mountaineering

It's awful MANLY.

go 4 it!

bring a gurl

try the presidential range

I keep coming back to the "beach example." If conditions are too dangerous, if there are sharks in the water or a hurricane is coming, there are lifeguards there to Close That Beach. Why don't we have similar regulations for mountains? If conditions are too dangerous, why not Close That Mountain?

--- Bill O'Reilly speaking about the recent highly publicized tragedy on Mount Hood in which three climbers died

wait, the presidential range in NH? i'm down with 'em

one more reason O'Reilly is an idiot, btw

like, what's with the caps?

then again, climbing mags are the only magazines i've read that have permanent obituary sections

http://www.americanalpineclub.org/images/anam.jpg

does anyone else on ILX like climbing/mountaineering?

http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/51AQYTVNAPL._SS500_.jpg

i dont climb but i love mountain hiking--i used to spend a lot of summers in/around acadia nat'l park in maine, which has nice if small hiking trails, and i did some hikes around katahdin. i bet montana is great for this kind of stuff.

it's great! though access is tricksy--all the big peaks are a bit of a hike to get to

yeah, at least you have peaks tho. growing up in jersey all we had was the kittatinnies and some appalachian bumps, none of which are particularly mountainous. i keep meaning to take a weekend and go up to yellowstone but its hard to get ppl together who want to do stuff like that.

my friend took this in kananaskis country on the wkend

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/241/518728436_0e4702d1bc_o.jpg

i am into mountains and hiking but have no desire to climb everest or similar - a tough hike is great but i also just like being there and not killing myself in the process

those clouds are rad!

max: "up" to yellowstone? are you in the area?

someone buy me these

http://www.mountaingear.com/item_images/mnfct2//common/omega%20pacific/l_640750_s05_000.jpg

http://www.climbing.com/photo/image/nwalkersneedles/NWalker-Needles_0323.jpg

http://www.climbing.com/photo/image/nwalkersneedles/NWalker-Needles_1751.jpg

haha whoops i meant yosemite--im in LA. i was looking @ the montana wikipedia page as i was typing that and got distracted. do you ever get up to glacier national park at all?

http://www.climbing.com/photo/image/travelclimbing/travelclimbing9.jpg

i actually haven't been to glacier since i was a kid! hoping to get there at the end of the summer, maybe on the way to this (tentative):

http://bugaboorock.8m.com/images/pidgeon_spire.jpg

i hear pretty amazing things abt glacier, and all the glaciers themselves are gonna be gone soon--so you better get it in while you have a shot

it's spectacular there, from what i remember.

http://swanrangepropertymanagement.com/Near%20Iceberg%20Lake,%20Glacier%20National%20Park,%20Montana.jpg

^^^^ that is glacier

bad rock, tho :-/

ive been watching the "mountains" episode of planet earth over and over and over and over and over and over again

if you want some mountain porn, that's where id turn

http://www.climbing.com/photo/image/travelclimbing/travelclimbing8.jpg

xp ooh, i need to see that

yeah, i'm just using this thread as an excuse to post pictures, basically

ts: alpine style v. siege climbing

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/194/518768858_010593aa39.jpg

^^^ dreamy

i assumed it'd be a picture thread anyway!
xpost

its the battle of this thread and big hoos for which is more self-indulgent

-- and what, Monday, May 28, 2007 9:13 AM

gasherbrum

http://www.peakware.com/photos/1058a.jpg

s/d: mountain movies (i love the dark glow of the mountains and cliffhanger, disliked k2)

i have a very soft spot in my heart for cliffhanger, because it is so totally ridiculous and rong and awesome. like, a bolt gun would have been handy on saturday, too bad THEY DON'T EXIST

i just watched Vertical Limit (Chris O'Connell) a couple of weeks ago and shit was hilarious and awful.

hollywood will never make a decent mountaineering movie because, at the end of the day, shit is SLOOOW.

the opening scene in cliffhanger continues to scare the shit out of me, i have a huge fear of heights (hence my reservations about actual climbing) and it exploits just about all the things that scare me.

i'm still baffled about why sly felt the need to freesolo the whole thing. they must have been short-staffed that day.

incidentally, i think black diamond equipment (maker of the harness that failed in that scene) sued the filmmakers and won. shit generally doesn't just *break* like that.

michael rooker is fucking classic in that movie, too

from the wikipedia trivia: The only Sylvester Stallone film to not feature a (split second) shot of a penis.

I have that "love of mountains/fear of heights" torment, too. It's gotten worse over time, so now I only hike in them here in BC. At one point, I even did some climbing and rappelling (we called it abseiling then, as it was back in England). My friend climbed the motherfucking Matterhorn, though. That gives me chills -- the good kind and the bad.

i sort of get the feeling that my love of mountains has a lot to do with my fear of heights.

Yeah, they're connected (although my slight claustrophobia doesn't make me want to hang around in closets).

I have climbed a number of mountains, mostly in the dim and distant past, but I am not a qualified technical climber. Any mountain I have summited could be free-climbed by a relative novice, off-belay.

I think I understand a fairish bit of the mountain-climber's psychology, though. It has very little to do with manliness. Women have climbed almost any pitch a man has climbed, and summited most any peak a man has reached.

Mountain climber's, both male and female, are exceptionally goal-oriented, risk-tolerant and are often fascinated with the mental aspects of the sport to the point where the danger begins to seem like something they can manage through their sheer will to succeed. The top climbers very, very typically die while climbing. Because there is never any end to the dangers they can court and they are finally incapable of setting a limit to them.

hollywood will never make a decent mountaineering movie because, at the end of the day, shit is SLOOOW.

Not necessarily true. The Eiger Sanction is a terrific movie, but it's not solely about climbing.

The best climbing movie is still Touching The Void

Best climbing book:

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/511XdSCrRoL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

We really need some Patagonia in here:

http://www.vcmba.com/uploaded_images/Patagonia%201%201186-761593.jpg

i forgot about the Eiger Sanction! good call. and yeah, Touching The Void is fantastic, but since it's basically a documentary, i don't really consider it a "hollywood" film.

patagonia otm

I've never climbed anyhthing serious but I have friends who do climb lots of shit and like them I like to ride mountain bikez when appropro.

I am glad this thread exists.

Dudes I used to live with were into this:

http://twocentsworth.com/photos/aaron-ice-climbing.jpg

I think I understand a fairish bit of the mountain-climber's psychology, though. It has very little to do with manliness. Women have climbed almost any pitch a man has climbed, and summited most any peak a man has reached.

Mountain climber's, both male and female, are exceptionally goal-oriented, risk-tolerant and are often fascinated with the mental aspects of the sport to the point where the danger begins to seem like something they can manage through their sheer will to succeed. The top climbers very, very typically die while climbing. Because there is never any end to the dangers they can court and they are finally incapable of setting a limit to them.

otm w/r/t "manliness." but i think that the "pathological risk-taker" stereotype sort of misses the mark. sure, guys like Dan Osman (RIP) are/were constantly trying to push the limits, and court danger, but that's hardly typical of, like, the 40 year-old dude i saw racking up at the parking lot the other day. he's just looking for a nice day in the sun, up high. (of course, rock climbing is significantly safer than alpinism)

xp But I was always too a-feared.

w/r/t the top climbers dying: if you're still doing significant climbs when you're in your 30s-40s, it means you're exceptionally safe, generally. when top mountaineers die, it has less to do with them having taken it that one step further, and more to do with numbers: thousands of hours spent in the mountains will eventually get you into an epic. contrast this with driving a car, and the numbers will favor mountaineering any day---it's just that cars have seatbelts and airbags and emergency medical services, and climbers have a rope with another guy at the end of it.

you should try it sometime, dan! literally every person i've taken out climbing has loved it, even if they were terrified at the outset. not all of them have gone on to be "climbers," but it was a rewarding experience for them all the same.

an added bonus: climbing is an excuse to go really interesting places.

damn, a thread for me and I won't be able to enjoy it today.

http://www.gymjones.com/images/disciples/disciple_1_2.jpg

nice oakleys, bro.

Another observation: most people I've ever known who have been climbers are a completely bizarre mix of the heartfelt romantic and the utterly pragmatic!

Touching The Void is one of my favourite documentaries, partly because it seems to recognise the above dichotomy.

also i like this book:

http://www.whittakermountaineering.com/pimages/products/book_seven_summits_thb.jpg

btw, he looks like sport climbing nonce and not a mountaineer.

Ascent of Rum-doodle, best mountaineering narrative, ever.

haha, that is Mark Twight, free-soloing the Aiguille du Midi, sometime in the 90s??? he's a bit of a dick, and would probably crush anyone that accused him of being a sport-climber

ompletely bizarre mix of the heartfelt romantic and the utterly pragmatic

see also dirtbags who can barely feed themselves and/or pay rent, but will spend hours organizing their shit, cutting the labels off things, and training.

I haven't climbed in years and I recently dumped a load of mouldering climbing gear that I wouldn't want to trust now. I was never that good a climber, much better at the lightly technical end of climbing big mountains. I did enjoy the beef between the high end french (bolt-clipping nonces) climbers and the british. (What do you mean you are not prepared to take a 10 foot ripper on to 000 copperhead balanced behind that wobbly flake, you french sportclimbing nonce).

The stuff of pub arguments. I need to get back into the hills.

I'd really love to try climbing. Anything that gets me near a mountain is fine by me. I've done a lot of hiking and i could spend months doing that shit over and over. I'll probably live near the Alps next year so will try and find some people to go climbing with me. The problem with this kind of thing, i assume, is that you really need to go with someone experienced at first so as to learn the basics. And i know no such people :(

http://www.climbing.com/photo/image/travelclimbing/travelclimbing9.jpg
rawr hhawt want

then again, climbing mags are the only magazines i've read that have permanent obituary sections

You don't read Mojo, then?

climber doods would be mad at me if they knew i'd never climbed a mountain, never skiied on a mountain, or really ever done anything but looked at a mountain, and i've lived in colorado all my life. however, i did take a train up a mountain once in switzerland. river wolf didnt you used to live in aspen? where should i go for mountaineering?

Vertical Frontier, about the history of climbing in Yellowstone, was very good! Lots of funny interviews and some SERIOUSLY classic '70s dirtbag photos/footage. Like, flooded muddy basecamp and tarps spread to keep all the equipment dry while it was checked, coils and harnesses and a hundred little tools fanned out in perfect lines, overseen by filthy sweat-stained ridiculously wiry twenty-somethings with crazy beards.

homo2: i did! there's loads of relatively easy mountaineering to be done in Colorado (ie non-technical), what with the abundance of 14ers and the like. at that sort of altitude, though, even easy stuff becomes tricky--I tried a summer ascent of Cathedral, but it we started a little late, and it was slower going than expected once we got up to the knife edge. i'm sure, however, there are plenty of 11-12k peaks with not too difficult walk ups, that will still provide plenty of thrills, w/o too much actual danger.

also, jhoshea otm.

Laurel: pics from Yosemite in the 70s are fucking hilarious. Camp 4 was basically the center of the universe there, and dudes were doing insane-o shit on gear that would terrify the average climber today. my dad told we stories of climbing in Wales, where he and his friends would walk along the railroad bed and pick up actual hex nuts lying on the ground (presumably thrown from the train), sling them, and use them as chocks.

I haven't climbed in years and I recently dumped a load of mouldering climbing gear that I wouldn't want to trust now. I was never that good a climber, much better at the lightly technical end of climbing big mountains. I did enjoy the beef between the high end french (bolt-clipping nonces) climbers and the british. (What do you mean you are not prepared to take a 10 foot ripper on to 000 copperhead balanced behind that wobbly flake, you french sportclimbing nonce).

The stuff of pub arguments. I need to get back into the hills.

-- Ed, Tuesday, May 29, 2007 7:06 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Link

copperheads are terrifying, holy shit. i've never been in a position to use/trust one, but even the idea of copperheads freaks me out. but not as much as hooking. whenever i hear about dudes aid climbing like 200+ foot pitches with basically nothing but hooks, i want to barf a little.

I love mountains and being around them, but you are not going to catch me doing any more than a strenuous hike. I'd like to hike up Half Dome, for instance. I have no desire to hang from the side of a vertical thing.

When I was doing a lot of pictched climbing the hardest climb in britain (therefore the world, oh the arrogance) was called parthian shot. Only a few people had ever done it, E9 8c?. To complete it you had to do a massive dynamic jump protected by a 00 friend behind a wobbly flake. The stuff of legend. It was generally agreed that it was better to free climb it than to lead it.

Yes, the Ystone footage also includes people talking about what they used for equip before stuff was commercially available, it's incredible that any of them survived. Pieces of auto chassis because the steel was heavier-gauge, etc etc.

(climbing in yellowstone?)

i love mountains and want to be near them often, but without enormous amounts of free time my interest is reasonably well sated by dayhiking or backpacking, and i don't really have a strong desire to get into mountaineering, nor would i likely be the type to do well at it (and i'd be probably be physically unable to be a serious mountaineer even in the incredibly unlikely event I magically got into the shape that's necessary). but my interest in mountains and wilderness is sufficient that i do have some desire to acquire basic mountaineering skills and summit some of your more accessible/frequented peaks. i wonder if my desire would extend beyond that if i did so.

(oh, yosemite, i see. the people who made that movie are supposedly making this

Ed, the hardest trad climb in the world is back in Britain, I think? Some young dude just did something on grit that has like a V13 bouldery crux, protected by a single slider nut. it's fucking bonkers.

parthian shot was originally put up by john dunne, i think? dude was/is crazy.

(btw i think laurel means yosemite--not much climbing in yellowstone)

summiting more easily accessible peaks doesn't really take that much in the way of know-how. if you're somewhere w/o glaciers (ie - most of the lower 48), then you just need to know basic knots (figure 8, clove, butterfly, prusik, and a handful of others), belay technique (you can learn in 5 minutes), and rope management. after that, it's mostly just mileage with someone who knows what they're doing.

Some young dude just did something on grit that has like a V13 bouldery crux, protected by a single slider nut. it's fucking bonkers.

I think it's this guy: http://www.davemacleod.blogspot.com/

His photo section freaks me out.

yeah, well I mean to some extent Tetons/CO 14'ers, but one day I'd really like to climb Rainier (and other Cascades?)

ooh i think yr right elvis:

23 years later MacLeod has now straightened the line out by climbing the headwall direct instead of finishing off right. He placed all the gear on lead and fell off the crux 9 times prior to the successful ascent - 20 meters onto a RP, the smallest of nuts on the market! He has put forward an incredible E11 7a for his "Rhapsody" which, needless to say, is obviously a strong contender for one of the hardest trad pitches in the world. "Rhapsody" is the first route to break the legendary E10 barrier...

20m onto an RP! YIKES

RW OTM, there is a lot that can be done with some decent and fairly stiff boots and a couple of slings to toss over spikes. I often wonder if scrambling might not be the best, or at least most pleasant orm of mountaineering.

Feel my beard.

I should start smoking a pipe.

I'm really envious of people who mountaineer given that my experience is more like gabbneb's. My problem is that I really am not all that comfortable at altitude in places of peril; I can ski down anything, I love to hike, I'm definitely fit enough to take on something like Ranier, but I'm just kind of wigged out by the thought of even being roped in and walking along a precipice. Maybe it's my kids that have scared some sort of responsibility into me.

this thread is making me think that taking all of next year off to live in Chamonix might not be a terrible idea

Remember me to M. Le Camping in Argentiere. (PS I will come and Ski/climb/canyon and shit with you)

do it before kids suck the life out of you.

w/r/t kids and responsibility:

my buddy (father of two) needlessly free-soloed a detached pillar last week (5.7), told his belayer to "watch him" at the crux (what, watch you fall?), started the second pitch, and then put a LOCKER on the first nut, you know, for added security. UH.

not really sure where i was going with that

that would be great, Ed! i think i'm going to plan on doing the Haute Route (or something similar) next spring, regardless.

that's kind of exactly why I don't mountaineer. Because I'd undoubtedly put my dumb ass into dumb positions where the only thing I'd leave behind is an "OHHHHHHHHHH SHIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTT" and a will.

Oh yeah sorry many parks with Ys and mountains. In a hurry here.

Does Yellowstone have mountains? Big nature, anyway.

sure it does! they're just not rock climby mountains, they're walky-scrambly mountains you can ski on.

You know how I feel about walking. Skiing is good, though, I miss skiing.

I have done some mountain climbing with my father, because he read that "Seven Summits' book and got really into it. This was ten years ago, when we were both stronger and a little less spooked. I'm not really a technical climber at all, everything was guided and we were "clients" so it's really just about making time for it, paying for it, and putting one foot in front of the other for a long long time. Together my father and I summited Kilimanjaro, the Matterhorn, and the Grand Teton. Really bad weather held us back from a summit of Mt. Rainier. What a cold and nasty mountain that can be . . . . My dad attempted Chimborazo (sp?) in South America but bad weather and I think overall fatigue stopped him there. My longest mountain trip was a hike accompanying an Everest expedition; there were people who had paid big, big bucks to summit Everest, and I just trekked with them up to Advanced Base Camp on the Tibet side. My personal highest elevation was scored on that trip: 21,000 feet. I kind of miss doing this, but it was always my father's idea to go on these kinds of trips and I was more into spending time with him than the manly / macho side (full disclosure: I kind of couldn't stand most of the people who are typically the "clients" on these trips, all Type A dudes who are super competitive and frequently right wing, it was an odd mix of hippy leftist guides and macho CEO dickhead clients). But I sure do recall the psychological/physical weirdness of high altitudes.

wait, the presidential range in NH? i'm down with 'em

yes, a kid i grew up with spent a year living at the peak of mount washington. i think he was working for the n.o.a.a. or something. whomever maintains the weather station up there. worst winter weather in the continental u.s. is on top of that mountain.

wow at drew. i'd like to do everest base camp some day.

Tibet was an amazing place to visit, but Everest Base Camp itself is a grim place. Lots of feces everywhere, a kind of weird concrete bunker where the Chinese army dudes hang out, little clusters of expeditions huddling against the wind. From our encampment we could use a telescope to spot the corpses of some members of a previous expedition that some people on our trip had known and climbed with. They'd look through the spyglass at a particular ledge and you'd see this little clump of colorful mountain climbing clothing. "That's Marty". It was disturbing. At that point the elevation was starting to affect my mind, and I was getting paranoid, walking by people and thinking they were talking about me. The worst part was that people on the expedition would be denouncing each other about health problems: "You've got Cheyne-Stokes! I heard you breathing in your tent last night! You've got to descend right now." Some people had been training for a year for this trip and they would be devastated when they got the bad news that the group as a whole had decided that they were too sick to continue and had to be sent down to a lower elevation. It was like some kind of 'voted off the island" thing, but it wasn't TV. At one point a guide got edema and we had to zip him into a Gamow bag and take turns for hours pumping this bag to create an artificial lower altitude inside it. He was sent back. By the time I was at Advanced Base Camp I was as cold and exhausted as I have ever been, but the Everest *is* amazing. There's no way to describe the scale of it, it simply goes beyond the way I think about the size of objects.

wow at drew. i'd like to do everest base camp some day.

-- gabbneb, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 19:10 (1 hour ago) Link

no kidding. yowza, Drew. i'm hoping to climb the Grand sometime soonish, once the snows recede--did you guys do Exum Ridge, do you recall?

but yeah, OTM w/r/t hippy guides and type-a middle-aged men. also, everest base camp has been a problem for a while now: it's sort of a dump, from what i've heard? like, O2 bottles and other detritus all over the place.

http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/68795/Mt_qjgenth.jpg

I need to dig out an scan a whole heap of my Himalayas pictures.

do it!

i have never been climbing outside of the US (except for some scrambly bits while visiting fam in UK)

Need to find them, I think I know where they are. Least successful mountaineering trip ever. Really late snow first two summits aborted because we couldn't get out of the valley floor due to neck high snow, we tried, but took 6 hours to cover a kilometre, basically digging. Consolation peak, I had to abort due to suspected altitude sickness after camping at 5800m, probably lost acclimatisation going down, round and up.

i fucking kicked arse in the alps after that trip though, I was sprinting up 4000s.

aha, the climb i was thinking of was The Promise, just done by James Pearson, at E10 7a, with a V11 crux. The only gear is a single #1 slider nut in a shallow pocket, over a boulder-strewn landing.

apparently the hardest route on gritstone (but maybe not the hardest in the world)

http://www.monsteroffwidth.com/climbing/20030413-indian_creek/image/crw_a0512_rj.jpg

supercrack!

I got really fucking bored with gritstone climbing, I hate jamming, however raves in gritstone quarries and midnight sieging cracks= rock.

bored with grit?? i've never climbed it, but i've always heard it was interesting, if only because there was so little pro

Devil's Tower!

http://www.onsight.com.au/gallery/temp/images/11%20big1.jpg

whipper!

http://www.onsight.com.au/gallery/temp/images/155%20100%20X2.jpg

the Totem Pole!

http://www.onsight.com.au/gallery/temp/images/400%20300%2004.jpg

http://www.onsight.com.au/gallery/temp/images/400%20408%2008.jpg

http://www.onsight.com.au/gallery/temp/pages/400%20001%20X1.htm

http://www.onsight.com.au/gallery/temp/images/400%20001%20X1.jpg

I studied in Sheffield and climbed grit a lot. Grit is great if you like short techincal routes, lots of standing on edges, jamming, hang off your finger tips etc. but there is basically nothing that you can't top rope to practice before leading . I like longer multi-pitches on easy routes, hanging belays a bit more in terms of jugs to pull yourself up on, give me a gabro slab any day.

Exum Ridge on the Grand Teton

http://www.summitpost.org/images/original/178408.jpg

xp oh that's totally 8080. i like hard stuff, for sure, but cruisy multipitch routes are the best

exum being the definition of a cruisy multipitch route!

Fuck know what I;d be like now, I am older and fatter.

hey river wolf, yep, that picture brings back horrible memories. I *hated* Wall Street, the part where you switch directions and there's a brief overhang was a nightmare for me as I'm kind of scared of heights and you are really, really, really exposed on Grand Teton for a while there. I'm not a technical climber really, just went to climbing school for a week on site with my Dad and the guides to prepare for the Grand Teton ascent. On Wall Street I got "sewing machine leg" a few times and had to fight to control myself mentally and physically. But, whoah, the rappel down the Teton is awesome, it's like some serious James Bond movie shit, way fun and seems to go on forever!

wow, this thread is giving me one of those "what the fuck have I done with my life" mindbenders. That is so awesome you made it to ABC on Everest, Drew.

Thirding the request for Drew to post some pictures somewhere. I'm in respect of anyone that makes it to ABC.

A podcast I've been addicted to is The Rest Of Everest which documents much of the minutia of a large scale Everest expedition: hauling stuff, dealing with trash, hauling stuff, acclimatizing, hauling stuff, bribing off Chinese soldiers, hauling stuff, etc. It's rough style is a great contrast to the heroic IMAX-knockoffs that make up most of the mountain documentaries. One entire episode was about the base camp latrine, so that should give you an idea.

wow, this thread is giving me one of those "what the fuck have I done with my life" mindbenders.

tell me about it. i've been futzing around in school and shit, while my buddy from college is globe-trotting and doing nasty shit in the big ranges.

w/r/t "the other side" of climbing -- i've always been interested in that, too. i remember an article in Climbing about Mt. Kenya; the climb was almost secondary to the unbelievable shit dudes had to go through just to get there.

Ok, I will look for some pictures. I brought one of those throwaway "panorama" cameras and it's grainy but it kind of works to convey the ABC experience. I remember just shivering in my full down suit inside a sleeping bag while rolling a hot water thermos across my face over and over all night to stop my skin from stiffening up because it was just . . . . so . . . . COLD.

actually im terrified of heights. not such a good hobby for me to pursue.

love the pics ,tho!

guys, thailand:

http://ksp.pzs.si/images/Thailand/thai18.jpg

sardinia!

http://www.climbonline.co.uk/photogallery/europe/sardinia/Cala-Luna.jpg

(not really "mountaineering," per se, but wtf i will hang out on all this beaches, climbing in the sun)

http://www.iit.edu/~andejoe1/Rockguide/images/gallery3.GIF

durrr, here i am in high school

Separate Reality (which is as real as it gets)

http://pbpl.physics.ucla.edu/~hristo/Separate%20Reality.jpg

a climb only possible after the invention of cams, i think? (ditto all of indian creek)

plz more pictures of blonde hot stuff climber dude kthx bye

HI DREW

http://pbpl.physics.ucla.edu/~hristo/trad/SR1.jpg

http://pbpl.physics.ucla.edu/~hristo/elcap/half%20dome.jpg

lol beefcake

http://pbpl.physics.ucla.edu/~hristo/elcap/Salathe%20Wall.jpg

haha i've got pants just like dude on the right

Thanks for the beefcake bro. Sad to see Badakov's not a natural blonde. *cries*

i think maybe i need to post more pictures of actual alpine climbing, hmmmm

http://www.brianpostphoto.com/images/rapidtransitcathedral.jpg

http://www.alpine-guides.com/images/alpine%20tech%20alpine%20course.jpg

http://www.umich.edu/~climbing/images/ice.jpg

mixed climbing is fucking terrifying

http://www.dave-stephens.com/iceclimbing/banff/johnsoncanyon/johnsoncanyon06.jpg

barf

http://www.alpinedave.com/ice/source_lake_mixed/M7_loren_lead2.jpg

http://www.waltonsmountains.com/ice/VI0303.jpg

hardest shit in the world (The Wheel of Life V16)

http://daihold.com/gallery/Australia/TheWheelOfLifeV16-3.jpg

http://daihold.com/gallery/Australia/AmmagammaV13-2.jpg

TS: canyoneering vs mountaineering.
canyoneering=a few moments of adrenaline-pumping fear interspersed amongst much fun. less awesome. less of a sense of accomplishment.
mountaineering=haven't done much really but what i've heard makes it sound pretty hellish, with the main plus being being able to say you've done it.

I can't find any pictures of it, but the maddest climbing I've done is climbing the south coast chalk cliffs. This are generally done with ice climbing boots, crampons and axes, using warthogs for protection. There is something indelibly daft about stomping down the prom at saltdean in short t-shirt, plastic boots and a belt full of axes and spiky protection.

Talking of Mixed Climbing, Scottish Grade III provides some of the most fun you can have in the mountains.

i'm interested in both canyoneering and mountaineering, but the latter seems more compelling, maybe simply because you're going up rather than down (because being above everything is more interesting than getting into a secret place? don't think that's it, really. i'll leave the freudian stuff to someone else). maybe also because you feel like your body is better protected on the mountain, ie more clothing/gear?

both interest me more than rock climbing alone because both are much more likely to allow me to see something/get somewhere i couldn't otherwise. the sense of accomplishment of ringing the bell (like i'm gonna free climb) is pretty great, i guess, but maybe i'm less into that sort of thing, and i'd rather play with words when problem-solving. plus i'm unlikely to develop the arm strength. is there a term of art for post-climb claw-hands?

If the rest of mountaineering gear is as awesome as crampons and ice axes, then cayoneering isn't even on the same page.

i suppose my conception of mountaineering is totally ignoring crevasses

you can avoid crevasses and still have a lot of fun with crampons and ice axes though...do a winter summit of Mt. Washington is where I did that. Mountaineering gear is so Batman.

i've always thought ice axes and crampons were pretty cool, despite not being a gearhead of any kind. maybe i just thought they went well with the outfit.

I'm kind of fascinated with the Southwest and canyons, mazes of buttes, boulder fields, all kinds of geology that's super visible out there b/c of the lack of topsoil & vegetation. But that's largely due to the greatness of a writer named Craig Childs. Also because people have historically LIVED there and learned to live with the landscape instead of against it (because otherwise you might died) and you can apparently sometimes find their routes if you know what you're looking for -- cf stories of reaching down off an edge and having to commit yr weight to the existence of a handhold and then realizing there's a measured sequence of hand- and footholds all the way down, carved hundreds of years ago.

never heard of this Craig Childs. this book might interest you.

Ed, did you ever climb the chalk cliffs of Eastbourne, or Beachy Head? I read this history of Beachy Head and it mentions some wild stuff about how dangerous chalk surfaces are, how these "fingers" of chalk break off and form highly unstable towers. Was that going on the faces you climbed?

http://www.bandmerch.com/java2/BandMerch2/Display/ProductImages/1869F.png

rock n' roll, dudes.

I was climbing the much more stable and slabby cliffs at Saltdean. The chalk is moist enough and soft enough to get some great holds with ice axes and crampons. I used to maintain the southern chalk guide, I shall dig it out and tell you exactly what beachy head had/has to offer.

maybenot so good

yeah, probably not so good at all. it is unfortunate that Everest's greatest challenge is its altitude, and not the climbing itself, which means that anyone with the $$$ and the time to get in shape can get up it eventually. K2, only about 800 feet shorter, is substantially more difficult, which reduces traffic considerably (also: kills way more people than Everest does).

This kinda lost in the morass of May season Everest summits, but three guys summited Lhotse's South Face - which as about as difficult as you can get in the Himalyas.

OK, this is freaky...

Free soloist Michael Reardon, has been lost at sea in Irland. Con Moriarty, whose house Mr Reardon was staying in, told an Irish TV news station that Reardon had just finished a climb and was standing on a rock shelf at the base of a cliff when a wave hit him from behind, knocked him on his back, and carried him out to sea.

The accident occured west of Valentia Coast Guard Station yesterday evening. The alarm was raised shortly after 5pm yesterday when Reardon was unable to get himself out of the sea.

Mr Reardon, who was 36, had been in Ireland for the past month along with a photographer who was taking pictures of him climbing for an American magazine. He was due to return to the United States today.

Mr Reardon's wife Marci and 13-year-old daughter are expected to arrive in Ireland tomorrow morning.

Valerie O’Sullivan, a photographer from Killarney who had accompanied him on a number of climbs, told The Times that his death had shocked the climbing community in Ireland.

“He was standing below a climb he had just completed and the photographer, Damon Corso, was about 30ft away taking pictures of him. Michael was on a real high after the climb. He was about 10ft above the sea and he let go and had his hands out, celebrating, to say he had completed the climb of his life. But then a wave just came in. The wave hit him on the knees and he lost his balance and slipped on the algae. He was shouting for help but there was nothing Damon could do.”

My greatest claim to mountaineering fame is that I attended college in Minnesota with the climber who eventually found the body of George Mallory on Mt. Everest. He was a long time guide on Mt. Rainier and well known in international climbing circles most of his life.

Back then, he and I would talk about mountains in the PNW a lot, because we were both homesick for them. His favorite saying was 'go for it', always spoken with gleeful zest. We dropped acid together in college. It was his idea. Really. He even bought my tab. Pretty lousy blotter, but how were we to know?

this thread reminds me of patagonia catalogue in a good way

i'm sad that i've never really mountaineered. river wolf should lead a pansy mountaineering trip for feeble nerds with no upper body strength.

whoah, I just came here to post about the Michael Reardon thing!

bell labs: okay! I am happy to!

...I am going to City of Rocks in ID for 8 days and am :D :D :D :D :D

...and my homey just got back from climbing the Snowpatch spire in the Bugaboos; hopefully I can go back with him later this summer.

http://www.bugaboorock.8m.com/images/snowpatch,spire,from,bugaboo.jpg

also, I just bought a new rope!

OK, I'm awed...

First successful climb of K2's west face ever

More info here

05:15 am EDT Aug 21, 2007
(K2Climb.net/Madrid. Story updated 10:35 am, EDT) At 12: 50 pm, local time today, Andrew Mariev and Vadim Popovich checked in over the radio - from K2's top! The west face has been finally climbed.

Summiteers back in C6 - 9 more climbers in camps above 8000m

At 6:15 pm, local time the sumiteers have reported safe and sound from C6. Back from the summit, Andrew and Vadim had rested for some time in C7, currently occupied by Shabalin and Tukhvatullin.

In addition there are seven team members currently in C6, while Penzov, Shamalo and Cherny provide with support from ABC.

As night falls on the Karakorum range, Victor Kozlov has reported on weather conditions finally improving: "Clouds are not wrapping K2 any longer, and the wind is decreasing," the expedition leader told Russian Climb.

Earlier this morning, the Russian climbers on the west face of K2 woke to red storm clouds, poor visibility and 30/50 mph winds. In a 10 am radio call, Shabalin and Tukhvatullin were reported holding in C7 (8400 m), while Mariev and Popovich were out scouting above the camp.

Four climbers were holding in C6 at 8150 m after a wrecked attempt to ascend further. The Jannu climbers were meanwhile approaching the high camp 6 as well. Serguey Penzov is still descending, and is now between C1 and ABC.

None of the climbers is using supplementary oxygen.

wow, this thread is giving me one of those "what the fuck have I done with my life" mindbenders. That is so awesome you made it to ABC on Everest, Drew.

-- Dandy Don Weiner, Tuesday, May 29, 2007 10:08 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Link

:( :( :( :( :(

http://cascadecrusades.org/SkiMountaineering/eldorado/eastridge2007/DSC_3153.jpg

*sigh*

Moraine Lake went on my Places I Must Visit list the first time I ever saw a picture of it. It wasn't even labeled and I had to do some google fu to find out where it was a picture of.

Ha, wrong Moraine Lake. Mine's in Banff:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c5/Moraine_Lake_17092005.jpg/800px-Moraine_Lake_17092005.jpg

The avalanche tragedy on K2 is worldwide news now (11 dead now), but this guy's story is worth reading. It's one of those random event climbing things that lead to survival/death.

Yeah, I was just looking over that story myself...

The NYT has a pretty good article on the whole thing and a decent graphic map

Fred Beckey (video)

cool video!

i was searching for a good climbing thread but didn't think to search "mountaineering" is river wolf still posting?

i climbed a little bit in high school/college. not much at all, all indoor stuff too. the college where i work now has a wall and a bouldering cave, free access anytime, they rent shoes/equipment, too. so i've been messing around a bit since starting this job, and i kinda want to get into it a bit more.

any recommendations for good shoes for beginners/novices? i like the velcro ones, real easy to get in/out of. also, is it true you should buy a size lower than normal?

also, currently reading krakauer's "into thin air." wow....

oh hi guys

i'm just going to shamelessly plug my friend freddie's new book: One Mountain Thousand Summit

it's a piecing-together of the complicated and contentious 2008 tragedy on K2, and an investigation of both the mistakes and the aftermath. of particular interest imo is his exploration of the heroic and practically unreported actions of the climbing-Sherpas involved---esp since he takes the time to explain the historical, sociological, and personal circumstances that shape the lives and perception of these guys

anyway, i'm only 2/3 thru, and even though the writing is a little uneven at times (it's his first book!), it's compulsively readable and (imo) totally accessible to a non-bro audience---you don't really have to know a ton about climbing to follow the action, and fred seems to have consciously styled his writing to be digestible by the layperson.

i know none of you will read it, but man i would kinda love an otm nabisco (or max or someone smart) review, esp since fred raises a lot of chewy issues w/r/t the wider public's perception of mountaineering ("reckless!"), the curious socioeconomic disposition of professional climbing-Sherpas (some of them were "equal partners" in some teams' summit bids, not just "the help"), and the eerily futuristic way in which the tragedy was reported ~in real time~ via satellite phones and blogs (eg one climber was calling his wife from a sat phone while he was hunkered down for ~fifty hours~ and she was, in turn, relaying the info to a webmaster, who was giving a live feed on a blog).

anyway---read it! freddie needs the money!

Fraid I'm a sucker for anatomy-of-a-tragedy mountaineering books and will almost certainly order this one.

Live web coverage of the big mountains has become a real issue, hasn't it – in that blame is now being apportioned even before people are off the mountain, while we do not even know who has died, let alone how ... Quite grisly.

yeah, if I'd been a cannier English major I wouldve done a senior project on mountaineering/tragedy books---pretty ripe for cultural criticism imo. mountaineering itself is an old and mature subculture with weird codes and morays, and the retrospection and apportionment of blame/success in mountaineering lit raises interesting questions about authorship and reliable narration. plus egos, post colonialism, modernity, etc

also: generally cracking reads ime

The spate of books in the wake of Into Thin Air make a case study in themselves - Anatoli Boukreev's and then the extraordinary book of the South African expedition, especially. Together they comprise the Rashomon of Everest disasters.

Cool story of a couple of climbers who were first to summit some unexplored and unclimbed mountains in a very remote part of Afghanistan.

http://www.tetonat.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/50classicscover.jpg

moms got me a to-do list for xmas, thx

^_____^

Ueli Steck climbs the north face of the Eiger mountain in 2 hours, 47 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-dPjDYVKUY

so. baller.

holy shit at the footage from ~2:15 onward: like a crab running up a mountain wtf

I'm kinda shocked there are still unsummited peaks out there...

most of them are! <3 mountains

TAKE A NUMBER - In the 16 years since Into Thin Air, Mount Everest has become safer in many ways, with better storm forecasting and amazing high-altitude rescue helicopters. So why did 10 people die in 2012?

(BTW, have to give props to Outside magazine - their investigative reporting is some of the best out there)

That was a really good read. But I have to say that the "DEATH ZONE" article linked to in there (the original blog post with the images, not the Gawker reprint) is one of the most terrifying and poignant things I have ever read.

The photos are kind of depressing - I had been reading about traffic jams on the way up Everest but until I actually saw the pictures, I had no idea of the scale.

That image of George Mallory face down and clutching the mountain is haunting. More like a sculpture instead of a corpse.

There was a passage in The Old Ways (yes, spoiler alert) about how Macfarlane took the daughter of one of his friends to the mountain that he had perished climbing - only to discover on their ascent that the glacier had moved, and brought the man's body to its surface, 18 years later, perfectly preserved. It was both haunting and chilling, reading the passage where he warned the daughter to go back, then had to explain what had happened, and her making the choice to view her dead father's body, perfectly preserved as she had last seen him, as a child. That image just really struck with me.

I have the Macfarlane book on preorder here. Can't wait to read it.

I've been increasingly obsessed with hiking the Hadrian's Wall Path and have sort of been in a fugue state of highway archeology and historical exploration. Probably a side-effect of not working and being at home all the time.

That story reminds me of the discovery of the Star Dust crash site and the WWII-era pilots that keep being found up in the Sierras.

I had been reading about traffic jams on the way up Everest but until I actually saw the pictures, I had no idea of the scale.

Yeah, those queues just look idiotic. Plenty of other mountains out there to climb guys.

After plowing through dozens of Everest documentaries and books, I felt like I knew the Sagarmatha Zone better than I knew the hills above my house - that is until I searched YouTube for Everest climbing videos and lost about two hours.

The best one is this footage from up on the Lhotse face with great zooms into other activity on the mountain, including a big traffic jam on the South Summit. Fuck, it looks steep as hell and positively alien.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0oVJR0W8yQ

p boss

btw can i pimp my friends' movie? ok thx

http://www.theoldbreedmovie.com/

Taking a nice hike in the mountains aside, aren't 'extreme' climbers of the type who scale K2/Kanchenjunga necessarily odious yuppies? The very act of needing to 'get to the top' strikes me as self-indulgent, reckless and requiring a degree of mania to even want to do. Especially when a lot of the climbers themselves have young families.

I half-watched this pseudo-documentary recently that was obviously made by North Face. It profiled these climbers seeking to climb the "Sharks' Fin" on Mount Meru. One of their previous failed summits brought the party within 'shouting distance' of the top, before they had to turn back due to weather. However, afterwards they began planning a second expedition... because. I just can't relate to that! If you've made it that close, why not call it good and revel in your ability to even get that far? Can't you enjoy the experience without putting some arbitrary condition on success? What makes one think this way? Peeking into the psyches of these climbers is interesting but mostly for all the wrong reasons.

Think of the sheer amount of privilege and social and financial capital that goes into having a hobby/compulsion such as this: acquiring visas/having the spare time/having the financial means to acquire the (extremely expensive) equipment/having the upbringing that entailed getting into the hobby in the first place. Maybe I'm being a bit strident and lack romanticism when it comes to human beings doing things because they can. But at least the original mountaineers a la Hilary could at least be seen to have some scientific/exploratory aim.

I have to say that folks like these are certainly gifted athletes. And of course I could apply this whole logic towards things *I* like, like musicians, who can be equally self-absorbed and destructive and consumptive. I dunno. Kind of a half-thought I've had since watching that doc. How much does a whole expedition like that cost in total? 100,000 dollars? At least. One of the climbers had to go to the hospital for some massive stroke/brain problems and also lost toes. How much did that medical care cost? Doesn't that kind of seem a bit flagrant when people in your own country lack basic preventative care? Or when millions of people in the country you're climbing in lack access to basic sanitation? How do you even get 'climbers insurance'? Or are they quite simply that rich?

I read somewhere that some sherpas were originally baffled as to why westerners would *want* to climb to the top of mountains. That seems a bit more wise than the attitude I currently see permeating the sport as a whole. Overall I haven't made up my mind necessarily, and obviously I am a bit fascinated by the topic or I wouldn't have thought this much about it. Any particular books that would convince me of the value of alpinism? Or at least let me relate a bit better to their point of view?

i have a lot to say about this, but, to be brief, you're...not really right about most of that

Well, that's enlightening, thanks.

chill dude writing takes time

aren't 'extreme' climbers of the type who scale K2/Kanchenjunga necessarily odious yuppies?

young urban professionals? no

the mountaineering community (and there is one) discusses stuff like Western privilege all the time. sometimes not very insightfully, or with much nuance, but it's not like no one has ever noticed the glaringly obvious before. also alpinists have been derided as callous narcissists ever since ppl started walking up mountains just for the hell of it. not that anyone needs to worry about their feelings or anything, it's just that pretty much everything you wrote has been said a million times before, it's a stock criticism.

anyway, it seems to me that you are conflating "guys/gals that go on guided expeditions maybe once or twice ever" with "guys/gals that climb mountains all the time."

my friend Fr3ddie, who made that film (his first), has been working as a guide for years, and making very little money doing it. he did come from privilege, yes, absolutely. and that is definitely what afforded him the chance to even learn about climbing. but right now he lives in a 12x12 shack (that he built) in new hampshire, works as a rock climbing guide in the summer, makes one or two Big Trips, and works as an ice climbing guide in the winter (well, now he's getting paid to write, too). those Big Trips are in part subsidized by sponsors, and he does get most of his equipment for free or for very cheaply. which seems fair to me, since he actually uses his "extremely expensive" equipment every day.

(nb mountaineering equipment isn't wildly more expensive than other kind of tools; it would certainly cost more to take up, like, furniture making than it would to have the needed supplies for a mountaineering trip).

mountain guides, in general, are the people that are doing most of the mountaineering out there, and as they say, the only difference between a guide and a large pizza is that the pizza can feed a family of four. and, as aimless pointed out, they don't live in cities. many of the guys i knew that made Big Trips on their own dime worked as carpenters, or doing other manual labor in the off-season. moreover, not all mountaineering trips are "expeditions" in the sense you seem to be thinking of. sure, it might cost 50k for a relative novice to get to the top of everest, but that's because someone has planned every single moment of their trip for them, including meals, travel, permits, and someone (many someones) to carry their shit since they are a fat yuppie.

but most climbers (actual millions of people do this activity, btw) travel the same way as the "groovy int'l backpacker" set, just with heavier packs. if i had the time, i could go climb something in the Andes for under $3000, i'd reckon. that isn't cheap, but i have a sneaking suspicion that some of the haughtier dismissals of mountaineering are made by people that might just maybe consider $3000 pretty cheap for two weeks doing anything anywhere in Europe.

also i think what you're missing out on is that these people ("these people") aren't driven by some psychotic "need to get to the top." they actually just enjoy the physical act of getting out there, climbing is really really fun. and so for some, it's a hobby, for others it's a job. and for "odious yuppies," sure, it's an expensive way to earn bragging rights.

and just to put you on the spot: what exactly is so galling about people having fun in bad weather in dicey places that compels you to make wild assumptions about their motivations? or immediately assume that they're self-absorbed yuppies who don't think about poor people? is it ok if they only do it once? what if, god forbid, they want to do it again? or is it only ~really~ despicable if they do it in a foreign country with lots of poor people? what if they got all of their equipment second-hand? does it matter to you that, decades ago, "alpine-style" mountaineering actually developed as a criticism of the "expedition-style" you're suspicious of?

things to read: i'll have to think about this. fr3ddie's book (pimped upthread) is actually pretty good, and he spends quite a bit of time picking apart how western mountaineers and sherpas relate to each other. if you want to read something that will shatter your image of "mountaineer as yuppie" you can read pretty much anything by Mark Twight, though he will shore up the notion that climbers are psycho. the Alpinist magazine is usually really good, and usually includes a lot of historical stuff. i'm ashamed that i haven't read some of the classics (one of which, funnily enough, is called Conquistadors of the Useless), so i can't recommend much there.

tl;dr: "At either end of the social spectrum there lies a leisure class." - Eric Beck

good lord i am sorry for posting all that

this is where you can get insurance, btw, and it's worth poking around the whole site if you want to get a better sense of the public face of mountaineering: http://americanalpineclub.org/

the annual journal:
http://aaj.americanalpineclub.org/

after looking at that AAC website, i guess i will concede that the mountaineering ~world~ IS rather like the art world, what with the preservation societies and fundraisers and outreach and self-congratulatory publications and such. it's a world of privilege, but it's maybe not the kind i gather you imagined.

Don't be sorry, gbx. I read it.

I give global tetrahedron credit for not going into full-rant mode and for counterbalancing some of his opinions by signalling the degree they were based on conjecture rather than deep study of the subject. However, people like global tetrahedron are not close enough to the mountaineering community to know how much they do not know, and unless someone explains it to them a bit, they will have no remedy for their (necessary and rather commonplace) ignorance.

xps

also, just cuz i'm procrastinating and have been thinking baout mountains on my own lately, here's how i break it down to an extent: climbing equipment really isn't that expensive, when compared to the other stuff that people spend money on for fun. especially when you consider that some of the pricier bits (outerwear, shelter) can be used for other things, like walking around in bad weather or basic normal camping. serious undertakings (ho ho) may require specialty tools, and it's always smart to have back-ups---that said, a basic alpine rack is still going to cost less than or equal to what a lot of people pay for one guitar and one decent amp. if you are fortunate enough to live somewhere with good access to the mountains, then you'll only need to pay for stuff as you lose/destroy it. if you have to travel, well...oversized baggage aside, dirtbaggin in mountainous areas is pretty affordable, actually. you're sleeping outside and making your own (spartan) food!

this may not be true, but i've always wondered if the assumption that climbing gear is expensive comes from the fact that it is (or appears to be) really dangerous. surely if one is doing something as stupid/reckless as falling off the side of a rock, the safety measures are High-Tech and absurdly priced (maybe even on purpose, to dissuade such foolish behavior!). but, it's like, nope, a single wired nut costs ~$8 and you can use it over and over and over again. i have, and have used, biners my dad got some time in the 70s. sure, ropes need to be replaced, but you can have one for the cost of an oil change and one or two trips to the pump.

perhaps they are thinking of the cameras they bring along

taking kids to climbing gym for first time tonight

tbf, a full-blown K2 expedition such as cited by gt, does cost a lot, and scrounging up the money for a big group effort like that is a rare talent and a difficult sell to a bunch of hard-headed business folks. I notice that Eddie Bauer has ponied up a fair-sized chunk of cash and equipment for some recent expeditions, mainly because they long ago lost their cred as outfitters and they thought it was worth buying back.

btw my kids are self-indulgent and reckless, they might be extreme climber material

oh for sure, i think it really does cost like 50k/head for those insane siege-style guided expeditions, considerably more if they're like fucking webcasting from the base of everest or something.

twight on expeditions:
"Climbing used to be counter-cultural. The parts of it involving great risk still are." he explains "Where others are trying to collect high numbers on sport routes or high summits by any means, the few alpine purists are searching for a particular psychological experience, regardless of the summit, the difficulty or the mainstream. In a sense, Alpine Style is rebellion against an acquisitive climbing culture that is full of 'collectors.' Climbing by fair means is a Luddite philosophy that has no place in the modern, 'fast food' style of climbing we are becoming accustomed to."

dude is a blowhard for sure, but i agree that it's a shame that the public conception of mountaineering (and other forms of climbing by extension) is that of a wealthy, middle-aged westerner huffing oxygen while a sherpa carries all the heavy stuff.

also that is killer, hunt3r. my dad took me to the gym (a novel concept at the time) when i was 13 and it really set the hook. not that i've been out climbing since, cough, march, but i was actually planning on going tonight myself!

xp basically all kids are extreme climber material, whenever i see a gaggle of them at the gym, they're incredulous that (a) they are allowed to do this at all and (b) that older people think it's a sport, and not merely stupid fun.

one thing that is prohibitively expensive is the cost of climbing permits for certain peaks. everest is upwards of 10k US dollars or something right?

10k per person i should say

dunno, but that sounds reasonable. expedition companies cover that by charging the customer; independent, unguided parties (2-3 ppl) will commonly receive grants from orgs like the AAC or, as is the case in Europe, from their governments.

it's worth noting that exorbitantly priced permits for famous mountains is a pretty reasonable practice: local govts fleecing the tourists.

but "lesser" peaks are often very cheap, or free, and many countries don't require permits at all.

yeah, thats about what i figured, too right as well.

hunt3r do let us know how you get on, thats definitely something i've been thinking of doing with my two little guys

i wonder if expensive permits had much to do with pushing the sport towards minimalist, alpine style ascents in lesser ranges and/or on less famous peaks of the greater ranges. why spend insane money on a permit when you can get full value from some random peak in the canadian rockies that, altitude aside, is way more braggable from a technical/misery pov than trudging up everest.

man now all i want to do is plan a trip for this spring :-/

I read your long post too, it was great, thanks. I admit my feelings are based on conjecture, are admittedly selective, and were especially based on my kneejerk reactions the tone of this fake documentary/promo spot and the attitudes portrayed within, which still grate on me tbh. I love big mountains though! I went on a hiking trek via Darjeeling to Sandakphu and a wee bit of Nepal a year or two ago, saw Kanchenjunga and Everest, and the West Bengal countryside was especially gorgeous. I suppose my own trip was also morally indefensible based on the metric I'd outlined above. No matter, I don't think I hurt anybody. Except my own ankles, which were sore for weeks afterward. I'll look into those books.

also, re: "and just to put you on the spot"-

I made/make wild assumptions about their motivations because their motivations are so unclear to me, especially since these motivations push them into doing something like, I dunno, sleeping in a tent that's hanging on a sheer and sharp rock face above a thousand meter drop so that they can weather a snowstorm and then climb up said sheer rock face. Coupling this with the fact that they are in many cases courting death and some are fathers/have families sort of astounds me, so that's why I wonder. Mine is a premise essentially based on ignorance, but also formed from what I *do* know about them. Wanting an answer led me to possibly make up some of the erroneous beliefs above, but I don't think my caveats are completely unfounded. Not that you said they were unfounded, just that I still feel many of my points are valid.

also, MAN that fakey North Face documentary was shit. this could be a big part of how I came to this stance.

also, on an unrelated note, this picture is amazing and terrifying (1909 expedition to K2):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/07/K2_West_1909.jpg

gbx did u see this let us now catalogue famous people

i did! it, and the one above, are tremendous

since these motivations push them into doing something like, I dunno, sleeping in a tent that's hanging on a sheer and sharp rock face above a thousand meter drop so that they can weather a snowstorm and then climb up said sheer rock face. Coupling this with the fact that they are in many cases courting death and some are fathers/have families sort of astounds me, so that's why I wonder.

sorry if i jumped down your throat a bit, up there. i haven't had the joy of sleeping in a portaledge, but plenty of people i know have. and while it might seem like courting death, it really isn't, if you know what you're doing. obviously bad things happen in the mountains, but most ppl do alright. it's just a question of comfort/familiarity, really:
http://assets.natgeotv.com/POD/346.jpg
this looks precarious and dangerous, but i'd rather spend the night in one of those than in a normal tent that i foolishly pitched in a depression that acts as drainage. some people might see delicate nylon tents tethered with bits of cord, but i see 9 honking bolts that could each bear the static weight of a good-sized automobile. those guys are gonna play cards and read books and not once wig out about the very slim chance of their anchor failing and plummeting to their deaths.

but the thing is: they didn't just wake up one morning and suddenly feel comfortable with such an absurd position. if you are on a portaledge, on baffin island (this is a picture of The Great and Secret Show), then you've probably got a fair bit of experience under your belt. sure, they've got families, but so do firefighters and alaskan fishermen and war correspondents. i know that it grates on actual alpinists (IANAM) when ppl raise the whole "reckless" and "selfish" thing, largely because the non-athletic side of mountaineering is a pretty serious technical craft. doing things safely in the mountains requires a more than superficial understanding of meteorology, geology (certain varieties of rock are considerably safer than others), engineering/physics (anchors can get real complicated real quickly), basic rescue medicine, and so on. asking a climber if they are ~truly~ aware of the risks involved in what they do is kind of insulting, since literally every single choice that you make is an evaluation of risk/reward. "don't you realize you have children at home??" "wait so THAT'S who those lil monsters are?!"

i'll just gin up a strawman here and suggest that anyone who has ever smoked/used their cellphone in their car while speeding should probbbbbbbbbably not go pointing fingers at ppl who are spending most of their waking moments being ~extremely careful~

i mean the very existence of Accidents in North American Mountaineering, as a publication, sorta puts the lie to the canard that alpinists are fundamentally throwing caution to the wind.

that said, have there been notable, experienced ppl that have made hubristic decisions in the face of objective hazard? loads. was Dan Osman a little...unhinged? very probably.

holy shit @ portaledge

what's interesting to me is that the nuttiest forms of climbing are at opposite ends of the gear spectrum: freesoloing, and hard aid climbing. everyone knows freesoloing, but aid climbing is a totally different kind of mental illness

A0 Pulling on solid fixed gear.
A1 Easy aid, no risk of any piece of protection pulling out. Safe falls.
A2 Moderate aid. Short sections of tenuous placements above good protection.
A2+ May include easier A3 moves but is not hard enough to be rated as such.
A3 Hard aid. Involves many tenuous placements in a row.
A3+ May include easier A4 moves but is not hard enough to be rated as such.
A4 Runout, complex and time consuming. Many body weight placements.
A4+ May include easier A5 moves but is not hard enough to be rated as such.
A5 Serious, hard aid with huge falls and possibly lethal results. No bolts or rivets.

here is a demonstration of body weight placements, by an unhinged gentleman who is trying to undermine all the reasonable things i've tried to say about climbers (0:30):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=tJcvhBDxFkA&NR=1

haha just a bunch of RURPs, nbd, hahahahahahahahaha
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee229/ddiegelman/RurpBelayNE92.jpg

here is something to read:
http://www.alpinejournal.org.uk/Contents/Contents_1997_files/AJ%201997%2052-58%20Hollinger%20Baffin.pdf

he appears to have something that is growing through his baseball hat worn backwards

moffe growing vpon the skull of a hard aid climber

yeah, i've seen that pic countless times, and even tho i'm sure it's just a finger in the way, it always looks like an incongruous novelty afro or something

granted i don't know jack shit but i don't even ~get~ that rurp belay- is that cause they didn't want to bolt it?

so my 6 y-o got high tonite (about 25 ft)

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/rr222/Chass3ur/IMG_1110_edited.jpg

whoa sorry so big!

both kids (the other is standing below) had a great time. i'd really like to have them do this once a week, but it's a pita travel zone, and pretty expensive. renting the harness plus the wall time was $16/kid.

i'll just gin up a strawman here and suggest that anyone who has ever smoked/used their cellphone in their car while speeding should probbbbbbbbbably not go pointing fingers at ppl who are spending most of their waking moments being ~extremely careful~

― well if it isn't old 11 cameras simon (gbx), Tuesday, November 20, 2012 6:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol dude i appreciate yr passion but you realize youre just reenforcing the general perception that mountaineers are horrible judges of danger

My experience is that properly trained and mentored mountaineers are far better judges of the risks involved in their sport than anyone outside it. But they use this awareness to manage and mitigate risk, rather than reject all chance of reaching their goal. The fact that the goal is useless just puts it in the company of every other game or sport.

Mountaineers have no more of a death wish than anyone else. As I said in my first post to this thread, the best of them just get so exceptionally brilliant at managing and mitigating risk, that eventually they tend to accept risks that leave a margin for error too small to consistently evade, because their goals are insanely difficult and cannot be achieved without accepting such extreme risks.

lol sure and what would that experience be

My experience is not the experience of being a technical mountain climber.

It includes climbing about a dozen peaks in the Cascades, spending some time on belay, learning how to wear a harness, how to rapel, how to use an ice axe. I hike in the mountains every summer and I've met and conversed with dozens of mountain climbers. I have taken some rudimentary lessons in mountain first aid. I've read the manual published by the Seattle Mountaineers titled Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills and learned simple knots and techniques. I've read a great many climbing narratives by elite climbers, who tend to like to talk shop. I just generally am interested in the subject and keep my eyes and ears open to it.

There. I am sure this will provide you with all the lol fodder you seem to desire. What are your qualifications to be on this thread?

im just wondering how you think this experience gives you the insight to quantify the relative accuracy of the two mentioned cohorts risk assessment skills

i mean i would love to see some research on this but it seems p obvs that mountain climbing is prob more dangerous than anything most people engage in, i think to some extent mountain climbers tend to know this but just get defensive when people question them abt it and end up offering up ridiculous defenses like gbxs driving while smoking one, meanwhile when theyre together they reminisce over all the times they almost died, i just failed to find this gbx post i remember where hes all yeah sometimes you almost die rock climbing *shrug* comes w/the territory

this is not particularly a value judgment, their lives are their own, but the general unwillingness to own up to the fact that theyre doing a dangerous thing because they enjoy it does make me think that theres a level of denial going on

its like i was talking to a friend who does back country skiingand i asked him how he felt abt the risk of death involved in it, and he was like oh its not that dangerous and besides we all wear avalanche beacons, and i was all yeah i dont do anything that requires avalanche beacon

So, let me just get this straight. Are you saying that you have any reason at all to believe that non-mountaineers are equally as proficient at assessing the risks involved in an activity they know absolutely nothing about, as those who have actual training and experience in that activity? Because that would be kind of jaw-dropping.

meanwhile when theyre together they reminisce over all the times they almost died

fuck it. what experience is that based on?

witnessing rock climbers do just that

also just human nature

and theres a super obvious reason why people who dont rock climb might be better at assessing the risks than those who do, rock climbers are the people who looked at a cliff and went woot lets climb that shit, everyone else, the vast majority of people, went naw i dont want to fall and die, consequently people who dont climb rocks die from falling off rocks at a much lower rate than those who do

im sure you wouldnt argue that say base jumpers are the best risk assessors at base jumping

I kinda feel, man they wanna fall of a mountain that's cool I'm gonna watch and look at the cool pics u guys get and maybe read that one book that everybody reads

or street corner drug dealers are the best risk assessors of getting shot

mcdonalds customers are the best risk assessors of heart attacks

im sympathetic to the argument that rock climbing is frivolous and self centered, but the problem is a lot of things that people do are frivolous and self centered, at least rock climbing is good exercise and doesnt contribute to global worming

can win/die if you don't play the game, bra

mountaineering: at least it's not race car driving

lol global worming

the craft/teamwork/exercise/nature aspects are all p sweet, wanting to get to the top of things is understandable, needing to get to the top of every tall mountain in the world is p lol, like how people are mad that theres a peak in bhutan that the government wont let them go up, aw

i'm going rock climbing (at the gym) right now, in fact. i just like the challenge (physical and mental) and the exercise - more stimulating for me than going for a run or lifting weights. on the other hand, i also really love yoga. i'm not a hardcore climber (yet?) nor a mountaineer. but i still don't think one can generalize about those higher-level types.
anyway, if we're going to use the driving analogy, as a novice driver without a licence (yet?), being a passenger in a car in heavy traffic causes me more anxiety than any extreme sport i've participated in. maybe this is all about control, in the end.

control and trust, i suppose. and staring fear in the face, obv

re: experience, at least with rock climbing and mountaineering, you know your skill level and who you're climbing with and you trust them, and know the mountain you're climbing (via experience of others or self), whereas with driving on a busy highway, you only know that you can drive and everyone else is a potential maniac and the road is full of potential dangers - a difference of variables perhaps.

call us back when youre up on some huge rock face and just realized youre out of yr depth

you know your skill level and who you're climbing with and you trust them

this illusion of perfect information is def dangerous

I did a p minor climb two weeks ago (breakneck ridge outside of NYC) and there were like 50 times when I was like, man it's b so easy for me to slip and fall here and that would be the end of me, it felt bad man

wasn't even rock liming just xtreme hiking

You know we climb with ropes and harnesses for a reason right?!
xps

you know people still die and get injured climbing w/harness and ropes right

consequently people who dont climb rocks die from falling off rocks at a much lower rate than those who do

you seem to be arguing that rock climbers don't actually notice that there is a risk of dying from a fall, while simultaneously arguing that they talk of little else. Assessing risk and accepting risk are not the same.

gbx's example of drivers seems useful to me. Driving is risky. The best way to avoid those risks is never to get into a car at all. However, many people see that in order to achieve their goal of getting places, taking some risk is acceptable. A well-trained and well mentored driver then tries to identify and mitigate those risks through safe driving techniques. A damn fool driver texts and juggles hot coffee while driving.

There are damn fool rock climbers, too, who take damn fool risks. The sport has a way of weeding them out before they climb any really big walls. The elite climbers are never that particular kind of fool. They die, too, but not because they stupidly underestimated the dangers they faced.

you have v poor reading comprehension, what of course im arguing is that climbers underestimate the risks inherent in climbing, and are further dishonest when discussing those risks w/non climbers

Of course, and I also know that there is risk of death/injury in many activities including more traditional sports and just everyday activities
Xps

Maybe that's because you hang with the wrong climbers.

oops. not a response to rrobyn, but to lagoon

Of course, and I also know that there is risk of death/injury in many activities including more traditional sports and just everyday activities

― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Wednesday, November 21, 2012 1:06 PM (35 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

see this argument is a perfect example of this kinda vague approach to risk assessment, sure you can fall down the stairs at home and die, but walking down stairs is not nearly as dangerous as climbing rocks, neither is basketball, neither is even the relatively dangerous activity of cycling

im not sure why its so hard for people to just admit that theyre doing something thats more dangerous than things they usually do

agree w/lagoon here.

sure, they've got families, but so do firefighters and alaskan fishermen and war correspondents

afaik alpinists aren't putting out fires (and getting paid for it), catching fish (and getting paid for it), or reporting on wars (and getting paid for it) on top of those mountains. daily driving is not the comparison. having the hobby of being a race car driver is a better one.

Maybe that's because you hang with the wrong climbers.

― Aimless, Wednesday, November 21, 2012 1:06 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is not just people ive met, its the impression ive gotten from p much everything ive read seen etc abt mountain climbing, including from people itt

i mean its kind of basica human nature to believe you are not going to die, mountain climbers are no different, theyre just engaged in something thats more dangerous than things most people do

its prob not more dangerous than stunt flying or being a mercenary

I never said I didn't think it's dangerous - of course it is, and part of the fun/challenge is working with this danger, applying tools and skills that mitigate it.

To quote my climbing partner with whom I'm in a car right now, "people are constantly underestimating the risk of driving - I can't believe we're not killing each other all over the place right now, but somehow it works, and sometimes we are..."

Okay going climbing!!

but driving while dangerous is not nearly as dangerous as climbing is the point

you can have 'great risk assessment skills' and still do things that other people would consider stupid risks

not sure what the argument here is

cars are stupidly risky is a great argument against cars, not a great argument for rock climbing

you can have 'great risk assessment skills' and still do things that other people would consider stupid risks

― iatee, Wednesday, November 21, 2012 1:19 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

only if you admit that youre taking a stupid risk

crossing a busy street is risky. but it's part of daily life and people need to do it multiple times a day in order to meet basic needs relating to food/clothing/shelter. moutaineering is a hobby, not part of daily life, only meets self-actualization needs.

well you can admit that you're taking a stupid risk when judged by other peoples risk preferences but not based on your own taste for risk

it's more that you are taking a smart risk you just have stupid tastes for risk

hypothetically but generally in the real world denial enters into the equation

there's the risk of getting mauled by a lion when in the process of hunting that lion for your meal. then there's the risk of getting mauled by a lion cause you get your kicks by running though lion dens w/impala carcasses strapped to you.

yeah I mean I prob don't agree w/ aimless' characterization of these guys as cliff-hanging warren buffets but I think people can still make 'rational decisions' that most people would consider really stupid, because they rationally act on their stupid preferences

yeah i agree that thats part of it, i certainly have done things that are dangerous and i consider myself p risk adverse to physical danger, i just decided it was worth it, but also theres denial and acting on mistaken unexamined assumption bad infos etc

how it looks to me:

lagoon considers X to be a stupid risk, for example, hanging in a nest on the side of a big wall in Yosemite. some people other than lagoon also consider X to be a stupid risk.

gbx, otoh, explains that X is nowhere nearly as risky as it looks to the untrained eye, because of the engineering specs of the hardware and other equipment, and the composition of the rock and how the hardware interacts with the rock, with redundancies included for safety, and staying on an anchored belay at all times. Not to mention that elite climbers understand the danger of mountain weather and remain prepared to retreat when adverse conditions threaten.

lagoon insists that because many people deem this risk to be stupid, gbx can only be correct if he admits the stupidity of relying on engineering, experience and redundancy to remain safe, because lol, just look at it!

how can we ever decide who is correct here?

coin flip

well you could look at the fact that people not infrequently die or are badly injured from mountain climbing

i mean lol just look at this dead crumpled body, engineering! expertise!

your credulousness in the face of expertise is kind of charming tho aimless

your insistence that expertise precisely equates with stupidity is equally charming.

i have some stock market tips for you, pm me

I thought he was saying that managing risk does not mean that those risks aren't still there

was just looking on this friends facebook page for a rant he had abt people not doing ice climbing right, i couldnt find it but i did find this

http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item.php?id=67521

The 37 year old mountainguide and geologist was, according to friends, a careful and serious climber. He was the president of the Rätikon Climbing Club and author of the Rätikon climbing guide.

obvs just anecdotal but its interesting how in these conversations people are always all oh yeah well if youre not doing it right then of course its dangerous you just have to not be a stupid fuck up, but no one does everything right all the time and there are a million things to be right about and no one knows everything, situations are dynamic etc mistakes will be made

There are damn fool rock climbers, too, who take damn fool risks. The sport has a way of weeding them out before they climb any really big walls. The elite climbers are never that particular kind of fool. They die, too, but not because they stupidly underestimated the dangers they faced.

― Aimless, Wednesday, November 21, 2012 1:01 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like this is not actually a bright line, everyone is a damn fool from time to time

Mountaineering looks like fun.

I went off, ate a meal, and have returned with the thought that, perhaps some of this tussle is generational. Most of my direct mountaineering experience took place in the 1970s and early 80s and most of my recent interaction with mountain climbers has been with my age group peers. That predates this whole X-treme Sports mania that grew up in the 1990s.

The nearest parallel I can come up with is flying. lagoon probably flies on commercial airlines. in this he exhibits the same trust in expertise that he clucked about in my case, except commercial pilots and flight engineers are not just highly trained, but also licensed, carefully screened and embedded in tightly contolled systems to ensure safety. Climbers are not.

There was a time when climbers were a tiny group of specialists on the far fringe of the population and the best of them were serious minded and analytical types, inventing techniques and refining them with the dedication of engineers. I'm pretty sure this ethos has been signifigantly eroded by the X-treme sports movement, who I would liken to the barnstorming pilots of the post-WWI era. Those guys crashed frequently, accepted injuries as part of the game, and died pretty often as a result. They weren't exactly damn fools so much as careless about the mortal risk.

this entire argument could have been prevented if we had remembered that gen x is short for gen x-treme

but I think denying lagoon's point altogether is weird

like, ppl who climb mountains surely reckon with the inherent danger of doing so the same way ppl who do big wave surfing etc.
yes there are degrees of danger seeking; there's degrees of mountaineering like there's degrees of surfing. but you're still at some point reckoning with the knowledge that you are one person against nature

idk. I don't think lagoon's really off base, and it is kinda weird how defensive ppl get about this

shrug, I have no horse in this race though so #twocents

Just had a super sweet climbing sesh - back on 5.9, slowly but surely, aw yeah (didn't climb indoors or out this summer, but did some bouldering). I realize that the cars and airplanes analogies aren't going to win any arguments, of course. More pointing out the extreme risk is all around us. I think the interesting question is around what risk is to some people and how one defines a risk level (of death or injury)- not only by a situation but by the circumstances of a situation. Climbing gear and experience is part of circumstance. And risk is still higher than going for a jog, sure (unless you're jogging in cougar territory maybe or in traffic.)

Anyway, climbing and mountaineering is super fun to me and I would never deny the risk involved but I also acknowledge that these activities are way more engaging to me than jogging or lifting weights, both of which I used to be into. I don't know any climbers/mountaineers in my circle of friends and acquaintances who would say these activities are full-on safe for anyone and everyone.

ercise

haha on iphone so didn't see that bit of dangling word left there

ercise otm

to use the racecar analogy, it's like, sure you can put in a rollcage into the racecar, put in lil inflatable pillows around the driver's neck, you can put in a horsepower limit, you can move the spectators back away from the track, you can have a fire crew availalble 24/7, but it's still a v v v dangerous sport and you'll be safer by not racing cars in the first place!

that said shine on you crazy climbers

my little theory about climbing, especially in a gym, becoming a more popular sport these days is that people are, consciously or unconsciously, sick of living in a mainstream culture of fear and the associated ultra-safe lifestyle. like what's the point, etc. climbing gyms are pretty safe places as far as climbing goes, so i'm not saying this is about rebellion and throwing caution to the wind, but it's about something about control and risk and understanding what safety really is as opposed to safety being not doing anything risky outside of the "normal" risky "everyday" stuff like driving a car or believing that the current consumer capitalism is the neverending future.

also sweet sweet adrenaline + endorphines

endorphines are a myth imo

mythical or not in their function, they are neurotransmitters that i spelled wrong

Anecdotally, this kind of exercise makes me high for whatever reasons, like I am high right now and just ate a bunch of DUMPLINGS! ohyeah

the general unwillingness to own up to the fact that theyre doing a dangerous thing because they enjoy it does make me think that theres a level of denial going on

i don't think anyone is "unwilling to own up to the fact" that climbing is dangerous, dude. it is, as every instructional manual and safety waiver says, an "inherently dangerous activity." and while my driving while smoking/texting analogy may have been shaky, the point was essentially this: just because climbing LOOKS risky does not mean that it is as risky as you, untrained person, think it is. like, objectively. it's easy to say "dogg ur hanging from the side of a mountain, if that isn't risky to u then ur in denial." and you're right, it IS risky. and you're also right in that many people (some climbers, some non-climbers), don't have a well-formed evaluation of what exactly it is that's risky about what they are doing. people like you.

like, if i am on lead, and five feet above a bolt, and the climb is overhanging (ie - like most climbing gyms), i know that if i fall i will go at least ten feet down and swing into the wall. the most likely outcome is that nothing will happen and i will bump the wall unscathed. if my fall is weird, i could twist my ankle when i collide with the wall (know how to fall). if the rope was behind my leg, i could flip upside down and that would be bad, because i could hit my head (don't let the rope go behind your leg, also wear a helmet). if my belayer is inattentive, i could go further than ten feet before the catch, and maybe hit the ground. if i tied my knot incorrectly, it could fail. if i didn't double-back my harness, it could fail. if the biner was cross-loaded, it could fail, but they're strong enough these days that even that isn't THAT likely (many can take 8-9kN, which is about 2000lb of force). if i had z-clipped, then i could fall further than expected. these are all possible. and are possibilities that would not exist if i were not climbing. but they aren't necessarily PROBABLE---they can be mitigated, easily, to a point where yes, taking a lead fall is very likely safer than riding my bike down a busy street.

what is far less likely to happen is that the bolt will fail, or the rope break (a virtual impossibility in this situation, like "struck by lightning" odds). these are all measured risks, and of course i think i am an expert at measuring them, and of course i'm not as good at it as i think i am. but i am waaaaay better at it than you are. not because i'm super special, but because some of the less intuitive risks (why should it matter if a biner is cross-loaded?) are not really obvious to someone who hasn't had experience or instruction.

basically (and to echo aimless): some climbers are reckless, some are not. but it's a little weird to suggest that the very act of going climbing means that you are, de facto, delusional about how safe what you're doing is. otherwise you could say that anyone that incurred risk of any kind (driving, again) is totally delusional. and you'd be logically right, and practically wrong, boring, and insufferable. i'd think that many experienced climbers would say that, if anything, they OVER-estimate how dangerous a given thing might be (that is good risk management). i have been totally gripped in situations where the most likely worst-case scenario (falling) would've been scary, but safe: the pro would've held (you guys really do not seem to grasp how strong good protection is), and the fall would've been clean. but i was scared anyway because falling is inherently scary.

i think a lot of this comes down to letting the consequences of risk inflate the actual probability of that consequence. climbing/mountaineering is an activity where the worst-possible outcome is death. this is true. and not doing it will completely reduce the risk of death by climbing to 0%. but that does not mean that doing it safely and conscientiously dramatically increases your risk of dying, tomorrow, in any appreciable way. it could! but for many, it doesn't.

its like i was talking to a friend who does back country skiingand i asked him how he felt abt the risk of death involved in it, and he was like oh its not that dangerous and besides we all wear avalanche beacons

avalanche risk is actually a perfect example of a perceived risk that has been studied, and that has data to support it. backcountry skiing is increasingly popular, and loads of people are getting into it without any knowledge or know-how when it comes to risk management (which is pretty much entirely avalanche related). and people are dying.

bros wear avalanche beacons like talismans, and assume that simply having one will keep them safe. which is garbage, of course, since an avalanche beacon does nothing to keep you from getting caught in a slide in the first place, nor does it really do much to get you out of one. someone still has to do all the shoveling, and all that's going to do is turn up your lifeless, mangled body.

from Bruce Tremper, an actual avalanche expert:

To give you an example, let's make the following assumptions:
* You travel in avalanche terrain 100 days per year
* You cross 10 avalanche slopes per day
* The snow is stable enough to cross on 95 percent of the slopes
* For every avalanche you accidentally trigger, you get caught every third time, and killed every tenth time

(he then includes an actuarial table i won't completely recreate, but:)

% decisions correct    avys triggered    number of times killed/yr    expected lifetime
          99.99                        0.1                            0.01                            100yrs
          99.9                          1                               0.1                                10yrs
           ...          
          95*                            50                              5                                  2mos

*People with no avalanche skills and assuming snow is stable on 95 percent of the slopes

boo formatting :(

but that does not mean that doing it safely and conscientiously dramatically increases your risk of dying, tomorrow, in any appreciable way. it could! but for many, it doesn't.

― well if it isn't old 11 cameras simon (gbx), Wednesday, November 21, 2012 7:47 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

depends on if youe climbing tomorrow

basically (and to echo aimless): some climbers are reckless, some are not. but it's a little weird to suggest that the very act of going climbing means that you are, de facto, delusional about how safe what you're doing is. otherwise you could say that anyone that incurred risk of any kind (driving, again) is totally delusional. and you'd be logically right, and practically wrong, boring, and insufferable.

ha and how would you describe posting huge blocks of text abt how you know how to clamp into a thing, and fwiw as ive said itt its not just the fact that climbers climb that make me think theyre delusional and/or somewhat dishonest in their arguments abt this topic but they way they talk abt it, i mean i certainly hope people who climb way up on rocks know how to use all their doohickies

i mean instead of explaining what a master of safety you are why dont you tell us abt a time you bit off more than you could chew climbing and were afraid for your life

Are you having a bad day or did you just run out of kittens to torture?

excellent contribution laurel

what instigated lagoon calling people insane for going rock climbing?

omg i am being strawmanned so hard itt

cant believe lagoon killed gbx by intentionally knocking him off a sheer rockface :(

he had to learn somehow

apologies lag∞n I was confused by your crayon-face, burlap skin, and flannel shirt

a mountaineer fell on his house, killed his perlt bunny

when will u all SEE

*pet

dammit

aforementioned bunny, in happier days, as we would all like to remember it:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4f/Pat_the_Bunny_image.jpg/200px-Pat_the_Bunny_image.jpg

(bites knuckle and turns away)

no you dont understand pearl t bunny is the name of my rabbit

;_;

rip perlt

my little theory about climbing, especially in a gym, becoming a more popular sport these days is that people are, consciously or unconsciously, sick of living in a mainstream culture of fear and the associated ultra-safe lifestyle. like what's the point, etc. climbing gyms are pretty safe places as far as climbing goes, so i'm not saying this is about rebellion and throwing caution to the wind, but it's about something about control and risk and understanding what safety really is as opposed to safety being not doing anything risky outside of the "normal" risky "everyday" stuff like driving a car or believing that the current consumer capitalism is the neverending future.

― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Wednesday, November 21, 2012 6:03 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is interesting, and sort of tragic in that its like one trys to get some breath of fresh air from contemporary programed materialistic culture and whats available, a leisure activity w/gyms gear media etc, you cant escape

rip hobbies nobody makes magazines for

managed risk, trusting your ability to manage risk, and your comfort in trusting your ability

I don't know, I just saw a nice picture of some people resting on a platform they'd secured halfway up a sheer rock wall, with it securely fastened and themselves tethered several ways, all by the book.

there is inherent risk in all things, but the inherent risk in rock climbing, and to an extent climbing in a more controlled environment, is in believing you won't be comfortable and cut corners.

being good about securing things and doing rock climbing *properly*, you're probably risking less than talking on your phone and driving while screwing with the radio. but it ~feels~ risky

I think it all comes down to gbx's table telling me I could act pretty dumb and still not die 19/20, or more likely, 9/10 times

*sigh*

well, if you are driving at 20 mph talking on your phone and fiddling with the radio, you're not in any mortal danger. transpose that same behavior to 70 mph surrounded by a pack of cars and you're def living dangerously. a grasp of physics is urgent and key to sussing out actual physical risk.

well, if you are driving at 20 mph talking on your phone and fiddling with the radio, you're not in any mortal danger.

lol sure if you're in the middle of a mall parking lot with no other drivers

btw g∞ny it's spelled "tries" and not "trys"

we are discounting the danger from meteorites and flash floods, of course.

sterling contributions itt mh

do u climb? I don't

I have made a grave commenting error.

* backs away, slowly *

(falls off cliff)

will no one think about the bunny

this is interesting, and sort of tragic in that its like one trys to get some breath of fresh air from contemporary programed materialistic culture and whats available, a leisure activity w/gyms gear media etc, you cant escape

oh this makes things seem so sad and pointless! oh let us simply toil away in our shallow urban lives!
- climbing gyms are a business, sure, but they're also pretty niche and the people who run them are usually (i can't adhere completely to a generalization) super committed to what they're about. the basics of climbing aren't devastatingly $$ nor is there overt pressure to get "the best" gear - yet you do need money to buy basic stuff ($200 or so). but like i'm in the gym and i see a group of high school kids from the neighbourhood and they've mostly prob never come to the gym other than on a school trip, but they're so into it i wish there was a way to have them be there every week (this was me in high school - a couple of climbs but didn't know what i could do to go further, esp re $), and it's fucked up to me that they can't. at the same time i know this gym will cut them a good deal somehow if they're really into it. and i don't know, it's also like with playing music - you get what you can afford or what people give you and you can do good things with that, e.g., you don't need boutique gear to be awesome. but anyway, also one of the points of the gym is to get/stay fit so that you can climb outside! outside!
- media, i mean, i know gyms usually have websites but they're pretty low on the advertising spectrum...
- what this also makes me think about is the differentiation between what is leisure and what is "work"/non-leisure these days. a lot of people dislike their "work" and want something more, want more meaning or responsibility, which they find in their "leisure" activities. a lot of work is bullshit, fuck work! climb! be alive! overcome! new world order!

i think getting exercise and being outdoors is great, but theres certainly nothing more emblematic of our current era than trying to find meaning in entertainment/leisure activities,i mean theres a reason no one ever thought of climbing a mountain until fairly recently

on a wider scale imho the more you try to define yourself in contrast to something be it our current societal mores or w/e the more beholden you are to it - so i think rock climbing is a fine and wholesome if somewhat dangerous activity, but i have a hard time believing it the solution to the human condition

What if you define yourself and it just happens to not be in alignment with mainstream social mores, not a fight, just a way of being? Wait is this suddenly an argument about hipsterism? ugh! Can anyone do anything anymore.

Hell I live in a country where people are constantly on about "let's not define ourselves as what we're not! eg the US!" - to which my response has always been I'm just doing some things i feel like doing and possibly they are influenced by media big and small! Culture! It's all around us! and the US has many awesome things I love the US too.

People have been climbing mountains for hundreds of years! Pilgrimages for one!

i sincerely hope people can just be themselves and be happy and get along and not have to worry so much abt how they fit in or w/e, im just somewhat suspicious of oppositional stances thatre all the world is so fd up im gonna go do this other thing when that other thing is still taking place on the world, its just kind of interesting how peoples solutions to the problems of the times also tend to be v of the times themselves

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaineering#History

everything is of the times; no escape

Moses was the original mountaineer

ha yeah i mean people did set foot on mountains in the past but the origins of mountaineering as a thing thing can be dated to around the time of the industrial revolution

I don't believe I linked it here earlier, but this article from 2007 is worth reading. What it's like to be in Everest Base Camp for a month: http://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/asia/nepal/mount-everest/High-Times.html

HIGH TIMES
You were told that Everest base camp is an insult to the true spirit of mountaineering. (Harrumph.) But why weren't you told about the excellent bars, the butter people, and that friendly Playboy bunny from Poland? The author spends a month at the world's most exclusive party town.

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/dvd/fox/soundofmusic/SOM1_L.jpg

command-f butter people

What are the chances of dying while climbing Everest? I've read everything from 1/60 to 1/10, and you could argue that it's not the best place to look for experienced risk-aware level-headed climbers; either way they don't sound like great odds compared to any kind of driving.

butter people can only exist at a certain altitude cos they start melting once they descend below the tree line

http://durbutter.com/durbutter.gif

Amazing panoramic gigapixel photo of Everest, Lhotse, base camp, and the Khumbu Icefall: http://www.glacierworks.org/the-glaciers/pumori-spring-2012/

HFS, I just zoomed in on that photo and saw just how small base camp and the climbers are in comparison to the mtn

what is this? a base camp for ants?

http://theadventureblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/first-8000-meter-summiteer-maurice.html

Sad news from France today, where we've received word that Maurice Herzog has passed away at the ripe old age of 93. If his name is familiar, it is because he was the first man, along with climbing partner Louis Lachenal, to successfully summit an 8000 meter peak.

Herzog and Lachenal climbed their way into the history books back on June 3, 1950 when they made the first successful attempt up Annapurna, the tenth highest peak in the world at 8091 meters (26,545 ft). Even more remarkable, considering the time, they actually made the ascent without the use of supplemental oxygen. The climb was not an easy one by any stretch of the imagination however, as the summit team, along with two companions, spend a night camped out in a crevasse on the descent. They had one sleeping bag between the four men and as a result, they suffered severe frostbite. Herzog himself had lost his gloves on the way to the summit and ended up having all of his toes and several fingers amputated in the field.

Ironically, Annapurna was the first of the 8000 meter peaks to be summited, but is now considered to be amongst the most challenging of those 14 mountains to climb. It wouldn't be successfully conquered again until 1970.

After his harrowing climb, Herzog published a book about the adventure entitled Annapurna: The First Conquest of an 8000-Meter Peak, which has gone on to be one of the best selling mountaineering books of all time. The book has been translated into 40 languages and has sold over 12 million copes across the globe, inspiring generations of mountaineers that followed. He also served as the Commissioner of Youth and Sport in France and was the mayor of Chamonix from 1968-1977.

(his book is one of my all-time faves)

putting that on my to read list

Man Makes History by Climbing 1,500-Foot El Sendero Luminoso with No Net

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX_rh8Qugt0

honnold is nuts

no thank you and good day sir

Off my comprehensibility scale. Gbx, in what sense does the yds rating only go to 5.13? Whats the disti ction being drawn there vs 5.14s or more?

Wow, no, 15 seconds into that, I'm going to be sick.

o_O

hoping that's like old Batman films and he's just crawling around the floor with the camera at a funny angle

Cool video from an airplane flying around Everest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HziXPKFpLu4

I just finished reading the book about the 1999 expedition that found the body of George Mallory, Ghosts of Everest. I knew the expedition leader way back in my college days. Incredibly, when the climbers first reached the area where they intended to search, they located Mallory's body in less than 1.5 hours. At ~8000m you can't walk very far in that time.

Searching on -name of mountain- + gopro turns up some great videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW_6eO6VMpk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKq-3H04SkQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUMHPnV8qz0

ueli steck is the greatest living human

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjRGHGV_MVI

not like as a kind giving loving human, but as a specimen, aliens would harvest him

Let's climb the most insane route on the most notorious climb ever - the Eiger North Face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MELPIlqCU74

RIP royal robbins

what a handsome man

https://www.royalrobbins.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/05-Royal-Portrait1.jpg

^^ People who are (barely) not River Wolf

i saw rw recently and id say that's more than a bit generous

but im sure he appreciates it

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/features/athletes/alex-honnold/most-dangerous-free-solo-climb-yosemite-national-park-el-capitan/

Renowned rock climber Alex Honnold on Saturday became the first person to scale the iconic nearly 3,000-foot granite wall known as El Capitan without using ropes or other safety gear, completing what may be the greatest feat of pure rock climbing in the history of the sport.

instant legend status

i'll be amazed if he makes it past 40yo

i don't think i can ever watch footage of what he did. reading that article made me sweat

can't wait to watch it tbh

Climbers have been speculating for years about a possible free solo of El Capitan, but there have only been two other people who have publicly said they seriously considered it. One was Michael Reardon, a free soloist who drowned in 2007 after being swept from a ledge below a sea cliff in Ireland. The other was Dean Potter, who died in a base jumping accident in Yosemite in 2015.

John Bachar, the greatest free soloist of the 1970s, who died while climbing un-roped in 2009 at age 52, never considered it. When Bachar was in his prime, El Capitan had still never been free climbed. Peter Croft, 58, who completed the landmark free solo of the 1980s—Yosemite’s 1,000-foot Astroman—never seriously contemplated El Capitan, but he knew somebody would eventually do it.

“It was always the obvious next step,” says Croft. “But after this, I really don’t see what’s next. This is the big classic jump.”

reardon's death was kind of a bizarre accident iirc, but worth noting that croft (a hero of mine as a teen) is one of the only prolific soloists who got out alive, and i think that's because he stopped trying to push technical standards while free soloing. i think he continued to do it (and may still, even in his dotage), but i'm not sure he did anything harder/more bold than Astroman.

as he says, there's not really much left available to honnold that doesn't involve more technical difficulty (which greatly increases the already astounding risk of human error) or more objective hazard (like some kind of remote alpine wall, like the trango tower or mt thor on baffin island).

xp i too am pretty excited to watch, though i will probably have sweaty palms the whole time

he doesn't seem to have much reason to stop. not much close family, lives in a van, lives for climbing

and i don't expect he will, tbh -- i suppose he could try to free solo the dawn wall but, from a technical pov, that's like an order of magnitude harder

if it's been free climbed, it can be free soloed, would be his outlook i'd imagine

his life insurance is presumably a bag of chips and a sausage roll for whoever scrapes him off the valley floor

nice

went to a mountaineering event at caltech a while ago and was impressed by some of the video footage of some dudes

dear ilx: please see Free Solo (documentary about Alex Honnold, who free soloed El Capitan last year)

it isn't just a bro'd out depiction of what (imho) is one of if not the singular athletic accomplishment of the last oh hundred years, it's a pretty intriguing portrait of the person that did it

also it'll make your palms sweat

i really want to see this

it's very good!

even if you don't care about or even hate rock climbing/mountaineering as a selfish dangerous pursuit

I'll try to see that. Honnold is pretty amazing.

definitely looking forward to this

i don't have an issue with rock climbing being selfish or dangerous, i just find the personalities of climbers to be annoyingly alpha

over the past 5 years or so i’ve discovered that mountain climbing docs are one of my favorite things. i love watching ppl do stuff i would never in my life even attempt.

i love imagining myself running them over with my car.

*shrugs*

:(

lol sorry, i have feelings about climbers as i'm living in one of their meccas right now and i guess this thread at this moment gets to receive them. i feel like i get what makes climbers tick and i just don't care about witnessing their increasing degrees of fearlessness; nonetheless, the spotlight is always turned on them and the same old story of physical triumph over nature.

Funny, nature never understands that it has been subdued or conquered. It just keeps on being nature in the same old way.

also it'll make your palms sweat
first theater I've seen with chalk marks all over the seat arms. Xp

Re what makes ppl tick - I get your point, and it relates to a phenomenon I call "venue toxicity". I get it when trapped in any super intensive sports environment esp. med/long course tri dorks hang gravity riders. but it can be non sporting, like jam bands. after like 8 consecutive hours I'm was way done. bluegrass? pretty instantaneous for me.

living in Moab tho? so many offsets.

not hang, "and"

map! i agree that climbers can be aggressively self-aggrandizing w/r/t their accomplishments ("accomplishments") and certainly with how they turn the camera on themselves (cf conquistadors of the useless)

also: climbing is so fucking fun i actually don't care

anyway if/when i get to moab i'll buy you a beer if you let me

I like the close-ups in climbing movies to the extent that they show spots that are so impossible to see irl: high in the Himalayas, etc. The Meru film, for instance. I can take or leave the actual climbing and alphaness.

Freeskiing movies are even worse. The accomplishments are generally not as impressive and the skiers are just blasting through the terrain. Best part of big-mountain ski movies tend to be the slow ascent shots imo. When I watch one I often wonder why/how they get made. Who is financing this stuff and why?

I love skiing and find climbing insanely hard and not so much fun, fwiw.

I liked Free Solo a lot! It was a nice look at "excellence" and how that relates to normal human relationships. Like I can admire Honnold's ability and focus, but those ex-girlfriends who thought he was impossible to deal with weren't wrong. It was interesting compare Honnold to Tommy Caldwell, who has off-the-charts danger tolerance by any normal metric, but at this point isn't trying to die for his art, while Honnold is basically okay with that idea.

NB: I have basically zero exposure to climbing culture and have found in the handful of times I've tried anything more than scrambling up rocks that I get freaked out very easily.

There's plenty of GoPro-on-a-head mountain climbing videos on YT, but this one got my attention. Probably because there's no background music, no annoying editing tricks, just the sound of breathing, coughing, wind, and climbing. Watch it full screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhBzhi9jPFs

Was waiting for the traffic jam on the lhotse face, was not disappointed.

whoops, i meant the hillary step.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfpYNr7es0Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfpYNr7es0Y

yay finally saw Free Solo, it was a really satisfying piece of work. i enjoyed how they identified the key difficult pitches and allowed you to see them enough to understand them visually and as elements. and THEN they sorta surprise-introduced the arete/whatever that crazy, exposed, external overhang in the final effort was- it was visually stunning and comprehensibly hard and ~felt~ like a perfect climax, to me.

Part of me is like, it can’t be easy to find someone who’s a bit of a weirdo socially, who also comes across as nice and smart, but who ALSO has superpowers. If Stan Lee was still alive to review the storyboard, i think he’d be, “cool character, but this guy is not very realistic. he’s in the uncanny valley of superheroes, my dudes.”

(even if u hate armstrong it’s worth watching the interview he did with honnold recently- i enjoyed honnold’s “my neighbor’s are used to my shopping routes” a lot).

“neighbors”

I will have to watch Free Solo. I've got an appetite for this stuff (literature and film) that outweighs my dislike of the characters involved. Recently watched The Dawn Wall, which documents Tommy Caldwell's fucking mental attempts to free climb in Yosemite. It's not the most cinematic film and is overlong but it's compelling all the same.

My favourite books of this stuff are probably David Roberts' The Mountain of My Fear and the first chunk of Harrer's White Spider.

Part of me is like, it can’t be easy to find someone who’s a bit of a weirdo socially, who also comes across as nice and smart, but who ALSO has superpowers. If Stan Lee was still alive to review the storyboard, i think he’d be, “cool character, but this guy is not very realistic. he’s in the uncanny valley of superheroes, my dudes.”

otm

also man ueli steck was something else, rip dude

re books, i'll make a shameless plug for my pal freddie's book "one mountain thousand summits," notable largely because much of the focus is on the experience of the sherpas working on K2 who are every bit the incredible athletes (or more) as the alpinists they're working for

i watched Free Solo recently and speaking of something else, wow that guy is something else

https://enormocast.com/2017/07/episode-133-alex-honnold-kind-of-a-big-deal/

Long, interesting interview with Honnold on the Enormocast. Definitely a lot of inside baseball, but that's also sorta the point (it's a climbing-specific podcast). Good complement to the documentary, and actually makes Honnold seem even more affable?

he is pretty charismatic, will check. hey gbx, do you get DMs off ilx? didn't know how to ping you on bike stuff, so i tried a ilx-o-gram a few days back. my email off here is from 2002 i think, still exists apparently. "yahoo"!

i don't think i've checked my ilx-associated email in....many years?

take my govt name as shown on strava and concatenate without punctuation and geeee mail it

i thought he was kind of a sarcastic ass to his girlfriend

In the documentary? For sure

you mean free solo guy?
i didn't think he was sarcastic but he was definitely acting selfishly

yea honnold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7qSiEKntQA

dude presents as so megacharismatic to my type imo, even as a non-climber. im at min 7 and just 👀 lol

"Whoah that's not a thing." LOL

"Oh well he just died, that sucks."

Very surprised that he said sliding down a rock face and catching the lip of an overhang IS a thing!

I assume he means in free-climbing when you're roped in but what do I know.

i watched the whole movie, and tbh i find this guy difficult to watch
he reminds me of grizzly man only more together :( watching him makes me feel sad & worried for his girlfriend who seems to be a beautiful young good person who is way in love with him :( :( :(

My wife came home a couple nights and says "oh, we had some sad news at work." What happened, I asked? She said a co-worker's future brother-in-law died in an avalanche. That's terrible, I said, how did that happen? And she said he was an extreme snow sports athlete, and I said that's still terrible, but, well, yeah.

eat shit

That was definitely in poor taste, and I apologize.

I did find out more details. It was near Aspen and I think he and someone else were readying for some kind of ski race? Anyway, it sounds like there has been record snowfall out there (just saw a picture of friend's porch, which got 12 feet dumped on it while they were away). Heard another report where this means there are a number of towns and areas at serious risk of both fires *and* flooding.

*shit-tons of hunt3r fatality takes deleted*

there's a lot of fun snotel nws pages, but this one is pretty well cleaned up:

https://www.weather.gov/source/crh/snowmap.html?sid=bou

even more than usual, this storm was weird and aspecty and hyperlocal, from reports and maps.

steamboat sez 'what's up!' wish i was there.

I'm sorry for being rude, JiC, I had literally just seen a friend post something on instagram about their friend they lost in a slide some years ago --- that shit will take out even the least extreme ppl if the conditions align.

odds are they were prepping for the power of 4 race, which was held in aspen, yesterday

snow can be scary stuff, and a lot of ppl go into the backcountry totally uneducated and come out unscathed, not fully realizing just how close to the sun they were flying (looking at you, 24yo gbx)

“too close to the sun” is def the correct title for a high-risk outdoor life bio/autobio- *checks*

fuck that, yeah def done by some imperial brit.

https://www.outsideonline.com/sites/default/files/styles/width_1200/public/2019/03/04/mera-sending-it_h.jpg

The First Dog Ascent of a 7,000-Meter Himalayan Peak

On November 9, 2018, a dog named Mera became the first of her kind to reach the summit of Baruntse, a 23,389-foot peak in Nepal’s Himalayas, located just south of Mount Everest. The peak, often overlooked as it lies in the shadow of some of the tallest mountains in the world, is a steep, challenging climb in its own right. Other than a brief human-aided zip line down a short section of fixed line, Mera made the ascent completely unsupported.

“I am not aware of a dog actually summiting an expedition peak in Nepal,” says Billi Bierling of the Himalayan Database, an organization that documents climbing expeditions in Nepal. “I just hope that she won’t get into trouble for having climbed Baruntse without a permit.” According to Bierling, there have been a few cases of dogs at Everest Base Camp (17,600 feet) and some who’ve followed teams through the Khumbu Icefall up to Camp II (21,300 feet), but this is perhaps the highest-recorded elevation ever reached by a dog anywhere in the world.

Mera, age unknown, is a 45-pound Nepalese mutt who appears to be a cross between a Tibetan mastiff and a Himalayan sheepdog. She possesses an extraordinary level of confidence relative to her small frame. Though slight, she’s lean, with muscles likely honed by years of travel over rough mountainous terrain in the Khumbu Valley. She has soft, close-cropped black fur, with legs and a snout dipped in golden yellow, small ears that flop forward, and kind eyes.

:)

started a yellow snow joek then realized i had to read about that pup and snark it went away cuz dog, aw.

[back in ilx after long spell away, hullo peeps!]

just saw "free solo" last night. for me, watching it was an emotional experience. i was intensely into climbing at one point in my life, decades ago, when 'sport climbing' was not a thing yet, rock gyms were a rumored curiosity, and shoe selection involved a choice between just two or three brands.

my climbing was mostly done with two good friends. we lived in montreal, so spent most of our time in the adirondacks. all granite. climbing was the first sport in which my gangly body felt gifted and graceful. i had a lot of difficult things going on my head in those days, self-hatred, terror, stuff that has taken me decades to get on top of, but the slow vertical dance on those vast granite faces, the rhythm of crack climbing, the controlled exhilaration i felt when leading a pitch, the feeling of setting up secure anchors for my partners, ...purified me deeply, and after topping out, the sense of feeling, not just okay, but exalted, was incomparable.

some years into this, i had a bad accident. not climbing: a car accident. i emerged with nerve damage in my left hand. could no longer oppose the thumb (i'm only half human now!), grip strength rendered negligible. i've continued climbing, but nowhere near at the same level. mostly bouldering, some indoor stuff.

for me the star of "free solo" was el capitan. i couldn't take my eyes off it. like many climbers who haven't even climbed the big wall i suspect, the profile of el cap, the great crack systems, flakes and roofs -- much of it is imprinted in our mind, from simply looking at so many photographs, topos, and whatnot. hell i went twice to the ansel adams exhibit that recently closed at the museum of fine arts, just to stand in front of those exposures and feel the storm clearing out of the Valley. i don't know, i just love granite. and el cap in "free solo" presented so many facets. massive and terrifying, yes. but on a small scale: textured, multi-colored, intimate even. above all predictable, when it counted.

i was just struck by the beauty of the wall and of the climbing. in some ways honnold's ascent is the supreme way to pay homage to all of what that is.

nice post! will have to watch free solo asap...

cg that post is fantastic, thanks for sharing.

Beautiful post!

thanks so much guys :-)

really great post

granite is so wonderful, but i think my heart belongs to desert sandstone?? for sentimental reasons, many great memories from red rocks nv

i just started climbing again (ie going to the gym) after a several year long hiatus and i have become obsessed with going to indian creek (finally, after a couple decades of fascination), but am a) out of shape b) not an owner of 500000 cams and c) without partners :(

wonderful post cg - welcome back!

free solo is airing on demand on NatGeo channel at the moment

watching it now & lol i didnt even realize that Jimmy Chin was one of the filmmakers! I saw Meru for the first time just last year so it all just clicked for me just now

maybe not everyone is familiar with mark twight, but the most recent enormocast with him is really good, definitely broke down some notions i had about him. he was the prince of darkness when i was reading climbing mag every month, interesting to see him come out the other end of the tunnel

finished the movie. so good!

i am not a climber
i have never climbed
but my god that climb was so incredible it made me cry

just amazing


i do feel bad for his girlfriend. i mean in general to paraphrase kenny rogers “dont fall in love with a climber” but also she seems lovely & i see so much hearbreak ahead for her.

but also i think his perceived dickishness is a function of his flat affect & a by-product whatever the untreated issue is that he clearly has going on. not to give him an easy out but he just doesn’t seem to generate emotional responses in a “normal” way. his family backstory was pretty o_O

i want a minute by minute no soundtrack film of his climb

yes!

i was kinda annoyed by the high-speed section, i would have liked less lead up if it meant being able to see the whole climb

*sections

thanks vg!

i too would love to see a 3 hr 56 min version, from the deck to the top-out, if such footage even exists (i suspect not, given the small film crew, the terrain to be covered, and the sheer speed of honnold’s climbing).

i could not believe how fast he went
especially after the false start etc etc

lookit now

she didnt come across as any innocent to me neither.

scenes jumping him with big questions were pretty staged and manipulative, her being all made up for her closeups in one or two were straight up lols

not that he doesnt need that tbf

like a younger version of lauren hollys character from any given sunday

idg what her makeup has to do with anything but ok

sound

The Dawn Wall (Tommy Caldwell vs El Cap) is on Netflix atm if anyone is keen
Good companion to Free Solo

Weird timing to see this on SNA. Went out to Western Maryland for a little father/son hiking with my kid. We always used to go hiking in state parks as a family, but once his little sister came along, having to wait up for her little legs slowed us down a lot and made it less fun for him. So I wanted to just take him out, two dudes with nothing in our way.

Anyway, we hiked this small mountain until we came to this great rock formation at the top maybe 30 feet high. He was eager to just climb straight up them (because he's a little intense), but I convinced him to take it slower because he doesn't know what he's doing. We climbed up top from one of the lower parts of the wall and we ended up scrambling around exploring some of these giant cracks and fissures for a good long while. It was a great morning.

Then we got home and he started watching Valley Uprising on Netflix. It had a lot of stylistic quirks that I've seen a thousand times before in sports documentaries like Dogtown and Z-Boys or whatever. I'll have to check out the docs you guys recommended to compare. But it was still cool to see him following up on his new interest. I guess the next thing is to look into climbing instruction so he doesn't go off half-cocked.

watching him makes me feel sad & worried for his girlfriend who seems to be a beautiful young good person who is way in love with him :( :( :(

Finally getting around to this, and she seems to be ascribing a lot of emotions and inner monologue to him that, by all indications, do no exist. Those people should not be in a relationship imo, that stuff is much harder to watch than the climbing.

We saw it this past weekend -- our read was that she did approach him initially via the book signing, and that she says she appreciates his blunt honesty. I'd just say it seems like they're reaching their own kind of random balance bit by bit, but who knows.

Separately, I did like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7qSiEKntQA

Anyway, separately -- yes: ridiculously beautiful film at its best, El Capitan as iconic place may never be captured so well, though I think we'll catch The Dawn Wall this weekend as a companion piece.

love that gq bit

and yeah, need to see the dawn wall too -- they kinda messed up releasing it so close to free solo

weeks later i still want to know wtf the eiger sanction is, and also to hear honnold pronounce the latest domestic political atrocity as "this...this is not a real thing" (and have it be therefore true).

last year i did sorta ~see~ the eiger tho, which even as a non-climber feels rad to say.

i remember sitting in a hotel restaurant in grindelwald wondering why wetterhorn et al weren't climbed officially until like 1850. because people were digging salt mines at 9k+ in the BCs. a book i found in the lobby actually told me one version of the answer- until bored english rich people got around to inventing mountaineering and visited the alps, no one did it or recorded it.

(also, the englishes discovered frankensteins and draculas very shortly before that (but they were also the bored rich).

Dawn Wall is really good. I had no idea of Caldwell’s backstory! They do a really good job at conveying all the emotional context to the climb and overall it is a great, well told story imo. INTENSE also.

my favorite thing about all these extreme climber dudes is how when really traumatic & emotional things happen & they’re on camera
“so i figured i should really just yknow CLIMB MOAR”
and you’re like “uhhhh i don’t think that’s...”
cut to year of psychotic obsessive climbing montage
“....”

it’s really O_o

Caught Dawn Wall (loved it) and Valley Uprising (good, though slightly put off by the PuNk RaWk trappings) on Netflix this week, even though I thought I had little interest in rock climbing. Just saw that Free Solo is on Hulu and put it on. Probably the right one to watch last. Man, ok, even though I will never be a climber this stuff is really compelling.

Also his achievement was retroactively negated by that terrible Tim McGraw song at the end, sorry that's the rule.

lol agree

watch full-screen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bos_FCt4sxg

yuck

I just watched Free Solo on the plane. It was soooo good but then I couldn't sleep after. I did not like the gf arc and could've done without it but she seems like a nice person and they obviously made it work. Both seem to have vast amounts of patience.

Let's climb the Matterhorn...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ2BSHNgTlo

Finally saw Free Solo today. I wasn't prepared for the emotional wallop of it. Christ.

never know if it's a good or a bad sign when i start rereading jon krakauer's INTO THIN AIR

ppl whose day is almost certainly going worse than yrs: the climbers on everest 10-11 may 1996 :(

That's one of the few books I genuinely read 'in one sitting'. Fantastic (and grim as all hell).

anyone interested in the mystery of mallory and irvine shd probably be checking out michael tracy’s blog and youtube accounts: tracy sets up a detailed and dryly meticulous counter to the standard readings, of the route M&I took and whether they reached to summit (he thinks yes) and finally how some of the mystery actually (needlessly) arose

(tldr on the last point: it arose via edward norton’s unexplained news-release obfuscation of noel odell’s famous final sighting of the pair as they climbed “with alacrity” etc etc — tho why norton did this and why odell went along with it are not so far explored as far as i've spotted)

ps pleased to say it’s NOT *that* michael tracy (who spells his name w/an extra e)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SGRCaGjZf0

just to expand on this (as I spent a long evening yesterday reading all tracy’s replies to all his youtube, some patient and some not so much)

it looks like tracy’s evolving a kind of triple theory why the myth of the modern or ridge route is now so embedded on the internet (by contrast he believes mallory and irvine traversed below the ridge towards the grand aka the norton couloir and then probably took what’s called the “zig zag route” up to the third step, that odell saw them at the third step, and that from there they very likely summited — and basically came adrift much later, on the way back, boned tired and dehydrated, when one of them slipped from the ice axe location and pulled them both off to their deaths. much of his work is suggesting where perhaps irvine’s body might be — he has some photos which I personally find it hard to decode)

anyway “zig zag route” is not currently the dominant narrative, for three reasons as he tells it

i: the expedition’s own history of itself: tracy believes that, shortly after noel odell’s original version of his sighting (at the third step at 12.50) was published in various places, expedition leader edward norton first promulgated a wildly different version of this sighting (first step some hours earlier) and then persuaded odell to fudge a comprise version and claim forever after to have possibly been confused, possibly between the first first and second steps. both of these, even given odell’s original timing, make summiting highly unlikely. there is evidence that odell did not in private accept that he had been confused or mistaken — which suggests he was (in public) taking one for the team, for reasons that (to me) seem opaque. there is documentation of the changing story, except for a key message which has conveniently gone missing. tracy says that norton’s deception is more interesting to him than his motives: though he also gestures gently towards reasons of high imperial state, given that colonialist hyper-weirdo frances younghusband was both president of the royal geographical society and chairman of the everest committee at the relevant time, and some of the reason there was an expedition at all (tibet was very reluctant) was of course the brits spying on russia lol

ii: china’s gatekeeping: china (bcz tibet) is how you access the northern route, which is the route at issue. assuming M&I did not summit, then hillary and tensing were the first up, via the southern route out of nepal, in 1953, and a chinese expedition in 1960 were the first up via the northern route, and specifically via the ridge or modern route. the chinese summit is controversial! reinhold messner for example thinks they did not summit and just faked their achievement beyond the second step (messner is tbc also a bit of weirdo). acc.tracy the the chinese are very discouraging of the notion that the mallory zig zag route is possible and permit no one to attempt it or explore it (tbf there are also safer concerns, like climbers on the ridge kick lethal rocks down on yr head): messner’s legendary solo sprint-summit w/o oxygen went up the grand or norton couloir but not up the zig zag, which remains unclimbed unless mallory and irvine used it in 1924.

iii: the mess after the discovery of mallory’s body in 1999: tracy claims that this important discovery was absolutely botched in forensic terms, and that ever since the big corporations and publications backing expeditions linked to it have been covering up their incompetence, rubbishing anything but the ridge route theory, amplifying both the “mystery” (bcz mystery sells copies of national geographic, the main disney-owned publication in question) and the fact that mallory could never have claimed the second step (an obstacle he explicitly said more than once he had no intention of attempting), plus just uncritically sucking up to the chinese version. tracy has absolutely uncovered a lot of inconsistencies in stories and is good at minor mallory myth-busting and sternly pointing out that ppl do fib a lot when various things are at stake, including pride and of course money (in real life he’s an attorney, tho he’s also an accomplished climber who’s been up everest north route and unsuccessfully searched for irvine’s body (too much snow that year).

all three of these element are obviously conspiracy theories in the classic sense — tho this fact doesn’t by itself invalidate them (sometimes ppl do conspire!) — and beyond the material sometimes gets deep into the detailed weeds. tracy talks a bit too sweepingly about the “post-truth society” as if this is a term we all use in a similar way, but it’s evidently a shorthand for his own exasperation at how hard it is to get the foax who claim to care abt the facts in this story to actually take the actions they would if they did care

claimed s/b climbed, my posh roots showing thar

one plausible if entirely petty reason for norton's deception is that he himself (norton) had failed to summit just days before via the grand couloir, at that time climbing higher than anyone else in recorded history. if mallory and irvine didn't summit, then this record stood from 1924-1953. so was he defending his altitude record against something that was at best uncertain?

tracy seems unpersuaded by this motivation however, since, unlike mallory and irvine, norton was climbing without oxygen: his altitude record without oxygen stood (i think) until messner's various ascents, solo and otherwise, in the 1970s? norton had also suggested the zig zag route to mallory as potentially climbable.

(actually a swiss team got higher than norton but not to the top in 1952: they had oxygen but the equipment was fucked so it's debateable which column they shd go in)

The 1960 Chinese expedition ran out of oxygen on the way up, so they're another in the question mark column. I believe they summited - given their descriptions of the third step and onward. I think Messner is sore simply because they did it without oxygen. Synott's book The Third Pole reviews much of the unearthed documentation of the 1960 expedition (and indirectly interviews the last surviving summiter) and the political back-and-forth.

I wish that Tracy wasn't so dismissive of the 2019 expedition to look for Irvine and his camera but I think he's hung up a narrative of brave adventureous men carrying their banners with strange devices. Synott's tales of looting abandoned tents, resting up against frozen dead, and the constant spectre of having to climb up the second step ladder next to a dead climber that's hanging upside down. All of this is set against the current political economy of Everest itself. I'm still kinda shocked at the entertainment complex that's formed around Indian families sending their kids up to the summit in exchange for a big cash payout.

Also discussed in Synott's book - sometime between 1975 (when Wang Hongbao reports "old English dead") and 2008, the CTMA found and removed Irvine's body. Mallory's body seems to have been removed too, but that's more unclear.

tracy's recent youtubes are well worth catching up on; the story is very rich now and i like the way he painstakingly explores each separate element (the watch, the rocks, the ice axes, the oxygen bottles, mallory's planning): he talks a lot abt synott's book, which he likes (with reservations). he doesn't believe the chinese have removed irvine's body -- as he puts in one of the most recent (my paraphrase), "they don't care about mallory and irvine, they care about their own 1960 summit being respected and acknowledged"

is he driven by a romantic and idealised vision of M&I's climb? i mean, he's pretty unromantic about both of them -- i think tbh he's more driven (as a lawyer when he isn't an everest-hobbyist) by irritation and frustration when ppl lie or obscure the truth or mess with evidence, or invent unevidenced explanations of anomalies in a story, whether it's norton back in 1924 or the chinese or the 1999 expedition (which synott is very critical of)* or the 2019 expedition's evasiveness about its drone footage and so on

i find his "post-truth" riddles fairly exasperating but his point that ppl in this context very often fib abt themselves -- and that a lot of the journalism that cover this field is bad at pushing back against that -- seems p well taken

*i haven't read the synott book, which looks genuinely very interesting in a wider sense than this one micro-topic

We interrupt this thread's programming of "Historical Himalayas" with a special new bulletin... Eberhard Jurgalski at 8000ers.com finally issued his report after a decade of research on who has actually been to the true summit of all 8000m peaks and who only got near to it.

Rumors had swirled in the climbing community for months. Eberhard Jurgalski and his team at 8,000’ers.com were about to release research that would change the history of alpinism. Well, the bomb has arrived.

History may or may not change but, at least, it has provided material for both heated debate and quiet reflection. Basically, Jurgalski states that only three people have really summited all 14 of the world’s 8,000m peaks.

In the new list, the first person to summit all of them was not Reinhold Messner, but American Ed Viesturs. Both he and the second on the list, Veikka Gustafsson of Finland, completed the challenge without supplementary oxygen. In fact, Gustafsson and Viesturs climbed together on a number of expeditions.

The bronze medal goes to Nirmal Purja who, on the same list, loses his Project Possible speed record. According to Jurgalski, Purja did not summit Manaslu and Dhaulagiri during his Project Possible race in 2019. Instead, he only reached sub-summits. He only properly topped out during follow-up climbs last fall.

Moreover, Jurgalski claims that Purja knew from the outset exactly where the actual summits of those two mountains were, "because we spoke about it months earlier," Jurgalski said. "Nearly secretly, he 'corrected' it in autumn 2021, when he went to the true summits of both mountains."

The NYT has the background on everything as of a year back.

I dunno... I look at something like the summit of Manaslu and can't really go hard on this issue but if you wanna claim that you went to the top you gotta go. Otherwise, drones, gps, other climbers, and the internet massive can and will rat you out.

https://www.journeyera.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/CLIMB-MANASLU-MOUNTAIN-NEPAL-0082.jpg

I remember reading Edward Whymper's book when I was a kid. And now...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W_nFlIAWFM

(terrible background music ahead - keep it muted & play yr own)

i also read whymper's book as a kid: it had victorian woodcuts which were mostly scenic (and therefore of no interest to me) and then a section depicted what happened to whymper's team as they descended the matterhorn having successfully been the first to get to the top (basically on of the least experienced climbers slipped, cannoned into the most experienced, knockign them both off -- then the rope meant to hold them broke and several of them fell to their deaths; whymper and two aline guides survived)

anyway i found these woodcuts super-spooky and returhed to gaze in horror at them many times

i don't have the book to hand but checking GiS suggests that the engravings were actually by whymper himself -- though there's also some of the incident by gustav doré

https://www.futilitycloset.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/2018-06-22-an-apparition.jpg

The engraving of the apparition is what has always stuck in my head. I hadn't realized that folks were working on the geometry of fogbow/ice crystals and may have discovered the answer

to pick thru the puritan brainwork of myself as a very serious 10-yr-old nerd:
i: i was huffy that whymper's big official engraving (above) misrepresented the scene as depicted in his better sketch (sketch can be see at the link) where the lines of the crosses are plainly more curved -- and therefore more likely perhaps to have a "scientific" than a "supernatural" cause
ii: i concluded it could not be "supernatural" bcz 4 ppl had died and there plainly are not 4 crosses. QED! facts and logic!

reading up on it now i discovered what i didn't grasp then: which is that this was a team very hurriedly cobbled together bcz whymper discovered that a colleague-rival was making a serious attempt on the same day. from nearby hotels he put together a group of fellow brit scramblers and local guides, who didn't all know one another at all -- and one of whom (the guy who caused the fall) was very inexperienced and really shouldn't have been there. whymper got to the top first; the rival saw this from below and despondently broke off his own attempt (who cares who's second); then on the way down the inexperienced guy slipped and pulled three others off the mountainside :(

in the aftermath whymper was slammed (and almost cancelled) for various assumed failings -- from making up the apparition to cutting the rope that saved the other three from being pulled off as well -- and it became an intense media talking-point for a while. queen victoria apparently considered banning brits from all rock climbing! (not sure how this would have been enforced in e.g. switzerland… )

Bummed to hear about what happened to Dmitry Golovchenko on Gasherbrum IV.
https://explorersweb.com/gasherbrum-iv-ends-sadly/

i am not exactly a bold adventurer in any context -- shut up! i have asthma! -- but i have always shuddered a bit at the word "cornice" as used in mountaineering: it means "overhang made of snow" which to me is also screaming "(so don't stand on it!)"

i'm not linking bcz i can't find an unghoulish telling (several ppl died) but googling the phrase "everest cornice collapse" will get you there, as well as pix of an insane* number of ppl queuing right at the summit (like insaner even than previous years)

not my skillset so i guess not my moral call, but the phrase "accident waiting to happen" is surely within reach

(i was planning to post an update on michael tracy's youtubes this weekend: the tl;dr is that his various quasi-prosecutions upthread have at last expanded to include jon krakauer's version of what he was up to on everest 10-11 may 1996, and how a close reading of krakauer's book plus those of others demonstrate that he has not been telling the full story: as an attorney, tracy in his dry way is p good at close readings)

(this is not exactly krakauer's first brush with this accusation -- he's been in contention with other climbers on the mountain on that day pretty since 1997 -- but tracy is definitely amping up the charge… )

Good video of Everest's SE ridge from the South Col to the summit. No music, helpful narration, shows the summit ridge in detail that other videos gloss over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X03eztjrMNA

Meanwhile the world's highest unclimbed peak, Muchu Chhish, was just climbed.
https://explorersweb.com/first-ascent-of-muchu-chhish-full-report/

that guy is hilarious. training to climb everest and he didn’t realise he had to fuel; and, on one training climb failed to check his safety equipment was fastened securely, leading to his cramp-ons coming loose under torque halfway up a mountain

cramp-offs more like

his expedition cost him $150,000 and he funded it via minecraft videos

He did an ep of the Alan Annette podcast. Arnette trained him I guess. Was a total newbie and seemed pretty reasonable abt the whole thing.

Michael Tracy looks at Mitchell's video and compares it with Krakauer's story about the 1996 disaster. Worth a watch if you've followed any of this story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeRPfrNfbWw

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/sandy-irvine-body-found-everest

mild content warning: it's only *part* of his body (his foot in a boot, his nametag sewn onto a sock); some may find the picture a bit grisly so take care if you do click through

it sort of means ppl have been hunting for him in the wrong place for 20 years -- but since this was based on a chinese sighting (in 1960 iirc) the conspiracies are probably already up and running (viz that he *was* on the upper mountain in 1960 and for whatever reason someone "moved" him much more recently)

Must have been a very distinctive foot!

Inside, they discovered a foot, remains that they instantly recognized as belonging to Andrew Comyn Irvine, or Sandy, as he was known, who vanished 100 years ago with the famed climber George Mallory.

i mean it's the nametag on the sock but lol yes

resists urge to bump one of the severed-foot-washing-up-on-a-beach threads

I wonder where on the Central Rongbuk it was found? I'm reminded of the Star Dust crash (the STENDEC one) - I wonder if more remains or artifacts are nearby. Hopefully National Geographic can do some basic archeology on site since it's not on the slope.

I suppose if only the foot is found, then nothing is technically proven.

where it is will depend on when the body fell into it, of course. if it fell all the way in 1924 then it be some distance from there 100 years later (and likely very smashed up 😔). but (obvious point, sorry) if it fell (or "fell") recently then it will be much closer to where the fall took place. so the body's current location on the glacier won't tell us much about where irving fell from, at least without more information

the search for irvine below the ridge (far far above) has been responding to xu jing's story, which he passed on to researchers in 2001 after mallory's body was found: he was deputy leader of the 1960 chinese north face expedition, and as he climbed down through a not very easy section from roughly the first step, spotted a body in a rock slot or gully (lying on its back, face blackened). exactly where this was is unclear: i forget why xu jing was on his own, but he was improving a slanting solo route down towards camp, and not in a position to linger or be precise.

chinese information is generally treated as being distorted by the political requirements of the day -- but how much certainly varies, plus directions shift as political fashions shift in beijing. there's been a lot of (western) chatter recently about the bodies being moved or hidden or disposed of by ppl with dodgy motives, for example in case the much-discussed camera is found, complete with photos that prove M&I summited in 1924 (thus beating the claimed chinese tibetan-side summit in 1960) (tenzing and hillary of course sommited on the south, nepalese side). hard to imagine a camera surviving 100 years of everest weather and a fall of several thousand feet and being ground about in the bowels of a large glacier, but who knows?

the "central rongbuk" is seeded below the north face, the face mallory's body would also have fallen down if it had tumbled a very few more yards (it really is nearly on the lip of the precipice). that the two fell at the same time and irvine simply fell all the way has always been a theory -- just a rather dispiriting one that doesn't by itself garner funding and media-focus.

i think there's a fair chance they won't publicise an exact location for this, to limit rubbernecking and amateur detectorism -- plus permission to climb the tibetan side generally comes with NDA-style conditions from the chinese government about whatever issue agitates them at the time…

"improving" = improvising

"dispiriting" = dispiriting for obsessed researchers on a mission, the whole story is dispiriting for normal ppl who stay off mountains bcz they're scary and dangerous

As expected, Michael Tracy has a video that ties much of this together

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVB6yr3yF0w

(not sure if anyone except me is still following this niche micro-beef, but tracy's many videos nitpicking the narrative details and omissions in jon krakauer's into thin air have finally drawn an angry response)

Kinda been following it but not in enough detail. Figured the force of JK’s responses suggested that MT is full of it. Or is he onto something?

I've been following it. It all spilled over into an overview on Explorers Web
https://explorersweb.com/jon-krakauer-confronts-youtube-critic-with-his-own-series-of-videos/

krakauer's approach is quietly to concede MT's many factcheck corrections and then attack his analysis (also motives) at loud sweary length. MT is a lawyer -- which doesn't mean he's correct of course (in every courtcase one lawyer is defending an incorrect version) but it does likely mean he is unfazed by and probably aused by aggressive pushback

JK has already admitted that there are errors and omissions in the book, and that in the first instance (writing when angry) he had "falsified" the narrative -- tho i haven't dug in to find out what JK means by this (there were notable changes between the original article and the book)

MT is i think furthest out on a limb when he suggests that JK's presence was actually load-bearing in the disaster (first that hall preferred to divert money towards publicity, viz a journalist expensively freeriding on the expedition, and therefore away from adequate oxygen; second that at a key late point groom had individually tasked JK with helping yasuka namba back to safety) (she did not reach safety)

aused = amused

It's a minor point but the 2016 film (clumsily) leans into this narrative - that Krakauer's presence was a contributory factor in decisions made other than for the climbers' safety.

krakauer ketchup: the issue of JK's presence being load-bearing in the disaster is come right into the open, with krakauer apparently agreeing that having active journalist on the climb perhaps caused the rival expedition leaders to make bad choices (about going on when they should have turned back etc) -- except krakauer blames OUTSIDE magazine for the journalist being there rather than the journalist?

caveat: this is michael tracy's reading of where we are, i haven't yet found any independent telling of this tale

tracy's video is here but it's subs only i think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5DaMgfRwk0

a big journalist did it and ran away

Elsewhere, first ascent of a bill wall on Baffin Island
https://explorersweb.com/first-ascent-of-a-big-wall-on-baffin-island/

I cant believe I watched these videos. This guy is a fucking idiot. In 1996, Krakauer was best known as an alpinist, not a journalist. Eiger Dreams was published just a few years before and everyone read it and it made him famous for his climbs outside of the United States. They might’ve tried to impress him but only because Krakauer reached legend status from the stories of him on the Stikine Icecap, not because he was doing a story. Krakauer Is too much of a boomer to do this, but he should remind people that he was a victim, because he was.

curious what role global warming is contributing in the discovery of these long glaciered... artifacts.

if i learned anything from 1996 it's that EVERYONE was making bad choices

Very good video from a drone flying up the standard route up Everest's north face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEpi-S9qacY

Looks like a nice walk, bit of scrambling required maybe.

its been easy since the 2015 earthquake smoothed out the hillary step

Is there a pub on the way back?

Hillary Step is on the ridge coming up from the South Col. The north face is on the China side. There’s enough infrastructure there that you can now just drive to base camp and get wi-fi at the pub

South Col/Nepal-side climbers can stop here though: https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/craic/highest-irish-pub-world.amp

Skiing down Everest from the top

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjZvFY6__qw

holy shit

probably a much more difficult and dangerous stunt than tightrope walking across Niagara Falls, but still a stunt

Trouble telling whether your post means stunt (derogatory), or stunt (an action displaying spectacular skill and daring).

This is definitely the latter— to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen and then to ski down is an act of extreme mental and physical fortitude and endurance, not some cheap trick.

I think that video makes it look kinda stunty in the former way by 1) skipping over the months of training and weeks of approach and 2) using drone footage on a perfectly clear day, which I think makes Everest look like a big Colorado mountain somehow.

Feels kinda stunty, aye. How has he got the place to himself?

That's what I was wondering, isn't there usually a bloody queue?

the worst queues are on the south approach -- far fewer on the north or west approaches, since the chinese issue fewer passes for the north and the west just is an extremely difficult climb

if this guy is skiing down the hornbein couloir, as he seems to be, did he ascend towards it via the (difficult) west approach? (it gets its name from tom hornbein, first to climb the west approach in 1963)

(i can look this up myself, but im listening to a podcast abt francesca albanese right now)

Even on the summit there's no-one else around. It's in "the quieter autumn season" they say, so are there times no-one is allowed to climb - well no regular punters?

i think people are allowed all year round but you'd find it hard to get support teams in winter or summer (monsoon season): or maybe you could get them but you'd have to pay insane rates (normal rates are insane)

in monsoon season the weather gets wild, in winter it's impossibly cold -- the two climbing seasons are spring and autumn but the weather in autumn is much more unpredictable than spring, and many steer clear just because you don't want to book a fortnight slot and then have no good climbing days in it?

naturally there have been winter ascents bcz literally everyone who thinks to climb this mountain is a danger to themselves: https://explorersweb.com/the-climbing-history-of-winter-everest/

I think that like 95% of climbers attempt it in early May

hence the queues

interesting account is here fwiw. still a little eyerolling at all of you calling this a stunt.

https://explorersweb.com/andrzej-bargiel-describes-how-he-skied-down-everest/

Obv not a stunt. It’s an insane accomplishment. I just have a hard time getting used to such slick video of a place that’s I’m used to seeing only in shaky handheld photos or clips.

I mean, Red Bull is one of the premier sponsors of more esoteric sports— they sponsor climbing Olympian Toby Roberts, too, among many others in the world of climbing and alpine sports. It’s a huge market, so it makes sense that they would front a lot of the resources.

mark synnott's book abt the 2019 expedition to locate irvine's body on everest goes into some detail abt how they solved the problem of getting drones up that high, which no one had done before: now it's very much a problem solved, hence all the aerial footage as a must-have for any project that requires sponsorship (which is most of them as it's a costly business)

I wonder if they could use drones to get oxygen or other supplies up there.

getting yr doordash burrito delivered as a treat for summiting

I watched it. I dug it.

But I don't think it's challopsy or churlish to say someone getting corporate backing and privileged access to an environmentally (and culturally) sensitive site, a place where scores of people die (a fact implicitly woven into the mythos of the place and the desire to conquer it), carrying out a, by its very nature, death defying act, and filming it, might be somewhere in the zone of the dictionary definition of what a stunt is.

Sure, but only if it’s not the derisive (and dismissive) definition of “stunt.” I’ll die on that, erm, mountain.

haha. i feel both sides here. i couldn't watch the video because of that music lol. and i'm just kinda saturated with drone footage. obviously that kind of thing is crazy. the drive to do summitting... that switch missed me thank god. i do like moving higher, getting to high places, but i'm happy with using my feet. i'm just not a climber. i know others here are (table :)). but staying on my feet and trotting and dancing a bit in exposed areas gives me all the adrenaline i need. and like others allude to, this kind of activity.. well, you have to have money. it's likely you're a successful... capitalist haha. and you're obviously missing a lot of what land should do for us, by doing this kind of thing. idk i would find huge enterprises and just the magnitude of a huge shiny accomplishment distracting. but it takes all kinds. men and their legacy lol. they want to fuck the world. whatever.

and you're obviously missing a lot of what land should do for us, by doing this kind of thing.

I don’t understand this, how can you know what is in the hearts and minds of these guys? or this guy in particular?

i can't, i don't pretend to, and i actually don't care. but there's only so much a person can pay attention to, and when getting out alive is pretty much it, by definition that person is going to miss a lot of what land can and should do for us. i think it's not only ok but morally a good thing to call out the kind of impulse that strives to be the first on the highest doing the hardest, and spending a lot of money to get there. if you don't think so, we can agree to disagree.

My instinct is to agree enthusiastically with all that but i def have questions as to the disconnected consciousness of the piper at the brink of death

i guess that it’s the “should” that bothers me, as that seems pretty subjective— what you see as stunting and someone “just getting out alive” in order to be the first to do something, that person might see as a mental and physical challenge that puts them in extreme touch with the materials of their world and livelihood, in this case snow and rock. the possibilities of death are numerous, and so respect for and knowledge of the terrain is essential. to me that isn’t just some cheap stunt, and i don’t think that the publicization of it cheapens it.

but yeah, agree to disagree.

honestly you're right. i get feelings about this stuff.

i'm in moab rn which has a lot of this kind of energy. makes me feel a certain type of way. i did watch more of that video and it's pretty stunning tbh. the oxygen thing is wild.

he truly "sent it"

oh i totally understand getting feelings about it— i have mixed feelings about Everest as a destination, and the intersection of climbing and outdoor sport with all sorts of gross colonialist ideologies is something i think about often.

what i guess i am trying to communicate is that i do think i get what you’re saying— that there are people who “conquer” mountains and people who are “with” the mountains— and my sympathies always lie with those in the latter mindset. here, i found the video and his account to be more along the lines of the latter— sure, it is a feat, and a publicized one at that, but its also a test of vulnerability. he’s at the whim of this massive ecosystem, and he knows it, and through care and reading the landscape, he was able to make it up and down. not just any rich fuck could do that.

yeah that's true i think. it does come across in the video too. i was skeptical.

honnold is nuts
― gbx, Wednesday, 12 February 2014 04:13 bookmarkflaglink

RT

just watched it - not the whole thing, I skipped through. insane.