mount evans

ON TOP OF

MOUNT EVANS

An Unbelievable Saga Of The Events

At The Top Of Mount Evans

With Some Interesting Characters

By Izzy Ess Of Grande Vitesse

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

(in order of appearance)

Ivan Salzburg

Emmanuel Lopez

Olga Fuchs

Marie Séville

Karl Schmidt

Mary Worthington

Samantha Dudley

Alice Madison

Gladys Bonnet

Clyde S. Dale

Jimmy Johnson

Peter Appleyard

Professor Ivan Salzburg was doing research on the physiological and the pathophysiological effects of altitude on exercise and behaviour, in “normal,” fit, young, educated people.  He had hired seven athletic students at the University of Colorado, in Boulder, to come and stay with him at the research station atop Mount Evans.  The route from Denver was direct.  The road to the top of Mount Evans was maintained by the State of Colorado, for tourists who could drive to 14,000 feet for spectacular views of Denver and the Colorado Rockies.  There was a small, privately owned kiosk offering, at inflated prices, chocolate bars, coffee, sandwiches, hot chocolate, soda, orange juice and yoghurt, right at the top.  Emmanuel Lopez ran it in the daytime hours; at night he slept in a small bed in a tiny storeroom in the back, looking east through a fair-sized window.

The research facility was comfy and included sixteen small, Spartanly furnished bedrooms, a dining room with a kitchen and a living-sitting room with a large window affording a great view toward the east.  For skiers, the slopes were both difficult and easy, with a drop of 8,000 feet to get to the level of the mile-high City of Denver.  All the seven athletes, three boys and four girls, had been living in Boulder in the dormitories and were acclimatized to 11,000 feet above sea-level, before they ascended to the top of Mount Evans.  This was a summer project starting May 1, 1963, for three months, so as not to interfere with the school year for the students.  The Federal monies were granted to help to ascertain why American athletes, and American army personnel, did so poorly at Olympics held at altitude, like the one at 8,000 feet in Mexico City and the fighting in the Himalayas.

Ivan, himself, was still athletic and an excellent skier.  He had often driven to the top of Mount Evans and skied down the double diamond slopes back to Denver, where he would retrieve his car by getting a bus ticket to the summit of Mount Evans.  He had not yet met the students who were hired for him by the University staff.  He was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a majority of women in the group.  His long-time girlfriend, Olga Fuchs, a registered nurse, had just dumped him for a younger man, a resident doctor at the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives, at Colfax and Colorado.  His long time technician, Marie Seville, would be there as well.  She was good at mathematics and statistics and would be of great assistance when the data starting coming in.  And, she was pretty and quite fit and might be able to participate in the research protocol.

On May 1, the group was picked up by the microbus that Ivan had hired with a professional driver, for the duration of the summer.  There would be trips to Denver to purchase supplies and food for all.  The cooking was to be an exercise in student independence.  The students were to share the cooking, laundry and the cleaning up.  It was planned as part of the evaluation of functioning at altitude for everyone, including for Ivan, Marie, the driver, Karl Schmidt and, of course, for the student athletes, Mary Worthington, Samantha Dudley, Alice Madison, Gladys Bonnet, Clyde S. Dale, Jimmy Johnson and Peter Appleyard.  All the students had superior Grade Point Averages and some were supported by Athletic Scholarships.  Alice was the President of her Student Council and Peter was the son of the Governor of Colorado.  Clyde was a medical student.  Jimmy was a published author of short stories.  Mary was the Homecoming Queen when Colorado defeated the Bruins of UCLA.  The microbus was big enough to hold everyone including Ivan and Marie who both lived in Denver.  Ivan was a professor at the University of Colorado, Denver Campus, and Marie worked with him, there.  Karl was from Aurora, Colorado, just outside the city limits, east of Denver, right near Stapleton Airport; he was of Austrian heritage.  His usual job was driving a limousine for Airline LIMO passengers. Alice and Jimmy were Afro-Americans.  Marie and Gladys were Hispanics, both with Mexican heritage.

The group was immediately friendly and enthusiastic.  They were all looking forward to an interesting summer in the Rockies with some interesting work to do, with interesting people.  They all liked the idea of being independent and yet co-operating for the cooking, cleaning and the laundry.  As they reached the top of Mount Evans, a cheer for the driver was led by Alice with a rousing chorus of “Three cheers for the bus driver!”  Marie had already made the room assignments which were posted in the dining room and the living room with the big window and the great vista.  Everyone pulled their small suitcases and back packs, containing, of course, sports clothing for the exercising experiments, as well as warm clothing for just hanging out.  Marie had also posted the weekly assignments for cooking, cleaning and laundry.  For the first day, Marie and Ivan acted as the hosts for small rib-eye steaks with backed potatoes, peas and carrots.  Chilled domestic Champaign, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, was served.  Dessert was a large chocolate layer cake with raspberry filling.  Coffee and tea, coke and diet coke, ginger ale and cans of fruit juice followed.  The cleaning up had been assigned to Alice and Jimmy.  There was a dishwasher which made it easy.  Clyde was assigned to sweeping up, for the week.  The evening of the first day had gone swimmingly; Ivan and Marie were pleased to see the camaraderie that developed quickly.

Marie wasn’t sure if she liked the other part of socializing which would have been quite normal, otherwise.  There were pairings and triplings of the crowd of students and their supervisors; obviously, sex was in the offing for the night.  Marie relaxed when Ivan asked her if she wanted to spend the night with him; she winked agreement and felt warm all over.  She had liked her boss for many years.  She had watched him recoil from socializing when his younger girlfriends dumped him.  She had fantasized about a sex or love affair with him.  Ivan wasn’t too much older than Marie.  It seemed to be the right time and the right place, right here and right now.  She checked her own rosters for rooms and assignments; Ivan was in room 1 and she was in room 2, across the narrow hall.  She slipped into room 2 and awaited the sound of Ivan unlocking his door.  When she heard him, he was not alone.  Alice had come to spend the night with him.  Shrugging her shoulders, she went out into the hallway.  She knocked on Ivan’s door and was admitted to find Alice naked and broadly smiling.  So, Marie then entered and smiled broadly and got naked while her Ivan followed suit.  The three of them had difficulty getting into one small single bed, but they managed by getting on top of each other and linking up their body parts to be enjoined and quite entwined.  They spent the whole night rearranging bodies, body parts and just who was on top.  Finally, they slept very soundly with some funny breathing due to lower oxygen and carbon dioxide partial pressures that were present in Denver and Boulder.  Ivan fell asleep wondering if he needed to check more carefully the oxygen and carbon dioxide ambient partial pressures and thought that he might look into this in the morning, as he drifted off to sleep.

At breakfast, everyone looked still a little sleepy.  As there was a sort of feeling of elation in the room, the moods improved and happiness again prevailed.  The experiments would start each morning at 9:00, sharp, as Marie had said it last evening, with authority.  At 9:00, in fact, Marie and Ivan prepared Alice and Jimmy for a treadmill run.  They were connected by oxygen sensing electrodes from their fingers and ear lobes to the oscilloscopes with bright green screens and yellow lines across them.  Alice and Jimmy were given belts to wear around their upper chests.  These allowed electrodes to pick up the rhythmic beating of their hearts, a kind of online electrocardiographic tracing, or EKG.  The chest belt also contained sensors which would measure breathing rates and depths.  A tiny needle was introduced into a vein in the back of the hand to be used for withdrawing blood samples for the measurement of pyruvic and lactic acid levels, as well as the partial pressures for Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide, and pH, the negative natural logarithm of the Hydrogen Ion Concentration, which could also be calculated from a measurement of the actual electrical resistance of the blood, which could also be measured continuously, online, with Ivan’s new equipment.  A small device allowed the calculation, online, of the Bicarbonate blood levels.  All hooked up, Alice put her lips around a mouth piece similar to the ones used by SCUBA divers, had her nose pinched shut, and started breathing into an expandable bag which collected samples for online measurements of produced Carbon Dioxide, consumed Oxygen and the other gases including Nitrogen, and trace amounts of the “noble gasses,” Argon, Krypton, Xenon and Neon.

Incidentally, the noble gasses are no longer so noble, since in the 1980’s a researcher at the Argonne National Laboratories in Batavia, Illinois, collided accelerated atoms of Argon with atoms of Chlorine, at almost light speed, in their underground cyclotron, and produced Argon Chloride, a simple salt.

Alice was started slowly at a rate of two miles per hour, as data was collected online.  Every three minute, her treadmill rate was increased by half a mile per hour, until she reached six mph, at which point she had to run to keep up her speed.  Thereafter, the incline of the treadmill was increased by one degree, every three minutes, until she was up to seven degrees of incline at six mph.  If she could, she continued at that level for a final three minutes, still breathing into the bag and still having a lot of data collected online by the electrodes and blood samplings from both the venous and the arterial blood.

Marie could see that she would have a lot of work to do later.  Her vital job at the moment was ensuring that all the online data was accurately being recorded on Ivan’s modern equipment that he had purchased in Denver with the Federal Grant monies.  Alice, in her skimpy sports outfit, was able to go the full routine, including the three minutes at 6 mph, at 7 degrees of incline.  Her breasts heaving and her skin glistening, she gradually slowed down and stopped walking uphill, until she had a full three minutes at 2 mph on a level treadmill at zero degrees of incline.  She whispered to Marie as she stepped off the treadmill, “That was almost as good as sex!”  Marie helped her disengage from the breathing bag and removed all her electrodes and sampling needles.  Alice headed for the showers and a change of clothing as Marie ensured that all the recorded data was transferred to her own personal computer for later use in her office back in Denver, where she would get full and exclusive attention from her loving boss, Ivan.  Marie’s private parts still ached for Ivan since last night’s activities.  She wondered what would be in store for her tonight.  Clyde slipped into the shower with Alice and was very helpful in scrubbing down her private parts.  Alice showed her appreciation for his help and helped the naked Clyde push in his erect manhood into her own highly lubricated honeypot as she presented Clyde her derriere, right then and there.  Clyde successfully just added to her lubrication with a large deposit of his own.  Alice squealed and was delighted as she exploded several times with some internal spasms.

Jimmy was successful just as Alice was, in completing a full routine of exercise and online collection of data.  Jimmy, however, did not get Clyde to help him shower; Mary was the one who scrubbed his private parts for him.  Mary did then offer Jimmy her pretty derriere, which he was able to take advantage of for almost half an hour.  Then, our Mary and her new friend, Jimmy, retired to Mary’s Spartan bedroom for another three hours of enjoining and entwining.  They didn’t seem to miss lunch, much.  They enjoyed eating each other…

The lunches and cleanups were efficient and many people retired to the sitting room to enjoy the view and just relax.  Some fell asleep in the comfy chairs.  Some went singly or with company to their bedrooms and slept or enjoyed some sex.  Marie and Ivan reviewed the records of the data collected on Alice and Jimmy.  They nodded and smiled approvingly and felt the ultimate review would be significant in establishing what a normal athlete could accomplish at 14,000 feet.  Later studies of greater workloads should begin to show the limits of these athletes, if there was a limit.  The performances of Alice and Jimmy were magnificent.  Marie quipped that perhaps they should study a threesome having sex!  Ivan blushed and smiled and said, “Why not?!  I’m game, if you are, my dear Marie!”  It was Marie that blushed and smiled.  “I’m game!” she said quietly.  “How ‘bout just the two of us, right now?”  “Great idea, dear!” he said.  “I’ll meet you in about 15 minutes.  I have a couple of messages I need to respond to.”  Marie nodded and checked her watch.

Ivan went to the lobby to use the telephone.  “I’m in Boulder, dear Ivan.  I heard you hired a driver.  How would you like to send him to Boulder to pick me up and bring me to the top of Mount Evans, where the air is rare and so exciting!”  “Olga, replied Ivan.  “You’ll just be in the way.  I’m very busy, here, and I only have a short time to get it done.  Capeesh?”  “Oh, c’mon, my dear Ivan.  You’ll need some rest and recreation.  I promise I’ll stay out of your hair when you’re working.  But, I could be available for some hanky panky should you need some.”  “Why don’t you just get lost, my dear Olga.  That’s what you told me several weeks ago.  Has your new friend dumped you, already?”  “That was a low blow, Ivan.  You didn’t use to be that way; you were always nice and polite!”  “Just fuck off, Olga.  And, do NOT come here or I’ll ask my staff to throw you out on your rear!  Capeesh?”  Ivan heard the satisfying click of the disconnection.  Immediately, he dialed the second number; it was his department head in Denver.  “Greetings from Denver, my clever friend.”  “Greetings!  You must want something badly if you call me a friend, and a clever one at that!”  “OK!  OK!  You know me too well.  Yep, I need to warn that the Federal agency that granted you those huge amounts of money need an accounting statement, immediately.  I couldn’t handle it so I called you.  I know my name is on the Grant, but I was fool enough to give your full rein.  Am I going to be sorry?”  “I don’t think so, boss.  I think everything was justified and is already being used to collect important data.  Tell me how to reassure the jerks!”  “I’m sure you’ll be OK but they are demanding an accounting, immediately.  If you don’t comply, those jerks can pull the plug on your great project!”  “OK, boss.  The accounting practically done.  I have all the receipts her and can describe the use of everything to even a child.  I’ll fax it to you in a day or two.”  That’s great, my boy!  I’ll get my secretary to look it over for errors and sent it on it’s way.  I’m sure that will satisfy the money folks in Washington.  Oh, by the way, I think you should know that a summer storm is coming your way.  It was severe and knocked power out in Oakland and San Francisco an it’s heading straight across the mountain passes to the top of Mount Evans.  You might need to be guarded against it because it’s the middle of a fierce low pressure system that originated in the Pacific over El Nino.  You may have to batten down the hatches.  I believe you can see it now.  It’s about 2 hours away from you.”  Ivan rang off and went outside to the top of the mountain, next to the kiosk.  Sure enough, off to the west, a huge black cloud, with lightning flashes could be seen.  Ivan could feel a chilling wind, on its way.  Ivan knocked on the locked door at the front of the Kiosk.  There was no response and he could see it was dark inside.  He went around to the big window at the back and knocked on it.  Emmanuel appeared with his heavy coat on and let him in.  “I know about the storm,” he said.  This flimsy Kiosk won’t protect me and I don’t have a cellar.  I was going to come down to the research lab and ask for shelter.  OK?”  Ivan nodded his assent and waited a few moments until Emmanuel locked up his Kiosk.  Then they both trotted down to the research building and entered.  Everyone there was aware of the storm.  It had been broadcast on the radio and television.  The research building did in fact have a large cellar for storage.  Ivan asked everyone to gather up their warm clothes and follow him down to the basement.  Some grabbed their suitcases and back packs.  Some grabbed some cans of food and liquids.  Within a half an hour, everyone was safely downstairs.  “OK, my friends, this may be rough.  Everyone sit or lie down on the floor as close to everyone else as possible.  Ivan sat, more or less in the centre of the basement floor.  Everyone huddled close to him.  “Jimmy and Alice, you guys are quick.  Could you make a quick survey of the bedrooms and the upstairs rooms and make sure there’s no one up there.  Bring anyone you find right down here.  Who’s got the radio?  Anyone of you that has a radio, turn them up and play them continuously.  We need to hear the news of this storm’s speed and direction.”  Jimmy and Alice had run upstairs and were down in two minutes.  “There’s no one up there, Ivan.  We’re all down here.  If anyone knows for sure there’s someone missing, please speak up.”  A head count was completed and showed that everyone was downstairs huddling around Professor Ivan and Marie.  A huge bang and the sound of shattered glass falling overhead signalled that the big vista window had imploded into the sitting room.  If anyone would have been up there, they might have been cut to shreds.  The howling, swirling wind was now quite loud.  The power was out.  The telephone lines were down.  The transistor radios were now vital.  They could hear the reports of a wide swath of destruction had passed over the mountain, headed toward Leadville and Denver.  The reports said the winds were in excess of 150 mph and gusting.

A loud scream came from above.  Ivan took a chance and went up the stairs to see who it was.  It was Olga.  She had somehow driven to the research centre and had come into the sitting room right after the glass vista window had shattered.  She was cut and was bleeding, but was otherwise OK.  Ivan motioned her to come quickly down the stairs to the basement.  She and Ivan joined the pile of bodies on the floor of the basement.  Ivan helped to remove the small chards of glass from Olga and stem the minor bleeding with gentle pressure.  Olga smiled her appreciation.  She put her arm around Ivan’s waist and hung on dearly.  Ivan put his arm around Olga’s shoulders and held her tightly to him.  Ivan motioned to Marie to come and take his place.  Marie complied and took over from Ivan the comforting of Olga.  Ivan stood up and looked around at everyone who smiled to reassure him that all was otherwise OK.  The winds were dying down.  Emmanuel was not moving.  Ivan went over to check him.  He called over his medical student, Clyde.  Clyde S. Dale checked Emmanuel’s pulses and pupil reactions.  “He’s dead,” said Clyde quietly.  “He must have had a major stroke or heart attack.”  Ivan and Clyde, Mary and Samantha helped to carry Emmanuel to a corner of the room and cover him with a blanket that Mary had found in a closet.  Other blankets were distributed.  It was getting very cold.  Suddenly, the entire building started trembling and everyone fell to the floor.  Mary suffered a wrist fracture and several others had sore hips and sore knees as they fell to the hard floor.  The trembling increased in force.  Chards of plaster fell from the ceiling and cut several people.  Then, the whole building started sliding down the mountain, gathering speed.  A huge set of boulders stopped the sliding and everyone ran outside into the snow.  An avalanche was coming toward them and they scrambled back inside.

The snow stabilized the building, somehow, and a dead silence ensued.  The structure of the research facility remained intact.  All the windows had been shattered and were covered with snow.  The students and everyone that was capable, found buckets to gather the snow into for water that would be essential for survival.  Non-perishable food was found and gathered together.  In a first floor fireplace, a fire was lit with papers and furniture to burn; luckily the flue was open and smoke did not fill the rooms.  The warmth was delicious.  The fire was used to cook some frozen food for everyone and the mood was definitely more optimistic.  Olga was able to get up and about and was of great help with those that were injured.  She fashioned a splint for the fractured wrist and helped with the minor cuts and bleeding.  Some cotton clothes were torn into bandages and these were used efficiently by Olga and Clyde, Ivan and Marie.  There were more smiles now.

The radio broadcast indicated that the storm had abated before it got to Denver.  Leadville and Boulder had been devastated by the fierce winds that had blown through them.  Roofs had been lifted off many houses and many buildings had collapsed completely.  Some deaths were reported and many people and pets were still missing.  As soon as they could be mobilized the cadets and officers from Colorado Springs Air Force Academy started investigations and clean-ups of the devastated areas.

Everyone heard the report that the kiosk and research building atop Mount Evans had completely disappeared and everyone was presumed dead.  Everyone cheered.  The smoke from the chimney apparently alerted some Air Force Helicopter pilots that there may still be some survivors atop Mount Evans.  Several loud clumps on the roof of the building heralded the arrival of the Air Force and everyone cheered.  Some digging down around the chimney revealed an intact roof and entry was gained through several of the blown out windows.  The rescuers found the happy people on the first floor cooking supper and smiling.  “Three cheers for the Air Force!” was the song they sung to surprise the Air Force rescuers, mainly young, handsome cadets.  Everyone was greeted by a warm, thankful hug.  Evacuation was completely successful, pulling folks up to the Helicopters, where the cadets were waiting with thermoses of hot coffee, hot brandy, large Toblerone, triangular chocolate bars, heavy woollen toques and heavy, warming woollen blankets. The descriptions and news of the dramatic survival and rescue became internationally broadcast.  The surviving group had provided all their names for kith and kin that might have been frightened by the initial evaluation of a total loss at the top of Mount Evans.  Back in Denver, Ivan had to explain the complete loss of all his new equipment to the Federal Government.  The Department of Health and Welfare, sent him a huge bill which he was going to ignore.  Ivan’s boss took it on the chin and had his Department pay for Ivan’s lost equipment, in order to clear the way for further grants.  Ivan vowed never to do more research on a mountain peak.  An associate got the grant to study CSF pH changes with altitude and became very famous for having allowed colleagues to do spinal taps on him to measure the CSF pH, which was an important piece of knowledge of the blood-brain barrier, and would be very valuable for the protection of the health of future astronauts.  Ivan, Marie and Olga purchased adjacent condominium apartments in The Brown Building, downtown Denver.  They had the walls between them knocked down and could freely be with whomever they chose for the day, evening or weekend.  This loving trio resigned from the world of Medicine and Academia and started writing stories of the adventures they had had atop Mount Evans.  These were bestsellers and the royalties were continuously lucrative.  They changed all the names, of course, to protect the innocence and lack of innocence in the group that survived an avalanche and a building that launched its way toward Denver.  Ivan, Maria and Olga invited Mary and Samantha to join them in Denver after they graduated.  Comme une Quintette d’Amour, they travelled together to Fiji, Sicilia, Montevideo, St. Louis and Honolulu to entertain them and to have material for further short stories that were bestsellers.  La Quintette lived happily forever after.

THE END

© izzy sommers, md

Welland, Canada

Oktoberfest 2013