Dash Hails the Outdoors

Professional alpine climber Micah Dash scaled a different kind of peak last night­—Harvard’s ivory tower—to speak to students about his worldwide climbing adventures.

Sponsored by the Harvard Mountaineering Club, Dash’s multimedia presentation in the Fong Auditorium featured a set of videos and a photo slideshow from his experiences, as well as a raffle of Mountain Hardware climbing gear.

Mountaineering Club President Kevin F. Jones ’10 said the goal of the event was to “inspire members to think bigger and broader” about opportunities in alpine climbing, adding that the club chose Dash for the event because of his unconventional, trailblazing experiences.

During the event—which filled the auditorium despite the $5 entry fee—Dash told stories of scaling peaks in remote and hazardous locations, from the French Alps to glaciers in Greenland.

The professional climber, who first started scaling mountains during high school, said that one of his earliest motivations was reading a 1996 National Geographic cover story about internationally renowned climber Todd Skinner. Skinner ascended Trango Tower in the Karakoram Himalayas, and Dash was intrigued.

Dash said that Skinner’s experiences inspired him to climb outside of his native Boulder, Colo., and to seek new adventures elsewhere.

The mountaineer’s presentation focused primarily on his ascent of the previously unnamed and unclimbed Shafat Fortress in Northern India last August, which he did along with his partner, Johnny Copp. The climb was marked by his interactions with the local culture and people, including yak herders and Buddhist monks, as well as by obstacles he endured—like limited gear, freezing weather, and competition with other climbers to be the first to the top.

When an audience member asked Dash what motivates him in the face of tremendous risks, he said he felt “empowered by being on the mountain and climbing new things.”

“During a climb, there is no place I’d rather be,” Dash said.

The event attracted outdoors enthusiasts from the College and University at large, and was advertised at other Boston-area schools as well.

Mountaineering Club member Paul R. “Coz” Teplitz ’09—who took a six year break from Harvard to work as a climbing instructor for the outdoor leadership program Outward Bound—said that Dash’s presentation inspired him to climb again.

“It makes me long for adventure elsewhere,” Teplitz said.