mountaineering

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.

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/