scaling new heights
scaling new heights Ain’t no mountain high enough for Rob McKany By Joyce Wiswell Californians are used to strange sights, but even they looked twice the day Rob McKany hiked up a San Diego hill dragging a tire. McKany figured it would be good practice for his climb to the top of Alaska’s Denali, where at some points he carried as much as 120 pounds of food and equipment. “I adopted the motto: train or die,” he said. “I had to be in the best shape of my life.” McKany scaled Denali, also known as Mount McKinley, in May. At 20,320 feet, it is the highest point in North America and is considered one of the hardest mountains to climb due to its high altitude, extreme weather and active glacier activity that leaves yawning crevasses. McKany and his team of climbers from Norway, Spain and the UK flew into a snow field and set up base camp at 6,850 feet. After many delays due to storms, they finally reached the top 14 grueling days later. “There wasn’t a morning that I woke up without being covered with frost and ice,” McKany said. “We all reach the summit at about 5 p.m. Wind chill is down to around -30F, and I have ice built up on my beard. My nose bleeding slightly, and is white [and] almost frost bit,” McKany wrote in the blog he kept during the trip. At least four climbers died while McKany was on the mountain, two in an avalanche and two by falling. During the descent, McKany was particularly exhausted. “Ended up having a very rough day. I fell several times on the ridge while heading down to camp,” he blogged. “At the last of the fixed lines, I got my crampon caught up on some cord and ended up stuck upside-down over a small crevasse. Just can’t seem to stay on my feet today.” His Idea of Fun McKany can’t say that he wasn’t warned. He caught the mountaineering bug after reading Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer’s vivid and controversial account of a disastrous Mount Everest climb that claimed the lives of eight climbers in 1996. While most come away from the book grateful to be sitting comfortably in an armchair, McKany decided he had to try Everest himself. “There are not too many new frontiers out there but when climbing something like Everest, you reinvent the adventure every time,” he said. “It’s not about discovery – it’s about discovering yourself.” One thing McKany already knows about himself is that he is an adrenaline Above: The only transportation on and off Denali’s base camp. Left: Tents glisten in the sun way up on Denali. junkie. “I have always been drawn to adventure,” he said. “It’s like you’re running toward a fire when everyone else is running away from it.” Rob McKany was born and raised in El Cajon, California, to Chaldean parents. The original family name was Mekani. The McKanys traveled to Michigan every summer. “I took a Northwest flight to Detroit to visit family and I saw the two guys in the cockpit,” McKany recalled. “I said, ‘that’s what I want to do when I grow up.’” McKany, who turned 35 while on Denali, earned his pilot wings 12 years ago. For the past four years he’s been working for Republic Airways, mainly piloting four-hour flights. But he’s become disenchanted with the airline industry due to the low pay; pilots, he noted, are only paid once the plane pushes off the gate. “That’s when the clock starts to run. Recently, I had a four-day trip and I only got paid for the 20 hours of flight time,” he said. “I make more money at the liquor store by brother and I own in San Diego.” Might As Well Jump Before he became obsessed with mountains, McKany got his thrills by jumping out of airplanes. “I saw it on TV and I always wanted to do it,” he said. “Once I did I said, ‘holy cow, I want to do that again.’ It was like someone flipped a switch and that brought out the extremist in me.” 22 CHALDEAN NEWS SEPTEMBER 2011
About Kourtney When Rob McKany steps atop Aconcogua, he’s doing it not just for the glory, but for a 9-year-old Chaldean girl who has spent virtually her entire life in pain and in the hospital. Kourtney Najjar of El Cajon has a host of conditions including neurogenic pseudo obstruction, osteopenia and chronic anemia. She had a longawaited multi-organ transplant in 2010 but went into severe acute rejection shortly thereafter. A second transplant this past June seems to be taking well, but Kourtney still faces many From top of page: Rob McKany after jumping from a helicopter at the World Free Fall Convention in Illinois (left) with Helene Scalliet. Dragging a tire on a conditioning hike. Inside his tent with fellow climber Robin Barraclough. obstacles. And her family has experienced overwhelming financial burdens due to the medical bills and the cost of two residences. Her parents, Laura and Mike, switch off, one living in a studio apartment near Kourtney at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles and the other more than two hours to the south with their other three kids in El Cajon. Laura has published Diagnosing Kourtney: One Family’s Journey, for all families faced with life-threatening conditions. To learn more about Kourtney Najjar or donate, visit KourtsKrew.com. Since that first jump at age 18, McKany has accomplished 908 skydives, some from an altitude so high that he must use supplemental oxygen. “My highest was 24,000 feet. The free fall was 2 minutes, 30 seconds. Then after you pull the cord, you’re under the parachute for about five minutes,” he said. Multiple jumps are routine for McKany, who once did 11 jumps in a single day. He competed in the U.S. Nationals in 1998 on a four-man team that was scored on the number of formations it could build in the 35 seconds between jump and parachute deployment. He also participated in a world-record group jump in Nevada in which 66 skydivers held onto each other for more than two seconds before pulling their chutes. “You are falling at the speed of gravity and you feel the wind but you don’t feel anything on your body; there’s no pressure,” he said. “We had a blind person jump who said that except for the noise, it’s very peaceful and exhilarating. In the competitions you’re very focused on what you’re doing and have such a short time to accomplish it in that you just go on and do the work.” Several near-misses have not kept McKany grounded. “I have had so many close calls it’s not even funny,” he said. “My friends call me the super cat. I have had three parachute malfunctions, one when I was only 100 to 200 feet from the ground. I deployed my reserve shoot and had such a hard landing I did a somersault, but I was only banged up.” Skydiving has lost some of its allure – “a potbelly pig can jump out of an airplane,” McKany said dismissively — but he does hope to accomplish 1,000 free falls before hanging up his parachute. “That seems like a solid number,” he said. (He also scuba dives.) For now, he is focused on conquering Argentina’s Aconcogua. At 22,841 feet, it’s the highest mountain in the Americas. “I’m hoping to go in January, which is summer down there,” he said. McKany is trying something new on this climb by turning it into a fundraiser. After considering several causes, he’s picked 9-year-old Kourtney Najjar, a Chaldean girl from El Cajon. McKany’s blog entries during his Denali climb became very popular and were forwarded around cyberspace, earning him a fan base that he hopes will help fund his climbs and raise money for Kourtney at the same time. Ascending Everest may be a far-off goal but McKany is determined — even though it means coming up with at least ,000 to make the journey, which takes a minimum of two and a half months. “I hope I calm down after Everest,” he said. “I really would like to eventually settle down.” Follow Rob McKany’s adventures and donate to his efforts through ClimbingChallenge.com. SEPTEMBER 2011 CHALDEAN NEWS 23
