Pike’s peak: Woodstock woman aims for adventure

Overcoming adversity

Meanwhile, Pike’s account of her eventful life amounts to a triumph of pluck and perseverance over early adversity. The former Jane Fox describes her childhood, spent mainly in the Westchester County community of New Rochelle, as “very rough.” She and an older sister were “abused and abandoned,” says Pike, by a father who was accomplished but mentally impaired and a mother who was willfully negligent. Pike attended boarding school in Virginia for a year, moved in briefly with her sister, and finally struck out on her own at age 15.

Settling in New York City, the teenager sang in a band and worked as a trained dancer, at one time performing and living in Amsterdam. A chance encounter with a photographer led to modeling jobs; the Marriott Marquis hotel on Broadway displayed a Kodak ad featuring her and another model, she recalls. Pike also worked as an actress, studying at the Actors Studio and appearing as an extra in the 1991 movie Billy Bathgate, starring Dustin Hoffman.

But Pike found that the life she was leading, while intermittently glamorous, was unfulfilling. “I realized that I didn’t want the adulation of performing,” she says. A Sunday-afternoon aerobics class in the 1980s proved pivotal. The instructor glimpsed Pike’s potential and offered to teach her to become a physical trainer. She was soon teaching in some of the city’s leading health clubs and gyms. She had found the vehicle that would enable her to resume her formal education.

“That’s how I put myself through college,” says Pike, who graduated from Hunter College in 1997 as the class valedictorian, with a double-major in geography, which emphasized geographic information system (GIS) technology, and a graduate-level track known as the Special Honors Curriculum.

Life in Woodstock

Jane and Gregory Pike, who were married in 1996, moved to Woodstock from the Upper West Side in 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attack. They are both physical trainers, working out of their house on Carey Drive. “I absolutely love it. This is truly my vocation,” she says, adding that her clientele is thoroughly diverse, ranging in age from 32 to 80 and in goals from running a marathon to simply losing weight.

Avocationally, Pike has been climbing rocks and ice for the last eight or nine years, scaling craggy or slippery slopes from the ‘Gunks around New Paltz to the Adirondacks and the White Mountains. An occasional injury goes with the territory. A couple of years ago, Pike emerged from a climb of the ravine abutting Viola Falls in Greene County with frostbite on the tips of six toes. “My toes were black,” she says. “While thawing, they felt as if they were simultaneously burning and being hit with a hammer. I have a high pain threshold, but I was screaming. I made some rookie-level mistakes on that climb and got hypothermic, but I learned from the experience.”

The recent Mount Washington ascent marked the realization of Pike’s long-nurtured dream of taking a stab at mountaineering. With her household’s discretionary income limited, donations from her vast network of friends funded the costs of the adventure, including food, gas, lodging, and equipment such as insulated clothing, crampons, and an ice axe.

While two of the men in the party reached the summit, sustained winds of up to 60 mph, with gusts approaching 100 mph, forced Pike and a fellow climber to turn back after reaching an altitude of about 5,150 feet, well above the tree line. “The winds were knocking me sideways and I had to drop down many times,” she recalls, adding, “We descended on some very steep terrain. I am happy to report that I didn’t do one face plant.”

Pike is eager to tackle another mountain sometime soon. “I am very goal oriented and love the physical aspect of climbing,” she observes. “You live in the moment, in the midst of nature. It makes you feel incredibly alive. You must focus on what you are doing because your life is on the line. It’s like meditation.” For the woman from Woodstock, peaks in far-flung places — Otter Cliff in Maine’s Acadia National Park; Mounts Rainier, Denali, and Blanc; the Rockies on either side of the border — beckon.

Mount Everest, perhaps? Pike considers the prospect. “I wouldn’t mind getting to the top of the world,” she replies.