The Higher You Go, The Farther You See

"How are you doing?" asks Tom Egan, our head guide.

"Not good," gasps Evan Mattenson. "My legs are cramping and I'm sick to my stomach."

It's 4:00 a.m. and our climb up Wyoming's Grand Teton is just two hours old. Battling 40-mile-per-hour headwinds and subfreezing temperatures, it will take us at least another eight hours to reach the Grand's 13,770-foot summit.

"You probably won't make it," Tom tells Evan. Quitting now, the guide explains, means Evan can descend safely to high camp, provided he waits until sunrise. Quitting later means he's stuck on the mountain face until the rest of us return for him. He hesitates, then says he's bailing out. We leave him in a moraine with a bagel, a couple of apricots, and an uncommon amount of self-doubt.

"I had no idea," says Evan as we flick on our head lamps and turn toward the mountain's Lower Saddle, "what I was getting into."

I've come to the Tetons to take Jackson Hole Mountain Guides' train-and-climb program for beginning mountaineers. The three-day course, one of the most popular in the country, includes a day of basic instruction on rock and ice that leads to a bid for Grand Teton's peak. At each end of the trip is a half-day to full-day approach-and-return hike. Summit day itself lasts anywhere from 16 to 24 hours.

None of the guides is surprised to find that we've got two securities traders on our five-person team: the pool of neophyte mountaineers is thickly stocked with businesspeople. Skip Horner, an independent guide who has led clients up the highest peaks on the planet, explains the attraction this way: "When you're high on a ledge with nothing but air below, you have to perform. That's part of the rush. The business guys I take out aren't like doctors or lawyers, who are more apt to look for ways to minimize risk. Big risk is what has netted them their biggest paydays."

We're a curious mix, with curious reasons for being here. I'm a writer who has reported on mountaineering for the past decade and has developed a degree of familiarity with the sport that has no basis in reality. This becomes apparent on day one when I put the climbing harness on backwards, then inside out, then backwards again. Knots are also a problem.

Jen and Mark Mjellinek, a honeymooning geologist couple en route to volcanology fellowships in Australia, have a bit more real-world experience. They're from Idaho and they're rock-climbing enthusiasts, though only Mark has an alpine background. A few weeks earlier, he and a friend climbed Mount Rainier, the toughest ascent in the lower 48.

Si Matthies oversees 17 traders who buy and sell corporate bonds for Norwest Investment Services Inc. in Minneapolis. His wife gave him the course for his 40th birthday this past spring a reward for a statement he once made about climbing Mount McKinley before he hits 50. He has a bullish, go-for-it personality and a broad, exfootball player's physique. Si says he is known at the office as someone who would take on a big-bang trip like this. "It's not exactly out of character," he allows.

Evan Mattenson is a different story. A 28-year-old currency manager for Prudential Global Advisers, he's lean, but not so athletic appearing. He admits that people in his New York office were pretty surprised to hear he'd signed up for a major climb. He says he's come here to learn technical-climbing skills -- though he's never set foot on a mountain. When we pull up to the trailhead at Lupine Meadows and get our first glimpse of the Grand's sheer north face, Evan's jaw drops. Literally.

Day One: What you think you've prepared for isn't what you've prepared for.

Rising from the pan-flat Jackson Valley, Grand Teton is forbidding, a shark-toothed blade shielded by glaciers. I've heard about the big exposure on the Grand and the lunge move at a precipitous pitch dubbed Wall Street. I've psyched myself for the climb, but I quickly learn that the number-one necessity on any big mountain isn't type A chutzpah but grade A fitness.

The seven-mile hike to high camp gains 5,000 feet in altitude. Packs weigh 30 to 35 pounds. In the dry heat we've stripped to the minimum: shorts, boots, sun visors. Coming from sea level is a curse. I have an unquenchable thirst, overwhelming fatigue, and at day's end a hangoverlike headache.

Nearly everyone is cranky. Jen labors hard and snipes at Mark, who hikes twice as fast and seems hardly to labor at all. Si gets a painful blister, a physical and mental annoyance since he's worn his size-12 One Sports to work for the past month. Every morning for the past three months he's been up at 4:30, biking 20 miles and lifting weights at the YMCA. "It didn't do a thing," he complains.

Evan is starting to wonder how much worse the next two days will get. He was inspired to take the course after reading Seven Summits (Warner Books, 1986) by Dick Bass and Frank Wells, two businessmen who knocked off the tallest peaks on each of the seven continents. It made climbing sound all too easy. "Actually," says Evan, "the book is really starting to piss me off."