Peaking at 72 - Man trains to become oldest Everest climber

CHICAGO -- Training to climb Mount Everest in Chicago makes about as much sense as getting ready to swim the English Channel in Death Valley.

Yet there is Al Hanna in this flattest of cities trudging up and down little more than a molehill to prepare himself to scale the tallest mountain on the planet.

And if the idea of training on a pimple of a hill in Lincoln Park seems odd, Hanna is closing in on his 72nd birthday -- or more than seven years older than 64-year-old Sherman Bull of Connecticut was when he set the age record when he climbed the mountain last year.

"Everybody says, 'What's wrong with golf?"' says Hanna, knowing most people think the only way a guy his age should climb to an elevation of more than 29,000 feet is with his seat in the full upright position.

"I've got three lawyers and they all threaten to have me committed," he jokes. "My wife, she just rolls her eyes."

But day after day Hanna is out on his hill, a pack filled with 60 pounds of weights strapped to his 5-foot-4, 140-pound frame. Five days a week, from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m., he makes his slow march. As many as 50 times he climbs to the top of the hill under the watchful eye of a statue of Richard Oglesby, an Illinois governor in the 1800s.

Those who know both mountain climbing and Hanna are impressed.

"I don't know if there is another person who does that kind of day in and day out rigorous training that isn't a professional mountaineer," said Gordon Janow, of Alpine Ascents International, a Seattle-based guide service.

Vernon Tejas, an Anchorage-based climbing guide who has climbed with Hanna and will climb Everest with him in May, agrees. "I have never had a climber so consistent and who pushes himself so hard as this man," said Tejas.

Stale feeling

Hanna took up climbing when he was 58 "because I felt stale." That led to a goal to climb to the top of the highest peak on every continent. Except for Mount Everest, he's made it up every one.

As for Everest, Hanna has tried and failed three times. But each time he got higher. The last time in 2000 he got to within 300 feet of the summit -- the length of a football field -- before turning around.

"I think we could have made it," said Tejas, who made the climb with Hanna. "He said he thought he could make it but wasn't sure he could make it back down."

Hanna's analysis of the climb takes him into a discussion of the roles of the two sides of his brain. He said he was fine as he used the left side of the brain, the side that handles chores like concentration. But when the right side of the brain managed to sneak in some questions -- like, 'What am I doing up here?' -- Hanna said he was finished.

"I lost the focus needed to go the last 300 feet," he said.

These days, Hanna is back on his little hill, a few blocks from his home.

During the summer months, he might share the hill with what he calls the "night crazies," who view the statue as kind of an open-air saloon.

They'll talk to him and escort him up and down the hill a few times, but for the most part they don't bother him. "Because I look so strange with this big pack, I think they're more afraid of me than I am of them," he said.

Then there is the occasional visit from curious flashlight-weilding police officers.