On the Way Up : Korean Climbing Club of Los Angeles Finds a Challenging Way to Fulfill Its Dreams

When he came from South Korea in 1974, Young Chu’s first job here was as a dishwasher.

Shivering and hungry in a tent high on a nameless mountain in the Himalayas last month, he had time to contemplate the fruition of his American dream.

“A lot of people, especially after the (Los Angeles) riots, view Korean people as merchants or workaholics,” Chu said. “Work, work, work. When you move to America, the Korean dream is you can make a lot of money. In our case, with the money we can go climbing. We dream about this for three years, and our dream came true.”

Chu belongs to the Korean Climbing Club of Los Angeles, which sent six of its 30 members to Pakistan last month to climb the Nameless Tower. That’s its name. Another is called the Great Tower, which was named first and exhausted the superlatives. They are among a group of rock projections called the Trango Towers, which look like goal posts Scott Norwood couldn’t miss.

The club, led by Choong Ok Sunwoo of Camarillo, planned the expedition for three years. Sunwoo, Chu said, is “the godfather of modern rock climbing in Korea.”

“Sixty percent of Korea is mountains,” Chu said. “We are born to be hikers. America is a much bigger country, but we have about the same number of rock climbers. We have 50 million population and over 20,000 rock climbers.”

Chu says Koreans have surpassed the Japanese as the major climbers in the Himalayas, in terms of the number of expeditions, and rock climbing is their specialty--hence, the Nameless Tower.

“This is not a really high mountain like Everest (29,028 feet), but it’s much steeper,” Chu said.

Nameless is 6,251 meters, or 20,510 feet. The last 3,000 feet are virtually vertical solid rock. Mountain climbing photographer David Breashears said: “I call it a 3,000-foot Washington Monument.”

Snow doesn’t cling to its precipitous faces, so climbing Nameless involves little classic mountain climbing but rather state-of-the-art rock-climbing technical skills of seeking out tiny toeholds and finger grips and building protection from falls with pitons--metal spikes with eyes for ropes--and other devices.

The climbing leader was Chu’s close friend and nine-year climbing partner, Jay Cho. Both came from Seoul, but they met at a campsite in Yosemite, where they developed their skills on Halfdome and El Capitan. In 1984 they attempted another peak in the Himalayas.

“But we went to the last camp and gave it up,” Chu said. “We ran out of equipment--rope and everything. We didn’t quite understand the Himalayas. The Himalayas are bigger than we thought.”

Then they started preparing for Nameless. American Jeff Lowe and Frenchwoman Catherine Destivelle, with photographer Breashears, had free-climbed Nameless together in 1990--meaning, they used protective rope but clung only to natural features, a style that demands more exertion.

“In order to free-climb, it has to be free of ice,” Chu said. “We climbed right after a storm. There was lots of ice. . . . You also have to have a (high) red blood cell count because of the altitude, and it takes one month there to get fully acclimatized. We did not have that much time.”

Chu, 37, is production director for a rock-climbing shoe company in Santa Fe Springs.

Besides Cho, 30, a copy machine technician, and Sunwoo, 52, there were Ho Young So, 36, a San Francisco liquor store owner; Cheol Woo Kim, 31, a graphic designer, and Duk Kyoo (Charlie) Cho, 28, a gardener. The plan was that Sunwoo and Kim would not attempt to reach the summit but would assist the others.

Sunwoo, who operates several dry-cleaning stores in the Ventura area, had counseled the others: “Don’t worry about me making the summit. Enjoy yourselves. Making the summit is not important.”

Chu was asked if he agreed.

“A lot of expeditions, after making the summit, (others) become enemies,” he said. “They talk bad of each other. But after our expedition everybody is still very good friends.”

That was tested. After their first try at the summit failed, Chu wrote in his log of Aug. 4: “We are 500 feet below the summit. Suddenly we got into a snowstorm. We waited for a while but the storm got worse, so we decided to come down (to advance base camp).”

It continued to snow and blow heavily for seven days.

Aug. 5: “We let base camp (4,000 feet below) know we are running very low on food. Jay and So rappelled down on a fixed rope through the snowstorm. I feel very sorry that I am staying up here. Our sleeping bags got wet from the snow. Our Portaledge is not suitable for camping here (a Portaledge is a fold-up, scaffold-like device for ‘camping’ on a vertical face).

“We try to conserve our food. We are eating one meal a day and lying down inside a two-man tent all day long to conserve our energy.”

Their daily “meal” was soup. They were saving one package of solid food for strength for the ascent. Meanwhile, they lay in their sleeping bags, listening to the wind buffeting the tent and knocking off the snow as it collected.

“It was like lying down inside a tunnel,” Chu said later. “All day long . . . sore, because we cannot move. Hungry.”

Aug. 9: “We ran out of food, so we decided to go down to base camp. We feel very disappointed. We can’t believe how much food we have at the base camp. Duk Kyoo--Charlie--is eating too much. He is eating until he pukes.”

Chu noted later, “Usually on an expedition you lose weight. This guy gained weight--10 pounds.”

Aug. 11: “Weather is improving. We have only one chance for the final summit attack. We left base camp at 9 o’clock in the morning. But Duk Kyoo Cho felt sick and could not walk fast enough to keep up with us. We told him he should return to base camp and give up the summit attempt. But he says, ‘Give me a chance. If I can’t make it up to the first camp, I will come back.’

“We gave up on Charlie. It was dark and we were having dinner at Shoulder Camp (on the relatively horizontal shoulder of the mountain) when he arrived. We could not believe that Charlie made it.”

Aug. 12: “At 5:30 in the morning we started climbing for the summit. We climbed up the end of a fixed rope and found one crack was filled with ice from the storm. We had to give up the summit attempt, but at the last minute we found an alternative way of climbing it, so we were able to climb this crack in three hours. After that it got much easier, but it was too late, so we spent the night there without our sleeping bags.”

The four hadn’t figured on spending the night--”We thought we were going to make one-day ascent,” Chu said--so, in sub-freezing temperatures, they huddled together on a small ledge until daylight.

Aug. 13: “We got lost on the way to the summit, so we had to retreat for one pitch (a length of rope, or about 120 feet), and then we climbed directly the center of the gray wall. It was easier than it looked. (At) 12:30 the first person reached the summit, and at 1:30 everybody was standing on the summit.”

The first was So, who was given the honor because he hadn’t led any other pitches.

“We told him, ‘You lead,’ ” Chu said. “He was very happy.”

On an easy part of the descent, Charlie suffered a broken shoulder when he fell headfirst into a crevice. He became wedged 20 feet down against a rock, which Chu said prevented him from plunging to his death. Jay Cho jumped in to help, and the others formed a human chain to extricate their teammate.

The climb has made the men celebrities in South Korea, in demand for interviews.

There is one point Chu wants to make. “The Korean immigrants in L.A. are working too hard. They don’t know how to enjoy life. A lot of Korean people are not workaholics. Only the first five years. Then they are more relaxed. We are hoping to get younger members (and) teach them how to climb, how to join with nature.”

Chu says they plan to go to Russia next year to climb a mountain near the Chinese border called “Free Korea”--named years ago by Russians as a propaganda protest against the U.S. military presence in South Korea.

“Now,” Chu said, “we go there to symbolize freeing North Korea from the dictator.”

The trip to the Nameless Tower cost $35,000, of which Sunwoo put up $20,000. Russia also will be expensive, which doesn’t seem to faze the Koreans.

“We work hard, we save money, we spend our own money,” Chu said. “I started here as a dishwasher. Then I got promoted to janitor, then pantry cook, assistant cook, busboy, and finally I was a waiter. Now I have 35 employees.

“I’ve traveled to about 20 different countries. America is still the easiest country to make your dream come true. Even with the riots, it’s the best country in the whole world.”