a032  0026  05 Aug 78
PM-Women-Climb,320
Laserphoto FX1
    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - An adventurous band of women leaves Sunday for
far-off Nepal on the first leg of a journey they hope will end at the
icy top of towering Annapurna, the world's 10th tallest peak.
    If they succeed, they will have made history - the first all-woman
American team to conquer a mountain more than 8,000 meters high.
    ''In mountain climbing, 8,000 meters (more than 26,000 feet) is a
magic mark,'' said Christy Tews, who will manage the base camp this
fall while 10 women attempt the harrowing climb.
    Ms. Tews said that while Japanese, Chinese and Polish women have
climbed beyond 8,000 meters, American women have yet to reach that
mark.
    The climbers, ranging in age from 20 to 50, all are experienced
mountaineers, Ms. Tews said.
    The group flies from San Francisco to Hong Kong and will assemble in
Nepal. From a staging area at Pokhara, the women will set out on a
10-day walk to the mountain.
    Ms. Tews said they expect to establish the base camp in early
September.
    Then, depending on weather conditions, they will begin the four- to
six-week assault of Annapurna, a feat completed successfully by only
four other expeditions.
    The Sherpa guides will include several women, she said.
    Arlene Blum, a biochemist at the University of California at
Berkeley, will lead the climb. She has had 10 expeditions in Asia and
Africa and was a co-leader of the first all-woman assault on Mount
McKinley.
    Other climbers include Joan Firey, Seattle; Alison
Chadwick-Onyszkiewicz, England; Liz Klobusicky, Germany; Vera
Komarkova, Bolder, Colo.; Prio Kramar, Seattle; Irene Miller, Palo
Alto, Calif.; Margi Rusmore, Santa Cruz, Calif.; Vera Watson,
Stanford, Calif.; and Ann Whitehouse, Laramie, Wyo.
    Four of the women will be leaving husbands behind. Ms. Tews said
families generally have given the expedition full support.
    The climb is expected to cost $80,000. Donations will finance part
of the trip, and the women have raised $24,000 by selling T-shirts.
    
ap-ny-08-05 0327EDT
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a071  0355  05 Aug 78
PM-National Overview,550
    HACKENSACK, N.J. (AP) - New York Times reporter Myron A. Farber,
sitting in a cell next to a murder suspect for refusing to surrender
his files on the Dr.X murder case, ''is like any other inmate'' in the
Bergen County jail.
    Farber and his newspaper were convicted of contempt for defying a
court order to surrender their material on Dr. Mario Jascalevich, the
surgeon referred to as Dr. X in Farber's stories on a series of
mysterious deaths at a New Jersey hospital.
    Farber served seven hours in jail last week before his sentence was
stayed temporarily by a New Jersey Supreme Court Justice. A last
minute effort to keep the reporter out of jail until an appeal could
be argued was rejected Friday by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood
Marshall.
    ---
    SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Immanuel David, who spent more than $30,000 on
food and posh hotel rooms for his family in the past 14 months, will
be buried with his wife and six of their children at county expense,
relatives said.
    David, who claimed to have revelations and to be able to destroy the
world, committed suicide this week. After learning of his death
Wednesday, Rachel David helped the couple's seven children plunge from
the 11th floor balcony of their $90-a-day, three-room suite before
she jumped over the side to her death Thursday morning.
    Only a 13-year-old daughter, Elizbeth, survived. Friday night she
was reported in critical condition at LDS Hospital.
    David's brother, Dean Longo, a Vero Beach, Fla., police sergeant,
arrived Friday to handle funeral arrangments. He said he could not
afford to pay for the family's funeral. He said the county had already
been contacted for help. The family will be buried in Utah.
    ---
    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - An adventurous band of women leaves Sunday for
far-off Nepal on the first leg of a journey they hope will end at the
icy top of towering Annapurna, the world's 10th tallest peak.
    If they succeed, they will have made history - the first all-woman
American team to conquer a mountain more than 8,000 meters high.
    ''In mountain climbing, 8,000 meters (more than 26,000 feet) is a
magic mark,'' said Christy Tews, who will manage the base camp this
fall while 10 women attempt the harrowing climb.
    Ms. Tews said that while Japanese, Chinese and Polish women have
climbed beyond 8,000 meters, American women have yet to reach that
mark.
    The climbers, ranging in age from 20 to 50, all are experienced
mountaineers, Ms. Tews said.
    ---
    ALBANY, Texas (AP) - Waterlogged residents of western Texas, already
inundated by up to 30 inches of rain in the last two days, braced for
more flooding today as the runoff sent rivers gushing from their
banks.
    Water poured over earthen dams and spillways, and creeks that barely
trickled a few days ago grew two miles wide across the rolling west
Texas prairies.
    The killer storm - remnants of Tropical Storm Amelia - has claimed
at least 20 lives while carving a 200-mile-long swath of destruction
from central to northwestern Texas.
    No rain was falling early today and skies were forecast to remain
partly cloudy.
    The Texas Department of Public Safety said 20 bodies had been
recovered across the state, including 16 in central Texas and four in
Albany, a farming town of 2,500 residents.
    
ap-ny-08-05 0656EDT
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a233  1233  16 Aug 78
AM-Focus-Adventurers, Bjt,840
TODAY'S FOCUS: Why? Not Only Because It's There
Laserphoto NY25
By MARC CHARNEY
Associated Press Writer
    NEW YORK (AP) - They leave the everyday comforts to climb mountains,
cross oceans in small boats, make epic balloon flights or marathon
swims.
    Why do they do it? It's an age-old question, and this summer there
are legions of adventurers about whom to ask it.
    This week alone, Diana Nyad and Stella Taylor tried - but failed -
to swim 100 miles or more to Miami; Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and
Larry Newman of Albuquerqu3 were trying to cross the Atlantic in a
balloon; two separate teams of Americans were in the Himalayas to
climb K-2 and Annapurna, two of the world's highest peaks.
    Those are just some of the adventurers in the public eye, doing the
most spectacular of feats. And there are others, men or women
everyone knows - canoeists or rock climbers or sailors, seeking out
rapids or cliffs or seas that may have been conquered many times
before, but never by them.
    Each has his reasons; each holds a fascination for the stay-at-home.
    Some explanations are as timeless, and as personal, as George Leigh
Mallory's was more than a half-century ago, when he was asked why he
wanted to climb Mt. Everest: ''Because it is there.''
    Others are as contemporary, and as complicated, as wealthy publisher
Malcolm Forbes' description of why people - himself among them - make
epic balloon flights. Apart from ''the great challenge,'' Forbes
says, ''An audience is vital; attention is a spur . . . Who'd be a
successsful writer, artist, etc., if nobody was watching?''
    Miss Nyad, on the other hand, had an answer both simple and
practical as she contemplated big-money contracts before her swim:
    ''This swim could set up my whole future,'' she said.
    But that is hardly the story for others.
    Consider Thomas Mutch, a geology professor at Brown University who
took students climbing a Himalayan peak nearly 22,000 feet high to
learn the meaning of exploration:
    ''I would disagree very strongly,'' he said when asked about Forbes'
explanation. He pointed to the way Charles A. Lindbergh landed in
Paris in 1927 after the first solo transatlantic flight - astounded
that his lonely flight had caused a stir.
    Mutch says mountaineering is ''a very very private feeling.''
    And he says: ''In exploration, you're talking about the goal, the
id3a of getting to some place. There's something exhilarating about
it. To struggle up a pinnacle and toward some point at the top,
whether you reach it or not - is a very simplifying experience.''
    Simplifying?
    ''The world's a complicated place. Most of the time, you kind of
muddle through. But most people who have climbed find that during a
climb all of your mental and metaphysical experiences are centered on
one activity - getting to the top. For that period of time, life
seems very, very straightforward. And afterward, you know that you did
this; people can't take this away from you.''
    Forbes, who has sunk profits from his magazine into cross-country
ballooning, says that sport evokes ''the way man first flew . .  the
air excites people; it's not a moonwalk; but it's as near as you can
get to it on earth.''
    As for epic flights, he says, ''Everybody likes identity. Everybody
wants something that they're known for. It's fun, it's a challenge,
and it's what you might call instant fame.''
    One man who achieved instant fame is Hugo Vihlen of Homestead, Fla.,
who is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for crossing the
Atlantic in 1969 in a boat 5-feet, 11 1/2-inches long, the smallest to
make the voyage. He says his goal was ''to set a world record.''
    But then he adds other motives. ''There are adventurous people who
are not content to go home every day and stagnate,'' he says, and
there is the satisfaction of planning for a difficult feat.
    ''Obviously, it's a calculated risk,'' he says. ''But by the
research you can eliminate an awful lot of the risk.''
    He rejects the idea that he was testing himself: ''I knew it could
be done. I didn't reach any big inner thoughts. I was a Marine fighter
pilot, so I knew about being afraid.''
    That, in turn, clashes with the thoughts of rock-climber Charlton
DuRant of Morganton, N.C., who teaches outdoor life at an Outward
Bound school and says adventure makes an individual face himself.
    Like all the others, DuRant stresses preparation; he speaks of ''a
dangerous situation that becomes safe because you're educated.''
    But he also says that ''a large part of climbing, to everybody that
climbs, is fear. In some way or another, you're dealing with it.''
    ''When you're mountaineering, you make irreversible commitments
. . . You go over a line; the only way you can tell about this
adventure is if you've finished it.''
    So it is a complex business, the ''why'' behind adventuring.
    But the rewards are sometimes quite simple. Joshua Slocum, who
couldn't swim, described them this way after completing the world's
first solo sail around the world - a three-year venture - in 1898:
    ''I had profited in many ways by the voyage. I had even gained
flesh, and actually weighed a pound more than when I sailed from
Boston. As for aging, why, the dial of my life was turned back till my
friends all said, 'Slocum is young again.' ''
    
ap-ny-08-16 1536EDT
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a269  1622  16 Aug 78
AM-Focus-Adventurers, 1st Ld, a233,100
EDS:The following subs the 3rd graf to show the ballonists succeeded.
TODAY'S FOCUS: Why? Not Only Because It's There
Laserphoto NY25
By MARC CHARNEY
Associated Press Writer
    NEW YORK (AP) - They leave the everyday comforts to climb mountains,
cross oceans in small boats, make epic balloon flights or marathon
swims.
    Why do they do it? It's an age-old question, and this summer there
are legions of adventurers about whom to ask it.
    This week alone, Diana Nyad and Stella Taylor tried - but failed -
to swim 100 miles or more to Miami; Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and
Larry Newman of Albuquerque crossed the Atlantic in a balloon; two
separate teams of Americans were in the Himalayas to climb K-2 and
Annapurna, two of the world's highest peaks.
    Those are 4th graf
    
ap-ny-08-16 1925EDT
**********