A 50-Year-Old on Other Side of Mountain Had Mixed Emotions

Sue Cobb, a 50-year-old lawyer from Washington, D.C., was on her way up the other side of the mountain when Stacy Allison became the first American woman to reach the top of Mt. Everest on Sept. 29.

Cobb, daunted by wind and poor weather, got no higher than 24,500 feet, nearly a mile below the summit.

Cobb was a member of the 35-person Wyoming Centennial Everest Expedition following the historic northern route of British climbers George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine, who were last seen heading up from 28,000 feet in 1924.

“The six members of the summit team had been down to base camp to rest,” Cobb said by phone from the capital this week. “On the way back up to advanced base camp for our final push, I learned Stacy had gotten to the top from the other side.

“That was a little discouraging, because at that point we were trying to get one of our two women up. I was very happy for her. She deserved it. She is a real climber in that sense.

“Once you’re there and have seen how hard it is, you’re happy for anybody who gets to the top. I still wanted to get to the top but, subconsciously, for me and the team, it was a little bit of a letdown, particularly since we were all so tired, anyway.

“At that point, I felt what we should do, for the benefit of the team, was try to get our strongest guys up there and forget about the two women.”

Along with Cobb, the expedition--also known as “Cowboys on Everest”--included climber Julie Cheney.

Cobb admits to limited climbing experience. Her effort, in particular, was criticized by mountain-climbing purists as a gimmick to put the first American woman on the Everest summit. Her husband, Charles E. Cobb, is assistant secretary of commerce for trade development in the Reagan Administration--a status, cynics pointed out, that did not hurt fund-raising or publicity for the expedition.

“You must have read the Outside (magazine) article,” Cobb said. “Let me say this: In some respects, (writer) Dave Roberts made some good points, but in other respects he did a disservice to the Wyoming team because he had no idea what our expedition was about.

“It wasn’t really about putting the first American woman up there. That was just one of the things to do.”

Cobb said the group, led by brothers Courtney and Bob Skinner, also included scientists in pursuit of physiological and geological interests, but she agreed with Roberts that she wasn’t an accomplished Himalayan climber.

“I don’t dispute that,” Cobb said. “I’m not a trained technical climber that’s been doing it for years, although I’ve had enough training to feel safe in what I was doing. Obviously, I did fine.

“But I was a little annoyed about the part about my husband--that I was being used to raise money--because I’ve been climbing with the Skinner brothers since 1985, and that’s long before my husband was a Reagan appointee. Chuck had absolutely nothing to do with this.

“It was laudatory for this group from Wyoming to want to take people who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to go there . . . and to do some of the research they were doing.

“In the end, they did use the American women to some extent, and I don’t see anything terrible about that, either. In fact, it would have been totally extraordinary if someone like myself had reached the summit as the first American woman.

“It had to include the effort of a team to put that person up. You know, somebody doesn’t walk up there by themself. But a 50-year-old American woman--it was a fantastic opportunity.

“I always recognized that for me to get to the top of that mountain was going to take a combination of circumstances that was highly unusual. The weather had to be good, the team had to be working well together, I had to be in good health. Everything had to be right, because Everest is not an easy mountain.

“I’m fairly strong, but I was realistic about it. I wasn’t going to bet my life on it--and that’s a good way to put it.”

Cobb said she knew of 12 deaths on Everest this year. Stacy Allison said she knew of 9. Either way, a person goes away with a lot of respect for the mountain.

“The mountain’s tough,” Cobb said. “There are tougher mountains, but it’s tough. Twenty-nine thousand (feet) is formidable, and the weather is formidable.”

Cobb, who is 5 feet 6 3/4 inches and weighs 150 pounds, normally, spent 55 days above 17,600 feet at base camp, helping to ferry 35-pound equipment packs between camps.

“In the end, that caused me some problems,” she said. “That was more draining on me than I anticipated. I had to do it twice because I couldn’t take all my gear in one load. I lost over 20 pounds and I began to be subject to hypothermia (a drastic dropping of body temperature).”

For the first week in October the temperature was always below zero, often down to 50 degrees below.

“The winds were consistently 40 to 80 m.p.h. with gusts up to over 100,” Cobb said. “That just kills you, when you’ve been up there that long and your body’s tired, anyway.

“The wind and the cold were just too much. We didn’t want to have any fatalities. Everybody was pretty tired, and that’s when you can get hurt. There was virtually unanimous agreement that we should get off the mountain.”

But she would do it again.

“People of my age group are vital and active these days,” she said. “They want to be doing things that are adventuresome, fun and exciting.

“I had a wonderful time . . . It was lots of fun.

“But I felt the last day I was up there that I’d climbed as high as I could, if I tried to go higher I was very much in danger because I was so weak. I had no inner resources to re-strengthen my body.

“You realize when you’re standing on the north ridge that you’re a mere speck (and that) human beings are not as significant as they think they are. The world really doesn’t revolve around us.”