Outdoor retailer Mountain Gear recently wrapped up an exciting mountaineering and climbing collaboration with athletes from Paradox Sports, a non-profit organization that provides inspiration and opportunity to the disabled community, and Mammut, a Swiss manufacturer who, for 150 years, has produced leading edge climbing and mountaineering equipment.
Teams of Mountain Gear climbers, Paradox athletes, professional guides, and Mammut representatives joined forces to take on three peaks in the United States as part of a global celebration of Mammut’s 150th anniversary. The climbs included Castleton Tower in Utah, Washington State’s Mount Baker, and New Hampshire’s Mount Washington.
In August of 2011, the Swiss company kicked off a year-long celebration of their origins 150 years earlier by taking on 150 of the world’s great climbing and mountaineering projects. When Mammut went looking for a retail partner in the United States, Mountain Gear was a natural pick.
“It started as a conversation about shared values,” said Mountain Gear president Paul Fish. Mammut and Mountain Gear are both deeply involved in the Access Fund, a national advocacy organization that keeps U.S. climbing areas open and conserves the climbing environment. “Access for everyone is at the heart of our shared values. What could we do to promote climbing and climbing access for everybody? That’s when we brought in Paradox Sports and realized we could complete this conversation about access and help celebrate Mammut’s founding at the same time.”
On the first climb, Mountain Gear President Paul Fish and Brad Myers, the company’s content developer, joined a contingent of guides, Mammut representatives, and Paradox Sports athletes Sean O’Neill and Pete Davis to scale the iconic sandstone monolith known as Castleton Tower. They chose the Kor-Ingalls route. Davis is no stranger to Castleton or the Kor-Ingalls route. The climber, born without a right arm below the elbow, had made three prior trips up Castleton. O’Neill, paralyzed from the waist down, had been to Castleton as well but not since 1998. The team carried O’Neill in a specialized lightweight chair to the base of the needle. Once at the base and harnessed up, he gained the summit entirely by his own strength. Likewise, Davis made it to the top under his own power.
The next climb was Mt. Baker in northwest Washington. Wounded Warrior and Paradox athlete Chad Butrick joined a team made up of Mountain Gear’s Brad Myers, Climbing Magazine editor Dougald MacDonald, Access Director of the Access Fund, Joe Sambataro as well as several IFMGA guides, a camera crew and representatives of Mammut. Keeping a close eye on the weather, the team abandoned the original North Ridge route and attempted the Coleman-Deming route instead. As the team neared the upper mountain, winds, ice and snow ultimately deterred them from the summit.
The final leg of the celebratory summit tour in North America took in New Hampshire’s Mount Washington. Mountain Gear Vice President, Dave Noonan, joined Mammut staff and Paradox athletes Mike Reddy and Maureen Beck. Reddy suffered a fall on a Colorado mountain that injured his spinal cord. Doctors told him he would never climb again. A year after the accident, Reddy topped out on a 5.7 route. Beck was born without her left hand but it doesn’t hold the Vermont-based climber back. The group set out on a March morning with temperatures hovering around the 5 degree mark and a 25 to 40 mile per hour wind coming in from the west. When they reached Washington’s alpine zone, clouds moved in and the temperature dropped. This was exactly what they had expected on Mount Washington. When they reached the summit, the clouds broke for a few brief views of the distant valleys to the south and east. It was a suitable end to the last climb of Mammut’s North American peaks celebration.
