Last climb

TALKEETNA — Sitting on the back deck of Talkeetna Air Taxi when the mountains are socked in, you become a student of shoes.

White walking shoes, fresh blue jeans and a flannel shirt tied around the waist for that added into-the-wild effect. Tourist from the Midwest.

Dusty work boots, worn Carhartts, fleece jacket over a Sportsman’s Warehouse T-shirt. Alaskan acting as tour guide for relatives from the Midwest.

Vibram soles over plastic shanks, front and back cut-outs for crampons, rubber last, seamless lowers, built-in gaiters rising up to just below the knee. Climber.

One pair of La Sportivas in particular are visibly more worn. Duct tape repairs crampon nicks. Day-glo coloring and cursive font suggests this boot has not been produced since the mid-’90s. One look at the owner says he did not buy these used.

Emil Frehner’s shoes have walked more miles than most. After a life of climbing the world’s tallest peaks, the 70-year-old has returned to his favorite mountain for his final accent.

Emil began climbing in the Swiss Alps as a 13-year-old boy with his father. He stuck to smaller peaks while he built up his furniture business in Bern. In 1995, with his business at the peak of success, employing more than 200 people, Emil sold his company to start his mountaineering career at age 55. Along with his wife Renate, they rented out their house, flew to Seattle and bought a Volkswagen camper van.

They immediately drove to Alaska. Mount McKinley was the first mountain Emil climbed over 20,000 feet, joining an expedition with legendary guide Colby Combs. From there, they drove back to Washington to climb Mount Rainier, then down to California for a walk from the floor of Death Valley to the top of Mount Whitney.

From North America, they drove south. Emil climbed the tallest peak in Mexico and then did a tour of the Andes. He climbed 13 mountains in this range, six of which are over 20,000 feet.

They shipped their camper to New Zealand and Australia, did some climbing and touring, then shipped it back to Seattle.

Once again, they drove the Alaska Highway north. Emil summited McKinley again, this time bagging the peak solo from high camp. By the time they sold their van and made it back to Switzerland, they had been gone for four and a half years.

In 2002, the Frehners left again, this time for the Himalayas. They traveled from the east to Katmandu. From there, Emil made his first accent of Mount Everest with the Swiss Jubilee Expedition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first summiting in 1953.

In 2005, they returned to the Himalayas traveling from the west this time. Once they got to Katmandu, Emil summited Everest again in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the first accent by a Swiss climber.

Now, he has returned to Denali to finish his career of high-altitude climbs right where he started.

“I’ve always had certain sympathies to this mountain,” Emil said. “It’s a very holy place. It’s like a throne from a goddess.”

Asked how much his boots cost, Emil responded “Normally, $1,000. But I get them for free because I’m sponsored by La Sportiva as well as The North Face, Adidas and others.”

Perhaps the only person on the deck that day with shoes more worn than Emil was his wife, Renate. While she does not summit the mountains with her husband, her wanderings have been no less expansive. She is quick to tell tales about her travels, holding the listener hostage with her kind voice about even the most benign story.

The first time Emil climbed Denali, Renate drove to the Montana Creek campground. Little did she know it was the day before the king salmon season opened. She said her VW camper was dwarfed by the huge RVs, and her fishing pole was much too small for kings. She met three Alaskans who acted as her instructors and let her borrow a pole.

During their travels in South America, Renate went with her husband to the high camp of every major peak he summited. On Emil’s second trip up Denali, she was the only other person with Emil, staying at the 17,200-foot camp while he went solo to the top.

Renate was side-by-side her husband on their first trip through the Himalayas until they got to Katmandu. When he started up Everest, she headed to the beaches of Cambodia and Laos.

Renate repeated this pattern on their second trip to Asia, but from Katmandu, she was planning to go from monastery to monastery to the holy city of Lhasa. When she tried to cross the border from Nepal into Tibet, the Chinese had closed the border because of an outbreak of the avian flu. Back in Katmandu, the long-running civil war in Nepal was heating up, and she ran out of cash.

There was one bank that was still supplying currency with a line stretching out onto the street. To crack down on dissidents, she said, the government instituted a curfew at sundown. She got her money just as the bank was closing and the curfew was imposed. The streets were empty. There was no taxi to take her the 30 minutes back to her hotel.

She finally found one driver and convinced him to take her back, but after 10 minutes, he pulled over and said he could go no further. She walked at night alone in a foreign country back to her hotel in violation of the curfew.

Renate when through the still-open border into India and headed to the nearest international airport. The only flight back to Europe went to London, but because there is such a big Indian population in England, the airport told her it was full for three weeks. After what she called constant pestering, the airline finally found her a set on a flight leaving sooner.

Now, back in Alaska, she is headed down to Kenai to stay with friends she met on her first trip here. She is armed her own tackle to land a king and asked for any tips about fishing along the way.

“You don’t find people like you do in Alaska,” Renate said. “Our friends from Kenai met us at the airport and introduced us to their friends in Anchorage. The Anchorage people took us to their storage facility, opened the door and told us to take anything we needed.”

They took some plywood and sleeping bags, bought a van and built a sleeping platform in the back. After Emil gets off the mountain, they plan to drive to San Francisco and maybe over to Florida. This is a short trip, she said. They should be back in a year or so.

“I’m more of a drifter than he is,” Renate said, pointing to her husband who’s conquered peaks the world over. “If it was just me, I would buy another VW camper and spend more time touring around.”

The wear on her mid-length light hikers proves it.

But before they do any touring, Emil has to make it up and down what he claims is mentality the toughest mountain to climb. At 70, he refuses to take a guiding service, choosing instead to bring a friend he met in Nepal.

Francis Xavier paid full price for his Millet Everest boots. He has never climbed a mountain this size, but Emil gave him the nod of approval after spending some time in the Himalayas with him.

Xavier is a corporate litigator from Singapore. His father was a Hindu from India, and his mother was a Taoist from China who was adopted by a Roman Catholic priest. When he was born, he became very sick, and the priest told his mother only the Christian God would cure him. Hence, they named him after the Spanish mission ary, and he remains a devote Catholic to this day.

It was difficult to take four weeks off at his firm of 220 lawyers, but when Emil calls, you go, Xavier said.

“I don’t know why he would want to climb the same mountain three times,” Xavier said.

“You will when you get to the top,” Emil responded.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or (907) 352-2252.