Way Down Under, a Great View From the Top

They poked their heads through an eerie mist and found themselves under a brilliant blue sky atop Vinson Massif, at 16,860 feet the highest peak in Antarctica.

A weeklong expedition fraught with stinging winds, blowing snow and blistering-cold temperatures had come to a rewarding end: The view from the summit.

“It was spectacular,” said Fullerton’s Jeff Mathy, one of 12 climbers who conquered Mt. Vinson Jan. 17. “We were above the mist and could see the whole expanse of Antarctica. We could even see the curvature of the earth.”

After climbing down from his magnificent perch, and calling his mother and girlfriend via satellite telephone, Mathy on Wednesday found time for an interview from the airport at Punta Arenas, Chile.

At one point, while scaling a steep headwall beneath the summit, the temperature reached an estimated 84 below, factoring in the wind chill.

“At that point, every second was a race to keep myself from freezing,” Mathy said. “I had been in 10- to 15-below temperatures in Alaska, but this was just a whole other realm of coldness.”

And so it went for the 23-year-old mountaineer, who emerged from this frozen part of the planet one peak closer to becoming the youngest person to conquer the illustrious Seven Summits: the highest on each continent.

Vinson was his fifth. The others: Africa’s Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,340 feet), South America’s Mt. Aconcagua (22,840), North America’s Mt. McKinley (20,320) and Australia’s Mt. Kosciuszko (7,300).

To avoid controversy, since there is some dispute among climbers as to whether Australia or Oceania is the official seventh continent, Mathy has put Indonesia’s Carstensz Pyramid (16,023) on a list that still includes Asia’s Mt. Everest (the world’s highest at 29,035 feet) and Europe’s Mt. Elbrus (18,510).

Time is hardly of the essence: Jody Ogwyn of Shreveport, La., was 26 years and 107 days old when he notched all seven, choosing Carstensz over Kosciuszko; and Sundeep Dhillon of England was 28 years and 323 days old when he became the youngest to accomplish the feat by conquering both of the disputed peaks.

The point of all this?

“Being the youngest is just something that came up recently,” Mathy said, perhaps alluding to how his age helped him land a corporate sponsor (Mathy’s dispatches can be viewed at www.liptont.com).

“But I do hope this will help get other younger people involved in the sport because mountain climbing usually attracts people a lot older than me.”

Mathy was 10 when he donned his first backpack, as a member of the Boy Scouts exploring the San Bernardino mountains.

He remembers his first climb being little more than a hike, up a small peak called Little Jimmy.

“I weighed about 45 pounds and the pack weighed the same,” he recalls. “It was a miserable experience--the worst thing I had ever done. But the next month we did it again and it got easier.”

His love of the outdoors became a passion after a trip into the Alaskan wilderness while on break during his senior year at UC Davis.

“It was a different environment than I had ever been in before,” he says. “We were walking around in snowshoes and it was almost dreamlike because we did all our hiking at night and with the full moon [illuminating] the ice crystals, it made it seem like we were hundreds of miles from our own planet. It really was otherworldly.”

Mathy was 20 when he joined his first real mountaineering expedition, to Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro on a trip sponsored by his parents as a graduation gift.

A year later, he traveled to Denali National Park and bagged McKinley. Then came Kosciuszko and suddenly, the Seven Summits were within grasp.

Still looming mightily in his path, of course, is the giant among Himalayan giants, Mt. Everest.

Mathy traveled to the region during the summer to train for the Everest expedition by climbing Mt. Chooyu, at 26,906 feet the world’s sixth-tallest peak.

He had planned to celebrate his 23rd birthday just before the climb but the celebration never materialized. Mathy’s birthday is Sept. 11.

“I was in a small village in China and I called home because it was my birthday,” he says. “My mom was crying and I thought it was just because she missed me, but she didn’t say why. Then my dad got on the phone and said a plane had just hit the World Trade Center and they thought it might be a terrorist act.

“I had to go and tell the other members of the team, and some of them had friends who worked in the Trade Center. I had to share this news and it was like delivering news of a death in the family.”

The next day they were at base camp, however, determined “to move forward as representatives of the United States and to keep our spirits and not have the terrorists affect our everyday lives.”

The summit attempt was cut short, however, because of foul weather.

A Fresh Start

In a surprising development, the Department of Fish and Game has wiped clean a slate of proposed marine closures mapped out as part of a nearshore fisheries management plan being developed as mandated by the Marine Life Protection Act.

During a California Assembly hearing held by the Joint Fisheries and Aquaculture Committee last week in Sacramento, DFG Director Robert Hight labeled the concept map “ill-crafted” and announced a new process that will allow more public participation and the exploration of alternative reserve locations.

He also announced that a federal grant of $372,000 will be used to fund economic analyses of any new reserves, and the formation of six regional committees to serve as workshops on the issue.

The decision delighted the sportfishing community, which complained it had unfairly been left out of the process the first time around.

“Considering that the first approach put us totally on the defensive and it appeared as though something like this was going to be stuffed down our throat, this is very big news,” said Bob Fletcher, president of the Sportfishing Assn. of California. “This gives us the opportunity to argue where any reserves should be placed to minimize economic loss.”

The implementation of marine reserves, which would either restrict or render off limits large parcels of coastal and island waters, is intended to allow for the recovery of several embattled species of fish.

Under the MLPA, a draft plan must be submitted to the California Fish and Game Commission by Jan. 1, 2003. A final plan must be adopted by Dec. 1, 2003.

Spouting Off

Bernardo Alps, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Cetacean Society, announced in a recent newsletter that the southbound migration of gray whales is well underway:

“I went out on [Redondo Sportfishing’s] the Voyager [last Friday] afternoon, after the morning boat had seen only dolphins. We saw lots of whales. At least 15, possibly more. It was difficult to keep track because some were snorkeling, some were milling, some were going the other way and some were moving perpendicular to the shore. There were small whales and large whales, singles and pairs and even one cow-calf pair.”

In other words, that was as good as it gets.

What, No Merlot?

Trout are biting like mad at Laguna Niguel Lake, and they’re quite the gourmets: The most irresistible bait, according to a lake spokesman, is a red salmon egg stuck on the hook with an inflated night crawler and dipped in garlic sauce.

Precious Metal?

The latest in winter sports products will be unveiled during the Snow Sports Industries America trade show, Wednesday through Saturday in Las Vegas. Atop the list of revolutionary products: bacteria-fighting silver underwear.

Medalist’s X-Static fabric, made with pure silver, is designed to combat odor and static, and to improve body heat regulation. Says the SIA: “The silver fabric’s anti-microbial properties mean that it can be worn longer between washings.”

Winding Up

There has been a big dose of sadness on the slopes of Lake Tahoe-area resorts in recent weeks, brought about by fatal accidents.

The latest involved an 11-year-old girl, who died Jan. 12 after skiing into a tree at Squaw Valley USA. Hers was the second fatal accident this season at Squaw Valley.

Less than a week earlier, a 31-year-old man lost his life at Heavenly Ski Resort, after losing his footing while holding his snowboard and tumbling 1,000 feet down an expert trail that had been closed because of hard-pack snow.