Titanium Ice Screws

In the early 1990s I was in the right place at the right time. Serving as an administrator and teacher at Mississippi College, I was introduced to Central Asia though our involvement with a consortium of colleges and universities. At first, we only worked with the Ministry of Education in each of the Soviet Socialist Republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

There was a great demand from the government leaders for us to teach them business principles of the western world. I could find no other western organizations that were doing that, so I chartered two nonprofits. One of the organizations brought people from the USA marketplace to teach entrepreneurship, banking, and other very basic business subjects. We used High School Junior Achievement materials.

Since we were among the first westerners to venture into Central Asia, we were given many unique opportunities. We had audiences with the President and Prime Ministers of these countries. We were hosted by cabinet level leaders such as the Minister of Education, Minister of Culture, the mayor of the capital city and many other dignitaries.

We were flown by helicopter to a virgin forest of walnut trees that covered thousands of acres. They told us that Alexander the Great had taken walnuts back to Europe from this forest of trees—can’t fact check that, but it made a good story! The businessmen traveling with me were doing some serious thinking about how to harvest some of that wood and get it into the western markets. There were fortunes to be made if one could only get the wood out of an area that was 9,000 feet high with access roads only passable for three months out of the year.

One guy in Kazakhstan showed me some titanium ice screws. What I knew about ice screws could have been placed on a tiny piece of ice. Ice climbing was popular in Central Asia, and someone had used Soviet missile technology to develop these titanium ice screws for mountain climbers, rescuers in mountain resorts and glacier climbers. I saw a business opportunity because I learned from these guys in Central Asia that the west did not have access to this technology, and they were not using the titanium screws. I talked my way into getting one of those ice screws and bringing it back to the states.

After doing some research, I could not find anyone selling them in the states, and there was interest from outfitters to import these ice screws from Kazakhstan. This was looking like a business opportunity, but I got cold feet. I was in the middle of a PhD program; I was working full-time trying to help my teacher-wife support our family; and we had no cash to invest in a business.

That seems to happen frequently—business ideas never get from the thinking and talking stages to implementation. As I look back on this missed opportunity, I wonder what I would do differently today.

As it turns out, the life of the titanium ice screws was only a few years as professional climbers found them to be far too brittle, and stronger ice screws were manufactured from alloys.

Paul admonished us in Colossians 4:5b, “…make the most of every opportunity.”

I have heard Truett Cathy say that he never liked to pass up an opportunity that looked like it would make money or enrich peoples’ lives. I wish that I had been around him earlier in my life. My family might have been shipping walnut wood out of the mountains in Kyrgyzstan to western markets.

Looking back, I think I should have put together enough funds to buy a container of those ice screws. Hindsight is always 20/20!