for 1995 plus shipping and handling.

To place an order called the University of Utah Press during business hours Monday through Friday at 1-800-773-6672. He was a groundbreaking mountain climber and explorer and evolved into one of the most important voices on the environment in the mountain west. Join us for the man and the mountains a profile of mountaineering legend Paul Petzolt. After I die they can say anything they want to. I don't care about that.

I don't care about being a legend. He may shun the label but Paul Petzolt's exploits are legendary from groundbreaking and breathtaking climbs to the top of the world to the evolution of a new outdoor ethic. Join us for a special profile of a man who has seen so much of the world from so many different angles.