Editor's Note: Dave Hahn, MountainZone.com sponsored athlete and columnist, wrote this piece shortly after the terrorists attacks on September 11 as he continued in his role of Mount Rainier guide. Hahn is currently on Everest's south side working with a team of women climbers on the South Col route. It's been a busy year for Hahn, one of the most active climbers of the day. Since the tragic events of 9/11, he has ski patrolled in Taos and climbed Vinson (the highest peak in Antarctica) for the 21st time. He also received the Denali Pro Mountaineer of the Year award from the National Park Service for rescues performed on Denali, and the coveted David A Sowles Award from the American Alpine Club for the multiple rescues he and others performed high on Everest in the spring of 2001.

It was a run of perfect weather. Prime time to climb. Except that was the last thing I wanted to do. It was September 12 and I was among several hundred million people who didn't feel right about doing what they normally do.

I was scheduled to guide an innocent two-day climb of Mt. Rainier by its normal route. And as I geared up listening to the radio and reacting to each new shock of that day, I just wanted to cancel the damn climb. How could those clients seriously expect that we'd go out there and play? That would be impossible, surely, while buildings were still on fire and new images of destruction and estimates of death were emerging. And how could we go out and risk our lives for no good reason?

Oddly that hadn't been a consideration on September 10 but now it was. Enough so that in my mind as I drove to the pre-climb morning guide meeting, I pondered other reasons why we couldn't and shouldn't go up a dangerous volcano. What if something happened and we required rescue? Wouldn't that be putting added and unwarranted strain on my country's resources in a time of crisis?

And what about my feelings? Weren't there personal reasons that I couldn't be expected to put myself out for business as usual on such days? Hadn't I grown up a hundred miles from New York City? But I knew I was on thin ice with this line of groping. Way too many people could show personal loss due to the attacks and thankfully, I could not.

At that point I wasn't even aware that my brother had been standing on the sidewalk a few blocks from the World Trade Center, looking up at that first jet overhead and thinking it looked a lot like a terrorist attack. Had I known, would I have shamelessly used that connection as a way to get off the climb? Possibly. I just didn't want to go up Mount Rainier. I believed, in theory that Americans should go about their business and not be terrorized. But in practice, I felt terrorized.

It wasn't my climb to cancel. I don't schedule climbs and I don't sell them. I just guide them. At the morning get-together, it became clear that we were going up anyway.

There were no airline flights in the United States on September 12, 2001. That meant that our 24 climbers could not leave if they wanted to. They had trained for months and, in some cases, years for this first venture into the big mountains. They'd shelled out relatively big bucks in making the transition from hiking local hills for free to what was needed for travel, gear and guidance on glaciers. They had told families and co-workers that they needed the time for this odd pursuit. Many, I'm sure had then needed to convince their friends and loved ones that it was a safe risk to take. And then these folks had flown to Mount Rainier from all over the country and had put themselves through a day of training and coaching in preparation.

— Dave Hahn, MountainZone.com Correspondent