Proving He Can Climb the Highest Mountain

Gasping for breath in thin air, watching clouds congeal on a jagged southern horizon, Elliot Boston wasted only a few moments in savoring his victory. He stood alone on the rocky peak of Aconcagua, the highest point in the Western Hemisphere, and knew he was closing in on a dream.

The 22,835-foot slab of Andean rock and ice loomed high above anything he had climbed before--half a mile above his last big climb, Mt. Elbrus in Russia.

But in mountaineering, triumph is rarely a clean emotion. Not only was this summit a mile below his ultimate goal, he still had to scramble back down the mountain before a storm rolled in. As he stood there last February, elation mingled with the fear of becoming a human Popsicle.

So went the second leg of his seven-step journey.

Boston, who lives in Newport Beach, wants to climb each continent’s highest mountain--the “Seven Summits” of the world. What makes the 32-year-old investment analyst different from the 79 other people who have accomplished this task is something that should have nothing to do with climbing mountains. Boston is black.

But for a variety of reasons, the world of adventure sports is predominantly white terrain. Just page through an Outside magazine and you’ll notice that most of the people climbing, skiing, kayaking, surfing or mountain biking don’t look like Boston.

Which is what he wants to change.

“For me, the great American outdoors has been my way to deal with society, to see life in the bigger picture,” he said. “Every one should have that opportunity.”

A sixth-grade summer camp in the mountains east of San Diego inspired Boston. Now, in scaling the monster peaks, Boston hopes to do the same for kids who might not have such an experience--to lead minorities into the wildlands the way Tiger Woods has guided them onto the fairways. It’s a lofty goal that requires not only physical endurance and mental resolve, says Boston, but also marketing and self-promotion.

Armed with a bachelor’s degree in advertising from Chapman College, Boston has planned his off-the-mountain strategy carefully. To raise the $175,000 needed to pay for his travels to complete the seven ascents, he’s seeking sponsors. Hewlett-Packard, for example, set him up with a laptop computer and satellite phone so he can file dispatches on the Internet from the mountains.

Between climbs and work, he speaks frequently to Southern California schoolchildren about his adventures. Aiming mostly for schools with high minority enrollment, he may talk to them about picking his way up a South American glacier with an ice ax or barreling down a firebreak in the Santa Monicas on a mountain bike.

His intention is to awaken young people to the satisfactions of athletic endeavors that they might not otherwise consider.

Last Monday, he visited a fourth-grade class at Los Robles Academy in Hacienda Heights. The mostly middle-class Latino and Asian American kids were rapt as they listened to his stories about blue-iced crevasses and distant lands even more intriguing than the polliwog pond in nearby Schabarum Regional Park.

“Who can name the Seven Summits?” he asked them.

Hands shot up. “Mr. Boston! Mr. Boston! I know, I know!” After a few noble attempts, he helped them, going over his two-year journey.

He has so far made it up two of the seven summits, Aconcagua and Elbrus, which is the highest peak in Europe. Next comes Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa, then Kosciuszko in Australia.

Beginning in December come the real tough ones: Mt. Vincent in Antarctica, Mt. McKinley in Alaska and the granddaddy, of course, Mt. Everest in Nepal.

“What happens if you get caught in an avalanche?” one student asks.

“Well, good question. All that snow is coming down. You want to swim to get to the top. . . .”

“How do you swim in snow?”

After class, the climber signed autographs. “He’s really a hero to them,” said teacher Lori Brenny.

Boston grew up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Diamond Bar around other children exposed to the outdoors. Neither of his parents ventured into nature much, but they sent Elliot to the camp on Palomar Mountain.

Now he inhabits three very different worlds: lonely mountain, yuppie investment firm, ailing urban elementary school.

“When all is said and done, I hope I can say Elliot Boston bridged the gap, that I’ve made a difference and got companies to market to minorities,” he says.

He cited a Jeep Cherokee commercial on Black Entertainment Television. Instead of traversing some rocky stream bed, the Jeep dodged obstacles on top of a building--with the message that it would get you through the “urban jungle.”

By making the outdoors “uncool” to African Americans, the ads are inadvertently ghettoizing them, he says.

As it is, even an investment analyst from Newport Beach can feel out of place, because of his skin color, in the world of mountaineering.

He recalled confronting Russian villagers last August, who looked at him as if he were a “naked lady walking down the street.” Heading into the mountains, he shrugged off the stares of incredulous Swedes and Canadians.

“I just ignore it,” he said. “So this is an oddity, but I’m just here to climb this mountain.”