Layne Pollard was born on 06/16/1963, his daughter set sights on
climbing Mount Kilimanjaro to celebrate his 60th and fatherhood.
Story by Darcel Rockett, Chicago Tribune
Layne Pollard, of Gurnee, has a trifecta of milestones hitting around the same time. His doggy day care and grooming business, Central Bark, celebrated its 10-year anniversary this month, and he’ll be turning 60 on June 16, just two days before celebrating Father’s Day with his family stateside after having hiked Mount Kilimanjaro’s 19,341 feet in Tanzania.
With his youngest daughter, Jorie Pollard, 26, by his side, Layne is adamant about
not spending his 60th sitting around. So when Layne, an avid hiker, casually mentioned summiting the dormant volcano four years ago to Jorie, another hiking fan, she jumped
at the opportunity.
“I want to turn 60, but feel younger,” said the father of three. “I’m turning 60, but that’s only a number. I know a lot of people say that, but I feel a lot younger than I have over the last number of years now. As it gets closer every day, I just get more and more excited and ready to hit the hiking trails for this big adventure.”
For the past six months, Layne and Jorie, who lives and works in Denver, have been training — with Layne walking steeper inclines on treadmills four to five times a week, working on balance, core strength and upper body strength with a trainer, and with Jorie running once or twice a week and doing long and short hikes on weekends and after work.
“The hike is six continuous days, so if we do 8 miles one day, we’ll probably be doing
7 the next,” she said. “So I’ve been trying to mock what that will look like here, so doing
10 miles one day and then 6 the next and I’ve just been doing that every weekend and
then some extra cardio during the week.”
Jorie has lived in Alaska and Wyoming and hiked the Teton Range in the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming, as well as Glacier National Park in Montana with her dad.
He said she’s been his hiking buddy since she was 5.
“For a trip, to go do something, she’s always ready to go. She’ll find time, she’ll make a way, she’s always been there,” he said about Jorie. “At a young age, we would take family vacations. We did Colorado Springs when she was about 5 years old, and just walked and walked all day. And then about seventh-eighth grade, we took the family out West and did a Colorado-Utah trip and she absolutely loved it. I think that really opened her eyes to all this.”
Layne instilled his love of the outdoors in Jorie, and Jorie said she and her dad are
looking forward to taking her 3-year-old nephew on his first hiking adventure when
he is old enough. But the Pollards come to it instinctually. Layne’s father, Jerry Pollard of Northbrook, climbed to 14,700 feet when he hiked Mount Everest in Nepal in March 2016.
For Layne, Mount Kilimanjaro will be the highest he’s ever climbed and his most strenuous hike. Normally, his birthdays entail a big dinner with family. But this time around, his love of nature won out. He’s been a fan of nature for the majority of his life.
“It gets you out of your element. … It just changes the mindset, resets you,”
he said, “We’ve gone on vacations in big cities, and you come home and say,
‘That was a fabulous vacation.’ But it’s not the same reset as you get when
you spend a week in the mountains. There’s nothing like fresh air.”
Jorie can relate. She started attending overnight camp at 8 years old and continued
until her late teens. She said that’s where she truly found her love of the outdoors.
With her parents’ encouragement, her adventurous side has thrived. She bought her
dad a shirt from Melanzana Outdoor Clothing to keep him warm on the mountain
as a Father’s Day gift.
“When you start out, it’ll probably be in the 60s and 70s and as we go up, it gets colder,” she said. “My dad was checking the weather; it’s like 28 degrees at the peak, but it has the possibility of being as cold as 5 degrees, so we will most likely be wearing a winter jacket of sorts at the top, just in case it is that cold.”
Layne isn’t afraid of the temperatures; he knows how to dress for the weather.
After all, he’s from Chicagoland. Layne said most of the hike will be done in 30-to
50-degree temperatures, except for the final day, at the top, where the high could
be 21 degrees and the low 10 degrees. The temperature increases again as one
goes down the mountain, ranging from 59 to 63 degrees.
The pair land in Tanzania on Saturday and the hiking begins Sunday.
He said over the first four days, he plans to go from 13,000 feet to about 16,000 feet.
And on the fourth night on the mountain, he and his daughter start their ascent in the dark from 16,000 feet to over 19,000 feet. “The goal is the summit,” he said.
“If I have to push myself, I will push — as long as altitude sickness is not involved.
The tour guides are not going to let you push through that. It’s too dangerous.
But if it’s body aches, that’s mind over matter. At that point, that won’t stop me.
God willing, we’ll get to the top and we’ll be home on Father’s Day.”
Layne posted about the trip on his company’s website. What started as something the Pollards didn’t think was that big of a deal is now something special because everybody else thinks it is.
Layne Pollard of Gurnee and his daughter, Jorie, pose at the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro
in Tanzania, where Layne Pollard celebrated his 60th birthday before returning home
Sunday for Father’s Day. Courtesy of Layne Pollard
‘An amazing trip’: Gurnee dad, daughter scale Mt. Kilimanjaro and back in time for Father’s Day. He said Central Bark’s clientele are excited for him, as are Jorie’s colleagues and friends in Colorado. The father and daughter intend to share photos, journal and blog posts while trekking, depending on connectivity on the mountain. Jorie will share her images on her Instagram account and Layne will send pictures to his wife, so she can update the Facebook page for Central Bark.
Layne said he will do his best to take it all in and revel in the time spent with his
daughter on this milestone. “Father’s Day is about either your kids being with you
or you are spending time with your own parents,” he said. “And we’ll be home for
Father’s Day to share this whole adventure with my dad.”
As for Layne’s next steps after hitting age 60, he’s already thinking of taking his hiking to elevations of 20,000 feet, possibly Chimborazo in Ecuador. “Let me get through 19,000 feet and let’s see what happens in a year or so,” he said. “My father, at 84, was hiking the route to base camp on Everest, so we have big shoes to follow. If he did this at 84, I have no choice in my own mind that I have to do this at 60.”
Jorie said Layne will push her as much as he’ll push himself. “He’s worked really
hard and I have all the faith in the world that he will have no problem at all getting
up the mountain,” she said. ©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Gurnee business owner Layne Pollard and his daughter, Jorie, scaled the 19,341-foot summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in the past week and celebrated Layne’s 60th birthday on the way down.
Their epic adventure, which began last Sunday, ended this weekend just in time for Pollard to be back home for Father’s Day. “It was an amazing trip,” Pollard said in a message from his hotel room in Tanzania. “Our fellow climbers will be friends for life.
The staff of 31 guides, porters, cooks and everyone else were the nicest people who did anything to make our climb successful.” It took five days to trek the mountain and a day and a half for the return. The duo reached the summit Thursday.
The journey wasn’t without its hardships.
The first 4 acclimation hikes were hard but manageable, yet the summit night hike was brutal, Pollard said. “We were hiking at a rate of less than 1 kilometer an hour,” he said. The trip down the mountain was made in two hikes that were “knee smashers,” Pollard said.
“Overall, the week was fantastic, but I have decided there will not be another hike above 19K feet,” said Pollard, who this month celebrated his 10th year as operator of Central Bark doggy day care in Gurnee. For anyone interested, a zoom interview of Layne and Jorie aired on Good Day Chicago on Fox 32 Friday, June 16. Illinois father, daughter
duo to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro for Father’s Day (fox32chicago.com)
Another article about Layne’s Kilimanjaro hike. This time you can just click and read;
no subscriptions necessary! ‘I feel a lot younger’: Gurnee man, daughter climbing Mt.
Kilimanjaro for his 60th birthday (dailyherald.com)
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