by Hap Rocketto
Andrew Waugh, the British Surveyor of General of India, had not been able to enter either Nepal or Tibet because they were closed nations and, therefore, could have had no idea that Peak XV was known to the natives as “Mother Goddess of Earth,” Chomolungma in Tibetan. He just wanted to honor his predecessor, Sir George Everest, who supervised the Great Trigonometric Survey of British India during the time that it was found that Peak XV, at 29,002 feet, was the tallest mountain on the face of the Earth. Waugh pressed to have the mountain named after Everest, who resisted the effort for he believed that geographic formations should carry the names the local population used, but all for naught.
By the early 1920s British expeditions began attempting to summit the mountain. George Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question “Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?” with “Because it’s there.”
That may be true but, on June 8, 1924, Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine disappeared into the clouds as they attempted to reach the top via the North Col route. Seventy five years later Mallory’s body was discovered in a remarkable state of preservation lying in a snow basin on the north side of the mountain. Mountains seem to be a nemesis for male members of the Mallory family. Mallory’s younger brother, Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, also met his death on a mountain when an aircraft in which he was a passenger crashed in the French Alps in 1944, just 20 years after the Everest fatality. George Mallory’s son in law, physicist Glen Millikan, was killed in a climbing accident in 1947.
Unanswered is the question of whether Mallory and Irvine succeeded. It is therefore accepted that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first to reach the summit on May 29, 1953. News of Hillary and Norgay’s triumph reached London on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, a gift as glorious to her as was Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe was to her predecessor, the first Elizabeth. In response both Elizabeth’s knighted their heroes.
There is nexus for me between mountaineering and shooting as Jeff Doerschler and Len Remaly, two of my shooting companions, climb as yet another hobby. They are both slightly built and quiet and so appear not to be the type to be found assaulting the ice and scree covered sides of jagged peaks, but appearances are deceiving.
Both are technical men, Jeff holds a doctorate in some obscure and esoteric area of computer knowledge and is the coauthor of the scintillatingly titled, A Rule-Based System for Dense-Map Name Placement. He is a “highpointer,” a climber who is determined to reach the top of the highest points in all 50 states. When not overhauling his ancient Honda, 200,000+ miles, he can be found working at pyrotechnic shows. He is a still water that runs deep.
Len, an engineer by profession, has turned to climbing and brewing as his athletic and creative outlets in retirement. I can only presume the latter is for celebrating the former. Both have won various national smallbore rifle championships so it should come as no surprise that Jeff has earned the NRA Distinguished Smallbore award in prone and position while Len has the position award.
I was engaged in an internet debate concerning the various Distinguished designations. It was a partisan argument over which might be harder to earn, CMP service rifle or NRA smallbore. Both awards are similar as they require a shooter to place in the top 10 per cent of designated matches a certain number of times. Other rules limit how many matches may be shot and at what competitive levels one must perform these feats.
I came down firmly on the side of smallbore because it is required to earn at least one leg, or “step,” at the National Outdoor Smallbore Rifle Championship. That means that one must travel to Camp Perry and do battle with the very best. The second proviso is that all Distinguished shooters are counted in the top 10 per cent, in high power one only competes against non-Distinguished shooters for a place in the top ten per cent.
That begged the question from a high power shooter of just how many smallbore Distinguished awards have been presented since it was introduced in 1965. Not having the last year’s awardees’ names my best estimate was about 720: 270 prone; 450 position; with 110 of them holding both awards: double Distinguished.
With smallbore Distinguished mountain climbing shooters Jeff and Len on my mind and my easily distracted mind drifting away towards Everest a comparison started forming. Records indicate that by the end of the 2010 climbing season, there had been 5,104 ascents of Everest by about 3,142 individuals. Some have done it more than once, with Apa Sherpa holding the current record of 21 round trips, making about 1800 of them sort of Double Distinguished climbers.
Further research shows that neither a successful climb nor a smallbore distinguished award comes cheap. Both take a minimum of two years to complete, require extensive training, travel, and expensive specialized equipment. Even if you are doing Everest on the economical side climbing gear may exceed $8,000, bottled oxygen runs about $3,000, and permits are at least $10,000-Everest climb fees are an important part of Nepal’s gross national product. Travel and transport fees hover about $5,000. That is a grand total of $26,000. A run at Distinguished can add up to the same numbers over an extended period of time.
In the end the cost may be the same but the hunt for Distinguished is undeniably safer. In the first 45 years of the award maybe someone has passed out on the grass at Perry but no one has passed away there, unlike the 149 unfortunate souls who did so on Everest’s slopes. Smallbore Distinguished is also more exclusive. Simply put in the ensuing 45 years after it was first conquered 1,197 made the climb to the top of Everest while only 720 have earned NRA Smallbore Distinguished in the same time span.
