The House of Rock: Exum Mountain Guides

Outside Magazine April 2004

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The House of Rock (cont.)


	Faces of the guild: clockwise from top left: seventh-year guide Amy Bullard, and Exum co-owner Al Read, Tom Hargis (with son Connor), and Peter Lev (Kurt Markus)

A THICK BLANKET OF SNOW still drapes the high peaks when the Exum alums and neophytes fly, drive, bike, and hitchhike in from mountain ranges all over the world, assembling in a large log cabin not far from the Exum office at 8 a.m. on June 30: Guides' Day. This is the official start of the summer season, so the attire is mountain casual—Hawaiian shirts, shorts, and river sandals. But the laid-back dress code belies the high-powered résumés in this room full of alpha dogs.

Near the front of the room is Rolando "Rolo" Garibotti, 33, an alpinist who holds the record—under seven hours—for the Grand Traverse, a route linking nine Teton peaks that

"I've done a lot of guiding," Morris says. "I don't care what you've done, or how bad you think you are; when you see how many of the best of the best are actually there, it's intimidating."

takes most clients two days to complete. Standing in the back is Jim Williams, 49, the first person to have successfully guided all Seven Summits in one year. Behind Williams is Miles Smart, 24, who holds speed records on four Grade VI Yosemite climbs. Near the window is Brian Harder, 42, who spent four years as a sniper with the 101st Airborne Division, and Cindy Tolle, 42, who has a Ph.D. in microbiology and has freighted each of her three children to the top of the Grand Teton—in utero. Not here, but certainly felt, are Stephen Koch, who recently attempted to snowboard Everest; climber and filmmaker David Breashears; and the late Alex Lowe, who died in 1999 in an avalanche on Tibet's Shishapangma.

"In that room, you just wonder if you can measure up," Morris tells me later, confessing to a bad case of Guides' Day nerves. "I don't care who you are, or what you've done, or how bad you think you are; when you see how many of the best of the best are actually there, it's intimidating."

Rod Newcomb, sitting in for Al Read, who's ill, welcomes everyone back and then calls for an introduction of the new guides. The crowd focuses on Wesley Bunch, a tanned, sinewy mountaineer from Jackson with a massive blond afro.

"This is Chris Morris," says Bunch. "I'm here to tell you that nobody can handle a shovel at 17,000 feet better than this guy."

The remark elicits a few smiles, but he's not joking. Bunch, 40, has been with Exum for 11 years and is a close friend of Morris, having guided with him in Alaska. In June 1998, the two led efforts to save seven climbers injured in three separate accidents on Mount McKinley's West Rib—the biggest rescue in the history of Denali mountaineering. Impressed by Morris's "quiet competence," Bunch approached Read last year and suggested that Morris be invited to apprentice.

Read receives about 40 such nominations for new guides each year; on average he invites fewer than five to try out. What drew the boss's attention in this instance was Morris's connection with Erik Weihenmayer, the blind climber from Colorado. After successfully, if painstakingly, guiding Weihenmayer to the summit of McKinley in June 1995—Morris walked a few steps in front of his sightless client for ten hours a day, ringing a cowbell and calling out descriptions of the terrain in a verbal shorthand that included terms such as "knee bashers" and "rollers"—they went on to knock off Aconcagua, Mount Elbrus, and Antarctica's Vinson Massif together. Perhaps most impressive, in late spring 2001, Morris helped Weihenmayer become the first and, to date, only blind climber to summit Everest. "I thought that if Chris has the patience to guide a blind person up Everest," Read told me, "then surely he's going to have the intuition and the caring to guide Exum clients."

After Morris's introduction, it's Susan Detweiler's turn. Detweiler, 38, is a Coloradan who has spent 14 years guiding in the Rockies and the Cascades, as well as on McKinley and Aconcagua. She has long brown hair, rock-scratched forearms, and an air of intense, thin-lipped resolve. Last winter, when Read expressed interest in meeting her but was unable to schedule a get-together, Detweiler drove to Jackson and offered to ski 20 miles to the backcountry cabin of a senior Exum guide for her interview—a display of determination that impressed Read.

For Morris and Detweiler, basic training officially starts this evening with the "phone-in," a nightly ritual that requires all guides to call the office after 8 p.m. and listen to a recording of their climbing assignments for the next day. For the first few weeks, the two rookies will "audit" climbs (read: assist senior guides for free) until they are deemed suitable for the next phase: teaching rock school and leading one or two climbs a week for the rest of the season. At the end of the summer, the company's 19 senior guides will huddle for discussion and then provide written recommendations to the owners. The crux of the rookie season takes place on September 10, after the new guides have departed, when the owners convene in Jackson for a star-chamber confab to decide which recruits merit an invitation to continue their apprenticeship.

But that's still months away. For now, the rookies are just trying to grasp the folkways of this guild as the Guides' Day gathering rolls through wide-ranging topics like how many bowls should be left for guides in the storage locker at Exum's Grand Teton high camp and the current condition of the park's wolf pack, bison herd, and bear population. (Clients often quiz the guides about local wildlife.) On the whole, the meeting has the backslapping atmosphere of counselors returning to camp. But toward the end of the morning the tone shifts as an older guide with deep-blue eyes and a gray ponytail strides to the front. This is Dave Carman, one of Exum's two chief guides, and he's here to deliver a succinct reminder before everyone splits for the rest of the day.

"Many of our clients are exhausted and at the limits of their abilities, and they make mistakes," he solemnly tells the group, which has grown quiet. "Sometimes they release their brake hand just when somebody falls. Sometimes they step on the exact rock that you've told them not to. Or they untie their knots when you're not looking and then tie back in poorly. What this means is that our clients are trying to kill each other, they're trying to kill themselves, and they're trying to kill you. Each of us needs to remember this at all times. That's our job."

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