BOOK GROUPIE: Obmascik an inspiration to go climb some Fourteeners
If you’ve ever had the feeling Pikes Peak is taunting you, you are not alone. Pikes Peak is one of 54 peaks classified by the Colorado Mountain Club as Fourteeners. Each of these mountains dares people to climb them, and every year about a half million people take them up on it.
“Halfway to Heaven” is Pulitzer Prize-winning Denver journalist Mark Obmascik’s account of climbing the 54 Fourteeners in one year. (There are more than 54 14,000-foot peaks but some are not classified by climbers as Fourteeners.)
If Obmascik was a hard-bodied, granola-carrying, twentysomething, this book wouldn’t have won my heart; I find it hard being inspired by super humans.
But this is how Obmascik’s book begins: “I was fat, forty-four, and in the market for a vasectomy. My mortgage was half gone, but so was my hair. Crabgrass bugged me.”
Obmascik had me at “fat.” And from that auspicious start, the author explains how his 12-year-old son, Cass, was on Pikes Peak with a camp group and fell. Cass received 10 surgical staples, but took it in stride. All the boy was concerned about was how he’d reached the summit and watched the sunrise.
After ascertaining Cass was OK, Obmascik told his son that once upon a time — “when my inseam had more inches than my waistline” — he’d climbed a few Fourteeners himself. The admiring look in Cass’s eyes got Obmascik considering the Fourteeners again.
Before you know it, the middle-aged junk-food junkie was making plans to scale them all.
The result is an entertaining look at the Colorado climbing world. Because Obmascik promises his wife he’ll never climb alone, he begs friends and family to climb with him. Not finding much success among loved ones, Obmascik is forced to search the Internet for climbing partners.
Obmascik’s first “man-date” is with KirkT, a daredevil drag racer whose goal is to perform a handstand on the summit of every Colorado Fourteener. KirkT, like most of Obmascik’s man-dates, is on the eccentric side.
Obmascik also meets other interesting people on various mountains such as a 62-year-old disabled man wearing shorts in 20-degree weather. Obmascik records their stories and relays them to readers in a compassionate, thoughtful manner.
Interspersed are interesting nuggets of Colorado fact and history. The information is well-researched and amusing.
I’ve lived in Colorado most of my life and had no idea I could buy doughnuts on the summit of Pikes Peak. Next summer, I’m climbing up to get some.
—
CONTACT THE WRITER: Anita Miller welcomes your book suggestions. Read her blog at bookgroupie.freedomblogging.com
or e-mail anita.l.miller@worldnet.att.net.
