Answering the Call of the Wild

“Rope!” the biologist shouts, before the morning’s divebombing begins. In the weak sunlight, Joel E. “Jeep” Pagel, 38, unfurls his faded rope down the 425-foot cliff, along with a backup rope. The sheer cliff is junk, a flaky volcanic rock with the bad habit of sloughing off and firing stones like projectiles.

Atop the cliff, Pagel had secured his climbing ropes to a Douglas fir. He stands out only as a speck of sky blue, the color of his climbing helmet, against a behemoth of rock in shades of mud and rust. He had yelled the rope warning out of habit, behind locked forest gates in the wild. No other climber would try to rappel down such unstable rock. (Once, when Pagel was making his way back up a similar slope, his foot tapped and broke off a chunk of rock the size of a riding lawn mower.)

But if you have a job at hand, the way Pagel does, you don’t get to pick the rocks you climb. With a 60-pound backpack, the U.S. Forest Service’s peregrine falcon expert ferrets out nest sites in Oregon, Washington and California. Pagel reaches the sites via mountain biking, bushwhacking, ocean kayaking, river kayaking and other means. One site calls for 25 miles of off-trail hiking and two river swims--not even a full day’s work for the “extreme scientist.”

Coined from “extreme sports,” the term refers to field researchers whose athletic gifts propel them to unexplored places or lead them to data that otherwise would be lost. They pursue what technology cannot--hand-extracted samples and observations made by a practiced eye at sites ripe for discovery. Such scientists are beginning to spin off into a sub-orbit, away from colleagues who face extreme environments, researchers such as storm chasers working out of vans or those based at Antarctic field stations.

Scientist-athlete hybrids, in fact, are finding themselves in a coterie of elite athletes and adventure jocks. Last December, for instance, Outside magazine named “geologist/caver” Louise Hose, 49, on its list of 25 international superheroes. Hose, an assistant professor at Chapman University in Orange, was recognized alongside sports stars including a 25-year-old big-mountain snowboarder who zooms off cliffs.

These days, scientist-athletes are being folded into the context of an evolving adventure age. “Extreme sports is one venue for that, and extreme science is another one,” said scientist and triathlete Peter Lane Taylor, author of “Science at the Extreme.” His book, which was published by McGraw-Hill last year, led to a two-part series on the Learning Channel in May and other multimedia projects.

The difference, Taylor said, is that “extreme science is not about public grandstanding ... extreme science is adventure with a purpose.”

For 18 years, Pagel has built his life around monitoring peregrine falcons, a species that barely skirted extinction. (In 1970, scientists observed only two breeding pairs in California and none in Oregon or Washington.) But he still lights up when the birds soar overhead, as if he were seeing them for the first time. Last April through September, he camped near peregrine nests all but 13 nights, partly so he wouldn’t waste time during their breeding season.

On this morning in northern Oregon, Pagel rappels with unhurried authority to an overhang on the cliff’s south face. At a 3,000-foot elevation, he can see clear down to an old-growth forest dominated by Douglas firs. Lean and graceful, in a cutoff T-shirt and khaki hiking pants, he descends past the whitewash of bird droppings and clumps of chaparral, 40 feet, 80 feet, 120 feet ...

She attacks.

Pagel sees her--a shrieking peregrine falcon, gray and cream colored. She is the size of a raven, with a wingspan of roughly 31/2 feet. Her dive is so powerful that she can kill bats and other prey in midair, striking with clenched talons. Peregrines, one of the world’s fastest animals, have a top speed of more than 200 mph. One protective peregrine struck him nine times with her talons or wingtips, aiming for his head.

Backlit against blue, this mother bird is mighty and majestic. In a 100-foot dive, the whoosh of her wings sounds like the air is ripping.

New Breed of Adventurer Emerged After the War

After World War II, as technology advanced, a new hybrid of adventurer began to emerge, with scientists such as Jacques Cousteau throwing athleticism into the mix. Cousteau and a partner had developed a way to explore underwater longer and more freely, leading, in 1948, to the first scuba diving exploration in U.S. caves.

In the late 20th century, scientists began taking advantage of the same technological innovations that ignited sporting enthusiasts, developments such as easier global travel and lightweight, more efficient gear. With bravura, Pagel and other scientist-athletes forged their own careers, making up field techniques along the way.

The next generation of extreme scientists is likely to push even further, experts said. “I think, in some realms, the areas that are left to be explored press human limits,” said marine biologist John Francis, executive director of the National Geographic’s Committee for Research and Exploration. “And so to some extent, in order to get to those new areas, new realms, you have to be particularly gifted athletically, or tapping into new technology.”

The committee awards 350 grants a year to field scientists, totaling $4 million. Of recent grants, Francis estimated, perhaps 15 of 20 were awarded to scientists whose athletic abilities are key to their field work.

Graduate students who tag along tend to have outdoors smarts and the physical ability to jump into projects with scientists like Steve Sillett, who hunkers down for the night in the tops of redwoods, the world’s tallest trees. Side by side with students, Sillett, a botanist, climbs into and rappels down the canopies of redwoods more than 300 feet tall.

Sillett, 33, is the first to study the thriving ecosystem in the treetops, turning up surprises like a species called the wandering salamander that had not been known to travel so high. Part of his goal is to document the biological diversity of the ancient redwood forests for conservation efforts.

At Humboldt State, Sillett teaches a forest canopy biology course. Students learn how to climb redwoods using a rope-based system that Sillett perfected to avoid pounding spikes into the trunks. “Ten years ago, we weren’t getting into these big trees,” said graduate student Jim C. Spickler, 28, who works with Sillett. “Maybe it’s this generation, this sense of adventure.... We’re doing new science. We’re making all the mistakes ... doing the frontier work for future scientists.”

Spickler and other advanced climbers traverse from tree to tree in old-growth forests, moving in open air without branches to grab. Among the ways they move is by sitting in a harness secured to a rope and, hand over hand, pulling themselves along the rope to the next tree. “The rope is not going to break,” Spickler said. “But it’s hard to believe that, hanging 300 feet over some gap over the forest canopy. You look at the rope and go, ‘Man, this thing is getting skinnier and skinnier.”’

Playing Down the Dangers of the Job

The very nature of their physical work--in unchartered waters--demands a verve that overrides fear. Talk about risks in the field, and they are quick to shift the focus to the hazards of everyday life. The most dangerous part of his job, Pagel said, is driving his truck.

In more than 700 nest entries, he is hard pressed to come up with what he even would consider a close call; he has never been injured in the field. Pagel finally mentions the time he tried to swim across a river at flood stage in the spring. Ice cold, he turned back before hitting a waterfall. “If I mess up [in the field], I’m dead meat, so I do everything I can to make it as safe as possible,” he said.

Geologist Hose is a former national cycling champion. She says she feels safer on her occasional caving expeditions than she did when cycling daily, for hours, on traffic-congested roads.

Hose, whose research has been funded by organizations including the National Geographic Society and National Speleological Society, is muscular, with a surfer’s glow. She is self-possessed, even while talking about the time she saw her expedition leader slip and fall to his death in an underground stream. Hose has climbed in slippery vampire bat guano--she has a bat phobia--and waded in neck-deep waters in Mexico’s Cueva de Villa Luz. The cave nurtures a unique ecosystem of bizarre microbes and other life forms that thrive on poisonous gases, and hunting them means dealing with high levels of deadly substances such as hydrogen sulfide. Those who enter the cave wear gas masks, but some still complain of memory loss, lingering headaches and deep chest coughs.

Just the sort of place that Hose dreamed about as a kid in Alhambra, watching adventure movies and wishing she were a boy so she could be an explorer. Now she is known for her exploration of 80 “virgin passages,” or unmapped chambers, in places like Mexico’s Sistema Cheve, one of the world’s deepest known cave systems. Only one other scientist has surpassed Hose’s 4,574-foot descent into Cheve. In the two-day descent, Hose, hauling a 40-pound backpack, makes more than three dozen rope drops for rappels down a series of waterfalls and other tight spots.

The tug of exploration led her to cave diving, a pursuit she acknowledges is dangerous. In water-filled cave passages, scuba divers can’t surface for air; swim fins can kick up silt and blind or confuse the diver. In an emergency, the diver has minutes to act, with scant hope of rescue.

“I loved it,” said Hose of her cave-diving forays in Florida. “It literally is the most seductive thing I’ve ever done.” She gets the caver’s feeling of lone exploration, coupled with “the sense of flying through a cave, that sense of freedom, of being suspended.” Still, she has known too many cave divers who have died to try it again in the near future. “I’m not ready to die now,” said Hose, who is divorced. But someday, she mused, with extensive training, she might not be able to resist the chance to study a cave in an early stage of development, before its water level drops.

Cave diving is an elite practice, pursued by only two dozen scientists on research missions worldwide including microbiologist Hazel Barton. Barton hunts for new extremophiles, or microorganisms that survive punishing environments and might attack cancer cells or lead to other medical breakthroughs.

She and a caving partner are featured in the film “Journey Into Amazing Caves,” now at IMAX theaters. In the film, Barton rappels into a cave near the Grand Canyon, dangling 3,000 feet over the turquoise waters of the Little Colorado River Gorge. She used to be scared of heights. “You brainwash yourself into not allowing fear” and push down the tingle that runs up your spine, Barton said.

MacGillivray Freeman Films, based in Laguna Beach, promoted Barton as being “one of a new breed of ‘extreme scientists’ who explore the Earth’s most perilous environments. ... “ Actually, Barton said with a laugh, her laboratory at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is more dangerous. “The chemicals we have around the lab--you can kill yourself real good.”

Barton, 29, is so passionate about her field work that, in October, she will get married in a cave. She has a map of Wind Cave, S.D., tattooed on her left biceps.

But she is upfront about the perils. “I’ve nearly died in caves because of the unpredictable things that happen,” she said. Once, Barton, who is 5 feet, 10 inches and 142 pounds, began an easy traverse around a pit, when the floor gave way. She managed to avoid the 80-foot plummet but woke up shaken the next morning.

“I had to deal with the fact, ‘OK, why are you doing this? What is it you are gaining from your life by going to this environment and doing these things? ... And then I realized: I’ve been caving for a long time. I love the environment. I love the people. I love the places you get to go ... the benefits to everybody in understanding the biology and the hydrology and the life in these caves.

“I could stop doing it because of the risks, but I’d give something up about me by doing that, and that I couldn’t accept.”

Peregrine Bides Her Time, Then Zeros In

On this morning, south of Mt. Hood, the diving peregrine had waited for Pagel to reach a vulnerable position, biding her time in figure-eight swoops. She revs up to three dives in 10 seconds ... when Pagel drops to the ledge, she zeros in.

From 5 feet away, he feels the rush of her wings. He ducks. She manages only to clip his knee with a wing and then retreats, maybe to join her fledglings for flying practice in the forest.

What Pagel does is not just a reflection of his smarts and stamina, said David Pitkin, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist in Oregon. “Something deeper comes into play,” said Pitkin, who has followed his work. “I think that peregrines in Oregon would have fallen through the cracks, literally, if it weren’t for Jeep. He’s on a mission. It’s just his life.”

During the five-month field season, Pagel lives out of a noisy Forest Service truck, with Ani DiFranco and Cowboy Junkies CDs for company. From October on, he works part time for the Forest Service, while pursuing a doctorate in ecology at UC Davis. He also is a research associate for the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group.

On a typical workday afternoon, Pagel springs out of his truck, barefoot, ponytail flying, after an in-transit lunch of organic fig bars, cheese puffs and Tang. In running shoes, on the way back from nest sites, he races rocks down hills or stops short to examine a woodpecker’s holes in a cedar tree. At night, deep in a forest, Pagel reads books by lantern; his literary influences include writers like John Muir, who worked for weeks at a time in the Sierras, living off bread crust and sleeping in a wool overcoat. Pagel is amazed that anyone would sleep under a tent, missing out on, say, the glory of the Northern Lights.

Sometimes, weeks fly by without his seeing anyone, other than on a road or at a gas station. “This job fits my personality,” said Pagel, who’s single and a 31-mile ultra-marathon runner. “I get to hike, be in the middle of nowhere. I get the chance to change things.”

In the field, Pagel doesn’t have to wait for a study or peer-reviewed paper to be published before taking action. He can use a hammer or chisel to increase the size of a nest ledge and build a rock wall around it so the chicks don’t fall out. If chicks hatch in precarious nest sites, he removes the baby birds and sends them to wildlife experts for eventual re-release in a safer place in the wild.

Chicks scratch and scar his hands as he snaps identification bands above their sharp talons and draws blood for DNA analysis. He has to band the chicks at a certain age, even in rain or snow, navigating slippery rock as late as November. From the nests, he collects beheaded gulls and other prey remains--leftovers from the peregrines’ dinners--for lab analysis.

He works bird by bird, part of a larger boyhood ideal of “ecological integrity and ecosystem balance.”

A Professor Taught Him About Rock Climbing

Pagel grew up on a turkey farm in Wisconsin, studying sandhill cranes and climbing sandstone pinnacles for fun. Later, as an undergraduate, he scaled sandstone buildings on the University of Wisconsin’s Stevens Point campus until a professor taught him about rock climbing with ropes.

A wildlife studies professor pushed him to try field work, leading, in 1983, to a volunteer position in Northern California. In Klamath National Forest, Pagel began studying the peregrine falcon, one of nature’s top predators. Near the top of the food chain, the peregrine is studied as a barometer for the health of the ecosystem.

In a controversial decision, the peregrine falcon was removed from the federal endangered species list in August 1999. But the bird is still listed as endangered or threatened in some states, including Oregon and California. In Oregon, Pagel is the only person authorized by U.S. Fish and Wildlife to enter peregrine nest sites in places including urban bridges; he is one of two in California.

One of his tasks is to gather pieces of eggshells from peregrine nests. The fragments are tested in a laboratory for signs of thinning caused by the pesticide DDT, which the U.S. banned in 1972. DDT exposure is still causing peregrines to lay fragile eggs that break during incubation or fail to hatch.

His field work often is misinterpreted as romantic, Indiana Jones kind of stuff. But he climbs as a means to get into a nest ledge, trailblazing his own routes. An earthquake knocked off one cliff that he used to climb. He has to make sure his rope doesn’t entangle a peregrine or slide over a snag. In protective gear, he has tunneled through 30 feet of poison oak to reach a nest. “But I got the data,” he said, a mantra of sorts for him.

He also writes journal articles and reports, consults with volunteers and officials who also monitor peregrines, makes overnight observations through a high-powered scope or navigates by unreliable cell phone through the tangle of government jurisdictions in which he works. A few potential job trainees have accompanied him for a day or two, quitting when they can’t keep up.

This is his dream job, but “the sacrifices a person has to make are obvious. Limited social contact for much of the year.”

On a recent afternoon, in Portland, Pagel dangles off the Interstate 5 Bridge, 200 feet over rush-hour traffic on the highway and sailboats on the Columbia River. The arched bridge sways in the wind. A circling peregrine female tracks his descent inside a bridge shaft, where she had left three fluffy white chicks, warning him away with piercing irritation: kaak-kaak-kaak . In 30 minutes, Pagel bands the chicks and crawls out, shrieked at by the mother bird until he leaves the bridge. In the last two days, Pagel had driven 1,100 miles. But at nightfall, he drives an hour and 20 minutes to the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, where he camps near a nest ledge that he had investigated earlier in the season. He has no plans to climb the cliff the next morning. But he wants to wake up to the cries of his birds in flight.

*

Staff photographer Rick Loomis contributed to this story.