At 78, man with artificial hip is oldest to summit Mt. McKinley

Tom Choate does not see what the fuss is about.

The 78-year-old Anchorage resident – with an artificial hip he got last year – became the oldest person to summit Mt. McKinley in Alaska’s Denali National Park. And all he did was take the climb a little bit slower than everybody else.

“I didn’t think it was anything but an old goat climbing up a mountain,” Choate told the Los Angeles Times in a phone interview Thursday.

North America’s tallest mountain at 20,320 feet, McKinley has gone from a wildland summit to a tourist destination in Choate’s lifetime. The retired college professor has watched it change.

Before Choate will talk about the ascent he made last month with two of his friends, Steve Gruhn and Bruce Kittredge – Choate in 50-year-old boots – he says the story really began in 1957. That’s when he went to work in Denali and “fell in love with the place.”

Six years later, he says, in 1963, he went on an eight-week expedition up and over the mountain. His group saw only one other party the whole time and made amateur hiking mistakes along the way.

“We should have died because there was no rescue or anything,” Choate recalls – then adding, almost as a verbal shrug, “We got away with it.”

He got away with the climb again, and again, and again, in 1983, 1993 and 2003. “I missed the ’73 trip because I was in Africa and going for the Himalayas and other challenges,” Choate says.

He was worried about making a 50-year-anniversary climb this year because of his hip surgery and because his foot had been bothering him for several years. “I didn’t think I’d be able to do it, because I’m only comfortable going out a few hours a day,” Choate says.

But Gruhn and Kittredge agreed to lend a hand and help with logistics. The three decided to hike only a few hours a day, climbing 1,500 feet instead of 3,000 feet at a time. They started up the mountain May 26, sending updates along the way.

“NOTE FROM THE OLD GOAT: TODAY ANOTHER BIRD VISITED OUR COOKTENT - A JUNCO COLLECTING CRUMBS,” one update on Facebook blasted in caps, dated June 1. “THERE IS LIFE IN THE SNOWLANDS! DOING GOOD HAULING 45-50 LBS SO FAR- TOM”

Choate describes the first days of the climb as “nothing dramatic or exciting or anything: Plod along for five hours, make a camp, make a day, and then plod along four, five hours and make another camp.”

But soon, Choate says, he started feeling acclimated to the altitude and began putting in more hours. “I was eventually able to put in eight hours, and then we made an attempt on the summit” that took 13 or 14 hours – only to be stopped by the weather near the top.

“Just, like, 40 minutes from the summit, we had this unbelievable thunderstorm that gave people sparks and curled their hair,” Choate says. He thought: “Wait a minute – thunderstorm on Denali? That never happens!”

Once the weather cleared, he says, on June 28: “We eventually plodded our way up to the top. My general feeling is that this is not really a big deal that people make a big thing about. ... It’s just a matter of being persistent and plodding on and not accepting, ‘I’ve got an artificial hip and I’m too old and I can’t go on’ – baloney!”

Choate is thought to be the oldest climber to top the mountain, breaking the record set by a 76-year-old Japanese man in 2007, according to the Anchorage Daily News.

“The more interesting record in my book is that I think it’s the greatest duration of time between a climber’s first ascent and most recent ascent,” his climbing partner Gruhn told the Associated Press, referring to Choate’s 1963 climb.

Choate looks back fondly on the “wilderness days” of that ’63 ascent, when a plane only came around every two weeks to check on his party. But the new days are good too: He loves seeing people experience his Alaska. He says he met his first Latvian climbers this year, and met another climber from Kazakhstan.

“They ask, ‘Where are you from?’ and I spread my arms out and encompass all those mountains around Mt. McKinley and say, ‘This is home, this is my home, welcome to Alaska,’ ” Choate says.

He’s not attached to keeping that oldest-on-McKinley record either. Before Choate ends the phone interview, he adds that he’s already prodding a friend three years younger than he is to prepare to beat his record in three more years.

“Bye!” he says, then stops. “Well, I described myself as a mountain goat, so I guess I could say that differently: Baaaaai.”

And he hung up.

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