Mark Twight
Encyclopedia
Born on November 2nd, 1961 in Yosemite National Park, California, Mark Twight rose to prominence in the world Alpine mountaineering community in the late 1980s and early 1990s with a well-documented series of difficult, dangerous alpine climbs in various ranges around the world.
guidebook author, Albi Sole as "so dangerous as to be of little value except to those suicidally inclined." In his guidebook to the range Joe Josephson declared "The Reality Bath is undoubtedly the most dangerous ice route in the range." That same season he established a speed record on the 925 meter-high "Slipstream" (2hrs 4min) on the east face of Snowdome.
Twight's first ascents in the Mont Blanc
massif
near Chamonix
, France
include "Richard Cranium Memorial" on the northwest face of Les Droites with Barry Blanchard
(1990), "Beyond Good And Evil" on the north face of the Aiguille des Pelerins with Andy Parkin (1992), and "There Goes The Neighborhood" on the northwest face of the Aiguille Sans Nom with Scott Backes
(1993).
In the Himalayas
Twight attempted more routes than he succeeded on, being turned away by the South Pillar of Nuptse
with Jeff Lowe
(twice), and shut down utterly 1200 feet (365.8 m) below the summit of Nanga Parbat
when a storm forced retreat down the biggest wall in the world, the Rupal Face, accompanied by Barry Blanchard, Kevin Doyle and Ward Robinson. He did climb several smaller peaks including Kangtega, where he visited the main summit with Alison Hargreaves
after the pair climbed a new route on the northwest face with Tom Frost and Jeff Lowe.
Twight made several landmark ascents in the Alaska Range
. In 1994 he and Scott Backes climbed "Deprivation" on Mount Hunter in 72 hours roundtrip, which halved the previous fastest ascent of the North Buttress. By climbing for 39 hours non-stop on the second "day" Backes and Twight ushered in the single-push climbing movement. Twight's participation in this style of climbing culminated with the 60-hour ascent of the Slovak Direct on the south face of Denali in June 2000 with Backes, and Steve House
, for whom Twight was a valuable mentor. During his visits to the Alaska Range Twight participated in a variety of high-profile rescues. Twight was nominated for the Piolet d'Or twice during his career, in 1993 for "Beyond Good and Evil" and 1995 for "Deprivation".
Following the Slovak Direct ascent Twight retired from climbing, and during the next several years he focused on shooting pictures and guns. Twight now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah
.
In 2005 Twight trained the cast and stunt crew for the movie 300
. He adhered to his philosophy that "appearance is a consequence of fitness" to make the trainees strong and lean, which happened to give them the physiques of Spartan warriors. "The first misconception is that we used a bodybuilding-type program of progressive overload and over-feeding with the goal of making the guys look huge. We took the opposite route of calorie restriction to make them look like they lived off the land, in the wild, all sinewy and ripped." The training was difficult, Twight pulled no punches, refusing to differentiate between actors, stuntmen, or athletes. After being told the details of a day's workout Andrew Pleavin
said, "It feels like you just killed my dog."
One training regimen
that his crew underwent in the movie came to be known as the 300 Workout, spawning many variations by other fitness personalities and trainers.
The name "Gym Jones" may be a reference to People's Temple leader Jim Jones
. According to the Gym Jones website, Mark Twight's favorite drink is Flavr Aid, the same product that Jones' followers mixed with cyanide in one of the largest murder-suicides in recent history in 1978. Additionally, one of the few Gym Jones shirts available for public purchase comes with the line "there's a fine line between salvation and drinking poison in the jungle" printed on the back. Twight says that "wearing it in public will require some commitment. Some readers will be offended, while others will merely scratch their ignorant heads."
Climbing
He made the first ascent of "The Reality Bath" on the White Pyramid with Randy Rackliff, which is unrepeated and described by Canadian RockiesCanadian Rockies
The Canadian Rockies comprise the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains range. They are the eastern part of the Canadian Cordillera, extending from the Interior Plains of Alberta to the Rocky Mountain Trench of British Columbia. The southern end borders Idaho and Montana of the USA...
guidebook author, Albi Sole as "so dangerous as to be of little value except to those suicidally inclined." In his guidebook to the range Joe Josephson declared "The Reality Bath is undoubtedly the most dangerous ice route in the range." That same season he established a speed record on the 925 meter-high "Slipstream" (2hrs 4min) on the east face of Snowdome.
Twight's first ascents in the Mont Blanc
Mont Blanc
Mont Blanc or Monte Bianco , meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain in the Alps, Western Europe and the European Union. It rises above sea level and is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence...
massif
Massif
In geology, a massif is a section of a planet's crust that is demarcated by faults or flexures. In the movement of the crust, a massif tends to retain its internal structure while being displaced as a whole...
near Chamonix
Chamonix
Chamonix-Mont-Blanc or, more commonly, Chamonix is a commune in the Haute-Savoie département in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France. It was the site of the 1924 Winter Olympics, the first Winter Olympics...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
include "Richard Cranium Memorial" on the northwest face of Les Droites with Barry Blanchard
Barry Blanchard
Barry Blanchard is one of North America's top alpinists, noted for pushing the standards of highly technical, high-risk alpine climbing in the Canadian Rockies and the Himalayas.- Climbing accomplishments :...
(1990), "Beyond Good And Evil" on the north face of the Aiguille des Pelerins with Andy Parkin (1992), and "There Goes The Neighborhood" on the northwest face of the Aiguille Sans Nom with Scott Backes
Scott Backes
Scott Backes is an American mountaineer. Backes has been called "one of the leading alpine mountain climbers in the United States".He was born in 1956 and has lived most of his life in Minnesota. He started climbing in 1975. His climbing style is light and fast, in an Alpine style...
(1993).
In the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
Twight attempted more routes than he succeeded on, being turned away by the South Pillar of Nuptse
Nuptse
Nuptse is a mountain in the Khumbu region of the Mahalangur Himal, in the Nepalese Himalayas. It lies two kilometres WSW of Mount Everest. Nuptse is Tibetan for "west peak", as it is the western segment of the Lhotse-Nuptse massif....
with Jeff Lowe
Jeff Lowe (climber)
Jeff Lowe is an American alpinist from Ogden, Utah. He is known for his visionary climbs and first ascents established in the US and Canadian Rockies, Alps and Himalayas. He is a proponent of the "Alpine style" philosophy of climbing, where small teams travel fast with minimal gear...
(twice), and shut down utterly 1200 feet (365.8 m) below the summit of Nanga Parbat
Nanga Parbat
Nanga Parbat is the ninth highest mountain on Earth, the second highest mountain in Pakistan and among the eight-thousanders with a summit elevation of 8,126 meters...
when a storm forced retreat down the biggest wall in the world, the Rupal Face, accompanied by Barry Blanchard, Kevin Doyle and Ward Robinson. He did climb several smaller peaks including Kangtega, where he visited the main summit with Alison Hargreaves
Alison Hargreaves
Alison Jane Hargreaves was an English mountain climber from Derbyshire. Educated at Belper School, her accomplishments included scaling Mount Everest solo without supplementary oxygen in 1995. She also soloed all the great north faces of the Alps in a single season—a first for any climber...
after the pair climbed a new route on the northwest face with Tom Frost and Jeff Lowe.
Twight made several landmark ascents in the Alaska Range
Alaska Range
The Alaska Range is a relatively narrow, 650-km-long mountain range in the southcentral region of the U.S. state of Alaska, from Lake Clark at its southwest end to the White River in Canada's Yukon Territory in the southeast...
. In 1994 he and Scott Backes climbed "Deprivation" on Mount Hunter in 72 hours roundtrip, which halved the previous fastest ascent of the North Buttress. By climbing for 39 hours non-stop on the second "day" Backes and Twight ushered in the single-push climbing movement. Twight's participation in this style of climbing culminated with the 60-hour ascent of the Slovak Direct on the south face of Denali in June 2000 with Backes, and Steve House
Steve House
Steve House is an American professional climber and mountain guide from La Grande, Oregon.-Biography:House earned a Bachelor of Science in ecology from The Evergreen State College in 1995...
, for whom Twight was a valuable mentor. During his visits to the Alaska Range Twight participated in a variety of high-profile rescues. Twight was nominated for the Piolet d'Or twice during his career, in 1993 for "Beyond Good and Evil" and 1995 for "Deprivation".
Following the Slovak Direct ascent Twight retired from climbing, and during the next several years he focused on shooting pictures and guns. Twight now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. The name of the city is often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC. With a population of 186,440 as of the 2010 Census, the city lies in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which has a total population of 1,124,197...
.
Writing
His first book, “Extreme Alpinism: Climbing Light, Fast and High” (1999) won the Mountain Exposition award at the Banff International Mountain Book Festival and the National Outdoor Book Award. “Kiss or Kill – Confessions of a Serial Climber” (2001) won the Mountain Literature category at the Banff International Mountain Book Festival, 2001, and was shortlisted at the Trento mountain book festival in Italy, 2005. His essays and articles have been published in seven countries, translated into five languages.Military consulting
Twight is the technical director of Mountain Mobility Group, LLC, which provides training and research and development to the Department of Defense. He was hired as the subject matter expert during the development of the Protective Combat Uniform (PCU) currently issued to special operations personnel.Gym Jones
Mark Twight is the founder of Gym Jones, where he trains athletes, military personnel, and others for whom fitness goes beyond appearance. The military work is largely unreported though in the August 2009 issue of Muscle and Fitness Dan John quipped that, "There are people in there who officially don't exist, if you catch my meaning, but you sleep better because they do ... It's a whole different world when you're training with folks whose lives are on the line." At Gym Jones Twight and fellow trainers and coaches work with everyone from NFL players to MMA fighters, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competitors (a half-dozen Pedro Sauer black belts work and train there), bike racers, rock and mountain climbers, and a variety of ultra-endurance athletes.In 2005 Twight trained the cast and stunt crew for the movie 300
300 (film)
300 is a 2007 American fantasy action film based on the 1998 comic series of the same name by Frank Miller. It is a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as executive producer and consultant...
. He adhered to his philosophy that "appearance is a consequence of fitness" to make the trainees strong and lean, which happened to give them the physiques of Spartan warriors. "The first misconception is that we used a bodybuilding-type program of progressive overload and over-feeding with the goal of making the guys look huge. We took the opposite route of calorie restriction to make them look like they lived off the land, in the wild, all sinewy and ripped." The training was difficult, Twight pulled no punches, refusing to differentiate between actors, stuntmen, or athletes. After being told the details of a day's workout Andrew Pleavin
Andrew Pleavin
Andrew Pleavin is an English actor known for his appearances in the TV film Attila, Unstoppable, Batman Begins, Attack of the Gryphon, Return to House on Haunted Hill and his roles in the British police dramas Messiah III: the Promise and the Bill...
said, "It feels like you just killed my dog."
One training regimen
Regimen
A regimen is a plan, a regulated course such as a diet, exercise or medical treatment, designed to give a positive result. A low-salt diet is a regimen. A course of penicillin is a regimen.- History :...
that his crew underwent in the movie came to be known as the 300 Workout, spawning many variations by other fitness personalities and trainers.
The name "Gym Jones" may be a reference to People's Temple leader Jim Jones
Jim Jones
James Warren "Jim" Jones was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 mass suicide of 909 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the killings of five other people at a nearby airstrip.Jones was born in Indiana and started the Temple in...
. According to the Gym Jones website, Mark Twight's favorite drink is Flavr Aid, the same product that Jones' followers mixed with cyanide in one of the largest murder-suicides in recent history in 1978. Additionally, one of the few Gym Jones shirts available for public purchase comes with the line "there's a fine line between salvation and drinking poison in the jungle" printed on the back. Twight says that "wearing it in public will require some commitment. Some readers will be offended, while others will merely scratch their ignorant heads."