Summit Proposal

Julie and Sandor celebrate on the summit of Mt. Stuart. Photo by Scott Auble

by Sándor Lau

When I met Julie, I knew I had found someone special. She was on the fast track to climb the 16 major NW peaks. She enjoyed eating freezedried meals and my lamb and asparagus on the grill. She had good credit. The week of our first date, I saved an entire page of my journal to write, “I’m going to marry this girl.”

Love, too, can be dangerous. Only fools rush in. I knew she was the one, but still we had to get to know each other. Did I mention I was born cautious? She drank IPAs. I drank porters. We’d have to see if we could make it work.

We climbed South Sister and Broken Top in the smoke of wildfires. We climbed Mt. Shasta with a 23-hour summit day. We assisted Snake Dogs BCEP team together. She caught me on my first lead fall. I convinced her to get an AT ski setup. We cried together when we lost a BCEP mentor and teammate who did dangerous things as safely as possible.

We met the parents. We found the perfect home a mile from the MMC after years of commuting from Eugene, Salem, and Gresham. We both became climb leaders. We started making plans.

Then, the world turned upside down, and we put our plans on hold along with 7.5 billion others. We followed the governor’s orders and were surprised by the emotional toll of lockdown. We thought about eating freeze-dried meals for fun. Learned what the inside our house looks like on a Saturday afternoon. The risk of the virus had none of the fun of the risk of the summit.

The loss of lockdown reminded us how precious life is, our families are, and our Mazamas family is. What I had written in my journal two and a half years ago was true. If there was ever a time to take our lives off hold and find something positive to move forward with, this was it.

Mazamas reopened climbing. I was set on staying six light years apart from everyone. Julie was itching to get one peak closer to her 16 and notch her first lead as a fully-fledged climb leader. The Cascadian Couloir route up Mt. Stuart made a perfect late-season rock scramble. I imagined her reaction as I popped the question on the summit and agreed to do the climb.

We assembled the Dream Team. I made a secret spreadsheet assigning the Dream Team video and photo roles for the occasion. Uncle Rico Micallef, our Chief Dirtbag, who stewarded us through BCEP assisting and leadership development and led our first climb together, would get the wide video. Scott Auble, who assisted BCEP with us and was on the smoky South Sister and Broken Top climb, would get the closeup stills. Ian McCluskey, a professional filmmaker who climbed with both of us on our provisional leads, would take the closeup video. Katie Polanshek, who cured me of a deadly (and fictional) edema in Mountaineering First Aid, would take the wide pictures.

On a perfect bluebird summit day in August, we faced just enough challenges to keep it interesting. The rocky apex of Mt. Stuart is a tricky place for small groups to stand even without social distancing, but we did our best and got into positions.

I put on my dress shirt and tie, hit record on the GoPro, and showed Julie and the Dream Team the journal. I took a knee and produced a ring for the only person I would carry a rock to the top of a mountain for. She said “Yes!” Then popped a question of her own, “Were you guys all in on this?”

Her reaction tasted better than any freeze-dried meal when the Dream Team revealed the truth they had kept from their own climb leader. We popped a bottle of bubbly and moved forward with our lives.

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