Interview with James Tabor | Sound Authors Radio

December 20, 2008

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors. Today is September 5, 2008. On this date in history Russia’s Peter the Great imposed a tax on beards in 1698. Other interesting things happened; On The Road was published on this day. George Bush nominated John Roberts for the Chief Justice and then what I find fascinating is my doctoral degree is in music; John Cage’s birthday is today. He was born in 1912, John Milton Cage Junior. He really revolutionized the classical music world with his music. And another classical composer was born on September 5, 1735, that’s Johan Christian Bach. Jessie James was born on this day so it’s really a packed day in history. Of course the republican convention just finished and people are thinking a lot about politics. On the show today I have four guests. My first three are authors and my fourth as always is a musician. The musician this week are called Old School Freight Train and they are an incredible singing group with a new album out and we’ll listen to them at the end of the show. My other two guests on the show are James M. Tabor and his incredible book Forever on the Mountain. It’s got amazing reviews and its award winning and we’ll talk to him in a minute. Kelly Adair who went through the program Body For Life and she’s going to talk to us about that in the book Champions Body For Life. So welcome to the show today, sound authors this is Dr. Kent. I want to welcome my first guest James M. Tabor. Are you there?

James Tabor: I sure am Dr. Kent, thanks for having me.

Dr. Kent: Forever on the Mountain by James M. Tabor was a Barnes & Noble great new writer’s selection, which is a big deal. It was the winner of the 2007 national outdoor book award for history and biography, a winner of the 2007 band mountain festival book awards grand prize and many others. A quote from Time Magazine says “A riveting account of a long ago mountaineering disaster.” People compare it to Into Thin Air. It’s had quite a few successes. Tell me a little about the story Forever on the Mountain.

James Tabor: Sure here’s the short version. In 1967, 12 young men set out to climb Mount McKinley, which is North America’s highest peak. Its one of the most dangerous mountains on earth. Unfortunately seven of them perished in the attempt and there were only five survivors. There were a number of mysterious things about this particular tragedy. One of them was that none of those seven bodies were ever recovered so we have no diaries, journals, cameras, no evidence of what happened to them or why.

The other mysterious thing is that although they were trapped in a known location for ten days and nothing was done to try to affect a rescue for them. You can imagine what would be happening today if we had seven guys trapped lets say near the summit of Mount Hood and nothing was done. There would be a human cry around the world. So there were several mysterious things about that and being an old mountaineer myself I learned about the story five years ago and was surprised that it hadn’t received more notoriety in the 40 years since then.

The biggest surprise was that I, despite being very well versed in what I had heard of it, I set out to do a little digging and without too much digging there was quite an untold story here so my book set out to answer a number of the unanswered questions that lingered in the aftermath of their seven deaths.

Dr. Kent: How did you get into writing about this kind of disaster? I know you have pretty extensive experience doing writing for Outside and Ski Magazines and things like that. How did you get into writing this long of an account of this story?

James Tabor: To be honest with you this is the first sort of disaster investigation that I had actually written certainly book length. I was intrigued by it because I did find an Alaskan myself in the 1980s and had remained intrigued in the area since then. I’m also a lifelong journalist and author and whenever a story with so much mystery and so much tragedy comes across your desk, I as an author just got hooked. It wouldn’t let me sleep at night so that’s kind of what drew me into it and then the rescue and a lot of research interviewing the survivors, interviewing a lot of people that were onsite in 1967. Maybe most importantly digging out of the government with a Freedom of Information action lots of documents of evidence that had not previously come to light.

Dr. Kent: You have experienced being on Mount McKinley. Tell us about that.

James Tabor: I will tell you quite frankly that it just kicked my butt. I attempted the mountain with a very experienced partner in 1981 and even though he was an averse we both substantially underestimated McKinley in both its size and its weather. We only got to about 14,000 feet, which is as one person said like stubbing your toe on the mountain. Then we turned around and fled back to base camp. I learned in that attempt what an amazingly challenging mountain McKinley is. I did go back some years later to climb other mountains in Alaska but never had the privilege of summiting McKinley. But I learned an awful lot about it in the three weeks I was there I can tell you that.

Dr. Kent: What is it like for the folks like me that haven’t been on a mountain? I’ve seen so much footage of Everest and they talk about you have to get ready with certain altitudes and things like that. What’s the difference with McKinley?

James Tabor: It’s really interesting. Everest is a very apt comparison because that’s kind of the gold standard that most people have for mountaineering accomplishments. The fact is that McKinley is 35 degrees of latitude farther north than Everest, which puts it much closer to the Arctic Circle, which means that it has much, much worse weather all the time. One guy who climbed both mountains multiple times said that he found Everest “tropical” by comparison. It’s also true that to climb McKinley from base to summit you have to ascend 18,000 vertical feet.

On Everest a similar ascent from base to summit is 10,000 so it’s more than a mile and a half extra vertical to climb on Mount McKinley. Finally, McKinley unfortunately holds a unique position east of the Bearing Sea and north of the Gulf of Alaska, which puts it squarely in the sights of some of the worst storm traps on earth. So you have conspiring against you on Mount McKinley many things which make most mountaineers to consider it to be one of the premier challenges on earth for mountain climbing.

Dr. Kent: Why did you get into in the first place writing about this kind of thing? Were you into this outdoor experiences and that’s how you sort of gravitated towards writing about them?

James Tabor: I would have to say from a very young age; my father was a life long outdoorsman. He was a hiker, a horseman, a hunter, a fisherman, and he had me out in the woods by the time I was six years old. I went to college in Vermont, where you’re surrounded by mountains and I think I fell in love with the outdoors at a very young age and a lot of my writing has been about outdoors and about adventure type things. So I guess I’m lucky enough to be able to combine a love of the outdoors with the love of writing and to focus on those things. As I said, when you have a tragedy like this with so many unanswered questions it was something a writer could not pass up. So I feel very fortunate to be able to tell the rest of that story.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about this tragedy. These guys start climbing the mountain and again what did the media report? What did people know from the outside? What was the easy information to find out?

James Tabor: The easy information was in the aftermath, it was asserted by some government agencies and “McKinley experts” that the seven men who died really were incompetent, poorly equipped, ill conditioned and shouldn’t have been on the mountain and in a sense invited their own destruction. One expert even used the word suicidal, that they committed suicide by getting in over their heads. So for 40 years the seven guys who died, they and their family lived under this shadow of death by incompetence if you will.

Well I found out that those assertions were made especially by government agencies who had really failed miserably to locate and rescue them and were in a sense trying to deflect blame and responsibility from themselves onto those seven men. In fact, the seven men were experienced, competent, very well equipped climbers who did everything right and unfortunately were caught by the worst storm in recorded Mount McKinley history up to that point. One of the great fruits for me in writing the book was to be able to clear the names of seven men whose memories had suffered for 40 years under these unfair accusations.

To really point out the fact that while the intentions might have been good by the park service, the United States air force and other agencies; they just really didn’t do a really good job of fulfilling their responsibilities at that time.

Dr. Kent: What’s interesting is now the entire political lens of the world is back on Alaska again.

James Tabor: You’ve certainly got that right. With Sarah Palin’s ascendancy we’re going to see a lot more scrutiny given to all things Alaskan. I will tell you that in the aftermath of the tragedy the scrutiny placed on the park service, the air force and other agencies really produced dramatic change and so on McKinley today you have the best equipped, most experienced, most expertise search and rescue operation on earth. Unfortunately there was not that in 1967 but it is that today and I think Alaskans and the national park service and all of us can be thankful for that.

Dr. Kent: Have you had some contact with the surviving families and is that how you were able to piece together some of these stories?

James Tabor: I had indeed. The first people I met with were the five survivors themselves, the climbers who are now in their mid 60s, and they were all very generous. They all shared their diaries, their logs, their pictures and most importantly their personal recollections. I was able to contact some of the deceased fellows’ families and interview them but more important because they were not on site so more important really were the survivors and people in the immediate area of Mount McKinley; park service employees, the pilots and folks like that who volunteered their recollections. Equally important were the records, its like radio tape, transcripts, and actual radio broadcasts and things like that allowed me to piece together things probably in a way that let me know more about what happened than anybody at that time or since then. It was a lengthy research project, it took about two years.

Dr. Kent: Going into it, when you first thought okay this will be a great book, have you uncovered things that you didn’t think you would uncover?

James Tabor: I did indeed. One of the major accusations that had been leveled in the wake of the tragedy was that the leader, a man named Joe Wilcox, who survived was one of the major agents of the tragedy by being a bad leader by just a number of bad judgments by him and he invited what happened. That turned out not to be true at all. He had for 40 years had been unfairly scapegoated so that was one thing. Another thing was that and no one really knew about this but on the mountain at the same time in 67 there were five young Alaskan men who pretty much volunteered to become a defacto rescue attempt.

Government agencies weren’t going to do anything and these five young men performed heroically. They didn’t save any lives but they risked their own trying to. So being able to tell their story for the first time in 40 years. I discovered that. I don’t think anybody else knew about these five young, now older men, and telling their story for the first time was really rewarding. It made me feel very good to be able to give them credit that they had never gotten before.

Dr. Kent: This is such a fascinating thing. Speaking to people that have done that kind of extreme rescue and extreme adventure. I have some contact with some people that do those kinds of extreme sports and certainly you have. What can you tell the listeners about those kind of extreme athletes, extreme rescuers?

James Tabor: One thing is that they have levels of commitment and courage that are almost impossible to really understand. I sat across the table from these fellows and said how could you do this day in and day out for five or six days in 40 below temperature, 100 mile an hour winds, and continue to pursue the goal of trying to help your fellow mountaineers? And they looked at me and said well we never thought about doing anything different. That’s just how mountaineers feel about each other. So that was certainly one thing, the lengths. They were like soldiers in combat, that’s what.

Dr. Kent: I think we just lost James. We’re going to try and get him back. In the meantime, I’m going to play a quick commercial. Be back in one minute.

[Commercial-ad]

Dr. Kent: We’re back on the show with James Tabor. Sorry about that.

James Tabor: Me too doctor, its good to be back.

Dr. Kent: Let’s talk about where folks can find this book. I know its now out in paperback.

James Tabor: That’s right. It was issued in paperback in July. Of course you can buy it at many of the popular online sites like Amazon. All your independent bookshops will also be carrying it because it has been reviewed very well and popularly. You can learn more about me if you like at my website at jamesmtabor.com. So yeah, that’s where it can be found.

Dr. Kent: What are you doing next?

James Tabor: My next book I’ve been working on for about a year now and is actually about the search for the deepest cave on earth. It’s the last great terrestrial discovery that was made in 2004. It’s like climbing Mount Everest in reverse is the way one person put it. It requires weeks and weeks underground, multiple camps, just an astonishing adventure that again to an outdoor reader who loves adventure this will be a great story. It will be out by the end of the year.

Dr. Kent: Is that something you’ve experienced also, cave diving?

James Tabor: I have, I did a bit of caving back in the late 80s and early 90s. Some very extreme caving in super deep caves. Some diving; I am a master diver and it’s another world down there. It’s like through the looking glass if you will. It’s an incredible underground wonderland and I hope to be able to bring readers through the book down there so they can experience it themselves.

Dr. Kent: Where did you get this bug and how does your family feel every time you go on these great adventures?

James Tabor: That’s why I don’t do them anymore actually. My family’s patience finally ran out but I guess there are some people who sort of biochemical need more stimulation than others just to feel comfortable and I think I might have been born with a brain like that. I’ve always liked things like hang gliding and scuba diving, climbing, and those kinds of things. As my children were born and began to grow older I really had to taper off those things so no, my life is a good bit tamer these days than it used to be.

Dr. Kent: I hope the next book does really well. Of course that’s the kind of adventure I’ve not seen on shelves and I hope it gets the same kind of exposure this one has. It’s been a real honor speaking with James M. Tabor, author of Forever on the Mountain: The truth behind one of mountaineering’s most controversial disasters. We can find him on the website at jamesmtabor.com. There’s some good stuff on there. Thank you so much for being on the show.

James Tabor: The pleasure is mine Dr. Kent, take care.

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show is going to be Kelly Adair and she is a participant in a project called Champions Body for Life. It’s become a bestselling book and we’re going to talk with her next about how her life has changed and about this book itself. So come on back for that.

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