Putting a Price on the Top of World : Santa Monica Mother of Five Takes On Highest Summits at Age 61, When She Isn’t Climbing Through Golf Business, Other Pursuits

When the earth trembled and parts of the city crumbled last January, Dallas Price, like everyone else, was doing a whole lot of shaking.

But Price had no clue that a devastating earthquake was in progress. She was halfway around the world, shivering on the ice in Antarctica.

Price had just conquered Vinson Massif, which at 16,067 feet is the highest spot on the continent of Antarctica.

“It’s minus-30, minus-40 all the time,” Price recalled the other day from her home in Santa Monica. “And when the wind blows, which it does, it’s minus in the 100s.”

After their descent, Price and guide Pete Whittaker had to wait out a storm on a glacier for eight days.

“We were low on fuel and food, but the real crisis was that we were running out of toilet paper,” Price said.

She made it back OK, only to find that her home, a multistory wooden house with huge glass windows, had not fared too well in the temblor.

“We had 18 broken windows and all the cupboard doors had opened up and everything spilled out,” Price said. “I had a major, major crystal collection. And it’s totally gone.”

She also had a major rock collection, which remained scattered on her wooden floors.

“The guys who came in to help put things back together didn’t touch them because they didn’t know where they’re from,” Price said, showing off the rocks that line her window sills, each next to a label indicating its origin. “And I thought, ‘This is incredible; I know where these rocks go. I can put them in the country that they belong in.’ ”

And on the mountains from which they came.

Vinson Massif was special for Price because it was the seventh of the seven summits--the highest elevation on each continent--she has attempted. She says she has reached the tops of all but two--Mt. McKinley because of poor weather and Mt. Everest because that was a team effort during the International Peace Climb in 1990. The United States, the Soviet Union and China climbed the mountain in stages and her group was not chosen for the summit climb.

In her tour of the continents’ highest peaks, Price started in Africa and proceeded to Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, North America and finally Antarctica. She climbed Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in 1986; Mt. El’brus on the Russia-Georgia border in ‘89; Mt. Everest, the highest of the seven at 29,020 feet, in Tibet in ‘90; Mt. Aconcagua in Argentina in ‘91; Mt. Kosciusko in Australia, the lowest at 7,310 feet, in ‘92; Mt. McKinley in Alaska in ‘93, then Vinson Massif last January.

What drives a 61-year-old mother of five to such heights?

“Like a lot of our clients, she tried it once, was bitten by the bug, so to speak, and decided to go around the horn,” said Whittaker, who operates Summits Adventure Travel in Eatonville, Wash.

Whittaker, who comes from a family of mountaineers--his uncle, Jim Whittaker, was the first American to successfully climb Mt. Everest--then offered another possible explanation:

“She is just a remarkable woman, and one with the finances available to pursue such twisted adventures. She’s one of those highly motivated, exceptional people.”

This would seem difficult to argue.

As co-owner, vice president and board member of American Golf Corp., the world’s largest golf operations company with 190 courses owned or leased in this country and abroad, Price works tirelessly.

Her latest project is a national effort to increase participation of women in the sport, both on the course--by creating a more user-friendly atmosphere--and in management positions. More than 25% of American Golf’s 9,000 employees are women.

Price also owns California Design, Inc., which is responsible for the interior design of American Golf facilities. She is a founder and trustee of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. She is a member of the Fellows of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Santa Monica Museum of Art.

She and her husband, David, were co-commissioners of basketball for the 1984 Olympics. She is a member of the UCLA Foundation board of trustees and serves on the nominations committee. She helped establish the David G. and Dallas P. Price Chair of Law, the first endowed chair at the school.

The list goes on.

“I think she has much more energy and strength than most people I know,” said her husband, 62, founder and chairman of the board of American Golf. “I wish I had it. I have to take naps from time to time.”

He certainly has no desire to go traipsing around the world on a whim. Especially when it means leaving the comforts of home behind.

“We tried a couple of camping trips together, but they were bloody disasters because he hated it,” Dallas said of David. “He just doesn’t see a comfort level in sleeping on the ground in a sleeping bag on rocks and dirt and an uneven plane so . . . “

So Dallas Price heard about an Outward Bound women’s program and thought, “That’s perfect for me.”

When someone in the group asked her to go trekking in Bhutan, Price was willing.

“A friend came up and said, ‘Do you want to go?’ I said, ‘Where is it?’ I had no clue. But I said, ‘Sure.’ I was really up to my tail feathers with a lot of work for the (1984) Olympics, so I had no opportunity to plan for it but I said, ‘If you organize everything, I’ll go.’ ”

She and six other women, led by a Bhutanese guide and porters, went their merry way, walking across the tiny country below Tibet.

“The Bhutanese man had never led a group of women before and he was absolutely panicked,” Price recalled. “But as he got (to know us better), we had an incredible time.

“When (the porters) found out one of the girls was having a birthday, they baked a cake for her, but it was inedible. The sweet little things had done this marvelous job of baking this cake and--the Bhutanese don’t make cakes--they put this frosting stuff on the top of it, but we couldn’t cut it.

“All we had were our little Swiss Army knives and when we borrowed a knife from the kitchen supply we still couldn’t cut it. So we ended up digging a hole and burying it. We didn’t want to embarrass them.”

When someone asked her if she wanted to climb Kilimanjaro, Price jumped at the chance.

And even though the mountain was littered with “a sea of toilet paper,” she enjoyed herself.

Although she failed to reach the summit on McKinley--making it to 17,000 feet before snow and winds that “sounded like freight trains” sent her group back--Dallas Price had become an accomplished mountain climber.

She also conquered Mt. Kenya in Africa and Mt. Cotopaxi in Ecuador, volcanoes Popocatepetl and Orizaba in Mexico and Mts. Hood, Rainier, Adams and Whitney in the western United States.

Of course all of that is behind her now. Her husband just bought her a motorcycle and she has been learning to ride it.

“She’s really attacking it,” David Price said. “She’s going to be a Hell’s Angel before you know it.”

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