Introduction:
I am excited but also flattered, as well as a bit surprised to be introducing our guest Doug Scott. As a headmaster of a local boarding school, I am mostly shackled to my desk. These days the only “Alpine starts” I am allowed are days like Wednesdays when I am on the road at 3 AM, rushing to catch the first train out of Albany to Manhattan … for a day of fund raising. And so I really hope that Doug will get a chance to hang out with some “real Adirondack climbers” while he is here.
Having said all that, for those relatively unfamiliar with the details, we are going to hear an amazing narrative about one of the great adventure stories of all time. More than a climbing story, more than a Himalayan tale, this a moment of high drama and a testimonial to all that is best in the human spirit. It is the kind of tale you expect to hear recounted third or forth hand, around a fire ring perhaps in Camp Four. (My first hearing of this tale was huddled around the stove in the Harvard Cabin in Huntington Ravine where I was the caretaker. Just a few short months after the events on the Ogre occurred, Paul Ross an ex-Brit was doing a bit of guiding, and regaling all at the cabin.) It is a tale that makes your jaw drop and your eyes grow wide with amazement. A tale that you pray you’ll never find yourself stuck in the middle of. A tale on par with Hillary’s climb, or Shackleton’s voyage, or Nansen’s ski crossing … its a tale you expect to read about in a book, as you never expect to hear the tale from the mouth of Odysseus ... tonight we have that great privilege.
Finally, Doug Scott is representative of an entire climbing generation. For those of you that are familiar with the book, he is indeed one of the Boys of Everest. Sitting at a study carrel in the basement stacks of the college library I constantly perused climbing rags when I should have been studying. Seemingly I lived to follow the escapades of Bonington, Whillans, Brown, Patey, Haston, Boardman, Tasker, and Renshaw, Rouse and Doug Scott, it was what got me interested in the sport in the first place. It was their stories of grim nordwands and lung busting 8000 meter peaks, not the short vicious overhangs at my Gunks, nor the multi-day aid routes of the Valley that caught my attention. And as my own climbing evolved, and my skills more closely matched my aspirations, it was Doug’s accounts of Denali that I turned to before heading off to the Cassin. It was his expeditions to the Garwhal that I read about before applying for permits to Kalanka and Dunagiri.
Please welcome Doug Scott.
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