Climber, comedian to speak at Colfax, Rosalia

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Oct 16, 20140

count

Speaker John Beede

At 13 years old, his father sent him to Camp Black Mountain, a Washington Boy Scout operation, against his will.

What he found there led him to his life today, as a professional speaker of 12 years who has stood on the summit of the world’s highest mountain peaks on six continents.

John Beede will be in Colfax and Rosalia Monday to tell about his experience, with a few punchlines woven in.

Born and raised in Las Vegas, Beede started out in standup comedy after graduating from Wheaton College in 2003 with a degree in communications.

A face in a crowd of thousands of Las Vegas high school students just a few years before, he had taken to scouting in the extreme, spending parts of nine summers at Camp Black Mountain and earning an Eagle Scout badge at 14. He had been a scout for three years.

“I was getting probably 12 merit badges a summer,” Beede said.

It was at the now-defunct Western Washington camp that he also noticed he was good at comedy, doing improv skits.

After college, and a year and a half of making his way in stand-up, he wanted to do something more with it.

“I realized I wanted to make more of a difference than just making people laugh,” Beede said.

Meanwhile, he was becoming more accomplished as a mountaineer, an endeavor he began in high school, returning from camp to a job at a climbing gym in Las Vegas.

Meeting other climbers there, Beede started taking trips to Red Rock Canyon, Nev. Grand Teton, Wyo., was the first big mountain he climbed, followed by Mount Rainier a year later.

“That’s when I got hooked on climbing,” he said.

One day Beede asked his mother, who had been a substitute teacher in Nevada public schools, if she could refer him to schools he could speak in.

She did and he began for free telling climbing stories.

“As I kept speaking, I’d go on more and more adventures,” Beede said.

Now he speaks no more than 25 dates a year, predominantly in the spring and fall.

In December 2015 or January 2016, he plans to be in Antarctica to climb the last of the seven summits.

Last May, Beede took down No. 5, Mount Everest. Previous summits were Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia; Mount Kilamanjaro, Tanzania; Mount Elbrus, Russia; Cerro Aconcagua in the Argentinean Andes, and Mount McKinley, Alaska.

“I want students to find the big mountains in their lives,” said Beede, the son of a retired pilot for Northwest Airlines.

He is motivated by his own experience as an adolescent.

“I didn’t enjoy myself very much in high school,” he said. “I was shy, self-conscious.”

The further Beede got into scouting and the outdoors, things brightened. In the fall of his senior year, he joined a Semester-at-Sea program, sailing on an 88-foot clipper with 12 other high school seniors in the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean.

He worked at Camp Black Mountain in the summers until he was 23.

Beede now lives in Bend, Ore., a central jump-off spot for his mountaineering, kite surfing in the Columbia River Gorge and other activities.

Just three months ago, in July, he found himself with a group of climbers in Indonesia caught between warring tribes and the world’s largest gold mine.

His group was hunkered down for six days.

“We had one scoop of rice per day and we put Power-Gel in them to give them flavor,” Beede said.

He is now set to tell about this experience Monday, Oct. 20, at two appearances in Colfax and one in Rosalia at 10 a.m.

Beede will speak at an assembly for Colfax High School students at 1:30 p.m. followed by a 7 p.m. session for the general public in the CHS auditorium. The public can also attend the afternoon session.

His visit is sponsored by the Colfax High School Future Business Leaders of America, a group which saw Beede speak at the FBLA state convention in Seattle in April.

“He really hit a chord for me,” said Tina Scholz, Colfax’s FBLA advisor. “This is just a fortunate, fortunate event that we could get him to Eastern Washington, our corner of the world.”

After Colfax and Rosalia, Beede will go to Freeman, and then speak at the FBLA Fall Regional convention in Spokane.

“I’m going to bring the same strategies that put me on the top of Everest and let the students pursue their own Everest-size successes for themselves,” he said. “Success strategies that work in all facets of life.”