“I’ve entered Gerry-Land . . . a PC/Unix “nerve center” occupies one end of the house, a Mac “nerve center” is in the other end. In between lie books, notes, pictures, gear, maps, and everything you need to be a world-class climber and guide book author. It’s a challenge to find a surface on which to eat lunch; virtually every square inch of Gerry-Land is covered with the tools of his trade. I am amazed by the amount of information that must be contained in Gerry-Land. Then, as we begin to talk, it occurs to me that Gerry-Land is just the tip of the iceberg. The man himself is a walking, talking encyclopedia of mountaineering and life experiences!” ...forward by Terri Horvath.   

What was your first fourteener, and how old were you?
 
Gerry: I dabbled with climbing in 1954 and 1955, but got serious in the summer of 1956 when I was 13. That was all rock climbing. The next summer, in 1957, the Rocky Mountain Rescue Group introduced me to the high mountains. The very first mountain I climbed was a 13er, Mount Copeland, on a search for a hidden “victim.” We never found him. A weekend or two later, I climbed my first fourteener, Mount Massive at the age of 14. We went off for Massive and Elbert, which I had never even heard of! Somebody said, “Oh they are just big lumps that you can see from Leadville”. The fact that there were big lumps out there, and that there was some place called Leadville, which I didn’t know about, was hugely exciting to me! So we drove to Leadville and climbed Massive from the backside via the Southwest Slopes Route. That was pretty neat. The next day, we did Elbert by a route that we don’t use anymore. We just went straight up. It’s not even in my book. On that day, I kicked in, zoomed ahead of the gang, and I’ve been doing that ever since! All of a sudden, they noticed I wasn’t with the group anymore and got worried that I’d wandered off. Dave Lewis was smart and said, “No… we’ll find him on the summit.” And they did. I was sitting up there wondering, “where the heck are all these slowpokes?” My third fourteener was Longs via the Keyhole Ridge. At 5.6, it was a serious high country rock climb, but I was a good rock climber, and I ended up leading the whole climb! And on it went from there… 

How did you get started with rock climbing? 

Gerry: Initially, Jeff Wheeler and I were able to sneak out our bedroom windows to climb in the Flatirons. When our parents finally found out, they said we needed to get some instruction. That was good advice for both then and now! Back then, we didn’t have the CMC schools, or the other options we have today. One of the most active groups was Rocky Mountain Rescue. So, we got into the Rescue Group, and spent our days doing Tyrolean traverses across the amphitheatre, and rigging ropes to lower litters. That was how I really learned rope work. Jeff and I didn’t know or care about first ascents; we just climbed routes that caught our eye. People told us years later that many of our routes were first ascents. We also had practices in the high country where we would search for somebody hidden, like the Copeland expedition. 

What would be the biggest single difference between climbing back then and today?

Gerry: There were vast differences, and I have a two-part answer. If you can, filter out the fact that I was 14. In the old days, climbing was an adventure that seems to be less available today, because of the nature of the roads, the people, the maps and other information. We didn’t always know where we were going. Like on Elbert, sometimes we just went straight up the hill. Maybe part of this was because I was a 14 year old, but it was all a huge adventure! Elbert and Massive might as well have been Mount Everest! Part of that’s being new to the sport but, even so, we treated the mountains with more respect back then. Coming through the Rescue Group ranks, we saw a lot of bad stuff, and the problems that could occur. We knew what could go wrong, and what to do when it did go wrong! I grew up with learning steeped in troubled scenarios, practices, and crazy things. We actually carried fake victims down the mountain in a litter, and learned at a tender age how hard it is to move a person down a hillside. We learned at 14 that it’s a huge effort to carry someone out of the mountains! So, I grew up with a deep respect for the mountain’s power. That’s one reason I’ve stayed alive all these years, and I can thank Rocky Mountain Rescue for some of my training. Fast-forward to a person getting into this sport today. I was up Bierstadt last year and saw people on the summit with newborn infants on their back. I thought, “Rushing up to 14,000 feet can’t be good for a newborn’s undeveloped respiratory system.” Indeed, the infant seemed quite distressed. Now, climbing a fourteener is just a family outing like a walk in the park. I look at that and think, “OK, the weather is fine, and everyone’s getting through this one, but, when things go bad, they can go hugely bad for a large number of people.” It wouldn’t surprise me if there is some fairly epic disaster on a fourteener one of these years where a bunch of people get in serious trouble, and maybe some of them end up dying. It could easily happen. In the old days, we were much more wary of the mountains. We treated every mountain like an Everest. 

Were there any guidebooks around then? 

Gerry: There was the Ormes’ guide. The Ormes’ guide goes way back to the 40’s. I have a copy of one of the early editions – a tiny hard back. It’s a collector’s item now. That was all there was for Colorado, and it was the guidebook! It had a section for the fourteeners with brief descriptions and little sketch maps. I stared at those sketch maps until they became Earth tunnels of life to my eyes! 

Your guidebooks, your climbing accomplishments, and your 50-year love affair with the Colorado Mountains has made you an idol to a lot of fourteener climbers. Were there any local climbers that you idolized or admired when you first started climbing? 

Gerry: Sure! In the rock-climbing world, I climbed a lot with Layton Kor. On the rock, which is the genesis of all climbing, Layton was a decade or more ahead of his time. In the fifties, our passion just swept us up these rocks and, later, up the mountains. But Kor was way ahead of us. The guy was 6’6” and strong as could be. He spent all day working as a bricklayer, and he’d say, “When I pick up the bricks, I hold them in a pinch grip to strengthen my fingers!” Well, he had stronger hands than 99% of the fourteener climbers today. Some of today’s rock climbers are pretty amazing too, but only when they train hard. Kor was there in the fifties. We used go to the basement of the UMC, where there was a pool place, and we’d arm wrestle. We didn’t play pool; we’d just arm wrestle. My goal in life was to beat Kor at arm wrestling! Laughter… Well, the guy was 6’6”; he had the strength of Zeus, and about an inch on me in leverage. He could always put me down! Then, there were wall-sitting competitions. We’d sit in a chair position against the wall, but there was no chair. At first, five minutes seemed like a world record. Through learning and yearning, I trained until I could wall sit with aplomb for more than an hour. This was too boring for Kor, and he was off arm-wrestling someone else! Then, I went on to breath holding. I would hold my breath until I passed out. I surpassed the two-minute barrier, carried on through the three-minute barrier and finally reached four minutes. Then, one day I held my breath for six minutes!

How old were you guys? 

Gerry: Thirteen through sixteen, around that age. Kor is older than I am. Kor wasn’t just an idol, someone you read about in a book. We were down there in the pool parlor arm wrestling! I finally invented something I could get him on. I figured out how to climb the brick corner of my house! They were regular bricks, not flagstone, and there was only a quarter of an inch inset! To my mom’s chagrin, I worked at it, and just creamed my fingers climbing up the house. I had to bonk my head into the eave at the top to complete an ascent. It was pretty high; 12 feet or so. Kor came over one day, and I said, “Hey Kor, check this out!” I climbed up my corner, bonked my head, climbed back down, and walked away as if it was totally natural. Of course, my fingers were screaming! Kor went up, and couldn’t do it the first time, so I had my victory! Laughter… Of course, he did it the second time.Another fabled climber of the time was Carl Pfiffner, who is not so well known. Carl was a mountain man, and I’ve named the Pfiffner Traverse after him. The original Pfiffner Traverse, which Carl talked about in his little cubbyhole student room on the Hill, was to go from Arapahoe to Longs. That was the core of it, and now it’s expanded to go from Berthoud Pass to Milner Pass. The traverse may seem obvious today, but Carl voiced it first. He was driven and would have been great, but he got killed in an avalanche in La Plata basin on a winter climb. Then, Pat Ament and Larry Dalke came along in the sixties. They were a new generation; the new ”hot shots,” and now they’re old! Laughter… Everyone gets old! 

According to the Colorado Mountain Club, over 750 people have completed all the fourteeners. Do you think this is accurate?  

Gerry: That’s a good question! We can only guess. When I finished the fourteeners, I did not report it to the Colorado Mountain Club, since I wasn’t a member and didn’t even know about their record keeping efforts. More than a decade later, a friend of mine, Alannah McTighe, said, “Hey Gerry! I don’t see you on the list! I know you’ve done them all.” She told me what to do, and I sent my history in, and became a registered fourteener bagger! So, there are two classes of people who aren’t on that list. First, there are people like myself who don’t report their climbs because they don’t know that the CMC is keeping tally. There could be many out-of-staters in that group. Probably half the people climbing fourteeners are from out of state. The fourteeners attract people from the Mid-West, Texas and Oklahoma. Then, there are people who don’t want to report their feat, because it’s not something they like to do. They are the same people who don’t sign registers! So, what do these two classes of people total? My guess is that 750 is off by a factor of two. I’ll bet there are 1,500! 

Do you have any estimate on how many people have climbed at least one fourteener? 

Gerry: If you figure that over a hundred thousand fourteener books have been sold overall, and that each book sold probably services multiple people, then maybe several hundred thousand people have done at least one fourteener! 

According to the Colorado Mountain Club, over 750 people have completed all the fourteeners, but less that 100 have completed the “highest hundred”. What do you think the reason for this is? 

Gerry: That’s a great question! The key word is completed! Less than 100 have completed the highest hundred, but it’s like the rat going through the python; it’s the lump in the snake. The lump is moving along! Laughter… I sold the thirteener project to Fulcrum on the premise that more and more people are finishing the fourteeners, and some significant percentage of them will move on to the hundred highest. Many of them will never finish the hundred highest, but they’ll climb a bunch of them, like the easier ones and the ones that are adjacent to fourteeners. Also, three centennial thirteeners require 5^th class climbing: Jagged, Teakettle, and Dallas. Some people may never do those three, but they’ll do many, if not most, of the other high thirteeners just because they provide the wonderful experience of being on one of Colorado’s highest peaks.  

How is your new thirteener book doing? 

Gerry: I had dinner with some of the Fulcrum people last night, and they said the thirteener book is already the sixth most requested new title. It’s basically rocketing up in the ranks of requests! 

Do you know if anybody is going for the fourteener speed record this year? 

Gerry: Yes… Andrew Hamilton who set the record a couple of years ago is going again this year. I traded e-mails with him and I don’t think it’s any secret. He’s adding a very interesting new twist. I don’t think he figures he can break Teddy Keizer’s record of 10 days and change, so he’s doing the whole event from his doorstep under his own power. He plans to ride a bicycle between peaks. I didn’t get into details with him, but I assume he has some sort of support vehicle following him, so he can get a meal and some sleep, However, the actual movement is human powered. Now… what he e-mailed me about was Culebra, which is off limits this year as it was last year. As I understand, there’s one legal CMC climb this year on Culebra as there was last year. To get your name on the list to be considered, you must have climbed more than half the fourteeners, and you cannot have climbed Culebra. Well, that eliminates someone like Andrew Hamilton who’s done Culebra. So, we had a long e-mail conversation about what to do with the Culebra problem. I gave it a lot of thought, and I finally decided to recommend that Andrew skip the peak and establish a new standard. If you sneak the peak, everyone’s going to ask what did you do? Either you lie, and you can’t maintain that lie, or you admit that you sneaked it, and then it’s a big mess, which ruins it for everybody. I finally said, “Look, just skip the peak and establish a record for everything else. You will be remembered as the guy who did the right thng.” Andrew had the creative idea to do a substitute peak, but I said, “Just skip the peak, and set the standard for what’s accessible.” He’s leaving about right now (June 20^th). His dreamtime is 25 days. There are a lot of unknowns with a bicycle, but he’s going for it! Last winter, I heard a rumor that a Sherpa was coming over to try it, but have not heard follow-up on that. I’m wondering if the Sherpa was Babu who died on Everest. I don’t know, it was just a rumor. 

As the unofficial or official historian of the fourteener speed record, do you think trail improvements made by CFI will affect the speed of “the course”? 

Gerry: Yes, definitely. No question about it! I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about effort. When I invented my Roach Point effort rating, I did comparison timings by doing switchback trails verses a straight up course. The switchback trail requires a lot less effort, and it’s typically somewhat faster if it’s a good trail. For example, the boardwalk through the Bierstadt willows is much faster. You can save half an hour on that alone! The new trails on Belford and La Plata make those peaks much easier. In general, the fourteeners have gotten significantly easier because of trails, whether they are built by CFI, or just created by climbers, i.e., the famous “social trail.” Some of the social trails have gotten pretty good! The one up Lindsey surprised the heck out of me, as it’s very good. We used to thrash and bash in there, and now we can walk up a pretty good trail. So, the fourteeners have gotten easier by their standard routes. The speed record is obviously taking advantage of the trails. 

Do you think the unavailability of Culebra Peak will ruin the “sport” of climbing Fourteeners? In other words, will the attraction to climb fourteeners in general diminish if the “official list” is impossible to complete. 

Gerry: The simple answer is yes! I don’t like what’s going on there. I think it’s a bad precedent. Nature should not be locked up or hidden from the public. I don’t know if it will happen, but we need to figure a way to get Culebra legal again, and avoid similar scenarios in the future. Hopefully, the CMC can play a part in that. Think of the precedent! If they can lock up Culebra, there are probably half a dozen other fourteeners with private summits that could be locked up. Somebody could buy another one. Pretty soon, half the fourteeners are private instead of public. Inject a dose of madness from some politicians, and they could all be locked up! I don’t like the trend at all. Let Freedom Ring. 

Other than Culebra, are there any other fourteeners or highest hundred mountains that will have access problems in the near future? 

Gerry: Possibly Sherman, which is private. Near Sherman are Gemini and Dyer, which are two of the hundred highest. These peaks are right above the ASARCO Mine. They could close if that mine activates. On the other side of the coin, we have this new Great Sand Dunes National Park. A rider on that park bill acquired some of the Baca land grant and put it into the national forest. I think this includes the summit of Kit Carson, which has been private, but will now be national forest. I assume and hope that there’s a legal public access to Cottonwood and Spanish Creeks. So, on the good side, we are actually gaining access where it has been denied. Cottonwood and Spanish Creeks have never been gated off but the access has been on private land for a long time, and it would be very easy for a gate to appear with no trespassing signs. 

Has there been talk of using lottery money or something like that to buy Culebra? 

Gerry: The Taylor Ranch was for sale for many years. The CMC looked into buying it, or a piece of it, and they couldn’t get the money, they simply couldn’t. They tried to get state involvement, and looked at many other options. I think the bottom line is that it is too much money for some outfit like the CMC to produce. Now, the Nature Conservancy is doing wonders. People donate big money to the Nature Conservancy. They’ve got some of the richest people in the world behind that organization, and they have been able to buy big chunks of land. An example is Clohesy Lake between Missouri and Huron. This was private for decades and there were a bunch of gnarly signs around the lake. The last time I was up there, the signs were gone, and I was just, “walking on up the trail.” I called the office to find out what the deal was, and they said, “Oh, the Nature Conservancy bought it.” The old guy died, the family didn’t care and the Nature Conservancy swooped in and bought it, then just handed it to the forest service, or something along those lines. That’s the kind of work the Nature Conservancy is doing. We saw another example of their work at Black Butte, which is the state highpoint of Oklahoma. I was there years ago when there was a famous sign that read, “Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be prosecuted.” Laughter… When Jennifer and I were there last year, there was a legal trailhead and a nice trail up Black Butte, thanks to the Nature Conservancy. So, it’s not all bad news. I don’t know, perhaps the Nature Conservancy over time might figure something out for Culebra. 

Years ago we heard rumors that the USGS was re-measuring the fourteeners with sophisticated satellite equipment and there were going to be some big surprises. What ever happened to that? 

Gerry: No, I don’t think we have new numbers, but I think we will in time. The accuracy of our 7.5 minute quads is pretty good. It’s probably plus or minus 5-8 feet, something along those lines. They’re not systemically off by 100 feet, or even by 50 feet. Probably not even by 25 feet. They may be off by 10 feet or less, and there are only a handful of peaks that are within 10 feet of 14,000 feet. The army error was recently lifted from the satellite transmissions, so that GPS units are now more accurate. There’s a whole conversation about the accuracy of GPS units with regard to altitude. They are precise for location, but are not precise for altitude. I’m told that it’s a large triangle problem. You’ve got a very long, skinny triangle, and there are mathematical errors involved in the calculations that keep the result from being precise. That is for hand held GPS units. If you spend a lot of money, you can buy equipment to get a precise altitude, but that work has not been done for the peaks. Ultimately, it may be left to the climbing community to do that work. If we really want to know the elevation of a summit and its saddle to see if this peak has 300 feet of rise, we probably have to go to these places with the expensive equipment, and do the measurements ourselves.

 Is there one defining moment that you can think of in your climbing career? 

Gerry: Probably summitting Everest. I have to say it! 

You are a world-class climber with an incredible climbing career and an obvious passion for climbing. But you’re also a man who has to make a living and deal with the mundane aspects of regular day-to-day life. How do you balance the two? 

Gerry: Fifty-fifty! Laughter… Half climbing, half everything else. 

Has there ever been a time or experience when you thought of giving up mountaineering? 

Gerry: Yes. Once I mentally quit. That was after I came back from Manaslu in 1978. I tried and failed on Everest in 1976. I thought we could make it up Manaslu, as it was supposed to be easy. Ha! We tried and failed on Manaslu. It’s a whole saga. I was shattered, and came home in defeat thinking, “I guess I better quit.” The next time a climber tells you they’re quitting, ask if you can have their gear. Laughter…  A climber isn’t really quitting unless they’re willing to give away all their gear. I held onto my gear! Laughter… 

So it was just the fact that you didn’t make two really big objectives right in a row? 

Gerry: Right. I thought, “I’ve climbed all over the world, but I haven’t done a Himalayan peak.” That was the big goal. Now, decades later, looking back on it all, after I’ve been on top of two 8,000-meter peaks, it’s like, “What was I so worried about?” Well, you forget the heat and passion of the crux moments! 

What was your scariest experience on a mountain? 

Gerry: Probably on Chacraraju in Peru. You can read the story of that climb in my upcoming book, “Odyssey” that I hope to put under contract this week as a matter of fact! The Chacraraju story is in there. It’s another saga. We were high on the south face of the east peak when a fluting collapsed. I thought we were goners. I hung onto an ice screw in a hole, and didn’t get pulled off. Mike Hane was unconscious, and we had to get him down the mountain. After an epic effort, we got him down, but he died from brain damage in the Huaraz hospital. That was the only experience I’ve had involving a fatality, and it was pretty scary. That was in 1971. 

This summer you already have out a new highest hundred guidebook, a Lost Creek Wilderness guidebook, and fourteeners on CD. Can you talk a little about these?  

Gerry: Sure! The centennial 13er guide was a long-term commitment and probably my “magnum opus” of guidebooks. It has even more detail and more information than the 14ers guide. It’s several signatures (16 pages per signature) bigger than 14ers, and there’s a good reason for that! There’s more to the centennial 13ers, as we call them, than you think. The fourteener book has about 5 routes per peak for 55 peaks. The thirteener guide has 59 peaks, and about 4 routes per peak. The fact that the thirteener book is thicker tells you that there are more words required to describe those peaks. That’s obvious when you think about it. A third of the centennial 13ers are in the San Juan’s. Many of those, like Jagged Mountain, are remote. As you well know, the approaches to those peaks are long and complicated. There are many pages of descriptions on the famous approaches such as Noname Creek. It was a big effort, and we spent two and a half years actively working on it. I did most of the writing and production stuff, while Jennifer (his wife) was always egging me on to do yet another climb!  

So what’s next? Do you have any other books coming out soon? 

Gerry: Depending upon how you count them, I have about 12 guidebooks out now. I’ve sort of conquered guidebooks, and have the formula down. Guidebooks are labor intensive. It’s almost like computer code, and I think one reason I’m good at them is because I’ve been a computer coder for a long time. I know about pointers, references and I know how to synthesize a big, complicated subject together into one working item. Guidebooks do sell, and the bottom line is that they are worth doing because they provide such a public service. That’s why we invest the time in it, but it’s very labor intensive. All those numbers like mileage, gain, class and Roach Points take a great deal of thought. One of those italicized lines with numbers on it takes much more effort than a line of words. Then, you’ve got picture captions, and you’ve got maps that are heavily annotated. To make sure there were no errors, I did the map annotations this time, and spent hundreds of hours working on them.

One final question: If for some reason you could only climb one more mountain in your life, and it had to be a fourteener, which one would it be and by what route? 

Gerry: Longs Peak by the Keiners Route!