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Grand Teton's unique geography is beautiful and frightening - a climber's paradise. Just Have Fun This mountain climb is the first serious physical challenge I've undertaken since my heart attack in 2003. My cardiologist discouraged me from running my tenth marathon last January, but after a clean round of blood tests and a stress test in June, the climb seemed an acceptable risk. In this arid dusk, I stood on the lower saddle of a big mountain once again, preparing for a sleepless night. I touched two fingers to the pulse at my wrist and felt the small miracle we all take for granted, the steady, rhythmic beat of a human heart. I no longer take my beating heart for granted, nor do I discount other miracles. On the day my heart stopped, I was 53. It was a hot, muggy Sunday in Houston, and I was finishing a 10-mile run in Memorial Park. In that last mile, I kicked up my speed. My 29-year-old son said his first reaction on hearing of the heart attack was anger. “I could just see you, pushing yourself so hard in that heat to go a little faster than you went the day before. For what, I wondered?”
On that morning two years ago, genetics caught up with me. My left anterior descending artery was blocked. I suffered a myocardial infarction. My heart simply and suddenly stopped with no previous symptoms - no pain, no shortness of breath, nausea or dizziness. I fell on my face in the red dirt of Memorial Park, covered in grime and quickly turning blue, with a barely detectable and erratic heartbeat and no respiration. Few people survive the kind of heart attack I had and most who do suffer serious hypoxic brain damage. For months, my memory was foggy. In conversation, I would construct a sentence but stumble over a missing word. It was like groping in the back of a dark closet for a shoe you know is there but can't put your hand on. My memory improved slowly. I take a handful of pills daily. I adjusted to a diet that seemed bland and tasteless, gave up some things I had loved (rare steaks, single malt Scotch whiskey, Tex-Mex food). Then I went back to work, and people stopped asking about my heart. But here is one of the things I have learned: You never get over heart disease. You live with it, and it lives with you. This climb would be like grabbing back a piece of my life. The idea to climb in the Tetons, like most of our group's ideas, came from Galveston attorney James B. Galbraith. Jimmy was the driving force behind our previous expedition - a trip to Africa to climb the highest mountain on that continent, Kilimanjaro. This time, Galbraith had been looking into a South American climb, but we had trouble working out the time and logistics. Through contacts developed on that search, however, he came upon Exum Mountain Guides of Jackson Hole. Exum not only could guide us but also could provide training in snow climbing, rock climbing and other technical mountain climbing skills. That was important because, while The Grand Teton is a small mountain compared to Kilimanjaro (about 14,000 compared to just over 19,000), it was definitely a technical climb - complete with a number of difficult rock climbing pitches. We'd be roped up the whole time. By contrast, Kilimanjaro had been a long, difficult hike. After haggling over dates for weeks, we decided to climb the week of July 4 to July 10. I had little time to prepare for the trip, had not trained as I should have, and I wondered whether I was in shape. I made a last-minute dash to REI to buy equipment. The trip felt thrown together. I was not the only member of the group with misgivings. Galbraith wrote us an email several days before departure. It said: “I'm sensing some of you are having some anxiety or even worry about this trip and the climb. Look at it this way - We're going to a beautiful place. We're going to learn some things. If we bag a mountain, that'll be great. But don't worry, let's just have fun.” Jimmy (Jimbabwe, as we called him since the Africa trip) was up to his neck in representing BP-Amoco. The company suffered a disastrous explosion at its Texas City refinery on March 23. Fifteen people were killed and scores injured. He had been working 10- to 20-hour days for months. Nonetheless, at dawn on July Fourth, we all put our misgivings aside and left Galveston. |
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By Dolph Tillotson
Climbing Teton
1 - Just Have Fun
2 - The Climbers
3 - Tuesday
4 - Wednesday
5 - Thursday
6 - Friday
7 - Summit Day 8 - Time is Short The relationships are more important than the climb. Resources See also |
© 2005 The Galveston County Daily News. All rights reserved. A Galveston Newspapers Inc. Publication. |