1990 Honorary Member Profile : John Roskelley

"At 16, he has to be dubbed 'most promising young climber'" wrote Bill Fix in the autumn 1965 Kinnikinnick after a club summer outing ascent of 12,594-foot Mt. Moran in Wyoming's Teton's. How right he was!

"By John Roskelley" was the credit line for the cover photo on the May 1979 National Geographic, taken on 28,250- foot K2, the world's second highest peak, in Pakistan. It was the first successful U.S. expedition after five had failed.

At 45, John looks back on 20 Himalayan expeditions. And on more difficult Himalayan climbs than any other American--Uli Biaho Tower, Great Trango Tower, Tawoche, Gaurishankar, Kanchenjunga, Dhaulagiri, Makalu, Nanda Devi... The American Alpine Club named him Outstanding American Mountaineer in 1983.

John is known for his standards (alpine-style, no bottled oxygen) and though he has clipped in with many luminaries, the credit he gives to his Spokane partners, Chris Kopczynski, Jim States, and the late Kim Momb. In 1980, they were the first U.S. team to put a man (John) on top of the fifth-highest peak, Makalu at 27,800 feet, and the first entirely from one city to conquer a major Himalayan peak. "It took all four of us to get there." John asked futilely, the Nepalese tourism ministry not to publish his name. "I had the choice of the best climbers in the country," he emphasized. "The best all live in the same city--Spokane." They have the traits he values most - judgement, humor, compassion.

Special honorary memberships for outstanding international mountaineering went to each in 1990 as the club celebrated its 75th anniversary. Profiles of Jim, Chris, and Kim in 1993 Kinnikinnicks are peppered with exploits shared with John. And John wrote his third book, Stories Off the Wall, "to give credit to my partners."

Fishing and hunting trips with his newspaper outdoor editor dad filled John's boyhood. "I loved to climb pine trees." He read Herzop's Annapurna, then Terray's The Borders of the Impossible. "When I was 15, I said I want to climb." His dad enrolled the Shadle Park sophomore, then 16, in the 1965 Mountain School. "My problem was patience: I had none," he says of club rope teams' slow pace. Then a Shuksan leader let John and fellow student Chris charge ahead. His climbing career would have ended, John believes, "if I hadn't met Chris." Atop Shuksan, they shared dreams, shook hands and swore they would climb together from then on. (Among notables: the 5,200-foot east face of Chephron in the Canadian Rockies in 1971, the first U.S. ascent of the North Face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps in 1974 on their way home from the Russian Pamirs.)

John discovered how rudimentary his club training was during summers in Yosemite, where he did a record 2-1/2-day ascent of El Capitan's North American Wall. He shared his new techniques as club climbing chairman (1971-1974) and Board member for 5 years. His 1972 school was BIG--93 on Snow Practice, 52 at crevasse rescue, and 60 climbers on three peaks (Temple, Stanley, and Athabasca) on the Graduation Climb.

Joyce Fountain was a 1971 student. She climbed Chimney rock, two routes on Liberty Bell, the east face of Stanley, and Athabasca. Their engagement was announced at the Chalet annual banquet. After marriage in January, John quit climbing to work for the U.S. Bureau of Mines. A year later he was invited on Dhaulagiri. He went.

"There's no way I could get a better wife, who's a wonderful mother and dedicated to a family life." Joyce is a Valley schoolteacher. John dedicated his first book, Nanda Devi: The Tragic Expedition, to her "for giving me the time and support to pursue my dreams." He's a family man when in town. "This is the first time I haven't had Jordan (4) full time. We can't afford a sitter." Another daughter, Dawn, teaches music in a Reno grade school.

Son Jess, 11, has been a horseback hunting pal since 4. "Jess spotted him," John says proudly of his hunting partner's large bear bagged last autumn. John shot a record black bear with a muzzleloader in Idaho the year before. He took a mule deer with a bow. A snowboarder, Jess began skiing at 4. His third time on a climbing practice wall, Jess did every route. "I don't want to push him," John insists. "If he wants to climb, it's his business."

There are community activities. He goes on 10 to 20 calls a month as a volunteer firefighter and EMT and is a member of the Spokane County Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee. John donates local fees for his multimedia climbing programs to the Spokane Guilds' School and Neuromuscular Center. He's on the School's Foundations Board and has chaired its auction three times. Even before his marriage, he helped with Special Olympics. "You can help a child run a race and they love you forever."

Illness and danger have been regular companions. During a 1992 McKinley climb, John made a risky crevasse rappel to help rescue two Koreans. He's suffered giardia (eight times), whip worm, bacterial and amoebic dysentery, spinal meningitis, malaria, etc. Pulmonary edema struck at 26,000 feet on Everest's West Ridge in 1982; Kim Momb helped him down and "saved my life." Frostbite on Dhaulagiri claimed some toe tips. A bad back from a 1968 construction fall doubles him up at inconvenient times.

Devi Unsoeld's death at 24,000 feet on Nanda Devi from acute abdominal distress, despite John's characteristically blunt urging to descend, came after John and Jim forged to the 25,645-foot summit up the difficult North Buttress. He topped the Pamirs 19,300-foot Peak 19 on a second try after frantic digging, but still lost a teammate in an avalanche that wiped out their 16,700-foot camp. Afterward John wrote to Joyce, "The route is all-important and not the top...it's not how high or important or rich a man gets, it's how he works his way along to attain his goals."

There are satisfactions. John's second book, Last Days, tells of "one of the hardest" - trading leads and jumaring loads with Jeff Lowe in 1989 on a 9-day first ascent of 21,500-foot Tawoche's northeast face in winter to avoid rockfall. Or the "Class VII," 10-day first ascent on the 3,500-foot face of 20,000-foot Uli Biaho in 1979. Or leading 21 of 27 most-technical pitches on Kanchenjunga's North Face.

Money has been a worry. He became an after-school shipping clerk to pay for skiing. Then came mining, tire retreading, building demolition and construction, photojournalism, lecturing. He worked summers for the Exum School in the Tetons "until it became too expensive to take the family," and ran his own guide and marketing services. There was promotion, including widely viewed TV and magazine ads, for Coca Cola, Sanka, Nike, Gore-Tex, and others.

John kept busy in 1993. Seven weeks on McKinley as a National Park Service climbing ranger, sound man for the ESPN show, "Surviving McKinley," 2-1/2 months on Everest, back to Tibet to lead a month-long trek, trips to promote his latest book, trade shows for DuPont. He ran the New York Marathon, his first, in 3:24.

What's ahead? Maybe another book, using a float downstream from Columbia Lake with his dad and Jess "as a vehicle to talk about the river, its historic perspective, the Indians and all..."

"After spending months on Everest again, no route leaves me transfixed." (He turned back at 23,000 feet because of dangerous slabs on bottomless corn snow.) "You feel guilty every hour the sun shines and you're not in summit position. If a storm comes, you're guilty you're not home with the kids... But something may pop up tomorrow and I'll be gone."

Tent bound while headed for his first Himalayan summit (Dhaulagiri in 1973), John wrote a letter to the club.

"I tell myself that this is what I have strived for...the highest and the hardest. Maybe in some ways this is correct, but only when I don't look deep enough in myself...I first climbed with the Spokane Mountaineers, who were older than I was but who were searching for the same freedom in life, that of being at ease with nature. I became fond of the men who shared their wisdom and experience with one so impatient and careless..."

"Climbing is putting oneself against a mountain, yes, but this is so very little of what it means. Climbing is fellowship, comradeship...it's facing peril or enjoying experiences and loving both because of who you're with...I feel... that I am here in lieu of others who trained me but could never go on an expedition...I feel a part of them as I climb because I knew I would never be here if they hadn't been patient or understanding of the immature ways of an eager young man. How can I thank you but to use my head, remember your works and use your wisdom on the hardest and highest."

Twenty years later, in Stories Off the Wall, John gives credit to those same Mountaineers.

Lorna Ream