December 21, 2011
25 Great Years...Thank You!
The years come and go so quickly anymore that we rarely get a chance to sit back and reflect on our past. And now, here we are with 25 years of it!
When we look back on the first days of IMG, we’re quick to notice that for the most part the mountains have stayed the same; it’s the business that surrounds them that has changed. A phone call and a handshake used to be the norm, now it’s FedEx, release forms and digital statements. We laugh at, and appreciate, all the envelopes we stuffed & mailed and chuckle at the volume of faxes sent and received from one hotel or another to keep things flowing. And it’s hard not to smile when thinking of the stash of cash we were once forced to travel with to pay our in-country support staff or the occasional bribe to get things done.
Nowadays we have our fancy website, instant emails flying from one country to the next, guides buzzing from one mountain to the other, pdfs, blogs, facebook, credit cards, invoices, sat phones, cell phones, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, GPS, not to mention twitter and iphones. But the long and short of it is this: climbing is still climbing and without putting one foot in front of the other there’s no reason to blog, chat, or make calls. Sure the gear has come a long way but in the end it still boils down to doing your physical homework and being mentally prepared for whatever climb you’re up against.
We’ve had the opportunity to get to know a lot of climbers over the years and take pride in all the memories in which we’ve played a part. Be it one of the summits from Mt. Rainier last summer or guiding Dick Bass up one of the Seven Summits – they all play their part in IMG’s growing history.
We’ll promise to keep up with this whole inter web thing but will continue to concentrate on what matters most: safety, summits and fun. The rest tends to take care of itself.
Happy Holidays & here’s to another 25 years!
George, Eric, Phil & Paul