Howie Schwartz

Date of Birth:
February 15, 1973

Hometown:
Bishop, California

What is your primary means of adventure, AKA what gets you most psyched?
When it comes to adventure, nothing for me beats ski mountaineering (not to be confused with what people are calling “SkiMo”), and technical alpine climbing of all types.

Invent your dream adventure by combining five places, disciplines, pitches, peaks, environments, etc. and stacking them together into a combination. Why did you pick each part?

I don’t know. Reality can be more adventurous than fiction. I think it was Yvon Chouinard that once said, “Only from the extremes of comfort and leisure do we return again willingly to adversity.” I’ve always loved that quote and have tried to orchestrate my life accordingly. So if I could do something rowdy in moderately glaciated mountains with features akin to Cerro Torre on top of numerous peaks, and with 5000’+, steep ski descents, at reasonably modest altitudes, with perfect Sierra Nevada weather and climate, in a wild location like the Wrangell‐St. Elias in AK, but with an Italian alpine hut at the base, and sport climbing in the valley, and with very few other people around, and with a very strong currency exchange, I’d probably go there. Live there actually. Why, you have to ask??

Describe 5 climbs, trips, or moments that have defined you as a mountain athlete:

1. 6 seasons of learning to guide adventurous people in the Wrangell‐St. Elias, AK
2. A life and career in the Sierra Nevada, CA
3. Mount Blackburn in 1999
4. First guiding day on the Matterhorn
5. 15 years of skiing and climbing for work and play in the Alps.

Describe your most memorable night in the mountains:
I don’t remember…

What has scared or intimidated you as a mountain athlete?
Death, injury.

What would your adventure partners be most surprised to learn about you from before the time when they met you?
That I am incredibly conservative when it comes to high risk environments.

What are your top 5 all‐time favorite pieces of CAMP equipment?

1. Nano ‘biner
2. Blitz harness
3. X-All Mountain ice tools
4. Tricams
5. Ball nuts

Why are you a CAMP athlete?
Over 2+ decades of using CAMP products I have been consistently inspired by the creativity and useful innovation that this company has produced. And there is no slowing down. For all of the mountain and climbing endeavors that I take on, CAMP is right there with me, representing all of the most indispensable elements of my rack. It is great to be a part of a company so essential to the safety, efficiency, and overall enjoyment of technical mountain pursuits.

Tick List

It meant a lot to me when I climbed:
I’m not going to answer this one as intended. I have spent my life and career trying to maintain the perspective that a singular climb does not hold meaning beyond what we make of it. Climbing is a self‐centered pursuit and I try to treat it as nothing more and nothing less than an essential part of my mental, physical, and spiritual well being. Climbing an objective changes the world very little in a positive way. And I have never completed a climbing objective and felt that it had a profound impact on my life and relationships. My failures have been far more meaningful actually. This is probably because I see each mountain/route that I climb/ski as a step along a path and not as a destination unto itself. It is the direction of that journey as a whole that holds the most interest and meaning for me.

The adventure, route or race I had to train the hardest for was:
Sport climbs of 5.12+ in the Owens River Gorge. Changing my focus to sport climbing from alpine endeavors has been such a constant transition and drives me to pursue excellence through training.

The adventure, route or race that wrecked me the most was:
I don’t know. I’ve been wrecked many times, but the worst ones are when mistakes were made that cause things to go wrong unexpectedly and begin to evoke real fear. Fortunately, I don’t often hang it out there too far beyond my known limits with little margin for error on a regular basis.

I most want an all‐expenses‐paid trip to:
…ski again from Ultima Thule Lodge in the Wrangell‐St. Elias National Park, supported by the Claus family and their fixed wing aircraft, with my family and some of my best friends’ families so we could trade days with kids and ski.

My short list of climbing or adventure goals this year:

1. New alpine rock routes in the High Sierra.
2. Some top secret ski mountaineering goals in the High Sierra (please end the 4‐year Sierra drought!).
3. Sport climbing in Kalymnos.