Pleasanton’s traffic guru Jeff Knowles won’t be looking at congested intersections or planning more traffic lights in our city for the next three weeks. Instead, he’ll be trekking to the top of Mt. McKinley as part of a nine-member team of Alaska Range Alpine Mountaineers. Leaving today, Knowles will fly to Anchorage to join his climbing party, check their equipment and plan the climb. On Sunday, the American Alpine Institute’s Denali expedition will leave by air from a small village near the mountain to its starting point on a 7,000-foot elevation glacier. Their plane will land on the glacier, and the group won’t see dirt or pavement again until they return around June 9.
Knowles, who is 47, took up hiking and mountain climbing as a student at West High School in Torrance. At first, it was hiking up the trails to the edge of Half Dome in Yosemite, and then up steeper trails to higher mountains. An avid runner, Knowles shunned cigarettes and drugs, getting his “fixes” by competing in the 1-mile and 2-mike track events and then hiking up to the top of California, Oregon and Washington state mountains in his spare time, including Mt. Whitney, Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens. He even drove to Mexico to climb the highest mountains there, usually climbing alone on trails where he saw no footsteps in the snow and knew no one would be coming down that route or coming behind him if an emergency arose. On one Mexican mountain, he reached the peak at 18,700 feet, camped there for a while and enjoyed the view before going down and then back to work the following Monday.
He met his wife Mary between climbs, and she only learned of his passion for mountaineering on one of their early dates when he persuaded her to join him in climbing Aconcaqua, a 22,841-foot-high mountain on the Argentine-Chile border. Mary made it to the 16,000-foot marker, but had to turn back because the scarcity of oxygen at that altitude was giving her headaches, a common problem for mountain climbers. So Knowles did what any chivalrous escort would do. He walked her down to a base camp, and then turned around and hiked to the top by himself. Despite his “hobby,” as he calls it, Mary still married Knowles, and the two now have two children: Amanda, who will turn 6 when her dad is at the top of Mt. McKinley, and Michael, 3. They’ll follow Knowles’ progress on the Alpine Institute’s Web site: www.aai.cc/currentnews.asp. Knowles is hiking with Team 4 in the May 21-June 10 timeframe, and the site is accessible to the public.
Although mountain climbing may not appeal to everyone, the hiking and the many triathlons and marathons Knowles joins are good for the physique. After marrying and settling down, and as Pleasanton’s traffic engineer which often meant early morning and late night meetings, Knowles found himself slowly becoming a couch potato at age 38. Tall at 6-feet, 3-inches, he still grew concerned when he tipped the scale at 274 pounds. That’s when he went back on the running and climbing routine, joining in marathons and triathlons up and down the state and preparing physically for another high mountain to climb. As a result, he’s now much trimmer at 230 pounds and more muscular. Of course, any of us could lose a few unwanted pounds if we joined Knowles in carrying a 60-pound pack up Mt. McKinley and pulling a full-size sled loaded with equipment behind us. Besides losing weight, Knowles will also be lighter in the wallet, with the Mt. McKinley guide-assisted trip costing $4,400 and the necessary clothes and equipment about the same. Of course, there’s still Mt. Everest, which Knowles would like to try as soon as he can find a sponsor to help pay the $60,000 climbers pay to hike up that mountain.
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