Bisbee Presents 'The Great Stair Climb'

LIVELY STEPPING IN

TEXT BY TOM DOLLAR

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ED COMPEAN

"Only 700 to go," I gasped, topping the 181st step in the third and longest flight of stairs in the fourth annual Bisbee 1,000 Stair Climb, aka The Great Stair Climb, aka "the 5K that feels like a 10K." That's K as in kilometers, and five of them translate into three miles. "Hey, look at that guy," a male voice yelled, meaning me. "He's taking them two at a time." "It's easier," I called back, grabbing two cups of water from the aid-station table at the top of the stairs. "Yeah, but you're only doing 500 steps that way," he answered.

Looking around, I located the speaker, a guy smiling broadly and wearing a stethoscope around his neck. "Easy for you to say," I shouted and waved, trying to sound lighthearted hard when words came in breathless bursts. The smiling guy was half-right I gave him that much. I'm fairly long-legged, so it was easier, less choppy, to take the steps two at a time. And I didn't actually put a foot down on each of The Great Stair Climb's 1,034 steps. But at the end of the race, I would know I had huffed up all the grades and covered the distance my aching muscles would tell me so. This is indeed a 5K that feels like a 10K.

If you know Bisbee, you know that the town is tailored for events like The Great Stair Climb. The main drag runs through the bottom of Tombstone Canyon in the Mule Mountains with tiers of houses arranged along the canyon's high sidewalls. Steep, narrow roadways rise from the main street to some houses, but many are accessible only by long flights of concrete or wooden stairs that rise at even more precipitous angles from the main street, ascend to a tier some 80 to 100 steps up, take a slight jog right or left, then climb another 100 or so steps to a higher row of houses. One Fourth of July weekend years ago, my mate and I spent two days exploring Bisbee's stairways. Avid hikers, we loved to climb. We scampered up long rises of stairs between rows of tiny houses, affectionately dubbed "miner's shacks" by those who bought and renovated them in the early 1980s. We stopped to admire wooden decks and tiered gardens where hummingbirds swarmed to flower beds and hanging feeders. Atop one stairway, we discovered the studio of a wood sculptor. Later we happened upon the Muheim Heritage House Museum, the former home of one of Bisbee's founding families. It never occurred to me back then that a recreational event could be organized around Bisbee's stairsteps. Why, I don't know. After all, Bisbee already had La Vuelta de Bisbee, a bicycle stage race, and the Tombstone Canyon coaster races, both of which exploit the city's unique physical layout. But 10-year Bisbee resident Cynthia Conroy recognized the possibilities after she read a couple of articles touting the cardiovascular benefits of step aerobics and stair-climbing. She thought, "Who needs that stuff when you live in Bisbee?" If stairclimbing is such good exercise, and fun to boot, why not organize some kind of local event around Bisbee's stairs? Enlisting support from the Thunder Mountain Running Club, she mapped out a course. The design was ingenious: Runners and walkers would never descend steps. "That's too dangerous," said Conroy, "and we didn't want anyone getting hurt." Only uphill portions of the race would be on steps, 1,034 of them. Downhill runs would be on city streets and lanes. Al Hopper, a Bisbee architect and bike shop owner, rendered the route map to scale, and Conroy, map in hand, started searching for sponsors.

BISBEE

Eleven months later, in October, 1991, the first Great Stair Climb attracted more than 200 participants, and Cynthia Conroy knew she had a winner. Each year since, the event has brought increased sponsorship to help pay for advertising, awards, and door prizes. And, each year, greater numbers of runners and walkers sign up. The goal, said Conroy, is to someday register 1,000 competitors. “After all,” she explained, “it is the Bisbee 1,000, and that's a nice round number.” I'm early, I had thought, arriving at 8 A.M. for a race that starts at 9, but scores of runners and walkers were already milling about the staging area on the front steps of the Cochise County Courthouse. At an elevation of 5,000 feet, the late-October temperature in Bisbee lingered in the high 40s. By 10 A.M. it would rise to 70° F. The lightest of breezes stirred. Perfect.

You could tell the serious competitors at a glance. In pricey brightly colored warm-up clothes, they jogged lightly on the courthouse driveway or performed elaborate stretching contortions to work kinks out of cold muscles. The not-so-serious noncompetitors like me strolled around and gawked.

As race time neared, more participants arrived and began to wander toward the starting line. There were young and old, military and civilian, and family groups parents, teenagers, and toddlers. One

STEPPING

(LEFT) Serious runners and casual contestants break at the start of the race.

(ABOVE) Wayne McCallum carries the Stair Climb's youngest participant, his three-month-old daughter, Juno Rae.

(RIGHT) Jean Beacon lugs an eight-pound block of ice in the Iceman Competition.

flight of 157 stairs. It's mind-boggling to imagine, but back in the days when all Bisbee households had iceboxes, icemen routinely carried 50-pound blocks up these unending stairsteps.

Later, at the awards ceremony, the guy with the stethoscope walked over, still smiling, and stood next to me. “Is that thing around your neck for show or do you mean business?” I asked.

“Oh, I mean business,” he answered. “I was out there just in case someone got in trouble.” His name was Glen Goerdt, and he was a nurse at the Copper Queen Commu-nity Hospital. He was one of the many volunteers, along with fire department paramedics, whose participation make the Bisbee 1,000 possible.

Cynthia Conroy presided over the awards ceremony on the courthouse steps. There were prizes galore: for the first three finishers in each age group, for oldest and youngest competitors - male and female - for first walker across the line, for first family group, and, on top of that, a bunch of door prizes just for the fun of it.

Great party. I'm going again this year.

WHEN YOU GO

This year's Bisbee 1,000 Stair Climb will take place October 17, starting at 9 A.M. For information write to Save Our Stairs, Inc., P.O. Box 1099, Bisbee, AZ 85603. Bisbee is about two hours south of Tucson on State Route 80. The Copper Queen Hotel and several bed and breakfast inns offer overnight lodging. Contact the Bisbee Chamber of Commerce, (520) 432-5421, for more restaurant and lodging information as well as additional sight-seeing and recreational opportunities in the area.