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Christine Boskoff: Making It Happen
RH: You have made 12 attempts on 8,000-meter peaks, with six successes. How many of them were done without oxygen? CB: Seven. I did Everest twice. No, no. Out of those, Everest I did with oxygen both times, and then I used oxygen on Lhotse. So, I don’t know what that is; so four of them I did without oxygen. RH: Very impressive. When they first started this business back around 1950 and a little before, they didn’t imagine that it could be done without oxygen. it was incomprehensible that it could be done without oxygen. Now, as a matter of course, strong people do it without oxygen and choose to, and they have been doing it without oxygen probably since the middle 1970s. I am a rank amateur, but I manage to do 20 little climbs a season, so it is reasonable that a professional would do many more small mountains as well as some large expeditions. Nevertheless, when I read through your climbing résumé, I am simply floored: You have guided on five continents and six of the Seven Summits, climbed a panoply of high Asian and South American peaks, and established innumerable new rock routes in Colorado. How do you do this? Do you go directly from one big climb or expedition into another? How do you deal with the austerities of three months in a tent over and over again? CB: You just love what you do. I climb at least four times a week. I go to the rock gym, I train ... I go rock climbing. I climb mountains all the time. I’m constantly in the mountains. RH: And being in Nepal for three months, coming home, and then going right back somewhere else doesn’t bother you? You enjoy sleeping in the tent, waking up, and eating the breakfast they prepare, and so on. That’s a good thing for you. CB: That’s a good thing for me. I love it. RH: Boy, that’s hard CB: You look tired just talking to me. RH: Its not so much being tired. It’s the fact that you have lost not merely the luxuries of modern life, but it’s so austere — bathroom facilities, showering, lack of specific types of food like fresh fruit, and on and on through a broad array of things that one sacrifices in order to be on a three-month expedition, in Antarctica, for example. That’s just difficult for most people. You’ve found your chosen profession because you actually enjoy it. CB: I love what I do, but I think [in] our culture, we’re so used to having a toilet, running water, and all that kind of stuff, but if you look around, and the more you travel, you see people without those frilly little things in life, and they’re happy. I think it’s really your frame of mind. ... RH: It’s not a sacrifice sleeping in a tent for you? CB: No, it’s beautiful. Look at the things you wake up to. ... RH: You are an extraordinary woman: an electrical engineer, an entrepreneur, an excellent rock climber, and the premier female mountaineer in the world. I recall that John Roskelley got angry on a climb and said that he would never again climb with women. Have you ever experienced discrimination in mountaineering because of your gender? CB: You do. The thing is you have to understand. ... When I do climb with men, I try to understand them and I try to get a sense of who they are. Some guys, they don’t want any interaction with women and some do. Some are fine with it. So I try to get that kind of sense; especially with my guiding, I have to be real sensitive to their needs. So I try to balance that out versus my climbing partner. I said before, I wouldn’t go climbing with John, if he doesn’t want to be with a woman. I want to be with climbers that want my company; my climbing partner, [whom] I climb with all the time, has 30 years of experience, — a lot more than I do — and we make a good climbing pair. But you do run into that, and it is a delicate way of handling those situations. Like I said, everybody has their own opinion and everybody’s been brought up differently. RH: I have never used a guide in my life for virtually all the different things I’ve done, not just mountaineering; I’ve traveled very extensively, and only when I was forced to because of legal necessities have I taken a tour. ... But if I were to use a mountaineering guide, I would much prefer a woman because, I would presume, she wouldn’t be as strong-willed and macho and tough. ... CB: I think all professional guides, if they aregood guides, they are not going to use their ego or machoness to go and plow [into a storm] and make the summit, even though it’s bad weather or conditions aren’t right. Women might be a little more motherly; but there’s a lot of our guides that are men who also are very motherly and very good as caretakers. RH: What do you have planned for the future and do you have anything else to add? CB: I am just building a great company and making it better; that’s my number one plan, and continuing to challenge myself in the mountains and doing what I love, which is running a guiding company and climbing. I love it all, and every day I go in the office I’m happy and I never say, “Oh I’ve got to go to work today.” I’m the luckiest person in the world.... RH: Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. Thank you. CB: You bet. We dedicate this interview to Christine, and Charlie Fowler, her climbing partner, who, in late November 2006, were lost in China. — Bob and Fred BibliographyAscent on G2: One Woman’s Journey to the Top. [Videocassette.] Dir. Robert Yuhas. n.p.: Robert Yuhas productions/Travel Channel, 1999. (50 mins)
RH: You have made 12 attempts on 8,000-meter peaks, with six successes. How many of them were done without oxygen? CB: Seven. I did Everest twice. No, no. Out of those, Everest I did with oxygen both times, and then I used oxygen on Lhotse. So, I don’t know what that is; so four of them I did without oxygen. RH: Very impressive. When they first started this business back around 1950 and a little before, they didn’t imagine that it could be done without oxygen. it was incomprehensible that it could be done without oxygen. Now, as a matter of course, strong people do it without oxygen and choose to, and they have been doing it without oxygen probably since the middle 1970s. I am a rank amateur, but I manage to do 20 little climbs a season, so it is reasonable that a professional would do many more small mountains as well as some large expeditions. Nevertheless, when I read through your climbing résumé, I am simply floored: You have guided on five continents and six of the Seven Summits, climbed a panoply of high Asian and South American peaks, and established innumerable new rock routes in Colorado. How do you do this? Do you go directly from one big climb or expedition into another? How do you deal with the austerities of three months in a tent over and over again? CB: You just love what you do. I climb at least four times a week. I go to the rock gym, I train ... I go rock climbing. I climb mountains all the time. I’m constantly in the mountains. RH: And being in Nepal for three months, coming home, and then going right back somewhere else doesn’t bother you? You enjoy sleeping in the tent, waking up, and eating the breakfast they prepare, and so on. That’s a good thing for you. CB: That’s a good thing for me. I love it. RH: Boy, that’s hard CB: You look tired just talking to me. RH: Its not so much being tired. It’s the fact that you have lost not merely the luxuries of modern life, but it’s so austere — bathroom facilities, showering, lack of specific types of food like fresh fruit, and on and on through a broad array of things that one sacrifices in order to be on a three-month expedition, in Antarctica, for example. That’s just difficult for most people. You’ve found your chosen profession because you actually enjoy it. CB: I love what I do, but I think [in] our culture, we’re so used to having a toilet, running water, and all that kind of stuff, but if you look around, and the more you travel, you see people without those frilly little things in life, and they’re happy. I think it’s really your frame of mind. ... RH: It’s not a sacrifice sleeping in a tent for you? CB: No, it’s beautiful. Look at the things you wake up to. ... RH: You are an extraordinary woman: an electrical engineer, an entrepreneur, an excellent rock climber, and the premier female mountaineer in the world. I recall that John Roskelley got angry on a climb and said that he would never again climb with women. Have you ever experienced discrimination in mountaineering because of your gender? CB: You do. The thing is you have to understand. ... When I do climb with men, I try to understand them and I try to get a sense of who they are. Some guys, they don’t want any interaction with women and some do. Some are fine with it. So I try to get that kind of sense; especially with my guiding, I have to be real sensitive to their needs. So I try to balance that out versus my climbing partner. I said before, I wouldn’t go climbing with John, if he doesn’t want to be with a woman. I want to be with climbers that want my company; my climbing partner, [whom] I climb with all the time, has 30 years of experience, — a lot more than I do — and we make a good climbing pair. But you do run into that, and it is a delicate way of handling those situations. Like I said, everybody has their own opinion and everybody’s been brought up differently. RH: I have never used a guide in my life for virtually all the different things I’ve done, not just mountaineering; I’ve traveled very extensively, and only when I was forced to because of legal necessities have I taken a tour. ... But if I were to use a mountaineering guide, I would much prefer a woman because, I would presume, she wouldn’t be as strong-willed and macho and tough. ... CB: I think all professional guides, if they aregood guides, they are not going to use their ego or machoness to go and plow [into a storm] and make the summit, even though it’s bad weather or conditions aren’t right. Women might be a little more motherly; but there’s a lot of our guides that are men who also are very motherly and very good as caretakers. RH: What do you have planned for the future and do you have anything else to add? CB: I am just building a great company and making it better; that’s my number one plan, and continuing to challenge myself in the mountains and doing what I love, which is running a guiding company and climbing. I love it all, and every day I go in the office I’m happy and I never say, “Oh I’ve got to go to work today.” I’m the luckiest person in the world.... RH: Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. Thank you. CB: You bet. We dedicate this interview to Christine, and Charlie Fowler, her climbing partner, who, in late November 2006, were lost in China. — Bob and Fred BibliographyAscent on G2: One Woman’s Journey to the Top. [Videocassette.] Dir. Robert Yuhas. n.p.: Robert Yuhas productions/Travel Channel, 1999. (50 mins)
RH: You have made 12 attempts on 8,000-meter peaks, with six successes. How many of them were done without oxygen? CB: Seven. I did Everest twice. No, no. Out of those, Everest I did with oxygen both times, and then I used oxygen on Lhotse. So, I don’t know what that is; so four of them I did without oxygen. RH: Very impressive. When they first started this business back around 1950 and a little before, they didn’t imagine that it could be done without oxygen. it was incomprehensible that it could be done without oxygen. Now, as a matter of course, strong people do it without oxygen and choose to, and they have been doing it without oxygen probably since the middle 1970s. I am a rank amateur, but I manage to do 20 little climbs a season, so it is reasonable that a professional would do many more small mountains as well as some large expeditions. Nevertheless, when I read through your climbing résumé, I am simply floored: You have guided on five continents and six of the Seven Summits, climbed a panoply of high Asian and South American peaks, and established innumerable new rock routes in Colorado. How do you do this? Do you go directly from one big climb or expedition into another? How do you deal with the austerities of three months in a tent over and over again? CB: You just love what you do. I climb at least four times a week. I go to the rock gym, I train ... I go rock climbing. I climb mountains all the time. I’m constantly in the mountains. RH: And being in Nepal for three months, coming home, and then going right back somewhere else doesn’t bother you? You enjoy sleeping in the tent, waking up, and eating the breakfast they prepare, and so on. That’s a good thing for you. CB: That’s a good thing for me. I love it. RH: Boy, that’s hard CB: You look tired just talking to me. RH: Its not so much being tired. It’s the fact that you have lost not merely the luxuries of modern life, but it’s so austere — bathroom facilities, showering, lack of specific types of food like fresh fruit, and on and on through a broad array of things that one sacrifices in order to be on a three-month expedition, in Antarctica, for example. That’s just difficult for most people. You’ve found your chosen profession because you actually enjoy it. CB: I love what I do, but I think [in] our culture, we’re so used to having a toilet, running water, and all that kind of stuff, but if you look around, and the more you travel, you see people without those frilly little things in life, and they’re happy. I think it’s really your frame of mind. ... RH: It’s not a sacrifice sleeping in a tent for you? CB: No, it’s beautiful. Look at the things you wake up to. ... RH: You are an extraordinary woman: an electrical engineer, an entrepreneur, an excellent rock climber, and the premier female mountaineer in the world. I recall that John Roskelley got angry on a climb and said that he would never again climb with women. Have you ever experienced discrimination in mountaineering because of your gender? CB: You do. The thing is you have to understand. ... When I do climb with men, I try to understand them and I try to get a sense of who they are. Some guys, they don’t want any interaction with women and some do. Some are fine with it. So I try to get that kind of sense; especially with my guiding, I have to be real sensitive to their needs. So I try to balance that out versus my climbing partner. I said before, I wouldn’t go climbing with John, if he doesn’t want to be with a woman. I want to be with climbers that want my company; my climbing partner, [whom] I climb with all the time, has 30 years of experience, — a lot more than I do — and we make a good climbing pair. But you do run into that, and it is a delicate way of handling those situations. Like I said, everybody has their own opinion and everybody’s been brought up differently. RH: I have never used a guide in my life for virtually all the different things I’ve done, not just mountaineering; I’ve traveled very extensively, and only when I was forced to because of legal necessities have I taken a tour. ... But if I were to use a mountaineering guide, I would much prefer a woman because, I would presume, she wouldn’t be as strong-willed and macho and tough. ... CB: I think all professional guides, if they aregood guides, they are not going to use their ego or machoness to go and plow [into a storm] and make the summit, even though it’s bad weather or conditions aren’t right. Women might be a little more motherly; but there’s a lot of our guides that are men who also are very motherly and very good as caretakers. RH: What do you have planned for the future and do you have anything else to add? CB: I am just building a great company and making it better; that’s my number one plan, and continuing to challenge myself in the mountains and doing what I love, which is running a guiding company and climbing. I love it all, and every day I go in the office I’m happy and I never say, “Oh I’ve got to go to work today.” I’m the luckiest person in the world.... RH: Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. Thank you. CB: You bet. We dedicate this interview to Christine, and Charlie Fowler, her climbing partner, who, in late November 2006, were lost in China. — Bob and Fred BibliographyAscent on G2: One Woman’s Journey to the Top. [Videocassette.] Dir. Robert Yuhas. n.p.: Robert Yuhas productions/Travel Channel, 1999. (50 mins)
RH: You have made 12 attempts on 8,000-meter peaks, with six successes. How many of them were done without oxygen? CB: Seven. I did Everest twice. No, no. Out of those, Everest I did with oxygen both times, and then I used oxygen on Lhotse. So, I don’t know what that is; so four of them I did without oxygen. RH: Very impressive. When they first started this business back around 1950 and a little before, they didn’t imagine that it could be done without oxygen. it was incomprehensible that it could be done without oxygen. Now, as a matter of course, strong people do it without oxygen and choose to, and they have been doing it without oxygen probably since the middle 1970s. I am a rank amateur, but I manage to do 20 little climbs a season, so it is reasonable that a professional would do many more small mountains as well as some large expeditions. Nevertheless, when I read through your climbing résumé, I am simply floored: You have guided on five continents and six of the Seven Summits, climbed a panoply of high Asian and South American peaks, and established innumerable new rock routes in Colorado. How do you do this? Do you go directly from one big climb or expedition into another? How do you deal with the austerities of three months in a tent over and over again? CB: You just love what you do. I climb at least four times a week. I go to the rock gym, I train ... I go rock climbing. I climb mountains all the time. I’m constantly in the mountains. RH: And being in Nepal for three months, coming home, and then going right back somewhere else doesn’t bother you? You enjoy sleeping in the tent, waking up, and eating the breakfast they prepare, and so on. That’s a good thing for you. CB: That’s a good thing for me. I love it. RH: Boy, that’s hard CB: You look tired just talking to me. RH: Its not so much being tired. It’s the fact that you have lost not merely the luxuries of modern life, but it’s so austere — bathroom facilities, showering, lack of specific types of food like fresh fruit, and on and on through a broad array of things that one sacrifices in order to be on a three-month expedition, in Antarctica, for example. That’s just difficult for most people. You’ve found your chosen profession because you actually enjoy it. CB: I love what I do, but I think [in] our culture, we’re so used to having a toilet, running water, and all that kind of stuff, but if you look around, and the more you travel, you see people without those frilly little things in life, and they’re happy. I think it’s really your frame of mind. ... RH: It’s not a sacrifice sleeping in a tent for you? CB: No, it’s beautiful. Look at the things you wake up to. ... RH: You are an extraordinary woman: an electrical engineer, an entrepreneur, an excellent rock climber, and the premier female mountaineer in the world. I recall that John Roskelley got angry on a climb and said that he would never again climb with women. Have you ever experienced discrimination in mountaineering because of your gender? CB: You do. The thing is you have to understand. ... When I do climb with men, I try to understand them and I try to get a sense of who they are. Some guys, they don’t want any interaction with women and some do. Some are fine with it. So I try to get that kind of sense; especially with my guiding, I have to be real sensitive to their needs. So I try to balance that out versus my climbing partner. I said before, I wouldn’t go climbing with John, if he doesn’t want to be with a woman. I want to be with climbers that want my company; my climbing partner, [whom] I climb with all the time, has 30 years of experience, — a lot more than I do — and we make a good climbing pair. But you do run into that, and it is a delicate way of handling those situations. Like I said, everybody has their own opinion and everybody’s been brought up differently. RH: I have never used a guide in my life for virtually all the different things I’ve done, not just mountaineering; I’ve traveled very extensively, and only when I was forced to because of legal necessities have I taken a tour. ... But if I were to use a mountaineering guide, I would much prefer a woman because, I would presume, she wouldn’t be as strong-willed and macho and tough. ... CB: I think all professional guides, if they aregood guides, they are not going to use their ego or machoness to go and plow [into a storm] and make the summit, even though it’s bad weather or conditions aren’t right. Women might be a little more motherly; but there’s a lot of our guides that are men who also are very motherly and very good as caretakers. RH: What do you have planned for the future and do you have anything else to add? CB: I am just building a great company and making it better; that’s my number one plan, and continuing to challenge myself in the mountains and doing what I love, which is running a guiding company and climbing. I love it all, and every day I go in the office I’m happy and I never say, “Oh I’ve got to go to work today.” I’m the luckiest person in the world.... RH: Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. Thank you. CB: You bet. We dedicate this interview to Christine, and Charlie Fowler, her climbing partner, who, in late November 2006, were lost in China. — Bob and Fred BibliographyAscent on G2: One Woman’s Journey to the Top. [Videocassette.] Dir. Robert Yuhas. n.p.: Robert Yuhas productions/Travel Channel, 1999. (50 mins)
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