G.P.S . Elevation: 8,324’
It was clear but brisk, really brisk: Twenty-four degrees Fahrenheit brisk. But it was that kind of rare December night perfect for climbing the highest mountain in Oregon:
Mt. Hood (11,249’).
The, rare, clear moonlit night reflecting on the white snow made the night-climb easy and beautiful.
I’m kind of a big guy: Six feet four inches.
Some say handsome.
“My, my! You look like a chiseled Greek god, JD!” But that’s Nadene in my office and she wears glasses.
My name is John Denning, but I prefer JD.
I’ve hiked to the top of Hood twice before but today would be different: Today, I would never make it.
I’ve never made excuses for stupid behavior, like the fools who attempted to climb this mountain in the winter without proper equipment, but I always figured,
I’ve got personal issues too.
Everybody’s gotta fight their own demons.
If I just could corral mine, I’d be happy.
I wasn’t one of those types who blamed my mother or father for all of my failings cause. For all of their shortcomings, on balance, with all they went through they were pretty phenomenal people.
People tell me I love doing everything at full throttle. I guess that’s true but I do it because it’s just plain fun. What’s wrong with simply enjoying life?
Whether it was racing motorcycles through the woods of Oregon, jumping out of planes HAHO (High Altitude High Opening) style, or helping a friend’s ninety-year old mother move all of her possessions to another state, I operate at full throttle.
A friend, Doug Meyers, once told me,
“You hug your motorcycles more than you hug your parents.”
I’m not married. My father passed after a long illness. So I try to treat everyone like family.
My life changed after a speeding ticket on my motorcycle.
I wound up in jail.
They claim I was doing 130 m.p.h. through Yuma, Arizona. I told the officer,
“Impossible! This thing can’t do more than 120!”
So, sitting in jail, I said to myself,
Self:
Instead of causing the police so much grief, you might as well do something for your country.
What do you like to do?
Well, I liked thrilling, daring, crazy things.
So after 9/11 I joined the Navy.
After eight weeks of Navy boot camp I signed up for the toughest twenty-seven-weeks of my life. This was Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training, better known as SEALs. I broke my leg just three days before the end of Phase II, meaning I had to wait for the next class and take the entire nine weeks of Phase II over again, which usually means: Washout.
And it appeared that was exactly what was happening, although I could run on my leg after six weeks, my underwater swim times were over ten minutes behind the basic minimums for passage.
In fact, the instructors/motivators (What we called drill sergeants at boot camp) started calling me: Washout number one.
There were two others who washed out of Phase II and were taking the phase over again with me.
Washout number two and Washout number three.
They both quit on their first day back!
On my last possible attempt at the underwater course, I squeaked by just in time:
With two seconds to spare!
I went on to easily pass Phase III.
Looking back on it all, I really had come a long way.
SEAL Qualification Training (SQT), jump school, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE), Personnel Qualification Standard (PQS), and six months of probation now all seemed worth it as I was officially:
A Navy SEAL!
No brag.
Just fact.
I rose to a Chief in Navy Seal Team Six (Now “affectionately” called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, NSWDG or DEVGRU) quicker than any SEAL in history, (From enlistment to DEVGRU in just under seven years!)!
But that’s where the bragging ends.
I really want nothing do with the Navy or Navy politics whatsoever (More on that later!).
Anyway, I really want to tell you about this hike.
Mt. Hood is one of the deadliest climbing mountains in the world with over 130 souls lost to date.
Of course, there are more novices who attempt this climb than many of the more difficult mountains.
Deaths average about one a year but that doesn’t seem to stop anyone.
I love the outdoors.
And when things became really stressful at the Portland FBI office I would take a hike, literally!
Well, things were now especially stressful as over 800,000 terrorists are on various FBI watch lists, and that was just inside the U.S. But since there are only 35,664 total FBI personnel everyone knew it was only a matter of time before some nut or nuts would do something far worse than shoot up a nightclub and murder forty-nine people.
When I left the SEALs I applied to the FBI’s counterterrorism department and became a Gold Team Instructor training FBI agents. We war-gamed chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) material attacks in U.S. cities. I always thought,
Even if just a few true believers got hold of a nuke, God help us all!
My job was to train counterterrorism, sniper and other personnel in every terrorist situation imaginable. I met many of my current and retired friends from DEVGRU here.
Routinely, the FBI would run Top Secret ops, like shut down NRG stadium in Houston, Texas a couple of months before the Super Bowl, just for practice.
Inside the stadium we would run an active sniper, or various CBRN scenarios.
On other occasions I’d be whisked away by private jet to a major city to war game a chem weapon in a movie theater or an attack on a nuclear power plant.
More recently, however, I was doing something far less exciting and far more boring:
Surveillance.
Currently, I had been assigned to a potentially high-risk person of interest. But I was trying very hard to compartmentalize and not think about office work today.
“Always pay attention to your surroundings!” as I was told by my very first SEAL instructor on Coronado, just across the bay from San Diego.
Again, I had to snap myself back to reality. I know that on Mt. Hood, storms can come out of nowhere, especially in winter. You are so high that, during the day, the weather looks sunny and fine, like in an airplane. Unless you’re experienced, however, you may not notice the difference between fog in the valleys below and a storm pushing quickly up the mountain. When a storm system is pushed into the side of the Cascade mountain range the sun can disappear in an instant and a zero visibility blizzard can come out of nowhere.
But city slickers in their, just purchased, state of the art, flashy clothing, and cell phones could never totally be deterred, despite all the warnings. These were the people that didn’t know squat about mountaineering but, rather, were here for their latest Facebook selfie. But hey, to each his own!
During the day, the upper Palmer Chairlift would carry skiers to 8,397 feet. U.S. Olympic ski teams would train on Mt. Hood, sometimes all summer long. In fact, Hood is the only mountain in North America where you can generally ski all summer!
But this is the dead of winter. As I walked near the last tower I heard the frozen cables on the lift start. The icy cold, braded steel grumbled like an old man trying to get out of bed.
I sure hope they don’t start allowing faux mountain climbers to use the chair lifts now, I sarcastically mumbled to myself.
I remember thinking: These idiots will probably get hit on the head by a rock or an icefall.
Even a small rock sized chunk of ice can slice skin, brake bones or knock you unconscious. In which case:
They’ll be seeing Jesus before they see the top!
Most came up the South side, as it’s the easiest of the fifteen ways to the top. Even in December rocks are always a major concern. The Old Chute is the last leg but the easiest way to ascend the top. But even this route is a forty-five-degree climb and nearly vertical in some places.