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The Climbers Let me introduce you to our group. Ages are listed as of the date of our climb, June 28, 2001.
Pobrecito! You need to understand that our group accepts no whining. Any whine, no matter how justified, is met with an immediate "awww, po-bre-CI-to" (Spanish for "poor little boy"). The humor factor in this group cannot be overstated. It is endless. We have pillow fighting, boxing, blow-gunning, short-sheeting, potato gunning, wrestling, mooning, rock fighting, and PAINFUL fights using towels, wire hangers, leather belts and Mardi-Gras beads. (I swatted Joey's bare back with a string of Mardi Gras beads once and he looked like he had been hit by a Portuguese Man of War.) We have had some minor injuries, but our group follows a simple philosophy: "it's only funny until someone gets hurt, then it's hysterical!" Oh, yeah, and Jace hates it when you put crumbs in his bed ... especially a whole package of crushed-up cheese crackers. He HATES it. On a climb, however, all of this humor quickly gives way to seriousness, care, and mutual support. If you got in trouble on a hill, these are the people you would want around you. They are smart, strong, funny and intensely loyal. If you were in trouble on a mountain or anywhere else, these guys would move Heaven and Hell trying to help. You could not hope to have better friends. |
Jake Collins, 27, was raised in the country near Francisco, Indiana. I
met Jake at a public astronomy observation at Patoka Lake in August, 1998.
He showed up at my telescope with two young guys in tow, fresh from water skiing. Jake is a rock solid 6 footer at 165 pounds and is always-tanned, always-smiling and always in motion. Born and
raised on the Padanaram commune in Indiana, he bicycled across the entire United States,
motorcycled 26,000 miles to all of the lower 48 states, spent two years on the hospital ship,
Anastasis, off the coast of Africa, spent
a year hitchhiking the length of Africa (including a solo 100-mile walk through Congolese jungle with just a spear for protection), and
spent another year climbing Ecuadorian volcanoes and wandering South America.
He has cliff-dived through fire, sky-dived, scuba-dived, hunted, and caved. He
has stood on top of a 60-foot mast with no hands and he has summited every
mountain he has attempted – Kilimanjaro, Cotopaxi, Chimborazo and now Maroon. He
has unlimited energy, knows more
tricks and cures than an Apache brave, can survive any situation, hunts successfully
with blow guns and sling shots, has been burned and shot, nearly died of malaria
in Zanzibar and has acted in a Rwandan movie about the genocide. Future ambitions
include rafting the Amazon and climbing Mt. Everest. Jake has a marketing degree
from Vincennes University where he put himself through school, and he has traveled to more than 70 countries. He has recently worked as a videographer filming festivals around the world. Jake currently lives in New York City and works as marketing director for 
Jace McAlister, 21, is from my home town of Louisville.
He was pursuing a B.S. degree in biology at the University of Kentucky when we climbed Maroon and received his degree the following year (2002). I met him while manning an astronomy display at a Louisville mall in May, 1998. Six months later, he e-mailed me out of the blue wanting to go observing, which we did. In a later e-mail, he casually mentioned that he was interested in learning how to snow ski, so I included him in plans for a March 2000 ski trip with Jake and two German friends. He was cruising intermediate slopes by noon the first day and was great fun to have along. While skiing, he learned about the climb in Ecuador and, three months later, he was standing on the summit of Cotopaxi (19,345 feet). He spent two months wandering Peru and Bolivia with Jake after our Ecuador climb. An Eagle Scout, Jace is 6 feet tall, weighs 155 pounds, and is a very fit former high
school swimmer, ranked table tennis player, a cyclist and a great guitar player. He can race up North Carolina's Mt. Mitchell (the trail gains 3,680 feet) in 1 hour 42 minutes. Jace has an awesome sense of humor and a serious side too. After graduating from U.K., Jace decided to work in journalism and took an internship with the Lexington Herald-Leader. In 2002, Jace met a new girlfriend at U.K. In the summer of 2003, Jace visited her family in Cochin, India, and then he hitchhiked and trekked alone to Namche Bazaar at the base of Mt. Everest. Jace got married in 2004 and they now live in Columbus, Ohio, where Jace is working as a scientific editor. We sometimes refer to him as our "Guard Jace." In 2001 while we were grocery-shopping in Colorado, a guy took abnormal interest in the skis in our unlocked car rack. When the guy noticed Jace in the back seat, he acted like he just wanted to comb his hair in the car window.
Joey Hammond, 17, is from
Princeton, Indiana. I met Joey in August of 2000, but I actually had met him two years earlier. He had been one of the two young kids with Jake at Patoka Lake in 1998. Joey is a now a lean, strong, 6' 2" 160 pounder who loves sports and
physical challenges. He and his friends used to circle cars and box with dangerously thin bag gloves. After one bout, Joey could not eat for three days. Now, he is a highly-skilled, three-time Golden Gloves boxer who trains with the 
I am Chuck Allen and was 53 when we climbed Maroon. I am an attorney and have practiced employment law with a large firm in Louisville since 1977. I have had a lifelong interest in astronomy and was president of the 
Brendan Anslinger, 23, is from Evansville,
Indiana. He graduated with a B.S. degree in geology from the University of Southern Indiana in 2002. He was also vice-president of USI's Geology Club and organized several geology trips to Utah and Kentucky. Bren got married in December 2002 and now lives in Dayton, Ohio, with his wife, Chrissy, who received her M.D. from Des Moines University Medical School in May, 2006. I met Bren in October 1999 while giving a talk at the Evansville Astronomical Society about my total solar eclipse-related trip to Romania earlier that year. He asked me questions about the trip for two full hours after the program, at a time when I was looking for a fourth person for the Ecuador trip. He looked fit as heck and was into geology, so I asked him if he wanted to see a volcano close-up. He politely declined until I sent him a
"carpe diem" e-mail which, to my great surprise, worked. Brendan was the first of my young climbing buddies to start giving me grief about my age. This occurred during a play-argument about which of us was keeping the "official log" of our trip to Ecuador. We ended up having an impromptu sword fight with trekking poles while we were completely lost on a foggy 14,000 foot-high plain in Ecuador’s Avenida des Volcanes. During the fight, he said "I can take you old man." Jace overheard this and had obviously been dying to call me that for ages. I’ve been "old man" (or worse) ever since. Brendan could not go to the Bells due to summer school and his job. We called him from the summit and met him on the return. He was on our Capitol Peak climb in August 2004. Brendan is a highly-skilled craftsman and wants to establish his own business in home construction and improvement.
Dishon Lutz, then 16, was born and raised near Ft. Branch, Indiana. He graduated from Gibson Southern High School in 2003 and is now a junior at the University of Southern Indiana. A four year starter and all-county soccer player for his high school, DiShon roamed Ecuador, Peru, Boliva and Chile for two months with Jake and Jace after our climb in Ecuador that summer. He is the only person I know who got two Yellow Fever shots in 6 weeks because Ecuadorian authorities could not read the only entry that appears on the Yellow Fever page of his Immunization Record. Soccer practice prevented his climbing with us in Ecuador or on Maroon but he did go with us to Mt. Mitchell in November 2003 and climbed the 5.6 mile 3,700 vertical foot trail in 2:22 with very little prior conditioning. (He's smart too. When we got caught by darkness coming down Mt. Mitchell, he took off with some dudes who passed us with headlamps.) One of Joey's closest friends since childhood, DiShon played city select soccer and Boy's Club basketball and also went on our March 2001 ski trip to Colorado where he proved to be a fast and skilled skier and snowboarder. He is graduating from the University of Southern Indiana in May 2008 and is already working an internship with Northwestern Mutual Insurance Company. Dishon introduced us to "You's a Ho" by Ludacris on the way into Denver on a ski trip ... now a group tradition upon reaching the Mile High City.
