Bend climber scales Mt. Everest, world’s tallest peak

Bend resident Jonathan Floyd Schrock just climbed to the summit of Mt. Everest, the world’s tallest peak, this week, colleagues said Thursday.

Schrock. 38, was guiding a ‘hybrid’ team from Ashford, Wash.-based International Mountain Guides, featuring a combination of Western and Sherpa guides, the company reported.

Schrock was among a group that reached the 29,029-foot summit at about 8 a.m. on Thursday, Nepal time, and are due back to base Camp 2 by Saturday morning, also Nepal time.

At the Smith Rock Climbing Guides site, Schrock is listed as a native Oregonian who has been climbing for 12 years and guiding such trips for five years. It says he learned to climb in the Willamette Valley before moving to Bend to scale Smith Rock and the Cascades.

International Mountain Guides’ biography said Schrock grew up on the central Oregon coast and got a business degree from Linfield College in 2002, briefly working in corporate finance before returning to his love of rock and mountain climbing. He also got his pilot’s license on his 17th birthday.

We hope to talk to Schrock after he returns to base camp about his experience.