Jack Allsup : Ultrarunner, climber, led 1986 Everest trip
Posted on Tuesday, August 1, 2006
In 1991, when someone asked Jack Allsup “Why climb a mountain ?” he replied in the famous words of British mountaineer George Mallory: “Because it’s there.” Allsup, who died Saturday at Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock at the age of 76, was not afraid of challenge. He sought and embraced it.
Over the course of his climbing career, Allsup reached the highest summit on six of the seven continents, including Vinson Massif in Antarctica at a temperature of 30 degrees below zero. Likewise, he spent a year climbing the highest peaks in all 50 states, becoming the 16 th man to accomplish the feat and, with six Arkansans, completed a run across Costa Rica, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Ironically, Allsup’s greatest accomplishment may have simultaneously been the challenge he wasn’t able to complete — a Mount Everest expedition.
In 1986, Allsup, 56 at the time, obtained a permit to scale Mount Everest and led a group of Arkansans on an expedition that lasted over three months. Though the group didn’t make it to the 29, 028-foot summit due to illness in the party, Allsup climbed to 25, 500 feet, further than some of the other, better-equipped expeditions on the mountain that year. Though disappointed at not reaching the summit, everyone on their expedition made it back down the mountain alive and the expedition was considered a success.
“[Allsup ] was always pushing himself,” said Bob East of Little Rock, one of Allsup’s team members on the Everest trip. “He loved testing himself against a physical challenge.” Expedition members said Allsup went to great lengths to make the expedition possible: raising money, finding sponsors and meticulously planning every detail of the trip.
“Jack was a thinker, a visionary,” said Allsup’s ex-wife, Donna Duerr. “He was into ultrarunning [longer than 26. 2-mile marathons ] long before anyone had put a name to it.” Allsup’s pioneer personality was evident in his climbing as well.
“When we met,” East said, “he was the only other person in the state doing any mountaineering.” The two wanted to face the challenge of Everest and began planning the trip.
“China had just opened up the north route to Everest and we got help from [U. S. Sen. ] David Pryor and [Gov. ] Bill Clinton to get licensed,” East said.
Allsup’s desire for challenge was also reflected in his work, which led him to design voice circuits for 18 “Project Mercury” tracking stations that were built for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to help put the first manned space vehicle into orbit.
His enjoyment of running and climbing stemmed not only from the physical challenge but also from the chance to interact with new environments and people.
“People ask me why I climb and I never really know the answer,” Allsup said in an Arkansas Democrat article in 1991, when he was close to completing his goal of climbing the highest peaks in 50 states. “Like most climbers I’m around, I really can’t explain why I want to go through the all the expense and effort and misery sometimes.” His longtime running buddy, Nash Abrams, remembers Allsup’s desire for another physical challenge. “On his 60 th birthday he had his wife drive him to Ola, Ark., about 60 miles away and drop him off at midnight,” Abrams said.
“He ran back to Little Rock to celebrate his 60 th.”
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