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June 23, Pisang, Manang region of Nepal:

I wake up before 5 a.m. to see alpenglow on the slopes of the mountains. I dash out of the still-sleepy teahouse and up the hill. Halfway up, I stop to catch my breath and hectically set up the equipment in fear of losing the magical dawn light. Nearly three miles higher than me, the summit of Annapurna II pierces the denim sky.

Yesterday, all I saw was the glacier's crevassed bluish tongues under the veil of clouds, but now the mother of the glacier is showing off the majesty and splendor of her treacherous north face to the first rays of the solstice sun. I trip the shutter again and again, change the roll, and keep on shooting. Awestruck, I pause and study the relief of the snow cornices and the sharp ridges; I wonder what the feeling is to meet the sunrise up there, when the world beneath you is still drowned in darkness and the sharp cone of the peak's shadow cuts through the thin, icy air.

Kaloyan Kapralov '05 went to Annapurna as a photographer, but left captivated and determined to return as a climber.

by Peter Rice '05
photo: Kaloyan Kapralov '05


One day nearly 40 years ago, Gary Ziegler '64 was ascending the steep, icy slope of Nevado Contraherbas, a 20,000-foot peak in Peru. Suddenly, an immense slab of the mountain below Ziegler's boots broke loose with a loud crack. Clutching an aluminum tube he'd anchored just a little higher into the mountain, he looked down in numbed silence as the rumbling cloud of ice and snow fell several thousand feet down to the glacier below. Death would have to bide its time.

To Ziegler and other high-altitude mountain climbers, events like that are all part of the game. "It's almost like in a combat situation. You just bite the bullet and keep going. Your focus is on surviving and moving on," says Ziegler.

So how is that survival instinct nurtured at Colorado College? It can't be coincidence that so many climbers find their way to CC ­ or is there something about CC that creates climbers?

The reasons CC alumni climb mountains are as diverse as the climbers themselves. Some do it for the personal challenge, others for the beauty of nature, and still others for the opportunity to absorb another culture and way of life. All of them, though, seem to like the dramatic break from their usual lives.

Location and Legacy

What makes CC a haven for climbers? A good question with an easy answer, as it turns out: location, legacy, and block breaks."Being in Colorado, you¹ve got proximity to the mountains and great weather," says David Conlin '99, who can be found climbing alpine rocks or sheets of ice when he's not doing graduate work in ecology at University of Colorado-Boulder.

Colorado College's proximity to the Garden of the Gods and Cheyenne Cañon certainly doesn't hurt, and even the curriculum adds to the outdoor experience. "My first two classes were geology, and we spent the first seven weeks touring and camping through the Rockies," says Brian O'Connor '82. "I now look at a mountain with greater knowledge and appreciation."

Thus inspired, many CC students and faculty pioneered the earliest major climbs of the Rockies. Among them was political science Professor Albert Ellingwood, who taught at CC from 1914 to 1919 and famously climbed La Plata Peak in central Colorado by a harrowing detour now known as Ellingwood Ridge ­ one of three high-elevation features in Colorado named for him.

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