On Dec. 8, 2004 I had the pleasure of interviewing PRG member Marcus Donaldson, over breakfast at the J&M Café in Southeast Portland. The sun was bright, the coffee bottomless, and after a few minutes of off-the-record chit-chat, we got down to business…

T – You’ve been climbing for about 12 years…how’d you get started?

M – I was in Arizona, and I met a fellow from Switzerland…and he wasn’t really that passionate about it, but he had the skills, so I begged him every sunny day, which was a lot in Arizona, to go out and take me on routes and show me how to do the deal.

T – So were you pretty hooked right off the bat?

M – Oh, completely…completely. First times I remember getting out there, I was just, this is it, this is what I want to do. Basically just went out every day and got into trouble, led what we could, backed off a lot of stuff too…stoppers and rap slings littered all over Arizona from our learning days.

T – I see you a lot at the gym, but sounds like you’re more into alpine, ice, trad…

M – Yeah, yeah…well alpine climbing I guess is where it all comes together, you know, the ideal of a route where over the course of any given day or series of days you’re going to be using ice climbing, aid climbing, free climbing, you know, the whole bag of tricks. The idea for me of a good alpinist is a well-rounded hack…

T – Versatility…

M – Yeah, to be able to transition between styles…mid-pitch or mid-move, whatever gets you up.

T – Right, these days people seem to specialize more.

M – Yeah, there’s that whole idea of tribes… you know, I’m a boulderer, or I’m a sport climber…but they’re all just different expressions of the move. That was something that I was kind of late coming to realize…just how fun actually this bouldering is, just going out with a chalk bag. I had this idea that that was antithetical to what I believe in, but it’s fun.

T – So other than the holistic dimension of alpine stuff, what do you find so appealing about the bigger, you know, scarier stuff. I mean, it sounds like you like bouldering, but…

M – Right, but I’ve never taken a bouldering trip…or gone so far as to buy a crash pad. Well for one thing it gets me out…that’s been the bulk of the motivation behind my travels, you know, Alaska, Europe, all over the Western US…see new places, meet all sorts of interesting people. And then as far as doing progressively bigger routes, I think that’s just an excellent way that we learn about ourselves…you know, I can do this, I wonder if I could push it a little further. Just the whole idea of always being within your learning zone, pushing limits…

T – When you say push limits, you mean more like mentally, or physically, or some combination?

M – Yeah, I imagine it is a combination…making decision where your commitment level becomes deeper…maybe moving into something where the only way to do a route successfully is to do it faster, or in a cleaner style. In Alaska last spring, all the routes that we were successful on were routes where we went very light, with little to no bivy gear. Whenever we went heavier, we didn’t have sufficient weather windows. You know, getting our asses handed to us.

T – So I know the purity aspect of alpinism is appealing to you, but it’s pretty gear-intensive…do you ever just get sick of it, all the rope management, does it ever just drive you nuts, where you want to just toss it off a bivy-ledge or something?

M – If you encounter that anywhere, it’s big-walling…where organization is key, you have to have everything in its place, and the ropes stacked anally, but things become second-nature, there is a system to it. I recall my first trip on El Cap, with this English fellow I had met in Camp 4, half way through the first day, he was ready to jump off the cliff, ropes wrapped all around every leg…it made it pretty painful. Actually, I got down off that route, and met one of my professors from college, and he was doing a route called Zenyatta Mondatta, and I’d never heard of it, and he said hey, you wanna go do a route with me? And I said oh, okay, you know I had no idea…he had me up on A3/A4, still my first week of real aid climbing, and he got my systems very dialed. I learned a lot from him…and after that it became much less painful.

T – Gym climbing has taken off so much…do you feel like there danger of a complacency, where you get these climbers who are born and raised in the gym, and they try to go out and do alpine stuff, and just get in over there heads…you know, thinking the world’s one big outdoor gym?

M – Well, there are a couple different possibilities. One, there is a certain casualness that can be around climbing, especially in a gym, that sometimes is of concern. You need to go into the mountains with a healthy amount of respect, to learn where the limit is. But you know the gym can be such a great training ground for just getting confidence and basic skills and movement…

T – So you obviously see pluses to climbing in the gym…even though these activities are about as different as they could be…apples and oranges.

M – Well, I think that old-school elitism is something that’s kind of forwarded by a bunch of crusty old guys, myself included, as a way to excuse the fact that we don’t train hard enough [laugh].

T – You don’t necessarily feel like bigger is better…?

M – Well, for me, it’s not so much about altitude or summit elevation. I’m definitely attracted to the bigness of it, but for me, it’s all what I can do in a bigger style…when I went to Alaska last year I was more interested in what I could do in a single push, much less interested in getting on top of Denali…

T – Single push…are you more into the routes you can fire in a day, or are you okay with multiple days…any preference there?

M – For myself, most of the routes I do are 2-3 days on the actual routes. If you take out the time you spend cooking and sleeping, all the gear…of course you’re gonna spend all that time you save actually crashing out exhausted once you get back home to base camp…so it doesn’t really save you any time.

T – But then you’re done at least…

M – Exactly, see I would rather suffer in my own living room…

T – You’ve probably had some fairly gripping experiences over the past 12 years…any “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” stories you’d like to share?

M – Okay, learning experiences…well, the whole deal is if you can make it out okay then it wasn’t that bad, right?

T – Yeah, that’s true isn’t it…but in retrospect only, right? I mean, when you’re in it, you think you’re gonna die.

M – That first serious wall route, Zenyatta Mondatta, that I did with my professor, I thought I was gonna die for a whole week [laugh].

T – You were up there for a week…?

M – It took us seven days on the route, which, you know, not a poor time, not exceptional. We planned for six, so we were out of food and water. That was the first time I’d experienced a copperhead…on lead. My belay partner was explaining the process to me while I had the hammer in my hand…that was a little unnerving. At one point I spent about a half hour just sitting on a hook with my forehead on the rock, just listening to the wind, wishing that I could downclimb it, but I’d hooked out about 40 feet from the anchor, with no gear, so I didn’t even know how to downclimb, so I just had to stay there until I figured it out, short of jumping.

T – At least you had your professor on belay…

M – Right, right…I trusted him. I think of other times in the mountains…the most scary things are when you’re surrounded by objective hazards that you can do nothing about. I’ve had to sit out storms for a day or two in a base camp knowing that I’m in pretty active avalanche terrain…

T – Any incidents with the weather…weather-caused epics?

M – Again, it’s just a matter of perspective. First time I did Triple Couloirs on Dragon Tail, we got into weather very quickly, and the first couloir was sliding around us…lots of point-releases, so we didn’t feel like we could downclimb it, but we couldn’t really see, and we got off route, just broke out onto the north face, did 10 or so pitches of mixed climbing on real loose rock, not knowing where we were going. It took us 27 hours to get up and down…we had no idea about the descent either, and we got to the top and thought, oh, if we rap down to that next ledge that’ll be the walk-off ledge, and we basically pulled our ropes and got ourselves into no-mans land, and had to do 10 more raps on single pins over terrain we couldn’t see. We had to hike over a ridge to get back to our base camps.

T – Seems like in those situations you’re just always making judgment calls, moment to moment, no long term plan…reacting to situations as they evolve.

M – We didn’t bring any sort of gear to take care of us, thinking we’d do the route very quickly. We didn’t even have enough layers to really hunker down, so we were forced to climb through the night, which was a good lesson…

T – Looking back on your “learning experiences,” do you feel like there’s a pattern in terms of the mental state they put you in…you know, how you get through them, how you respond, a switch that flips…?

M – Reinhold Messner talks about having intense preparation, a meticulous plan, and a willingness to throw it all out the window on a moment’s notice. I think that’s a pretty good dictum. It’s so much about mediation…about just being present in the moment, you know, what are my actual choices, what are the possible outcomes. Sometimes in second-guessing yourself, you can quite possible get yourself hurt.

T – How’s it been living in the Pacific Northwest?

M – Well, I went to high school here. I’ve traveled some but always come back to Portland…I always think of Portland as my home. The thing I’m most interested in is alpine and especially winter alpine, and to do that around here, the best tools are an understanding spouse, a car that runs, and access to the internet so you can check the damn weather…

T – So are you good to go on all three fronts…?

M – Yeah…especially the spouse. The car could use some work…but yeah, every day I get up and check the weather…the postings…see who’s climbing what, and then try to line that up with the work schedule, and have a flexible schedule there, and a willingness to ditch a shift and just go. Years ago, in a restaurant I used to tell them I had H-fever, which meant that when that high pressure was coming over the Cascades, I was gonna be sick for 24 hours, couldn’t make it to work. You only get so many windows…

T – How about trips coming up…what do you have planned in the near future?

M – Well, I’m deciding between southern Colorado and Wyoming, and it looks like Wyoming. There’s some great stuff…lot of big routes, minimal avalanche danger, big ice routes…winter is all about trying to lead as many ice pitches as possible…kind of a preparation for the spring alpine. The way the rock forms out there, it tends to be in vertical steps, then it plateaus, so you’ll do a dead vertical pitch, and then you top out and you can take off your rope and actually walk to the next pitch on horizontal ground. So they’re still big days, but the commitment level is more about leading the pitch.

T – How about aspirations before you cash in your chips with this whole alpine thing…you know the one route you’ve just gotta do…

M – Well, I think for good luck purposes, if I name the route then I’d be jinxing myself, but this spring, I’m going to Alaska twice, and I’m really excited about that. I’ll spend some time on Mt. Dickie, and try another route closer to Denali that’s been climbed once….try to do that in a different style.

T – Do you have a preferred region…?

M – It’s all about the Alaska range…that’s where it’s at.

T – What is it about the Alaska range…the nature of the climbing?

M – The granite, the ice, just the vastness of the wilderness out there. I mean talk about being responsible for your decisions, we brought a radio and then you realize there might be 5 minutes within a given week where you could get a response on that radio. So you’re really out there. And it’s big. Last year we spent four and a half days non-stop in our tent playing Yahtzee, waiting for avalanches to stop roaring…and it’s like, okay, this is the real deal. And there’s just so much out there.

T – Did you see Touching the Void? What did you think, in terms of the way they depicted the experience those guys had, based on your experiences…good way for the masses to get a little taste of the alpine experience?

M – Yeah, I thought it was such a great portrayal, that I took my wife to see the film, but only the first half hour. Once they summitted, I said, oh the rest is boring, let’s go home and have dinner [laugh].

T – Any parting advice for someone looking to get into alpine climbing?

M – Well, I used to work mountain rescue on Rainier for a couple years, so I would suggest trying something else first [laugh]. But beyond that, I would perhaps encourage getting a general backcountry experience…just trying backpacking, learning how to carry loads, move efficiently over moderate terrain, learn your layering systems, how to keep yourself dry and hydrated. The best recommended route would be to find a good mentor, and if there aren’t a lot of those around, then there are local clubs and organizations that can teach basic skills as well. Doing the “red route” at PRG doesn’t mean you can do the equivalent in the Alaska range.

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