SPORTS
by Brendan Cooney
HOLED UP FOR DAYS, three-quarters of the way
up one of the highest mountains in the world, Eldon Dales repeated the
"climber's equation" over and over in his head. Outside his
tent, the temperature plummeted to 20 below zero as the deafening 60 mph
winds gusted over Mount Aconcagua, South America's highest alp. Inside
and down to his final three packs of food, Dales agonized over whether
his daily calorie intake, which had fallen from 5,000 to a mere 1,000,
would be enough to summit.
"I was doing math constantly," the '85
University of Cincinnati nuclear engineering grad says. "Calories
are gold. I had less energy at 1,000, and I was colder at night."
He considered descending for more food to try again,
but instead, chose to push on. The rations turned out to be enough to
get him through, and when he finally made it to the top on Christmas Eve,
2002, he found himself all alone.
"Here I was absolutely alone for the whole summit
day. That's very unusual. There were other people at the top when I climbed
Mount Denali."
He cherished his day as the highest person in the
Americas. "All that pain and sweat I went through to make it to the
summit was worthwhile."
Though Dales' 19-day solo climb into thin air is
impressive, perhaps what is most fascinating is the 40-year-old's 8,000-mile
journey from Texas to Argentina to reach the base of the mountain.
He did it by bicycle.
Six months earlier, the self-described "computer
geek" was spending too much time in front of the screen. Sitting
in his home office in Houston, the software engineer found himself losing
touch with reality in the world of Internet protocol. So he hopped on
a bicycle at the beach in Galveston, Texas -- sea level -- and pedaled
his way to Argentina.
Dales wanted to start at sea level, because that's what he'd done a couple of years before when he rode his bike from Galveston to Alaska before climbing Mount Denali (20,320 feet), the highest peak in North America. His winter summit of Mount Aconcagua (22,831 feet) made him the first person to bike from sea level to the highest mountains in North and South America, then climb them both.
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