Fresh off the plane from his most recent journey, Tahoe climber/adventurer Dave Nettle sat down with me to discuss his epic journey to Kyrgyzstan to climb big walls. Dave works along with Alpenglow Sports in Tahoe City and will host their Winter Film Series. Dave will be presenting his Kyrgyzstan show at Sawtooth in Tahoe City on Thursday, November 17th at 7pm.
RS: Are you a travel addict/travel junkie?
Dave Nettle: Oh absolutely, though it’s hard to figure if I’m a traveler that climbs or a climber that travels but both are equal passions.
RS: What is the dumbest thing you have done abroad?
Dave Nettle: Amongst all the dumb things there is one that stands out. Everyone has to start out in their travel/adventure life at some point. The dumbest thing was on my first climbing trip to Peru on 1980 I didn’t know I needed a passport. I showed up at the airport in Miami and when they asked for a passport I only had a birth certificate. I got stuck in Miami and was so poor I had to camp on the beach. When I told people we camped on Miami beach they said we were lucky to be alive.
RS: In your experience would you say it’s easy or difficult to pick up chicks in foreign countries?
Dave Nettle: I think traveling opens you up. The traveler in everyone sends out a different signal that makes you more receptive to everything. Whether that’s picking up those foreign French girls or meeting great people that invite you in for food or shelter. You definitely have more brief encounters.
RS: How do you pick a travel destination?
Dave Nettle: The mountaineering objective sparks my imagination. It’s a life goal to see all the mountains of the world. To see the world through my desire to climb in the mountains. That’s clearly what gets me interested in where I’m going to go. Once the adventure begins it’s the people, places, and culture that makes the trip unique.
RS: What’s more important the the trip or the stories to tell afterward?
Dave Nettle: Definitely the trip is most important. At the time when you’re living it you’re so much in the present. What travel has to offer beyond experience are the stories. When you tell people you were in a “Stan” they freak out. They ask if people were trying to kill you or if you were afraid. Just recently I have been taking great pleasure in telling people how awesome the rest of world is especially with the preconceived notions that people have. The stories you come back with are important but the actual trip is the juice.
RS: I understand your most recent adventure took you to Kyrgyzstan. Why would anyone choose a destination with that many consonants?
Dave Nettle: There’s a certain pleasure in getting a rise out of someone. You could simply call it Central Asia, but Kyrgyzstan evokes so much mystique. What a wild name. I love telling people that I was there. The real reason we went was for the granite. There’s a tower there called the Russian Tower. It’s one of the great big walls of the world that as a climber you know is out there. It ranks up there with El Cap, Cerro Torre, and Asgard on Baffin Island. It’s an immense spire of rock with an amazing route that goes right up the middle of it. All four members of our team made it up. The goal was to do it in a one day push and we made it by 6pm and repelled down through the night.
RS: Who was the the biggest bad ass amongst your crew?
Dave Nettle: The crew was myself, Jim Barnes, Reuben Shelton and Paul Adams. The combination of four best friends that have all climbed together made it basically a bad ass team. There was a constant flow between us and there was a smooth powerful energy in the crew.
RS: What Happens when a member of your team’s gear doesn’t make it?
Dave Nettle: Here’s the deal, all this adventure is not an adventure unless things go wrong. Five of our bags were lost at LAX and didn’t make it. Reuben saw his bags from the window of the plane, not getting on. He tried to tell the flight attendant but she said that it could be that it just looks like your bag. As is the case in these adventures in the end something great always happens. For us we got delayed 5 days and our trekking agency needed to helicopter gear in and asked us if we wanted to fly in. So, we flew in the most bad ass, rickety, Russian helicopter. We still got to hike out and see the country.
RS: Tell us about the climbing in Kyrgyzstan.
Dave Nettle: Overall the climbing was phenomenal. It was like being in a remote Yosemite Valley. One thing that really stood out was our amazing base camp. We hung out with three Colorado climbers. We had a 60-year old Uzbek cook. Every meal was a cultural gourmet. The biggest thing about the climbing there was that everything is huge. There are granite walls everywhere.
RS: Were there any sketchy times?
Dave Nettle: On a huge climb with Reuben called “A Thousand Years of Russian Christianity” (we nicknamed it Two weeks of Tahoe Debauchery) which is 5000 feet of granite up and down our rope got stuck. We were repelling on a face at night. We had to cut one of the ropes and went down into the unknown. We arrived to base camp completely thrashed but were laughing at midnight.
RS: Do you have any profound impressions on travel?
Dave Nettle: You are constantly surprised by how reality is different from your expectations. I expected Bishkek (the capital) to be a funky, quasi third world environment. This town ended up being awesome. The women were beautiful. They were the cross between the Russian athlete and the Mongolian princess. The food was phenomenal. The generosity and hospitality towards us as Americans was amazing. One of the best things about travel is that it reconfirms how good basic human nature is. The bad stuff you read about are exceptions to the rule and not what you see when you are out there.