mountaineering

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