"I was scared enough that I was in great shape, and I came back looking like a refugee," Jeremy Hubball '69 said, referring to his most memorable and taxing mountain climb — Mt. Everest.
Hubball joined a team of nine men to tackle the world's tallest and send their team leader — Scott Fischer — to the top. The climbers called themselves the "Sagarmatha Environmental Expedition," after the Nepalese name for the mountain, reflecting their additional goal to clear the litter previous teams had discarded during their climbs and protect the mountain from future expeditions.
Hubball had years of preparation before tackling Everest, which began one summer at the National Outdoor Leadership School during a break from the four year teaching job he accepted after graduating from Princeton.
From there, Hubball went on to climb in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, South America, Ecuador and the western United States.
"I'm enthralled by the beauty of mountains," Hubball said. "Something magical happens to me whenever I step on a mountain."
Getting ready
Preparation for his 1994 climb of Mt. Everest began years before the trip, as the team sought climbing permits and the necessary gear to scale the mountain. Preparations intensified in the last six months before the climb.
Hubball would spend two to three hours each weekday and six to eight hours each Saturday and Sunday preparing for the rigors of the mountain.
"Nothing motivates you like fear," Hubball said referring to his pre-Everest workout.
By the time the climb began, Hubball had added eight pounds of muscle to his usual 152 pounds and reduced his body fat to 2.5 percent.
A nine-person team intended to get Fischer, already one of the world's premier climbers, to the top. Success would qualify him to lead future expeditions of high-paying clientele. It was on such an expedition two years later that Fischer lost his life.
A five-member summit team and four-member support team, of which Hubball was a part, were determined not to let Fischer fail on what was his third attempt to reach the mountain's top, though they themselves would not attempt the summit.
Hubball and his partners spent six weeks on the mountain before Fischer began his climb, preparing four high camps above the base camp, which would serve as rest stations during the climb.
"It's like a military campaign," Hubball said. "To keep them supplied with food and water and ammunition is a huge effort."
Cleaning the scene
The other part of Hubball's time was spent collecting garbage — empty oxygen bottles, torn tents and discarded cooking materials left behind by earlier climbers.
Hubball said he understood why other teams left supplies behind. "When you're up that high and you're interested in your own survival, you're not going to worry too much about cleanliness," he said.
The team convinced the Nepalese government to require climbers to be more environmentally-friendly.
The team also worked with the Nepalese government to try to limit traffic on the mountain to four teams at a time.
"The year before we climbed, in 1992 to '93, seven to eight teams climbed at same time. By 1996 [the Nepalese government] was getting enough requests to let 13 teams on the mountain that May," said Hubball, who noted the significant impact of the fees the government collected from climbers in their decision.
Hubball partly attributes the death of his friend Fischer and 12 other climbers on Mt. Everest in 1996 to the large number of people on the mountain, a tragedy retold in the book "Into Thin Air."
The most challenging aspect of climbing Everest, according to Hubball, was the altitude. "You're going to feel awful, have a splitting head ache, be diarrheic or constipated, have body aches, and cough so hard that you can crack ribs," said Hubball. "You're dealing emotionally and psychologically with feeling really awful . . . trying to find the strength to still get up and go out into the cold and the wind and keep climbing."
Nevertheless, Hubball says that the rewards more than compensate for the struggles.
"Often times you get through a stretch and you recognize you've accomplished something, and it's frequently spectacularly beautiful. I like being where practically nobody is and hardly anybody has been," Hubball said.
Most times, Hubball said, his fellow climbers quickly become his best friends.
"The process of climbing with other people is an incredible bonding experience that we just don't get to experience here on earth because you have their lives in your hand and they have your life in their hands," Hubball said.
"We're used to a life where our society tries to and we like to control everything and to make everything comfortable and we don't like surprises and all that, but you get out into the third world and you better surrender to the whim of the universe," Hubball said.
Still climbing . . .
Despite tales of a fellow climber dying from altitude sickness, and of narrowly escaping hostile guerrillas by hiding beneath equipment in the flatbed of a pickup truck, a story Hubball claims it took 10 years for him to tell his wife, Hubball still wishes he could travel more often.
However, with his work in commercial real-estate — which he has done for the last 26 years along with a Princeton classmate — a family of four children, and his involvement in community activities, Hubball said he is only able to travel about every three years.
He said he hopes this summer will take him to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with his wife and 16-year-old daughter, but said he is uncertain about traveling now.
"If that doesn't pan out, I'll go do something else," said Hubball. "I haven't done anything in two years and I'm very antsy."
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