Here WE Go Again … Paul Ryan CAUGHT In Mountain Climbing FIB?
What with all the sub-three hour marathon running, how did Paul Ryan find time to scramble up 38 of Colorado’s tallest mountain peaks? Well, somehow he did, says Paul Ryan.
Release the spreadsheets! I’m not one, but serious mountain climbers say that they record an account of every peak they’ve ascended. That’s why various message board posters and Twitter folk are asking Paul Ryan to release documentation that he actually climbed 38 “14ers” (mountain peaks) in the Colorado Rockies, as he claimed in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1905949&tn=120
Other reactions? People are actually climbing 14ers and taking pictures of themselves at the summit with signs mocking Ryan. (Note the empty chair).
Our story begins when Mitt Romney first picked Ryan to be his running mate. At the time, state Colorado Party Republican chairman Ryan Call told a reporter that Ryan told him he has “climbed nearly 40 of Colorado’s 53 fourteeners, or mountains above 14,000 feet in elevation.”
Actually Ryan has claimed to have climbed 38 fourteeners … and some of them multiple times, for 30 unique fourteeners total. Still, that’s just short of 40 serious climbs. From the 2009 article in the Journal Sentinel:
Ryan: “My mom was very outdoorsy … We spent our summers doing backpacking trips in the (Colorado) back-country, you know, Snowmass Lake, Capital Peak, spent all our summers doing that … went all over White River National Forest, just the whole Elk range. I mean I’ve climbed every fourteener in that range and the three around there … So I got into climbing fourteeners when I was 12, with my brother, Stan. My mom got us into that.”
Question: “How many fourteeners have you climbed? Or how many times?”
Ryan: “38. I think that’s my last count.”
Question: “Those are just climbing peaks that are 14,000 feet?”
Ryan: “I’ve done it 38 times. … I’ve done 38, but I think the number of unique peaks is something like twenty … no, no it’s like thirty or something like that. I counted it up a year or two ago.”
Question: “Most of those in Colorado?”
Ryan: “All of them are in Colorado.”
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/168696016.html
Meanwhile, on the Supertopo.com message board …
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1905949&tn=100
40 14?ers is serious lifestyle climbing and a lot of hiking. This guy is pathological. — Riley Wina.
Riley is right. To have climbed forty and not be a resident means that you would have had to devote entire summers to climbing fourteeners. — Rick A.
http://offthebench.nbcsports.com/2012/09/06/here-we-go-again-paul-ryan-caught-in-mountain-climbing-fib/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Quite !
Welcome to DU! 
I'm wondering what it is about this guy that is making him such a narcissist about his athletic prowess. It's kind of weird.
He's as full of it as a Christmas Turkey, and that's being kind to how much "stuffing" he has put out there.
Oh, and welcome to DU 
for Ryan/Romney, it isn't particularly helpful to insult the people in Colorado who are proud of their mountains and traditions -- which is basically everybody in Colorado.
Of course, he told this little lie three years ago, before he thought it might bite him n the ass. But that just goes to show that Ryan has been in the lying business a long time.
Before it is all said and done, we are going to learn that instead of doing the P90X workout regularly, he has actually been doing Sweating with the Oldies a couple of times a week.
The Atari computer simulation climbing game, that is.
"See those Mountains over there? Those are mine. Yep, I BUILT THOSE! "
