{"id":2990,"date":"2021-07-08T00:45:07","date_gmt":"2021-07-08T00:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/?p=2990"},"modified":"2021-07-08T00:45:07","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T00:45:07","slug":"the-call-of-the-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/2021\/07\/08\/the-call-of-the-mountains\/","title":{"rendered":"The Call of the Mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a great time hiking with Marc Anthony and Nathan Sparks, publisher of Cityview Magazine. Some of you may know Marc from the Marc and Kim radio show. Marc did a wonderful piece here and I really appreciate his time and that of editor Rebekka Whalen.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/cityviewmag.com\/the-call-of-the-mountains\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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FEATURES<\/a><\/span>JUL\/AUG 2021<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

The Call Of The Mountains<\/span><\/h1>\n
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\"\"By\u00a0Marc Anthony<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/i>\u00a00<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/i>\u00a0Share<\/b><\/span><\/i><\/i><\/i><\/i><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Mountaineer John Quillen shares tales of climbing the world\u2019s 8,000-meter peaks<\/em><\/h2>\n

We stand at the foot of the Schoolhouse Gap Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and I look to John Quillen and say, \u201cCan you handle this or do I need to get the oxygen tank out of the truck?\u201d His bemused look was one of,\u00a0I\u2019ve been to the top of Everest and this trail has the word Schoolhouse in it. I\u2019ll be fine.<\/em><\/p>\n

John Quillen is from Morristown. He is an adolescent drug counselor in Knoxville, an everyday guy, 54 years old, a typical \u201880s kid. He got in the same trouble we all did growing up, \u201cplaying Tarzan in the woods and getting poison ivy in unspeakable places,\u201d he says. \u201cAlways that kid going out into the woods and not coming back at supper time.\u201d His first drives as a 16-year-old were into the Smoky Mountains to car camp. John is unassuming, quiet, and soft spoken.<\/p>\n

John has flirted with death and dismemberment while climbing three of the 14 8,000-meter peaks around the world. For the Americans in the audience, that\u2019s 26,000 feet; your last airline flight was just a little bit higher than that. And these 8,000-meter peaks are in something called the \u201cDeath Zone,\u201d elevations where there isn\u2019t sufficient oxygen to sustain human life. Helicopters can\u2019t fly there because the air is so thin. But John? John spent almost an hour atop Everest with only his Sherpa, when the average stay at the summit is just long enough to get your picture taken. He has almost lost body parts while climbing these 8,000-meter peaks because the oxygen is so low, the temperatures even lower.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBeing from Tennessee, we\u2019ve all had the experience of walking in the woods on a cold, snowy day and having our fingers get cold at low elevation,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen you walk, it warms up [but] the higher you go, the more viscous the blood gets, which means less blood flow, which means you are killing the cells at the end of your fingers and toes. And for me, that was about seven or eight fingers and five or six toes\u201d. When he returned from Everest, John spent 10 different days in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber at UT to save them.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to be honest. Everything I have watched and read about Mount Everest has been about tragic events and the dead bodies scattered across the landscape; it pervades my thoughts about extreme altitude mountain climbing. As a matter of fact, just days after my hike and interview with John, two Everest climbers died. I have always been curious as to why someone would be willing to put their life on the line for a hobby.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you step foot on any peak or climb any rock, it\u2019s not about death; it\u2019s just about the allure of the mountains and the call of the mountains,\u201d John says. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s just being in an outdoor space and the view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long-distance runners achieve something called a runner\u2019s high. Mountaineers like John describe the experience of sitting atop the world in a different way, equating it to something more profound: \u201cThey opened the velvet gate to heaven and I got to step in for a few minutes.\u201d After hearing this sort of explanation, I think maybe I\u2019ll consider it. Maybe.<\/p>\n

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Let\u2019s get back to the frostbite thing. Mountaineers are often faced with this bizarre decision while on some of their expeditions. They arrive at a point of their ascent where they have to decide whether to continue up the mountain and return home with possibly fewer extremities, or turn around and head for the safety of base camp, extremities intact. John\u2019s been there, and even in the short time we\u2019ve spent talking, it\u2019s pretty clear which choice he\u2019s more apt to make.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Everest in 2018, I was at a decision point on my ascent where I knew my foot was already frostbitten, and this was with oxygen and with pretty good weather for Everest, only 20 below zero. That\u2019s not bad,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I had to kind of make that decision of [whether I was] going to push on knowing that my toe is going to be frostbitten again or turn around. [So I] pushed on.\u201d<\/p>\n

It takes a lot to get to the summit. Months of physical conditioning, in fact. But when a mountaineer arrives, it\u2019s a time-stopping experience. And from the way John talks, it seems to be that way no matter how many mountains you\u2019ve climbed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy ascent was so atypical in so many ways,\u201d he says of Everest. \u201cI spent 45 minutes on the Everest summit; no one ever does that. No one ever gets that opportunity. And my summit photos are me and my Sherpa, no one else was on the summit. Well, there\u2019s a reason for that. It has to do with my age and how late I was getting to the summit. Everyone had summited two or three hours before I did. So I had the whole peak to myself for 45 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the classic tortoise and hare: \u201cIt pays to be the old man.\u201d He tells me later: \u201cWhen I saw the true summit, I thought there\u2019s nothing that\u2019s going to keep me from the summit. I can\u2019t describe to you any kind of pain whatsoever until the descent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Right. The descent. The treacherous journey back down to safety, and one that is just as dangerous as the journey up. It\u2019s the point where John says \u201call your senses kind of re-enter your body and you realize, okay, you better get it together because this is where it\u2019s going to go bad, if it goes bad\u201d.<\/p>\n

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John knows bad. He\u2019s been a part of a disaster that almost took the life of a Sherpa, the Tibetan natives that are regarded as elite mountaineers and local geographical experts that guide climbers to the top of Everest.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were ascending the Lhotse face, which is the steepest 45-degree ice wall part, not the most dangerous, just the steepest part of Everest, and a rock came down and hit two Sherpa,\u201d he says. Sherpa don\u2019t wear helmets, he continues telling me. They wear a strap across their forehead to offset the \u201cgigantic refrigerator-size loads\u201d they carry up the mountain. Staring at the man\u2019s skull, cracked wide open, John had no choice but to get involved. \u201cI\u2019m not a medical person. I\u2019m not a blood and guts person. And sitting there, looking at somebody with their brains, literally, right there wasn\u2019t my cup of tea, but we had to bandage him up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later he tells me about his expedition in Pakistan, on Broad Peak in the Karakoram Mountain Range, another 8,000-meter peak. \u201cIt was a crap show from the very beginning,\u201d he says, \u201c\u2026we were [rappelling] down from camp three to camp two and [my partner] missed a clip and fell a hundred feet.\u201d John couldn\u2019t see what truly happened until he got down to his friend, whose leg was a mangled mess. \u201cWe were two days from base camp. We were on vertical slopes. It was getting late in the day, and I was going into panic mode because I just did not know what to do with him. There was no-one there by this time\u2026nobody around.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to splint his leg and then I had to put him in a sleeping pad and lower him hand by hand for hours on a fixed rope while I was clipped in, without me coming off the fixed rope,\u201d he says. He finally got to a point where he could call for help, on one of the most vertical points, and a team came and helped him get his friend to base camp. \u201cI was real worried. We didn\u2019t get him out of there for five days, but he survived it. But three of my teammates did not.\u201d<\/p>\n

John\u2019s teammates, mountaineers who had helped get John\u2019s friend to safety, went a different route on their ascents and got lost. \u201cWhile we were getting home, I\u2019m getting news about my three teammates getting lost on the mountain.\u201d John says there was no word from the trio for days. \u201cEventually we lost all contact with them and they were never heard from again. It was the biggest attempted rescue on Broad Peak\u2026You asked me earlier if I ever thought I\u2019d give it up? I definitely took the next year out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legendary mountaineer George Mallory is famously quoted as replying to the question, \u201cWhy did you want to climb Mount Everest?\u201d with a winking, \u201cBecause it\u2019s there.\u201d Over the last few decades, Everest has become what some refer to as a \u201ccommercial climb\u201d, as anyone with $50,000 can jump in the conga line and head up with a guide. But what some don\u2019t realize about climbing high peaks is that taking your selfie at the summit of some of the highest points on Earth might also include daring rescues and the possibility of leaving some of your crew behind to die on the mountain. It\u2019s a risk not easily taken, but one understood by mountaineers, like John.<\/p>\n

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Throughout the interview, I become more focused on the physical price you pay to climb to a point on Earth where flora and fauna don\u2019t exist. Laid back John Quillen will always guide the conversation back to the positive aspects of why he climbs Denali, Rainier and other peaks I\u2019ve never heard of and need him to spell when he says them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe freedom of being on a remote peak\u2026it\u2019s thinking you\u2019re one of the few people to ever set foot on a certain piece of ground,\u201d he says. \u201cI mean there\u2019s something to that, that gets into our pioneer spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

When John\u2019s head isn\u2019t literally in the clouds, he spends a lot of time hiking and protecting the Great Smoky Mountains, working with and battling against the Park Service for your rights to access all parts of the park for free.<\/p>\n

\u201cI go to the Himalayas, I paid $11,000 to climb Mount Everest. I don\u2019t mind that; I don\u2019t live there. I\u2019d like to see that go back into the local economy,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I don\u2019t feel like we need to make mountains so [financially] prohibitive, especially here, where it\u2019s going to price the single mom out of taking her kids into the backcountry having to pay $24 a night to sleep on the ground. This park needs to be open.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you want to walk all 800-plus miles of the trails in the park, John can help. \u201cI\u2019m on the support crew for trail finishers. People are trying to get their \u2018Maps\u2019, which means they are trying to finish them all. I\u2019ll sherpa their stuff into campsites because you need refreshments after a long hike. Plus, it\u2019s a good workout hauling stuff uphill.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Quillen can often be found climbing the Crag at Ijams Nature Center, and he\u2019s a story teller.<\/p>\n

Look for the quiet guy.<\/p>\n

Ask him about Mount Everest and have a seat.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a great time hiking with Marc Anthony and Nathan Sparks, publisher of Cityview Magazine. Some of you may know Marc from the Marc and Kim radio show. Marc did a wonderful piece here and I really appreciate his … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2990"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2992,"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2990\/revisions\/2992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/southernhighlanders.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}