Expedition Leader and Climber
Portland, OR
Age: 41

As K2000 expedition leader, Alzner, 41, of Portland, Oregon, believes the team members must eat the best meals of their lives and have a ton of fun — but also suffer for the summit. He first learned about rock climbing with Lute Jerstad in 1972, and over the next dozen years progressed to Canadian waterfall ice and Yosemite's El Capitan. In 1985, he found altitude agreed with him on Denali's West Buttress. A year later he took an exploratory trip to Nepal with Dr. Fred Ziel, checking out the Annapuran area trekking peaks. In 1987, he got stormed off Ama Dablam's North Ridge just short of the summit.

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During the next eight years he climbed in Wyoming and did numerous winter ascents of Mt. Hood, gaining bad weather experience. Then it was back to the Himalaya. He climbed Pakistan's Broad Peak in 1995, got to 24,500 feet on Cho Oyu in 1997 and became the third American to reach the summit of Manaslu in 1999. Still a bachelor and without children, he is a self-employed landscape contractor and nursery grower, with a small business owner's down-to-earth pragmatism, sense of organization and biting sense of humor. "I always wanted to climb K2 since I found out about it. It's the ultimate mountain," he says, adding with a laugh, "climbing is a hard way to go nowhere."