Climbers want your old gear to aid Pakistan

Normally, when you put any four of the world's great mountain climbers together in a room, the climbing war stories flow like ale at an Irish pub.

Not tonight.

When Seattle-area climbing greats Jim Whittaker, Steve Swenson, Jim Wickwire and Dee Molenaar assemble at 7 p.m. at Seattle's Flagship REI store, they'll be offering up some gripping tales of survival. Not their own, but of the people of the mountainous regions of northern Pakistan, still devastated from October's massive earthquakes that killed more than 73,000 and left 3.3 million homeless at the onset of winter.

The event is a benefit for the Pakistan Alpine Club, whose members are looking to help homeless Pakistanis simply survive the winter. All proceeds from the $10-per-head admission donation will go to earthquake relief.

But that's just the start of the effort.

The team of four, aided by famed mountaineer Ed Viesturs of Bainbridge Island, are asking all of us outdoorsy Northwesterners to take a timeout from holiday shopping and do an inventory.

Look in the garage, they suggest, for that extra, still-functional, rarely used car camping or backpacking tent. Check the closets in the spare bedroom for those sleeping bags or Gore-Tex parkas whose colors don't quite rate on the hip scale anymore.

Bundle it all up and drop it off at a local REI or climbing gym, and it'll be shipped to Pakistan at year's end to provide direct, possibly lifesaving, relief to earthquake victims.

Swenson, a Seattle engineer who claimed the region's highest peak, the legendary K2, in 1990 with Greg Child, has trekked or climbed in Pakistan nine times. He knows it's difficult for the average American to imagine the plight of the earthquake stricken. The popular Western image of Pakistan is of an arid, hot place — a far cry from the reality of the hardest-hit earthquake regions.

In fact, families are freezing to death in crumbled villages at snowy elevations around 10,000 feet. The death toll is expected to climb to more than 100,000 as some of the millions left homeless succumb to cold.

"I try to tell people it would be like any one of us being dropped off at Snoqualmie Pass and trying to survive the entire winter without any of your stuff," says Swenson, 51.

Villagers often can't — and almost always won't — leave devastated areas for warmer climes because to do so would be to surrender their land, which they essentially own merely by occupying it, he says.

"That's all they've got. If they left it, they'd have nothing."

Many of the villagers also stay to care for their livestock — in many cases their only valuable possessions besides the land they live on, he notes.

But that has never stopped them from being generous with foreigners. In many cases, they've helped save the lives of climbers coming down from places like K2, with serious illness or injury.

"They helped us as climbers," Swenson says. "Now we need to help them."

Swenson and his wife, Ann Dalton, trekking in Pakistan just this summer, were humbled by the generosity of people they visited along the way.

"These people have absolutely nothing, but they would give you everything," Swenson says. "Their homes are basically mud huts, but they're offering you tea and literally taking stuff off their walls to give to you.

"My wife was crying half the time. These people have nothing ... we don't have that here. We have everything, but we hardly even know our neighbors across the street."

Tonight's event, with a $10 suggested donation, will include a slideshow and gear auction — one with a mix of new gear and some rare items from the climber's personal collections, all sure to be alluring to fans of peak bagging.

The gear drive will run from today through Dec. 29. Donors are asked to bring solid, useable tents, sleeping bags and parkas to any Puget Sound REI store, Feathered Friends, Second Ascent, Stonegardens, Vertical World, the OR retail store, The Alpine Experience in Olympia, or Cascade Crags in Everett.

All of the donated goods will be sent to New York by the Pakistan Association of Greater Seattle, then delivered by Pakistan International Airlines to the Pakistan Alpine Club for distribution. Organizers hope climbers on the Pakistan side will pinpoint the highest, least-accessible villages — those that might have received little foreign aid.

Think of it as a holiday gift that not only will make someone happy, but just might keep him or her alive to see 2006.

Trail Mix appears every Thursday. To contact Ron Judd: 206-464-8280, rjudd@seattletimes.com