He grabs onto an ascender,and pulls himself up along the rope. Then, he sits back down, re-adjusts the rope and starts all over again, slowly rising higher and higher.
If this were a real situation, Olson would be fighting for his life after falling deep into a mountain crevasse.
Fortunately for the 18-year-old Palm Harbor University High School senior and Eagle Scout, this is merely a practice run, staged on a warm Memorial Day morning in at Adventure Outfitters in South Tampa.
There's a lot riding on Olson. Later this month, he will help lead a small group of wounded veterans on an expedition to climb Alaska's foreboding Mount Denali.
Some of the men are missing limbs. One is a Navy SEAL who underwent a double lung transplant.
Called the Denali Mountaineering Challenge for Combat Wounded Veterans, the adventurers are on a mission to show others injured in war that their lives are not over.
Their motto: Vulneror non Vincor — Latin for "I am wounded, not conquered."
It won't be easy. At more than 20,000 feet, Denali is a massive mound of ice and rock and North America's highest peak.
Seven people already have died this season trying to climb it. And none of them was missing an arm or leg.
In December of 2003, Army Sgt. Victor Thibeault and Staff Sgt. Dan Swank were riding through the crowded bazaar at Martyrs Circle in downtown Kandahar, Afghanistan, when someone tossed a grenade into their Humvee.It landed at Thibeaut's feet.
Seeing that the bazaar was filled with people, he stuffed the grenade into the Humvee's center console instead of throwing it out the window.
"There were a lot of people, women and children," says Thibeault. "I didn't want to hurt them. They had nothing to do with it."
The grenade exploded inside the Humvee. Thibeaut's lost his left hand. Swank would eventually lose his right leg.Thibeault is among the five making the climb.
"I am not scared at all," says Thibeault, now a certified EMT and psychology student living in Vallejo, Calif.,with his wife and two children. "I want to do this. I need to do this."
The physical aspect of the climb, says Thibeault, is not daunting, either.
"The injuries don't bother me," he says. "I still walk. I have shrapnel injuries in legs that doesn't affect me too much. I am a pretty strong guy, always have been. When it comes to walking up all kinds of terrain, I am pretty good at that. It's basically what I did in the Army for 10 years."
Thibeault honorably retired from the Army in 2008. He says he has been studying psychology at a local college and went for the EMT certification "mostly for this team, to help out if anything went wrong."
The biggest challenges facing the climbers will be "cold and the crevasses," says Leon Watts, an experienced mountaineer and diver who owns Adventure Outfitters. Watts met the organizers of the Denali expedition last year as they were gearing up for a training mission. Now he is helping them get ready for the climb.
On this morning, he is training Olson, his father David — a retired Navy captain who is organizing the mission, and Army Col. Randolph Rosin, an experienced mountaineer who is going along to help out.
"Denali is an incredible challenge," says Watts. "It's over 20,000 feet high. It's a 17-day expedition. Glacier travel. My clients and friends who have been on it say the striking thing about it is that you land on a glacier when you get there and it's just cold."
For most people, climbing Denali would be the biggest challenge they ever face.
But these aren't most people.
"If it were somebody other than these guys, I would say it is one of the toughest things they have ever done in their life, but for these guys, it's not," Watts says. "The toughest thing they've already been through, and everything else is just a reward."
Working with Thibeault and the others "has been truly humbling," says Evan Olson. "These are America's finest, really. They've risked everything for our protection and it's great to be out there climbing with them."
Last year, the Denali challenge team spent about three weeks on the Pica Glacier in Alaska training for the expedition.
Inspiring others is not the expedition's only mission, says Evan Olson.
One of the climbers, Lt. Justin Legg, is a Navy SEAL who had to undergo a double lung transplant as the result of leukemia he contracted after being exposed to chemicals during a raid.
Olson says one of the goals of the climb is to see how Legg and the others react.
"We are going to see what effect altitude has on the double-lung transplant victim and how the weather affects the prosthetics," says Olson. "Maybe we can have enough information to progress the technology of prosthetic legs to facilitate the needs of combat-wounded veterans and paraplegics all over."
Edward Coleman, a heart and lung surgeon from Green Bay, will accompany the team. A veteran mountaineer, Coleman will oversee the altitude study on Legg.
The study is so noteworthy that the world famous Explorers Club is allowing the team to carry its flag on the mission.
"This is an amazing experience," says David Olson, a civil servant working at U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base.
Amazing for his son and for the veterans.
In 2001, David Olson founded SCUBAnauts International, a marine sciences program that introduces young men and women to informal science education through underwater exploration.
SCUBAnauts, in coordination with an anonymous sponsor and Alaska Mountaineering School, is facilitating the Denali challenge, David Olson says.
Most of the money for the trip's estimated $100,000 cost has been put up by anonymous sponsors, and the vets will pay nothing, he says. He also hopes to raise money for future trips.
One is planned next year at Mount Kilimanjaro.
The climb, David Olson says, is scheduled for June 21, depending on the weather. He will be recording the mission to show other wounded vets what they can accomplish.
Thibeault says working with this team has been one of the most rewarding experiences of his life.
"I love Dave and all the guys on that team, every single one of them," he says. "They respect me in a way no one else can, something I need."
Tampa Bay Online
Mountaineering challenge for combat wounded veterans
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→Wounded US combat veterans' mountaineering challenge
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→https://national-grid-news.blogspot.com/2011/06/wounded-us-combat-veterans.html
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