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| Sanford Schulwolf |
Climbers rest before their push up Avalanche Gulch
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NO ONE I SPOKE WITH wants to banish techreationalists to their cubicles, but traditional mountaineers do wish they'd unplug—from both their gadgets and their notorious ambition—before they hit the trail. "The new breed tends to be more summit-oriented," says Bela Vadasz, owner of Shasta guiding service Alpine Skills International. "The people
who get the most out of the sport look at it from a more experience-based goal, plus the humanistic values that they can maintain while climbing." In other words, dotcommies, beware: Relentless drive can easily turn into summit fever. "A lot of [computer industry] people are used to pushing and making things happen," says climbing ranger Towner. "On the
mountain, you can push and sometimes make things happen, and sometimes the mountain doesn't let you make it happen. And for a lot of them, that is a new thing."
Some early adopters already know this, of course, and decry the soullessness they see in techreationalists. Paul Saffo, a director of the Institute for the Future, based in Menlo Park, California, and a former backcountry ski instructor with "a low REI membership number," has no patience for cell-phone campers. "When those people have carried themselves
to the top—surrounded with their titanium exoskeletons of information appliances—they should ask themselves, 'I am at the top, but have I climbed this mountain?'"
It's a hard lesson to learn. Our own party turned around that day with great reluctance—this after being repeatedly thrown into the slope by 60-mph winds just 1,100 feet shy of the summit. The Forest Service is aware of only five climbers who reached the peak that day, some crawling on their hands and knees. No one knows how many of that select
group, upon touching the cairn, first checked their altimeters, confirmed their GPS coordinates, and then voice mailed the boss to let him know how high they'd gone. —JAMES GLAVE
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