Bulletin E-Edition:
300 summits club
Bend's Robert Link becomes the seventh climber to reach the top of Mount Rainier for the 300th time
By Mark Morical / The Bulletin
Published: September 13. 2007 4:00AM PST
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Robert Link of Bend smiles as he stands atop Mount Rainier for the 300th time on Sept. 2. Link is just one of seven climbers to accomplish the feat.
Photo courtesy of Mountain Link
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Robert Link first stood on the summit of Mount Rainier when he was 12 years old.
That climb was just the beginning of what has been a long, continuous journey up and down the rugged slopes of the 14,410-foot peak southeast of Seattle.
Early this month, 26 years after his first ascent, Link reached Rainier’s summit for the 300th time.
Link, 49, is just the seventh climber — and the second Bend resident — known to have achieved the milestone. Paul Maier of Bend boasts 333 Rainier summits, according to a recent report published by the Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune.
Link, the owner of Mountain Link guide service in Bend and also a guide for Seattle’s Alpine Ascents International, began guiding expeditions up Mount Rainier in 1981. Since then, he has averaged about 12 summits of the mountain per year.
During his descent of the 300th climb, Link was congratulated by longtime friends George Dunn and Phil Ershler, both of Seattle. Dunn has made 490 summits of Rainier, the most of any climber. Ershler has reached the top of Rainier 430 times.
“I’m seventh,” said Link, back in Bend last week. “I love it because I respect all of them greatly. They’re friends of mine that I’ve climbed with for a long time. We all understand the game we got into and all the ramifications of climbing.
“I guarantee one thing about Mount Rainier: It changes weekly. We’ve put in multiple routes through the years.”
Link, who moved to Bend from the San Francisco Bay Area four years ago, recalls a variety of emotional experiences on Mount Rainier. The joyous summits of many climbers stand out in his memory — but so do the tragedies.
In 2001, Link was guiding Lawrence Minard, a 51-year-old London-based editor of Forbes Global magazine, and Minard’s 16-year-old daughter up Mount Rainier. Just 2,000 feet from the summit, Minard suffered a massive heart attack and died.
“That’s when I wanted to quit,” Link recalled. “I thought it would be much easier just to be a fishing guide. I felt responsible. It’s hard when you’re taking people where they’re unfamiliar. But if you’re good, you take good care of them.”
Link finally did quit guiding on Mount Rainier in 2005, after 294 summits. But Alpine Ascents International invited Link to be a guide this year, and he’s reached the top of Rainier another six times since.
“It was great to be invited back this season,” Link said. “Three hundred was a great milestone, but it was nothing I ever pursued. Once you get past 75 (summits), you really gotta want to do the job.”
While the bulk of Link’s climbing experience has been on Rainier, his mountaineering resume also includes summits of the Himalayas’ 29,035-foot Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, and Alaska’s 20,320-foot Mount McKinley, the tallest peak in North America. He was the fifth American to summit the Himilayan peak Kangchenjunga, the world’s third-highest peak at 28,208 feet.
Link has also led climbing expeditions in South America, Mexico, Russia and Europe.
The seasoned mountaineer said he hopes to organize a nonguided expedition up 28,251-foot K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, in the Himalayas next year. But this week, he’s back on Rainier, working on summit No. 301.
“I don’t know how I can stay away from it,” Link said of mountain climbing. “Just the lifestyle, and the health, and the mood it puts you into. You’re living life to the max. If the Army thinks they do a lot before 8 a.m., we get up at 11 p.m. We summit before 8 a.m., right at dawn.”
Thousands of climbers attempt Mount Rainier each year. Link said it’s a popular mountain to climb because it’s so visible from a major metropolitan area.
“You can see Rainier from a long ways away, and from Seattle,” he said. “It’s such an icon, it makes you curious: ‘What goes on up there?’”
Seven men — among them, Robert Link — have a pretty good idea.
Mark Morical can be reached at 383-0318 or at mmorical@bendbulletin.com.
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