Free Peak by Roland Smith Page A

I had been fifteen would you have come to New York?"
    He hesitated, then said, "Probably not. I was right in the middle of leading a group of amateur climbers to Everest."
    I would have liked it a lot better if he had come to New York to save me because I was in trouble, not because he was in trouble.
    "The youngest Americans to top Everest are a couple of twenty-year-olds," he explained. "So, your being fifteen might have worked, but truthfully, getting a fourteen-year-old up there has a lot more sex appeal, especially after your climb in New York.
    "There are a lot of celebrities climbing this year: a couple of rockers, an actor, a football player. There are seven documentary and TV crews on this side of the mountain alone, and just as many, if not more, on the south side. So, when we tried to get the media interested in our climb there were no takers. Without publicity we're circling the drain.
    "Your skyscraper stunt was beamed all over the world. I knew about it before your mom called and asked if I could help out. Someone in our Chiang Mai office saw it on TV, figured out the connection, and called up here suggesting we try to put you on top. At first I told them no way, but then your mom called. I thought I could take care of your problem and mine at the same time."
    "Did you talk to Mom about what we're doing?"
    "Yeah, before I left Kathmandu."
    "What did you tell her?"
    "I told her I was going to take you on a climb, but I didn't tell her where."
    "She's not going to like it when she finds out."
    "Don't be so sure. She may not climb anymore, but she understands what it's all about. That's why she let you go to those climbing camps. She knows that I might risk my own life to summit, but I would never risk anyone else's, especially my own son's, to get to the top of a mountain."
    "What's going to make her mad is your not telling her beforehand," I said.
    "You're probably right, but the reason I didn't tell her is that we can't let this out until you're back down."
    "What about the film crew?"
    "They're not going to say anything. We're paying them. They work for us."
    "What about Holly Angelo?"
    He gave a deep, foggy sigh. (It was cold in the tent.)
    "Blackmail," he said. "Or what amounts to it, anyway.
    Somehow she figured it all out. I think she might have a line to Dr. Woo.
    "And by the way, if you had flunked the physical I wouldn't have brought you up here. Period. I would have sent you on to Chiang Mai. And I did enroll you in the International School there.
    "Anyway, Holly called me here last week and said that she was going to print a story about your Everest attempt unless I gave her an exclusive."
    "And now she wants to climb the mountain herself," I said.
    "Yeah, and it looks like I'm going to have to give her a shot. Otherwise, she's going to start filing reports as soon as she gets up here."
    "Why do we have to keep it quiet?"
    "Because of the Chinese," he said. "There's no age limit on this side of the mountain, but if they find out we're trying to put a fourteen-year-old on the top, they might pull our climbing permit. They've been trying to get a teenager to the summit for years. They wouldn't be too happy if an American teenager topped it before one of their own."
    He let out a harsh laugh. "Politics, publicity, advertising, sponsorships, endorsements: Climbing has really gone downhill. I can't tell you how much I miss our rock rat days when we showed up at the base of a wall with a bag of trail mix, a bottle of water, and an old rope. We're rock weasels now, and it will never be the same."
    "Josh!" A high-pitched scream pierced the cold mountain air.
    "That would be Holly," Josh said.
    "You know her voice?"
    "I haven't heard it in fifteen years, but I'd recognize it anywhere. Kind of like fingernails scraping on a chalkboard."
    "Josh!"
    We both winced.
    "Holly was on the circuit writing freelance articles when your mom and I were climbing. She actually wrote a couple of good pieces about us. She