I had the good fortune of growing up not far from Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. My dad was a serious amateur photographer and our family frequently spent weekends hiking the trails around the park while my dad pursued his photographic interests.
As I got older, I became enamored with the idea of mountain climbing in the Tetons and pestered my parents to allow me to go the park’s Exum School of Mountaineering. As it turned out, the minimum age for climbing school enrollment was 14. At the ripe old age of 12, I had to anxiously wait for the coming years.
The Exum School of Mountaineering was co-founded by a friend of my dad’s, Glenn Exum. Glenn and Dad played in a swing band that toured the Northwest in the 1930s. In 1962, I finally reached the minimum age and my parents gave their reluctant approval for climbing school. My instructors were Glenn Exum himself and one of his young guides, John “Jake” Breitenbach.
I spent most of the two-day climbing school with Jake. He was a Washington native and grew up in Aberdeen, on the coast. We talked about salmon fishing and his recent pioneering climb on Mount McKinley (now Denali) in Alaska. I remember him telling a lot of jokes with a hearty laugh to calm us down, as he was both kind and patient with his fledgling climbing students.
After mountaineering school and armed with some minimal skills, I explored the crags and buttresses around my hometown after convincing several friends to join me in early climbing adventures — which, fortunately, did not result in serious injuries or deaths. Over the following years, I climbed most of the major peaks in the Tetons, often with my favorite climbing partner, John Kahm.
My instructor, Jake Breitenbach, was selected to be a member of the 1963 American Everest Expedition, along with several other renowned Exum School guides like Willi Unsoeld and Barry Corbet. The expedition was amazingly successful, with Americans summiting Everest from two different routes, one of which, the West Ridge, has rarely been repeated. Sadly, there was one expedition fatality, and that was Jake Breitenbach.
As the expedition worked its way up the lower part of Everest, climbers had to traverse a particularly dangerous section called the Khumbu Icefall. It is like a frozen waterfall that is continually moving downhill. A giant ice tower known as a serac collapsed on the climbing party, barely missing several of the climbers but burying Jake under tons of ice.
There was no way to rescue him and to this day, he remains entombed in the Khumbu.
Several years ago, I had the opportunity to trek the Everest region of the Himalayas. Part of our journey followed the traditional route to the south side of Everest. One of our trekking members recalled that there was a memorial for the 1963 American Everest Expedition near the famed Buddhist temple at Tengboche, Nepal. After a search, high above the monastery we located a series of carved stones with the names of various expedition members.
Among them was one that read: “John E. Breitenbach — Long live the crow,” which was Jake’s nickname.
Several days later, in a hike to the base camp of Ama Dablam, one of the most iconic peaks in the Himalayas, we stopped to rest below a group of Tibetan prayer flags draped over a rocky outcropping. Out of nowhere, at this high altitude, a large crow suddenly appeared on the rock and spoke to us in a most crowlike squawk.
“Hi Jake,” I said, and he flew away.
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