Padecky: Santa Rosa man preps for climb of a lifetime

Just say the word “Everest” and the imagination begins its heavy workout. The mind climbs to 29,035 feet, to the top of the world, looking out to neighboring mountain peaks as if they were so many frosted cupcakes. And then there’s the sobering glance below, of crevices and razor-wide ridgelines and, because this is Everest, the climbers left frozen in their fate, a reminder this ain’t no trip up Mount Tam.

One way or another, Mount Everest takes your breath away.

Mount Everest also invites curiosity. Exactly what kind of person would attempt this climb? Only 517 Americans have summited Everest since Sir Edmund Hillary was the first 61 years ago. Estimates of the number of people who have died attempting Everest range between 200 and 300. So who ventures into such a thing?

Someone like Santa Rosa’s Scott Holder. Someone who can climb for hours and never have his pulse rate reach above 150 beats a minute. Someone who has covered 11,000 vertical feet in the past seven days. Someone who on a Saturday morning strapped on a 50-pound pack, began his hike at the Goodspeed trailhead at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park. He summited to Mount Hood, descended to Pythian Road, turned around and went up and over again back to Goodspeed.

Holder returned Sunday and did it again, each time making the 12-mile trip in about five hours.

“I don’t want to be in the best shape of my life to climb Everest,” said Holder, 49, a financial adviser. “I want to be in Everest shape.”

During the week Holder thumps a Stairmaster for two hours on one night, waits a day and then hits the Stairmaster for another two hours. On April 2 that stops. Holder will leave for Nepal, 30 hours of airplane flights and connections. Thirteen days of trekking follows that, if all goes well, Holder will arrive at Everest Base Camp April 15. A couple days later Holder will begin his climb with 10 Sherpas and Jacob Schmitz, a professional guide.

That Holder wants to do this, that’s obvious. How he handles that desire needs a bit more elaboration. Holder knows how to tempting it is to ignore warning signs on a mountain and charge on. Months of preparation and thousands of dollars needed to finance an Everest climb - $42,000 is a base amount, according to Holder, but he wouldn’t reveal the amount he will spend - can drive common sense to the curb.

“I don’t get summit fever,” said Holder, a 1983 Casa Grande graduate. “That’s how tragedy happens. One thing my family knows is I make smart decisions.”

In 2006, while leading a group up Mount Hood in Oregon, a snowstorm hit. Holder turned his party around and descended.

“One of my partners was not happy about that,” Holder said.

Three climbers died that day on Mount Hood.

Just as rock climbers Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson tried their best to convince people they weren’t egomaniacal thrill seekers when they epically scaled Yosemite’s Dawn Wall, Holder emphasizes the challenge he will face deserves so much mature attention, it overrides and eliminates any mindless zest.

That was never more obvious than that day when Scott had to sit down with his wife, Tricia, to do a most awkward thing.

“When we had to decide what to do with my body,” he said.

Climbers who perish above 26,000 feet typically aren’t retrieved, as the descent from that altitude puts the rescuers at increased risk. Nothing brought Everest into as sharp a focus for Holder as that conversation with his wife. It made him appreciate Tricia more, as her acceptance of Everest is a concession not every partner would make.

“I enjoy being married more than I love climbing mountains,” said Holder, 5-foot-7, 165 pounds. “I would never be doing this without Tricia’s approval.”

Holder said he “sleeps like a baby” at night, calm and collected about his upcoming adventure. As a detailed, thoughtful man who investigates every possible scenario, nonetheless Holder is at a loss when he contemplates something he can’t formulate and chart.

“I’ve never gone more than three days without talking to her,” said Holder, his marriage now in its 24th year. “I’m more afraid of that mental aspect than anything else.”

As partial recognition of the stress he has put his wife under, the pot has been sweetened a bit for her. When he is on a major climb Tricia will try to be partially distracted by going on a cruise, like she did with her mom and sister in the Mediterranean when Scott was climbing Kilimanjaro in Africa.

Yes, Tricia knows the drill. Four years ago her husband decided to do The Seven Summits, climbing to the highest peak on all seven continents. Holder has finished five of them: North America’s Mount McKinley (20,322 feet), Antarctica’s Mount Vinson (16,050 feet), Europe’s Mount Elbrus (18,510 feet), South America’s Aconcagua (22,838 feet) and Africa’s Kilimanjaro (19,341 feet). What’s left are Asia’s Everest and Australia’s Kosciuszko, a bunny hop at 7,310 feet.

“I made a huge mistake when I summited Aconcagua,” Holder said. “I called Tricia from the top of the mountain and said, ‘Honey, I’ve got a big problem.’?”

He remembered his wife, whispering for him to hold on, finding a quiet spot to ask what the heck was going on, ugly scenarios racing through her mind.

“I just ran out of mountains to climb,” Holder told her, displaying a sense of humor that at the time would have best said at sea level.

If he summits Everest, Holder will summit with the same routine as he did at his five previous peaks. He will have someone take a picture of him holding his Rotary banner, a Santa Rosa Rotarian climbing mountains to raise money for polio, a disease that took two uncles, one of them last year.

Holder will then open and hold a stuffed turtle given to him by one of his daughters, Miranda, a freshman scholarship gymnast at UC Davis. He then will unwrap another still-to-be-decided gift from Brittany, his other daughter, a junior at Santa Rosa High. And then there’ll be a card from Tricia.

“It’ll be a tear jerker,” said Holder, then adding with a wink, “probably something about loving me.”

And that’ll be it. No one sets up a camping chair, listens to tunes while eating a bagel on top of Mount Everest. Twenty minutes, that’s the most Holder will allow himself to soak in the pleasure of being at the highest point on this planet. His family, his fellow Rotarians, his friends as well as the curious will be able to tell where Holder is by tracking him on a website, mountaintrip.com, then clicking on Trip Reports.

It may feel so abstract, maybe even surreal, a man’s grand adventure reduced to a computer screen. Not a lot of effort to lay down a keystroke. As if it could ever be that easy to reduce Mount Everest to a simple click and drag.

“It’s graduation time,” said Scott Holder, who is planning to summit mid-May.

With all those international peaks climbed, adding those 12 summits of Mount Shasta, all that feels like a warmup as Everest awaits Scott Holder. It’s graduation time all right. The audience will be small. The ceremony reduced to something like a hoot and maybe a holler. Someone might clap. And then Holder will walk off a graduation stage unlike any other, determined not to trip.

To contact Bob Padecky email him at bobpadecky@gmail.com.