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Interview with Neal Beidleman 28 AUG 2000 You're an accomplished rock climber and mountaineer, but I understand you also have an interesting day job.
I'm a mechanical engineer and I do product design for my own company, Big Air Designs, started in 1994. We do everything from commercial product design to spacecraft mechanical design. I've worked on many currently flying spacecraft for NASA. The company is just me, and I do a lot product design in the outdoor industry. I try to test things I design, especially outdoor products. If it's ski or climbing related, it's a good way to get out of the office.
Did you have a part in designing the Avalung? It is Black Diamond's product, I was not the inventor but I was one of the designers and worked on it. It's changed the whole thinking about safety equipment used in avalanche terrain.
Do you wear one yourself? Depending on where I go and the kind of conditions happening at that time, I do wear one.
What other products are you particularly proud of? Avalanche probes, shovels; we did a ski boot heater product. It's fun to have a shovel that you actually designed on the computer and there it is in front of you. It's an essential tool in the mountains, to form tent platforms, cooking on, rescue.
Are you involved with Mountain Rescue here in Aspen? Yes, every day I come home from work and rescue my wife from taking care of our daughter.
On the subject of rescue, at the Outdoor Festival you will be giving a slide presentation on the tragedy on Everest in 1996 and your involvement in it. How is it to retell the story so often? I don't seek out doing these talks, I only do them if I'm asked so I'm not trying to market this. Usually people bring their own motivation for wanting to hear about it. I just tell the story as I see it. Obviously time provides the ability for all of us to have perspective. The history of the story doesn't change, but some of the thinking around it has evolved.
How has the perspective changed? Not to get too off on a tangent, but with anything, time allows more perspective. The immediacy of the tragedy has sunk in so we're not dealing with it on that level. We can think about it as what it means in terms of guiding and climbing now. Over the last four years, I've come to a personal opinion about what happened up there and it took a long time to sort it all out.
You've recently returned from an expedition to Annapurna with Ed Viesturs as part of his Endeavor 8000 project. How was that experience? It was great climbing with Ed, Michael Kennedy and Veikka (Gustafsson). We went to do Annapurna but the climbing was far too dangerous for the level of risk we were willing to take, but we had a blast. I wished we could have climbed more but that's how it goes in the mountains, sometimes you're successful, sometimes not. You have to know when to say it's too much.
Do you have some future climbing plans? Climbing? Yes. Lots. Many. Nothing concrete right now, but I'll be out there as much as possible.
— Krista Crabtree, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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