Peak Experience

David Horine never really wanted to be a daredevil, he just wanted out of the pressure-packed life of corporate sales.

He ended up on top of a mountain.

“A lot of people who are mountain climbers are people who don’t really relish the idea of being buried in the corporate hierarchy. But I may be a little more extreme example of the typical Southern California mountaineer,� said Horine, a 51-year-old resident of Orange.

“I was a salesman for one of the largest collection agencies in the world. I spent my days sitting in other people’s offices, talking about nasty people who didn’t pay their bills. It was just about the last thing in the world I really wanted to be spending my time doing.�

Horine was in his mid-30s and had been climbing mountains for 10 years. His forays into the wilderness had become more than just a weekend diversion. Hiking and climbing had become a necessary part of his being.

“If I had valued money more, I’d certainly be living in a much nicer house and driving a much nicer car. But I’m much more motivated by experience than accumulation. I’m an idealistic person, and nature is an idea that is more powerful to me than money.

“John Muir said going to the wilderness is like going home. There is a natural component to our existence. If you deny it, you probably deny a part of yourself at the same time. It’s like pretending that your left hand isn’t there.�

In 1982, Horine founded the Pacific Wilderness Institute as a way out of the corporate world and into the mountains he so loves. He teaches courses ranging from beginning hiking skills to advanced rock and ice climbing. He teaches in the classroom and takes students on workshop excursions throughout the mountains of Southern California.

“It’s not that I wanted to avoid working. I wanted to do what I define as working. In my case, it’s running back and forth to the mountains and teaching other people how to do the things I know how to do. I’m really teaching people how to have fun, how to put fun back into their lives.�

But in his escape, Horine said he learned skills that are critical to success in business.

“I worked in the corporate world for quite a number of years and have an understanding of not only how enjoyable it is to be away from it, but what is required of people in that world. We do a number of team-building programs and staff retreats. Mountaineering is a sport of getting to the top of things.�

Communication, cooperation, planning and problem solving are all integral parts of the mountain climbing experience, he said.

“Mountaineering is not generally the solitary guy shuffling off into the woods with one bag of pinto beans and one bag of rice. It’s very much of a team sport, just because you depend on each other so much.�

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Horine has not scaled the most hazardous peaks of the world. At nearly 15,000 feet, California’s Mt. Whitney is the highest mountain he’s climbed. He’s more interested in the aesthetics of climbing than the danger. But it was on Mt. Whitney that Horine nearly lost his life six years ago.

“I was anchored in a rock chute--a kind of gully on the side of the mountain--as we were descending. It’s the place where the rocks come down; kind of like the garbage chute of the mountain where all the detritus eventually ends up. Somebody about 50 feet above me knocked some rocks lose, and the little ones hit the bigger ones and so forth. So all of a sudden, several thousand pounds of rock are randomly coming at me and I was tied to an anchor in the center of it.

“Fortunately, there was a boulder that I put my 6 feet and 180 pounds as far behind and underneath as humanly possible and just waited. They all missed me. It wasn’t frightening then, but it was frightening about a week later when I started thinking about it. I was in charge of this trip and I was too busy to be distressed about it.�

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For Horine, the reward of climbing is the serenity that comes with having reached the top.

“For some people, there’s the idea of having conquered the mountain. I don’t like that idea. That’s not what I think it is all about. There are some people who are allowed to climb the mountain and some people who are not. Then there are some people who were allowed, but the mountain changed its mind.

“Earlier this year, I did this climb on Gaylor Peak near Yosemite, and we’d been up there for two days in a storm. But on the third day that we were going to climb this peak, it was gorgeous. The sun was out, and the birds were singing. We got up early in the morning, and we crunched up these long snow fields and climbed around this and that and picked our way up.

“The higher we got, the more spectacular the view was. Some of the lingering parts of the storm were still around, and we had all these very interesting cloud effects. The wind was real crisp and cool, that feeling of higher altitude and less oxygen. It was getting warmer, and we were just wearing our T-shirts.

“We got to the top of the peak, and we could see all the way down into Yosemite, and the air was just clean and glittering. There was nothing hard about it at all; it was an easy climb. But people were talking about that climb for weeks afterward, what a great time we had. It was a peak experience. That’s what mountaineering is to a large degree.�

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Profile: David Horine

Age: 51

Hometown: Pasadena

Residence: Orange

Family: Wife, Sue; two school-age daughters

Education: Bachelor’s degree in sociology, Chapman University; graduate studies in marketing communications, Cal State Fullerton

Background: U.S. Air Force medic, 1964-68; psychiatric technician, California Department of Mental Health, 1968-72; returned to college and subsequently worked in various sales and marketing jobs through 1986, including work as an advertising representative for CBS Publishing (1976-80) and the Pennysaver newspaper (1980-82); founded Pacific Wilderness Institute in 1982

On climbing: “You have to be stupid not to be afraid of heights. The sensation of fear is just a warning buzzer. You can choose to either listen to it or not listen to it. But there’s nothing quite like being afraid in a situation where you have no choice, which is part of the mountaineering experience.�

Source: David Horine; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times