CHAMPAIGN — The farmland of central Illinois doesn’t provide too many opportunities for mountaineering, but for Nick Selby, traveling to climb is worth it.
“You get to see something that very few people can see. ... You really kind of forget about everything and you’re with nature,” the local pharmacy manager said. “You look out and it’s like there’s nothing there that’s man-made. Everything’s very pure.”
While climbing has become a more serious hobby for Selby in the last few years (especially once pandemic travel restrictions lifted), the first mountain he remembers scaling was a 14,000-foot peak in Colorado.
It wasn’t full-on mountaineering by any means as Selby, who was in high school at the time, remembers wearing tennis shoes from Walmart, but it was still a solid workout where his cross-country and track-and-field background came in handy.
The Shelbyville native attended the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis, then moved to Fort Wayne, Ind., to begin his career. He returned to Illinois to manage the pharmacy at a CVS in Urbana, then transferred to the Green Street location in Champaign.
In the meantime, Selby has been traveling the world, learning more about mountaineering.
“I did a mountaineering course on Mt. Rainier that taught me a lot of how to do alpine-style crevasse rescue,” he said. “Everything else is just kind of learned while doing it — seeing that, for example, sunscreen freezes.”
And that sunscreen is necessary, as at high elevations there is less atmosphere to block UV rays from the sun, not to mention the reflected light from snow and glaciers.
On many climbs, Selby has to wear special mountain sunglasses that block as much as 95 percent of the light from reaching his eyes.
“I remember all the pictures I took in Nepal — I’m like, ‘It didn’t really look that great whenever I was there,’” Selby said.
Selby discovered that GoPro cameras would freeze, too, after he lost footage from a trip up Lobuche in Nepal.
Learning the equipment is a major part of learning to climb, including differentiating between different types of climbing for different mountains.
The alpine style Selby mentioned has climbers connected by lines as they use crampons and other equipment to work their own way up the slope. Alpine involves a lot of technical skills as conditions may vary with rock, snow and ice.
He has also done some fixed-rope climbing, which he says is different and a bit easier because climbers follow a course that is already charted out.
Learning to climb on the 14,411-foot Mt. Rainier might not have taken Selby to a new country or the heights he’d later reach, but it’s no wonder the experience had him hooked.
“This plane, this F-16 from a naval base that was really close, flew at eye level, probably from here to that building over across the way,” he said, pointing to a storage building just a few hundred feet away. “It caught me off guard because it came behind us. ... The guide I was with said that had never happened before.”
There have been some tough moments, too.
Mt. Baker is smaller than Rainier at 10,781 feet, but Selby’s group had a late start and slow ascent. The sun came out as they descended, reflecting against the ice and snow.
“It was just cooking us; it was probably at least 100 degrees,” Selby said.
But the heat wasn’t the worst part.
As everything warmed up, the snow began to melt, so instead of walking over the surface, the climbers found themselves sinking thigh deep, wading through feet of snow after an already long day of hiking.
Selby ran out of snacks and water. You know it’s bad if he’s eating raisins, he said.
“It was the worst. But, I mean, you learn a lot from that kind of thing,” Selby said. “Like maybe you should do more exercises on your hip flexors.”
He has “only” had one near-death experience, when a boulder could have rolled straight over him had he not seen it coming.
Selby has continued to tackle higher and higher peaks, including the 20,075-foot Lobuche.
He could see Mt. Everest from there, and it’s staying in his sights for the near future.
First, though, he’ll be in Nepal in September to climb Manaslu, the world’s eighth-highest mountain at 26,781 feet.
It’s seen as the precursor to Everest, where he might go as soon as this May, if plans align.
On all his trips out of the country, Selby enjoys connecting with local people as guides; he said that’s also a safety measure, as locals tend to have better knowledge of locations and weather patterns.
He said he feels he’s doing things the right way by working up to higher peaks and listening to the experts, and he’s just excited to keep seeing what he can do.
“Everyone loves nature. Anyone that wouldn’t say that is either lying or is crazy,” Selby said. “And there’s the part where you want to push yourself and do better things. It’s pretty much a combination of those.”
