Climbing Lessons from the School of Tomaz Humar (Cont.)

You Are Here:

Home >> Climbing Lessons from the School of Tomaz Humar (Cont.)

Today's Question
What should you do if you run into a cougar in the backcountry? answer

What is the number one backcountry skill people should learn? answer

Today's Question
What are the five best environmental movies of all time? answer

What are the greenest colleges? answer

What kind of dog will make me look manlier? answer
Is there a sport that safely combines my twin passions for guns and kayaks? answer
How come most of the world's cultures enjoy eating goat, but Americans don't? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine June 2002

Page:

Climbing Lessons from the School of Tomaz Humar (Cont.)


	Chakra steady: Humar above Chamonix (Photograph by Antonin Kratochvil)

I'VE BEEN HANGING OUT with Tomaz for nearly two weeks, and he has not stopped talking. He talks about his father, Kamnik, George Bush, environmentalism, abortion, Dhaulagiri, meditation, war, food, wine, Yosemite, hang-gliding, paragliding, Slobodan Milosevic, country music, the Internet, pitons, and prosciutto. If we are in the car and I happen to fall asleep, he nudges me awake to tell me more.

I've come to realize that being with Tomaz is not unlike hanging out with a hyperactive child. One day we watch an unemployed electrician demonstrate a new sport he has created—"stone skiing"—on a slope of cast-off pebbles from a cement factory. Another afternoon we set off on a bike ride and end up at the home of Tomaz's reflexologist, Jana Prezelj, a plump and jolly woman he calls his "spiritual mother." The evening that ensues involves prodigious quantities of wine and schnapps, a guy singing and playing a tuba, the reflexologist standing on her head and clapping with her feet, and her husband playing a didgeridoo, the wooden horn used by the Australian aborigines, as Tomaz throws open his arms, tilts his head back, and lets the vibes seep into his heart chakra.

But there are times when the solitary Tomaz emerges. One afternoon he leads me to a lookout tower in the Kamnik Alps. It's a rickety wooden thing, but it soars above the trees and gives us a clear, 360-degree view of the rock faces around us. Wind shakes the tower, but Tomaz stands with his hands on his hips, like a commander in a barrage.

For two weeks Tomaz did not stop talking—about meditation, George Bush, Dhaulagiri, war, food, wine, Yosemite, hang-gliding, Slobodan Milosevic, country music, prosciutto.

"The higher I am, the more comfortable I feel," he says, his voice echoing. "I don't really start breathing until 5,000 meters. I need the air. I'm an Aquarius—a man who needs to be free."

On the way home, Tomaz and I stop off at a nearby pub, where we find two of his climbing buddies, Robert Policnik and Damjan Kochar, both in their midtwenties. Beers are ordered, and after a few rounds Tomaz and Damjan drift off to the men's room and I hear loud voices. Damjan is one of the best sport climbers in Kamnik—better than Tomaz, though he doesn't have Tomaz's intensity or his spirituality. Apparently that's what they're discussing in the men's room—more precisely, it's what Tomaz is lecturing loudly about while Damjan listens.

Damjan's flaw, if it can be described that way, is that he prefers to be attached to a rope and to climb with a partner. Policnik—Poli, as he's known—has the long arms of a spider, and it's easy to imagine him scaling a Himalayan face. I ask why Tomaz climbed Dhaulagiri and he didn't.

Poli stares at his beer for a long time.

"Tomaz is..." He stares deeper at his beer.

"I can't find the word." He smiles. "Tomaz is vicious."

"Aren't you vicious?" I ask.

"Small vicious," he replies.

"Would you like to be vicious like Tomaz?"

The beer stare again. "It's suicide, almost."

When Tomaz decided to solo the south face of Dhaulagiri, even Bojan Pollak worried. One afternoon, Tomaz and I idle away a few hours with his old instructor, drinking homemade blueberry schnapps outside a mountaintop cabin. A bee has just dive-bombed into Tomaz's glass, and he downs the contents in a single gulp, leaving the drunken bee. It's classic Tomaz—pulling off something only he could do, and finishing with a loud laugh, as if to say, "And you doubted me?"

Tomaz reveres Pollak's judgment, because Pollak, now 58, is steady and thoughtful. "Tomaz knows himself better than we do," Pollak says. "We can't tell him not to go. If we told him not to go, he might lose confidence, and that could be dangerous."

He looks at Tomaz and smiles.

"But Tomaz did not ask if we thought he should go. He said he would go. We gave him only a 50-50 chance to survive Dhaulagiri. We trusted him, but not nature."

Later, I ask Tomaz if he was surprised by Pollak's odds.

"I think it was less," he replies. "Maybe 20 percent."

And once more, the laugh.

Page: