Bean boss heads for Everest

PORTLAND — Leon Gorman is leaving his L.L. Bean boots at home when he joins climbers from three nations this week in scaling Mount Everest to promote world peace and environmental protection.

Instead, the president of the outdoors outfitter famous for its duck shoes, plaid flannels and huge mail-order business is taking a pair of backpacking boots and some stiff plastic ones equipped with crampons for venturing onto glaciers.

Bean’s signature Maine Hunting Boot — with its leather uppers and rubber bottoms — wouldn’t be appropriate on 29,028-foot Everest, the world’s highest mountain, along the border of Nepal and Tibet in the Himalayas, he said.

Gorman, 55, is participating in the climb as a “trekker” who will follow the nearly 50 expedition members to Camp 3, an advanced base camp at 21,325 feet where the technical phase of the ascent begins in earnest.

“That’s the highest we expect to go,” said Gorman, lead sponsor and official outfitter of this year’s Everest Peace Club. “But if everything is perfect, we might go on the glacier a little higher …”