The Mountain World

Scientists: 'We May Be Running Out of Rocks'

2010-05-06T06:17:00.000-06:00

This just in: Geologists are warning that, unless current habits change, the world is in danger of running out of rocks in a remarkably short time. "Think about it," scientist Henry Kaiser told the Onion newspaper. "When was the last time you even saw a boulder?" Click here to read more about this alarming hypotheses.

Tuesday Morning Time Waster

2010-05-04T09:36:00.000-06:00

A beautiful, inspirational look at one of the greats, Japan's Yuji Hirayama, climbing in Turkey. From the Camp 4 Collective, a new collaboration of the creative dream team of Jimmy Chin, Tim Kemple, and Renan Ozturk. Should be some great stuff coming out of these lenses and laptops in the coming months.

Oh, Zermatt, Where Did You Go So Wrong?

2010-04-30T07:41:00.002-06:00

Zermatt, Switzerland, one of the birthplaces of Alpinism, promotes...well, who knows what it's promoting with this advertisement, spotted at the Furi lift station in April.

Inspiration and Sobering Reality

2010-04-25T07:35:00.000-06:00

I've just returned from a couple of weeks of skiing in the French and Swiss Alps, where we stuck to well-traveled tracks and merely ogled the improbable traces of bold skiers arcing down seemingly every plunging gully and cliffy face. The stuff that gets skied routinely in these mountains is mind-blowing. And so it was fun to discover Colin Haley's helmet-cam video of a "typical" day of skiing this month off the Aiguille du Midi above Chamonix—this is a great window on the kind of skiing I'll never do. Thrilling stuff!

But as I read deeper in Colin's long debrief of recent weeks in Chamonix on his Skagit Alpinism blog, I learned there was another, darker side to his story. In less than one week, Colin watched his skiing partners suffer two serious accidents during big descents (the two skiers who fell both lived, somewhat miraculously, though one was severely injured) and he himself narrowly escaped being pulled off a mountain by an avalanche. Colin's account is analytical, sobering, and highly worth reading. Don't miss it.

Russian Avalanche (Out of) Control

2010-04-03T11:31:00.002-06:00

Think you'd be safe on a chairlift if a big avalanche swept underneath? Skip to about 0:25 to jump-start the action and find out.

"Unclimbed": Seven Years Later

2010-03-30T07:18:00.003-06:00

I've just been editing a story for the American Alpine Journal about the first ascent of the north face of Chang Himal in Nepal, by British climber Andy Houseman. Andy said his climb, with fellow Brit Nick Bullock, was inspired in part by an article called "Unclimbed," published in 2003 in Alpinist 4, in which various writers identified nine great unfulfilled challenges in the alpine world. Which, in turn, inspired me to dig up the article and see how climbers have done over the last six and a half years.

Not bad, as it turns out, not bad at all. But these lines have proved to be worthy challenges. Here are the nine routes and their status:

Annapurna III, Nepal, southeast ridge. Not yet, but the peak has seen some action: The southwest ridge was climbed in 2003 by Kenton Cool, Ian Parnell, and John Varco. And Britons Jon Bracey, Nick Bullock, and Matt Helliker are headed to Nepal this spring to attempt the stunning southeast ridge. [Photo courtesy of Annapurna3expedition.blogspot.com.]

South Tower of Paine, Chile, south face. Not yet, but big-wall soloist Dave Turner spent months in the Paine in early 2009, hoping to attempt the face, before an injury forced him to focus on smaller objectives.

Shingu Charpa, Pakistan, north ridge. Climbed. Twice, more or less. Or not at all. Depends on how you look at it. In 2006, a Ukrainian trio claimed to have climbed the route, but it later turned out they had turned back perhaps 100 meters below the top of the peak. A month later, Kelly Cordes and Josh Wharton climbed most of the route, but also retreated near the top because they didn't have the right gear for the summit icefields. In 2007, a Russian team climbed the east face and continued up the final section of the north ridge to the summit. [Photo by Clint Estes.]

Namcha Barwa, Tibet, west face. Nope. The 7,782-meter peak has been climbed only once, in 1992, from the south. The 3,300-meter west face has never been attempted.

Janak, Nepal, southwest pillar. Climbed! Slovenians Andrej Stremfelj and Rok Zalokar pulled off a stylish alpine-style ascent in 2006.

Chang Himal, Nepal, north face. Climbed! Those Brits, Nick Bullock and Andy Houseman, polished off the route, alpine style, in a five-day round trip from the base of the wall.

Mt. Tyree, Antarctica, southeast face. Not yet. Antartica's biggest and steepest alpine wall remains untouched.

Latok I, Pakistan, north face. Not yet. Several teams have attempted the line but diverted to the north ridge, also unclimbed.

Torre Traverse, Patagonia. Climbed! Rolando Garibotti and Colin Haley linked Cerro Standhardt, Torre Egger,and Cerro Torre in January 2008.

So, more than half of these routes remain unclimbed. But it would be a mistake for either climbers or the media to focus attention exclusively on these lines. As the Alpinist compilation's editor, Sean Easton, wrote in his introduction, these climbs "represent only a minute sampling of what remains to be found."

Indeed, one of the great thrills of working on the American Alpine Journal is seeing photo after photo of great unclimbed walls around the world (and those other mountains, barely in view over the shoulder of that peak in the foreground...what are they?). The world still holds enough great alpine challenges for generations of ambitious climbers to come. Time for a new article?

Kite Skiing on Patagonia Ice Cap

2010-03-26T07:13:00.002-06:00

Don't miss Dave Turner's wild stories and photos of kite skiing on the Patagonia Ice Cap. Absolutely crazy! Click on the link in the Black Diamond Journal sidebar to the right.

Best Climbing Trailer Ever Made

2010-03-16T19:23:00.003-06:00

The movie is Core, by Chuck Fryberger. The world premiere is April 7 at the Boulder Theater.

Marko Prezelj Slide Show: Repost

2010-03-14T13:01:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the technical difficulties with the Marko Prezelj slide show (below). I was climbing at Shelf Road (T-shirts, sunburn, sharp rock...the usual excellence), so it took me a couple of days to fix the problem. I believe I've got it sussed; if not, I'm sure you'll let me know!

Marko Prezelj: Images of Norway

2010-03-11T07:51:00.005-07:00

Marko Prezelj, the fantastically accomplished Slovenian alpinist, is also a gifted photographer. In the four years that I've been working on the American Alpine Journal, he's already had one photo on the cover and is likely to have another this year. Recently, he sent me some beautiful photos from a trip to Norway for an international ice climbing meet in Fjellkysten. "I was climbing there with Luka Lindic, and we were exploring the area and climbed several interesting lines," Marko said. "The images are my diary. Climbing was my main interest, and I didn't really focus on photography."

Maybe he wasn't focused on shooting, but Marko came away with some striking images of Norway, reinforcing my strong desire to visit there someday. Indeed, he told me, "It is such a unique place that you should not think twice." With Marko's permission, I offer a selection of his unique images:

Rock Climbing In Your Living Room

2010-03-09T08:32:00.000-07:00

At last, soon there will be no need to ever go outside, or even to a sweaty, dust-filled climbing gym, to experience "the thrill and adrenaline of free soloing." Game maker Human Soft has announced that it is developing a rock-climbing game for Wii called HardGrip.

I quote: "HardGrip takes players on a tour of exotic and stunning locales around the globe as they compete in open events or invitation-only official races. With no harnesses or lifelines, players must solve seemingly impossible challenges and conquer their fear to make it to the top. Speed counts, but climbers who prove their ingenuity and daring will earn more respect. As climbers progress, their skills will have to become truly awesome to make the grade."

Become truly awesome in the comfort of my own home? Sign me up!

Inspiration

2010-03-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

Going through some old files, I came across this Chip Carey shot of John Truden, the multi-time Heavyeight Ski Champion from the early 1970s. Truden tipped the scales at more than 400 pounds. I still think this is one of the most inspiring ski photos I've ever seen.

In Season

2010-02-09T07:25:00.007-07:00

The Season is the most creative new outlet for outdoor-sports storytelling since...well, since the Dirtbag Diaries, the last new-media creation of Fitz Cahall. Co-produced by Cahall and Bryan Smith, The Season is a 22-episode "web television" production that follows five outdoor athletes as they pursue their passions in the Pacific Northwest. I've seen the first three episodes (No. 3 went live yesterday at Arc'teryx.com and will be released Friday at Outside.Away.com and iTunes), and I think I'm hooked.

Fundamentally, The Season promises to deliver compelling stories—the element that's missing in most action-sports films. After episode one's stage-setting introduction, each new episode will unfold the story of a single character; they'll generally alternate in sequence, following five separate narratives. Episodes two and three convinced me that these stories will be worth following; the people are likable, and I'm curious about what's coming next for them. Cahall has honed his skills as a narrator through nearly three dozen episodes of the Dirtbag Diaries, but here he holds back a bit, allowing the individual athletes and the footage to carry the story.

That footage, all in HD, is spectacular. There's a crazy early shot in the second episode of sea kayaker Paul Kuthe playing—and rolling—in a whirlpool. And the overhead tracking shots are amazing. The Cable Cam system, developed by Bryan Smith and climber Matt Maddaloni (one of the athletes featured in The Season), mounts a remote-controllable camera to a pair of steel cables that they ran up to 750 feet over gorges and through dense forests. It's as if the shots were filmed from a miniature helicopter flying along a few feet from the action.

My one concern about The Season is the short clips and the schedule. I'm a long-format, New Yorker–story man; I like long movies (assuming they're good). These clips run 6 to 7 minutes, but over a minute of that time is eaten up by intro, sponsor plugs, and credits. That leaves 5 to 6 minutes of storytelling. I felt the clips were coming to an end just as I was really getting into them. Cahall told me, "I wish they were longer too, [but] that four- to six-minute mark is the magic number, just long enough to convey a story or plot but not too long that someone is going to get bored or feel guilty about watching it at work.

"It's also a reality of where the industry is at," Cahall added. "It's incredible what we can do, but we still bump into size constraints. Even with the massive advances in the tech specs, you can't overload someone's computer or connection speed."

I also wonder if this schedule (a two-week rotation of Monday, Friday, and Wednesday releases on the Arc'teryx site, followed a couple of days later by Outside and iTunes) is going to feel satisfying over the long haul. If I get hooked on one of the characters, I'll have to wait three weeks to catch the next episode featuring that person. That seems too long.

But we'll see. Right now, the content seems so good and the approach so fresh that this series seems likely to be a hit. Cahall said the early response has been "overwhelming...bigger than we had imagined." In a way, it makes me a bit sad: I've always been a words on paper guy, morphing into words on computer screens over the last few years. But it's still almost all words. New multimedia concepts like The Season, delivered right to your desktop, make me wonder if words alone are still sufficient. But so it goes. Times change. For everything there is a season.

Nordwand: The Eiger Movie

2010-01-30T07:57:00.003-07:00

For Hollywood-style mountaineering films that are both A) reasonably accurate and B) good entertainment, I can think of Touching the Void and, ummm...that's it. Now I can add Nordwand ("North Face") to the list. Last night I saw the German-made film about the famous 1936 disaster on the north face of the Eiger, and it's an impressive reconstruction of state-of-the-art prewar mountaineering and, at times, a nail-biter.

First, the climbing. In the mid-1930s, German and Austrian alpinists were probably the best in the world, and I was fascinated by the equipment, clothing, and techniques, which, to the best of my knowledge, the film depicted quite accurately. The gear and methods seem astonishingly primitive compared with our high-tech tools and bombproof-anchor-at-all-times mentality. Yet these climbers could pull from their full bag of tricks pendulums, reasonably sound belays (when they chose to use them), and free-hanging rappels. The climbing footage is convincing, and the weather and avalanche scenes are harrowing. The bivouacs look truly miserable.

For me, the storytelling worked well until the last 30 minutes. Just as the drama reached its peak, some niggling aspects of the film started to become outright annoying: a couple of overdrawn characters, an intrusive love interest, and an excess of melodrama in scenes that were plenty dramatic on their own. When Toni Kurz's on-again-off-again girlfriend ventures onto the face and climbs to within a few feet of him as he nears death, I thought, "If she can get up there, why can't the Swiss guides join her and throw him a rope?" And then came a truly awful line that I hope was just a flub of the subtitles translator. I won't give it away, but a third of the audience broke into laughter during a scene that should have been evoking anguish and tears.

To their credit, the filmmakers didn't give this tragedy a Hollywood ending. I walked out of Nordwand drained, and though I could annoy my wife with my typical post-film analysis of the movie's faults, its rich evocation of 1930s mountaineering will stay with me much longer than its foibles. Click here for U.S. screening info.

Real-Time

2010-01-25T18:00:00.004-07:00

On January 15, Renan Ozturk and Cory Richards topped out on Tawoche, a 6,500-meter peak in Nepal, after completing a difficult 1,200-meter new route. They had to battle dehydration—no water for 36 hours—and dangerously loose rock to finish the route. It was a major effort. But here's what was really amazing: On January 20, four days after they descended safely to base camp, the two guys posted a creative, heartfelt, beautifully shot video about their climb. One day later, they posted a follow-up covering the final climb to the summit and the descent, thus breaking the news of their own success.

TAWOCHE 2k10 dispatches #4 from renan ozturk on Vimeo.

I think this could be a game-changer for expedition climbing films. In their immediacy and authenticity, these short clips blow many slickly produced expedition films out of the water—I find them infinitely more inspiring than TV-style documentaries. Ironically, the climbers are sponsored in part by the North Face, which led the way in big-media big-walling during the first Internet boom in the late 1990s. I mean absolutely no disrespect to the climbers on those projects in Baffin Island and Pakistan, among other places, but when your game plan includes a multi-person camera crew, it inevitably dictates the terms of the climb, including endless fixed ropes, portaledges, days of hauling and repositioning, and releading pitches. It dictates the choice of route itself.

Ozturk and Richards chose a chossy, dangerous, unclimbed alpine route at high altitude. They had no idea if they would succeed; in fact, the odds were very much against success. They climbed alone and shot their own footage, each carrying a single digital camera; they had a helmet-cam rig and a few extra batteries. They edited these clips in their tents at base camp and uploaded them by satellite modem (except for two clips for which they had to race down to Namche Bazaar after their sat link died). "It is arguable which was harder and took more time: the climb or the dispatches," Richards said.

In the intro to their summit-day clip, on the Vertical Carnival blog, one of them wrote: "As [we] are artists, we are locked in a constant struggle between what we want to capture and the energy our bodies can afford to give. It’s an instinct to reach for the camera, but one that nearly always falls second to the tasks at hand. Often times, I criticize myself for not shooting more…for not nailing the perfect image…but then again, I am fighting just to move. As athletes, we are succeeding, but as creative individuals, we are flailing…it hurts."

They may have been flailing, but they weren't failing. In my view, they succeeded beautifully.

TAWOCHE 2k10 dispatches #5 from renan ozturk on Vimeo.

Christian Beckwith Going 'OuterLocal'

2010-01-20T13:47:00.002-07:00

Here's an interesting development in the "where are they now" department: Christian Beckwith, the founding editor of Alpinist magazine (and before that the founder of Tetons-based Mountain Yodel), is unveiling a new venture: an ambitious website called OuterLocal, slated to launch in July.

Beckwith, who started Alpinist in 2002, had floated the idea of a multisport outdoor magazine on the Alpinist/Surfer's Journal/Ski Journal model back in 2004. But the money wasn't there for a print book. Now, more than a year after Alpinist went belly-up (and then was resuscitated by Height of Land Publications), Beckwith is trying to launch his magazine vision on the Internet.

I asked him to describe the new site, and he sent the following blurb/media-kit copy, which I'm reprinting verbatim below:

"Alpinist was born in Jackson, Wyoming, and raised in the mountains of our backyard. The people who worked at our magazine, however, were far more than just climbers. We skied the backcountry for six months a year. We ran the footpaths of the Wind Rivers, mountain biked the Pinnacles of Togwotee Pass and paddled the Snake long before the tourists arrived for summer. We lived in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem because of its wild beauty, its lack of people, its daily opportunity to experience nature on nature’s terms. When we traveled, we sought out the wilds wherever we went, be it surfing in Mexico or hiking in South Africa’s Cederberg or flying the thermals above Switzerland’s Grand Combin. Wherever we went, our love of the wilds extended far beyond the mountains. Problematically, we could find no authentic expression of what we loved in the day’s mainstream publications.

"In 2004, we set out to create a new magazine, one that explored a broad range of adventures with the respect they deserved using the values we had brought to Alpinist. We originally partnered with Patagonia on the idea, then worked to launch it on our own, but the tide was already turning against print, and we were unable to secure the $5 million necessary to launch a title from scratch.

"Since Alpinist’s collapse, I’ve been developing a way to transfer that original idea online. Over the course of more than a dozen road trips across the US, and international journeys to Mexico, Europe, Japan, and Africa, I met with adventure athletes, web developers and entrepreneurs from numerous walks of life and industries. I forged relationships with opinion leaders in climbing, skiing, paddling, surfing, hiking and biking, and built agreements with strategic allies across the outdoor industry. In December I traveled to India, where I secured a website design and development company to execute the site. The result is OuterLocal.com , a website that takes as its foundation a simple premise: the fullest measure of life is experienced in those moments when we test ourselves against the wildest features of our environment.

"Adventure is the medium through which we understand our lives. Exploring new lands, new waters, encountering nature in ever-deepening ways, we gain n appreciation of ourselves as individuals and as participants in the world. The feel of Scottish granite beneath our crampons, the narrowing of our sightlines as we commit to a steep couloir, the focus as we drop in on a reef break during a late-afternoon session: OuterLocal will celebrate the artisans of the wild in a website as respectful, irreverent and profound as the manner in which we pursue our dreams.

On January 8, noted big-mountain skier and filmmaker Kina Pickett shot our first film. We’ve recently finished design of the home page and user interface and are now working on the interior pages. We expect to launch OuterLocal by July 2010."

Should be interesting!

Tuesday Evening Time Waster

2010-01-19T16:48:00.001-07:00

Readers who enjoyed Barry Blanchard's terrific "Mountain Profile" of Mt. Robson in the latest issue of Alpinist will also enjoy "Infinite Patience: The Movie." (Not its real name.) Eric Dumerac, one of Blanchard's two partners for his much-tried (and oft-failed) new route on the Emperor Face of Robson, shot footage during their successful climb in 2002 for a cool 10-minute video that can be watched at Blanchard's new website.

Barry also has posted a collection of more than 40 scanned slides (dust, scratches, and all) from his 1985 first ascent of the north pillar of North Twin with Dave Cheesmond—still unrepeated. I'd never seen the majority of these images, including this shot of Barry arriving at the summit. Great stuff!

Have No Fears, We've Got Stories for Years

2010-01-14T18:14:00.005-07:00

In the time-honored tradition of producers who'd rather rehash the "best of" old shows than create something new, I present the five most commented-upon Mountain World posts of 2009. (Not necessarily the best.) Drum roll, please!

1. No Consolation: reflection upon the death of Craig Luebben.
2. Oops, Wrong Planet: the Hubers get funky.
3. Never Stop Litigating: TNF gets aggro on a teenage parodist.
4. Lacelle Avalanche Video Analysis: a (strangely) controversial post-mortem.
5. Mountain Movie Clichés: what's your favorite?

Sorry for the clip show...

Pledge for Endless Ascent

2010-01-08T09:45:00.004-07:00

Will Gadd's "Endless Ascent" at the Ouray Ice Festival begins tomorrow. He's going to climb the same route over and over, for 24 hours straight, to see how many vertical feet he can accumulate. It's a mind-blowing effort.

But this isn't just a Red Bull athlete's latest wacky stunt: It's also a fund-raiser for the vital work of the dZi Foundation to support remote mountain communities in Nepal and Sikkim. Will's effort won't mean nearly as much unless he raises some significant dosh. I've pledged 0.5 cents a foot. If Will reaches his primary goal of 11,429 feet (the gain from Everest base camp to summit, or 77 trips up the Pick O' the Vic route at Ouray), I'll give $57.14 to the dZi Foundation—an amount that will be matched by a challenge grant. What will you give? Visit the Endless Ascent website to make a pledge and track Will's progress.

UPDATE: Will climbed the route 194 times in 24 hours, starting at noon on Saturday. That's about 25,400 feet of ice climbing. Surely this is a Guinness record? Congratulations, Will!

You can see a great gallery of James Beissel photos from the Endless Ascent at Colorado MoJo.

Oh. My. Gawd.

2010-01-07T11:03:00.002-07:00

Looks like maybe Zion to me. Anyone know for sure? Man, these two were lucky to get out unscathed. (I'm assuming they were OK: You don't usually say "Hooolly shit!" and keep filming when you get hurt. You say something else entirely.)

If it is Zion, I can attest to the nastiness of those approaches and descents. Once you get off the well-beaten paths to the classics, that ground is loose, loose, loose. And don't forget the ticks.

Retire Those Ropes

2010-01-06T06:55:00.005-07:00

Black Diamond's QC guy, Kolin Powick, has published some scary test results on a rope he had just decided to retire—and those results prompted him to test other old but still-maybe-OK ropes around the BD office. One of the working ends of Powick's trusty 9.4mm broke at just 6 kN of force, and not at the knot. (A figure-eight knot reduces the strength of a rope by around 25 to 30 percent.) That figure compares to a range of around 13 to 16 kN for the new 9.4mm he tested. In subsequent tests, other ropes broke at less than 7 kN—the kinds of forces that can be generated by a short slamming fall. Picture a cliff with an overhang at the bottom and a crux move at the first or second bolt—a very common scenario.

Sure, we all know ropes need to be retired when they start to look old and worn, right? But it's so tempting to hang onto a rope for just a few more pitches. Particularly for sport climbers, Powick's tests should serve as a real-world warning: Sport climbers beat the hell out of the ends of their ropes through repeated falls, hanging, and winching, and sport routes are more likely than most climbs to have crux moves close to the belayer. It's a double whammy.

Bottom line: A hard, unsentimental look at your rope, combined with your personal knowledge of how much work it has seen, is the best guideline for deciding when to retire your cord. Don't be cheap: If it looks bad, it ain't safe.

Truer Words Were Never Spoken

2010-01-02T16:11:00.001-07:00

Climbing.com reader Jeff Weinberg posted this great "Overheard" quote, from a man giving his son a pep talk at the Philadelphia Rock Gym: "The beautiful thing about climbing is, everyone sucks at their own level."

New Year's Weekend Time Waster

2010-01-02T10:41:00.004-07:00

Kelly Cordes makes a margarita for Tommy Caldwell, courtesy of Kelly Cordes Dot Com:

[Hey, you kids, what are you doing watching videos all weekend?! Go outside and play!]

Caving=Scary

2009-12-22T16:28:00.004-07:00

The tragic death of a 26-year-old caver in Utah on Thanksgiving confirmed my long-held feeling: Cavers are nuts. Of course, many cavers likely say the same thing about climbers. When I tried caving the first time last summer, I got a lesson in perspective and humility that gave me a lot more sympathy for people who are afraid of heights.

My own fear is claustrophobia. It's not a severe case, but it's bad enough. I first noticed it years ago during a big snowstorm in the Adirondacks, with three of us crammed into a two-man tent. As the walls pressed inward, I felt discomfort rising to panic, and I had to open the door to let fresh air wash over my face—and fresh snow fill the tent. My claustrophobia has gotten slightly worse over time, and now snow caves and squeeze chimneys may give me serious concern. Sometimes on a cold night, with my mummy bag zipped up tight, I'll wake and go into a panic, grasping for the zipper.

I wasn't a prime candidate for caving.

Yet I'd always wanted to try it. I loved the various tourist caves I'd visited—no problem for me in those vast chambers. And if it weren't for my claustrophobia, I knew I'd love caving: the climbing aspect, the feeling of exploration, the strange geologic forms. It was all me. And so when my wife and I visited friends in southwest England last summer, and they offered to take us into a famous local cave, I had to sign on.

People have been exploring Swildon's Hole for more than a century. It's the biggest known cave in the Mendip Hills. The rock inside is polished smooth from thousands of hands and boots, and the floor is clear of obstacles. Our host, a friend and local caver named Steve Cosh, had been inside Swildon's dozens of times. He used to lead youth groups through the cave (we borrowed our headlamps, helmets, wellington boots, and spiffy jumpsuits from his old boss). Swildon's has some serious caving, including many underwater passages, but we weren't going that far. How bad it could be?

Pretty freakin bad. Swildon's has a tiny hut atop its entrance, which is like a manhole with a short ladder. At the bottom of the ladder, the passage turns horizontal and narrows to the point where you have to squirm on your back or stomach. I was third in our party of five, and as soon as I got into the narrows, the old familiar panic began to rise. I squirmed back again, bumping into the feet of a friend, which only made it worse. I've got to get OUT! I shouted. Back on top, I told the others to go ahead. I might or might not follow.

After a moment, I decided to try again. Going last helped. I could still see a glimmer of daylight as I shimmied through that initial passage, and I rationalized that I could always escape, with no one to block my way, if things got bad. My wife and friends were just ahead, encouraging me to follow. The passage was wider now, and I could scurry along on my feet, ducking under the ceiling. But then it narrowed past crawling size again—mandatory belly or back scraping. It was only 10 or 15 feet, and I could hear Steve talking to me from the other side. "Once you're through this one, it gets bigger for quite some time," he said, as if talking to a 14-year-old from one of his hoods in the woods programs. "Just give it a try. If you don't like it, you can go back out."

I was ready to go back out. But I also really wanted to continue. I narrowed my focus to the wall beside me, to the rivulets of water on the limestone, the strange knobs and tendrils of rock. Slowly, I felt my breathing slow, the panicky feeling subside. I decided to go for it. I squirmed through to Steve, and he smiled and pointed the way ahead. "No way," I said. "You go first—I've got to be last in line.

We were underground nearly two hours, exploring Swildon's upper passages. We clambered up and down drop-offs and through streams running along the floor. We climbed down and then back up a eight-foot waterfall. We had to boulder up through a hole named the Toilet Bowl. It was fascinating and beautiful, and at times even fun. My claustrophobia never got too severe after the initial panics, but it was always there, just under the surface, ready to rear up and smother me. I was glad to have entered Swildon's, but I was also very glad to get out.

Walking back to the car, Chris, my wife, was hopping with enthusiasm. She had loved it, couldn't wait to go again. "You're on your own, honey," I told her. Once was enough for me.

At times, I've been known to grow impatient with gripped climbers or with friends who are spooked by heights on a mountain scramble. What is wrong with them? I'll think. But now that I've felt a little taste of what they must be feeling, I hope I remember it the next time I'm with an acrophobe. Neither claustrophia nor acrophobia is an irrational fear, after all. And, of the two, acrophobia has more power to preserve one's life. But caving still seems nuts to me. Get me back to the airy perils of cliffs and ice falls.

In the photo: Yup, that's me, smiling for the camera, but not because I'm enjoying myself. OK, maybe just a little.... Photo by Steve Cosh

Probably Not the Best Screw

2009-12-18T16:07:00.002-07:00

Never Stop Litigating

2009-12-16T07:39:00.004-07:00

I just had to laugh when I heard the North Face was suing an upstart company in the Midwest that calls itself the South Butt and sells clothing with parody logos and slogans ("Never Stop Relaxing"). A very similar scenario unfolded about a decade ago when I was running Rock & Ice.

The old Franklin Climbing company had been running a series of full-page ads featuring portraits of interesting climbers posing against a white backdrop. The ads were simple and sharp, and we liked having them in the mag. In early 1999, the company sent us a particularly funny one: a photo of a baby boy sitting on the floor and peering into the front side of his diaper, with the tiny tagline "Never Stop Explorin.' " We thought it was harmless and cute, and if we thought about it at all (which I doubt), we expected the North Face would laugh along.

Uh-uh. Shortly after the ad appeared, I had to take a call from the company's CEO—the CEO, for cripe's sake—who said he was suing Franklin and that we'd better stop running that ad immediately or he'd sue us too. I groveled a bit (hey, we needed the North Face's advertising money more than we needed a freedom-of-speech case), and the problem went away. The Franklins' problems with TNF eased, too, although probably not as quickly.

This time, though, the legal action may have backfired for TNF. In the age of viral information, the North Face just looks like a bully, and the South Butt had more than 4,400 fans on its Facebook page this morning. They're undoubtedly selling loads more clothes than they ever expected, though I doubt they were prepared for the onslaught of orders.

I also doubt the South Butt will be in business for long. The Franklin incident seemed ridiculous to everyone but TNF, but in this instance I'd say the North Face actually has a very strong case—I mean, South Butt is trying to sell its clothes primarily by trashing the TNF brand. That's not right. But for the North Face, will winning in court mean losing with the public?

Lacelle Avalanche Video Analysis

2009-12-12T16:55:00.001-07:00

Doug Chabot, director of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center, prepared this excellent video analysis and reconstruction of the avalanche accident that claimed the life of the great Canadian ice climber Guy Lacelle last Thursday in Montana's Hyalite Canyon. This tragic incident and Doug's timely video are sobering reminders of the dangers that lurk in seemingly innocuous terrain. You just can never let down your guard—ever.

Nordic Skating

2009-12-05T08:26:00.002-07:00

The December issue of 5280 has my story about three new "adrenaline" sports to try in Colorado this winter. Of the three, by far the most intriguing to me is Nordic skating, combining the long blades of speed skaters with cross-country ski boots and bindings for long-distance cruising on ice. Although few people in Colorado have even heard of Nordic skating, it's big in New England, where Vermont-based Nordic Skater sells and rents the gear, starting as low as $89 for skates and bindings. (Most cross-country skiers already own the necessary boots.) As a kid in Maine, I skated along winding streams to connect chains of frozen ponds, and when I talked to Jamie Hess, owner of Nordic Skater, I was pleased to hear that people still skate up the Royal River near my hometown. There's nothing quite like speeding over bumpy ice along a twisting creek, each bend bringing a new revelation. I can't wait to try it again.

National Geo Adventure Calls It Quits

2009-12-03T11:21:00.001-07:00

The December/January issue of National Geographic Adventure will be the last one, another victim of the Great Recession and the changing tides—the tsunami—affecting print journalism. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. Since its launch in 1999 under editor John Rasmus, the magazine has balanced superb reporting—I've got The New Age of Adventure collection by my bedside—with massive amounts of trip and equipment service material, and it was backed by the mighty National Geographic Society. I didn't do much work for the magazine, but I always enjoyed my dealings with its editors, especially Cliff Ransom and former editors Jim Meigs and James Vlahos. Steve Casimiro, the magazine's peripatetic West Coast editor, has just published a good report and reflection on his magazine's demise at his Adventure Life blog. Good luck to everyone.

Off Route in Nepal

2009-12-03T10:19:00.001-07:00

Is it just me, or does it seem misguided that Nepal's cabinet ministers are staging a meeting at Everest base camp to call attention to global warming's threat to the Himalaya? The ministers have flown to Lukla and soon will continue by air to base camp. That's X number of helicopter flights from Kathmandu to Lukla, plus Y flights to Everest base camp, plus Z return flights, all adding up to a nasty output of carbon emissions. The threats to Nepalese mountain communities are real, but is flying around the Himalaya the best way to publicize them?

Deep Water Reservoir-ing

2009-12-01T08:12:00.001-07:00

Now this looks like fun...

Deep-water soloing above Lake Powell. Photos by Rachel Kemble (upper left, courtesy of Josh Thompson) and Greg D., used with permission. See Mountain Project for more pics, including some enticing walls with not-so-soft landings.

Colorado MoJo

2009-11-25T12:18:00.001-07:00

I've launched a new website that I invite you to explore. The Colorado Mountain Journal exclusively covers human-powered mountain sports. All Colorado. Mostly backcountry. I created it to provide news and a bit of inspiration for the sports I enjoy most—climbing, backcountry skiing, hiking, and trail running—in ways I couldn't finding anywhere else, in print or online.

Please take a look and let me know what you think. I'd be grateful for suggestions, critiques, contributions of news and other stories from the Colorado mountains, or links from your site. Have a great holiday!

The Cougars of Climbing

2009-11-25T07:05:00.001-07:00

Too funny. This calendar of thirty- and forty-something women of climbing is the work of Miss March: Misty Murphy. Check out all 12 Cougars of Climbing, and click below to listen to Murphy's hilarious "Cougar Climber" rap.

Monday Morning Time Waster

2009-11-23T10:52:00.001-07:00

Fantastic sequence of annotated "instructional" clips from the baddest bad climbing film of all: Vertical Limit.

Block That Cliché

2009-11-22T10:15:00.007-07:00

"Bullet hard." Can we please retire this phrase in writing about rock climbing? I don't know much about guns and ammo, but I do know that, unless you're talking about armor-piercing rounds, most bullets are made of lead coated with copper. Neither metal is any match for granite—or even solid sandstone. I've even seen "bullet-hard ice" in ad copy. Seriously?

Now, "bulletproof rock" is an acceptable phrase. But "bullet hard" or simply "bullet"—these have got to go.

Got a favorite overworn climbing cliché? Post it in the comments.

The Great Alaskan-Yukon Loop

2009-11-18T13:02:00.006-07:00

If it were coming from anyone but Andrew Skurka, you'd dismiss the proposed "Great Alaskan-Yukon Loop" as sheer fantasy. But Skurka, whose accomplishments include a 6,875-mile trek around the American West (2007) and a 7,778-mile trek across the continent (2004-05), has the experience and determination to just-maybe pull this one off. Here's how he describes this ski-raft-hiking odyssey on his website:

"The Great Alaskan-Yukon Loop (GAYL) is a 4,500-mile wilderness adventure around the state of Alaska and the Canadian territory of Yukon that connects many of this region's most magnificent natural features, including the Alaska Range, Wrangell's, Lost Coast, Coast Range, Yukon River, Richardson Mountains, and finally the Brooks Range. The GAYL is not an official trail or route; it has never been completed, attempted, and possibly even conceived of until now; it is almost entirely off-trail and it crosses only about 10 roads for its entire length."

He continues:

"In March 2010 I will begin the GAYL in the village of Kotzebue, located on the Chukchi Sea in northwestern Alaska. I will ski south to join the historic Iditarod Trail, which I'll follow southeast into the Alaska Range. Spring will arrive as I am traversing this range, which is home to North America's tallest mountain, Mt. McKinley. Near the eastern end of this range I will begin packrafting the Copper River and its tributaries towards the ocean. After several hundred miles along the rugged Lost Coast, I will trek the historic Chilkoot Pass Trail from the Inside Passage to the Yukon River, which I will float to Dawson City. A route through the Ogilvie Mountains, down the Miner River, and through the Richardson Mountains will link me into the eastern edge of the Brooks Range, which I will finish traversing just before Fall finally succumbs to Winter again."

Mind blowing. Who knows if this is possible, or if Skurka will even find the resources to attempt it. But this sort of uncertainty is the nature of real adventure.

By the way, Skurka is looking for a better name for his project. Leave a comment with your suggestion, or you can post it directly at his website.

The Alpine Briefs

2009-11-16T11:10:00.000-07:00

Alpine Briefs 5 is live: alpine starts, a new Zion wall route, first ascents in Newfoundland, whipper videos, and much more.

Friday Morning Mood Brightener

2009-11-13T08:47:00.001-07:00

Mt. Shuksan,with Mt. Baker in the distance, at sunset—another astonishing aerial photo from the one-of-a-kind Pacific Northwest pilot and photographer John Scurlock.

24 Hours of Gadd

2009-11-11T07:56:00.006-07:00

Will Gadd will attempt to climb near-vertical ice for 24 hours straight in early January during the Ouray Ice Festival, as a benefit for the dZi Foundation. Gadd will be climbing the classic WI4 Pick O' the Vic. If he manages to complete the 150-foot route three times an hour, he'll be right around 11,000 vertical feet for the day. Think of the late-night heckling opportunities!

Rock Climbing Feat of the Year?

2009-11-06T06:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the blind Colorado climber Erik Weihenmayer climbed the Naked Edge (5.11b, 8 or 9 pitches) in Eldorado Canyon. Weihenmayer climbed with Brady Robinson, executive director of the Access Fund, and Charley Mace, a longtime friend and climbing partner. Cedar Wright filmed the ascent, so someday we'll be able to see it for ourselves.

The five main pitches of the Edge are comprised of near-vertical to overhanging sandstone, notorious for tiny holds and complex sequences. Three of pitches are 5.11, and one is a very tricky 5.10. Weihenmayer had never been on the route, yet Robinson and Wright said he only fell once or twice on each pitch, except for the final overhanging lieback and hand crack. Both men marveled at Weihenmayer's ability to quickly figure out 5.11 moves, and both said it might be the most impressive climbing feat they'd ever seen.

Not Too Big to Fail

2009-11-05T14:35:00.006-07:00

Joe Puryear has just posted one of his superb desert trip reports (24 towers in 20 days) at SuperTopo. Buried in the post, in a caption to Joe's photo of the Cobra in the Fisher Towers, was this nugget:

"A warning to all about the Cobra: the Cobra shuddered and swayed twice while we were on it. I've never heard of or had it do that before. Fun times..."

I climbed the Cobra many years ago, but when a group of friends repeated it recently after doing nearby Ancient Arts, I stayed on the ground and took photos. One time up the Cobra was fun; twice seemed like pushing my luck. The summit is a tilted block merely balanced on a spindly neck of pebbly stone. The tower didn't shudder or sway when I climbed it, nor when my friends did it a couple of years ago. But if the Cobra is swaying now, it may be about to strike. Who will get the "last ascent?" And who will get snake-bit?

Postscript: A friend from Europe wrote after reading this item: "I feel the final sentences in your post incite people to do something which perhaps they shouldn't. Surely if the block is unstable, if it took millions of years to form in the fragile desert ecosystem, then perhaps we climbers should lead by example and call it a day." Come to think of it, he's right. To protect this cool, unique formation—to say nothing of climbers' lives—this climb ought to be "retired" for good.

The Obscure Tour: Bullet

2009-11-03T07:01:00.003-07:00

In early season, the most rewarding ice and mixed climbs often are those on the obscure tour—climbs that might not seem worth the trouble when fat ice is everywhere. Sometimes, the result is a happy discovery, as with Bullet, a short route at the foot of Hallett Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. I'd never heard of anyone climbing this route since its first ascent nearly 10 years ago, but this fall, thanks to a couple of compelling photos at MountainProject.com, Bullet has seen a flurry of attempts and ascents.

As Jack Roberts and I neared the base of the route on Sunday after the relatively short walk from Bear Lake (less than 1.5 hours), we were surprised to hear voices—two climbers were just starting the climb. We watched them complete the first pitch as we geared up, and then Jack started up after them. Bullet isn't super-inspiring from the ground: After about 50 feet of easy ice climbing, it's all gray rock above. But the climbing was much better than it looked.
After taking a brief gander at the crux of pitch one, a poorly protected lieback, Jack opted for a bulging but well-protected variation to the right. Good stuff.

The party ahead of us hadn't liked the look of the second pitch, which follows a steep corner to a leftward traverse under a big roof; the leader bailed after about 15 feet, citing a lack of pro. Attempting the first ascent, Greg Sievers had taken a 25-footer from this roof. Neither of these facts gave me much confidence as Jack handed me our jumbo rack of rock gear, but, on the other hand, I could see that Bullet suited my style. The angle was less than vertical, and tiny footholds dotted the icy rock. I'm no good on really steep routes—rock or ice—because I don't have the strength and confidence for sustained overhangs, but on good days I can stand on small holds for a long time and work out moves and protection. This was a good day, and as I moved up the corner I was able to find decent pro every few feet. Below the roof, I spent many minutes balancing on monopoints and carefully slotting tiny wired nuts and C3 cams into the ceiling. The slab below the roof was nearly blank, but I could see jugs at the far side. When I was more or less happy with the pro, I committed to the traverse and quickly but carefully dry-tooled across the slab to reach a good stance and more pro.

Every once and a while, I feel really great about a lead. Bullet required some skill, but the real key was patience and mind control—the willingness to hang in there on tiny, tenuous holds until I'd done what had to be done with the gear, and then—and only then—switch to confident but controlled aggressiveness for the short run-out to good holds. Whether it's traditional rock climbing, steep ice, or dicey aid, the best climbers seem to muster this combination of patience and aggression at will. It rarely happens for me, and it's just so satisfying when it does.

Books to Read: Banff Festival Winners

2009-11-02T07:58:00.001-07:00

Jerry Moffatt's Revelations is the grand-prize winner at the annual Banff Book Festival. I had high hopes that Moffatt's memoir would be good, in part because it was cowritten with the very talented Niall Grimes, and now it would seem to be a must-read.

Steve House's excellent Beyond the Mountain (reviewed here, with a follow-up note here) took the prize for Mountain Literature. Sarah Garlick's climbing geology book Flakes, Jugs, and Splitters won for Mountain Exposition. And the book I'm perhaps most keen to see is The Alps: A Bird's Eye View, by Slovenian photographer Matevz Lenarcic, who captured his aerial images from an ultralight motorized glider. Other winners: The Great Polar Journey: In the Footsteps of Nansen, by Børge Ousland; The Last of His Kind: The Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn, America's Boldest Mountaineer, by David Roberts; Royal Robbins: To be Brave—My Life, Volume One, by Royal Robbins; and In the Bear's House, by Bruce Hunter.

Friday Morning Time Waster: 33 Years Ago on Ben Nevis

2009-10-30T07:41:00.001-06:00

John Cunningham soloing a pastiche of routes on Ben Nevis in 1976. This understated, beautiful film was shot by Charles Grosbeck and produced by Yvon Chouinard. Watching Cunningham's speed and technique, it's easy to see why Scottish climbing and equipment were so influential on the development of modern ice climbing. Tragically, Cunningham died in 1980 when a wave swept him into the sea below the cliffs of Anglesey.

Revolver Carabiner for Glacier Travel

2009-10-29T10:34:00.003-06:00

Andrew McLean has posted an interesting idea at his often excellent Straight Chuter blog: Carry a DMM Revolver locking carabiner instead of a pulley in your crevasse-rescue kit for glacier travel. The idea is not that the Revolver has less friction than the average pulley—McLean's thinking is that this ’biner can serve many different purposes in glacial mountaineering and skiing, while the pulley really has only one use. Gear that does double or triple duty is good gear for lightweight ascents.

I'd be wary of the pulley (and, for that matter, the gate) icing up on this carabiner, which was designed for rock climbing. But it definitely seems like a worthwhile idea to experiment with.

McLean's blog has a few other interesting posts on glacier gear, including ropes and snow anchors.

You Gotta Love Colorado

2009-10-28T13:52:00.009-06:00

Yesterday: Just my wife and I, all by ourselves, at the mega-popular Cactus Cliff at Shelf Road; rock climbing in T-shirts (at least for a while); pale sun gleaming off the distant Sangre de Cristo mountains. The calm before the storm.

Today: A foot of snow on my deck at noon, and it's not supposed to stop snowing until tomorrow night.

Later Today: Went skiing in the nearby open space late this afternoon. Pretty sticky, nasty snow and a stiff wind in the face, but, as they often say about alpine climbing, it doesn't have to be fun to be fun. Enzo sure liked it.

Banff Photo Contest Winners

2009-10-26T14:01:00.006-06:00

It looks like a scene from Lord of the Rings, but in fact it's Canadian Nathalie Daoust's image from Switzerland, the grand-prize winner in the 2009 Banff Mountain Photography Competition. Three of my favorites from the other winners:

Look very closely at that last one: There's a North Vancouver mountain biker suspended in a dew drop. No Photoshop involved, swears photographer Jordan Manley, just a good eye and painstaking set-up.

See all the 2009 winners at the Banff Centre website.

The Ultimate Tick List

2009-10-23T07:33:00.005-06:00

At Rock & Ice, we once published a supplement called the Ultimate Tick List. We surveyed readers for their recommendations of the absolute best boulder problems and rock, ice, and alpine climbs in North America, and then compiled the answers into a list of 500 climbs to go at. As often happens in these surveys, the response rate wasn't as great as we'd have liked, and some geographic areas were woefully under-represented. We editors had to do some backing and filling, and mistakes were made. One climb was listed twice (under slightly different names), and somehow the short, slick, forgettable sport climb Deck Chairs on the Titanic at Table Mountain made it onto the list of the absolute best climbs in Colorado. But it was still a cool project, and readers seemed to like it. Climbers love hit lists.

Now, the excellent Mountain Project website has created a new method for generating tick lists. Using a secret algorithm that weighs star ratings and other factors, Mountain Project automatically generates a list of "The Classics" for each area it covers, whether that area is Boulder (3,201 routes in the database this morning) or the west face of the Bastille in Eldorado Canyon (20 routes). It's a slick gizmo, and it seems to work pretty well, though of course it's easy to quibble. Example: The Wasp, a 95-foot route on a small crag in Rocky Mountain National Park is picked as one of Colorado's most classic "alpine rock" routes. Really? Overall, though, Mountain Project has created a very useful tool.

I wondered if I could create a personal Ultimate Tick List by looking at Mountain Project's lists of classics at several areas where I've done a lot of climbing over the years. How many climbs would I have missed in the grades I usually climb, which top out at 5.11 on rock these days? Were there entire areas I should be moving to the top of my hit list? I looked at Eldorado Canyon in Colorado, Cathedral Ledge in New Hampshire, the Moab area in Utah, Yosemite Valley, Colorado ice & mixed, and Colorado alpine rock.

Eldorado was a bust: I've already done all 20 routes on the classics list, though I'm sure I could find some hidden gems if I drilled down to the lists at individual crags or sectors. At Cathedral Ledge, I found only one climb I hadn't done, and it's a beauty: Camber, a two-pitch partly bolted route that didn't exist when I did most of my New Hampshire climbing, back in the ’80s. That's definitely worth putting on the list. I suppose I also should add the Prow, because I've only aid-climbed it. A free attempt certainly needs to be on my list. Liquid Sky (5.13b)? I don't think so. The list of 20 classics in the Moab area held two routes in Indian Creek Canyon I haven't done—nice to know about, but not worth a trip in their own right.

Yosemite Valley was more interesting. Midnight Lightning was out—I'll never get farther than fondling the starting holds on that one. But I realized I'd never done some moderate classics, like Nutcracker or Sons and Yesterday. And though I've done three El Cap routes, one of them is not the Nose. Hmmm.....

I was also surprised to see how many classic routes I still haven't done in Colorado's high mountains: the Little Bear-Blanca traverse, Wham Ridge on Vestal Peak, Ellingwood Ledges on Crestone Needle, Syke's Sickle on Spearhead, and Pervertical Sanctuary on the Diamond. Makes me wish winter weren't coming on so I could get after this list.

On the other hand, the richest lode of undone classics I found is just about to come into season. I was astonished to see that I had never climbed almost half the classic routes on the Colorado ice and mixed list. Most of these are in southwestern Colorado, a six-hour drive from home, but that's a pretty lame excuse. So here's my goal for the 2009-2010 ice season: Finish the list. I may have to find someone to drag me up the Talisman (WI6 M6), and one or two of these routes may never come into condition this year, but the winter is long and, for the moment at least, my motivation is high.

Mountain Project's Classics lists offer a great tool for planning visits to unfamiliar areas, and you may be surprised at what you learn about old familiar crags. However, I did notice that Deck Chairs on the Titanic made the list for Table Mountain. No system is perfect.

Review: "Progression"

2009-10-21T11:20:00.004-06:00

If you're the type who dismisses climbing films as amateurish assemblages of clips cobbled together with no story line and a boorish soundtrack—in a phrase: climbing porn—do yourself a favor and check out Progression, the latest film from Big Up Productions (i.e., brothers Josh and Brett Lowell plus Cooper Roberts). It will change your perception of what a climbing film can be.

Progression is a collection of mini-stories about major ascents and ground-breaking climbers—in that way, it's similar to past films of the type. But the quality of the photography, the camera angles, the storytelling, and above all the editing raise Progression to a new level, surpassing even the high bar set by previous Big Up titles. Each segment is compelling—Progression even manages to make lead-climbing competitions feel super-exciting—and the transitions are smooth. The filmmakers assume they have knowledgeable viewers, and they adhere to the storyteller's mantra: Show, don't tell. When Adam Ondra makes 18 big moves above his last pro on the second ascent of Papichulo (5.15a), the narrator doesn't have to tell us, "Look at that run-out!" and Josh Lowell doesn't. When Kevin Jorgeson's belayer fumbles with the Gri-gri just as Jorgeson is about to attempt the second ascent of the Groove (E11), the film doesn't comment. We get it.

Watching Progression, I realized this film does for hard rock climbing in the year 2008 what the American Alpine Journal (which I help edit) does for alpine and big-wall routes around the world: It selects and documents many of the best routes of the year for posterity. But Progression (along with Big Up's Dosage series of annual videos from years past) does this in a visceral way that print can never achieve. It makes me jealous of the filmmakers—imagine if it were possible to create such a work for alpine climbing each year!

Big Up is offering Progression in both DVD and downloadable forms; the download costs just $19.95 (a saving of 10 bucks), but it's a 1.8 GB file, so you need a good connection, and it doesn't come with the many extras included with the DVD. These include a long segment on Tommy Caldwell and Justen Sjong's first free ascent of Magic Mushroom on El Cap, which only gets a tease in the final cut of the film. Still, the HD download version looks great on my computer and gives me the opportunity to open the film whenever I'm bored at work.

By the way, the film has a long segment on Caldwell's super-project on El Cap's southeast face, but doesn't ever name the route. At the time, Caldwell was trying to maintain a not-too-well-kept-secret. The route is Mescalito, and Tommy and Kevin Jorgeson are back on it this fall.

Tuesday Morning Time Waster II

2009-10-20T08:50:00.000-06:00

"Bit of a sneaky line there!"

Tuesday Morning Time Waster

2009-10-20T08:11:00.002-06:00

"Mom, come here, there's a black guy down here!"

Total Abandon!

2009-10-16T07:45:00.005-06:00

After several false starts due to illness and road closures, Jack Roberts and I made it to Pikes Peak yesterday and climbed the classic ice route Total Abandon. This climb forms occasionally in the fall on the right side of a dramatic granite buttress on Pikes' north face, starting about 900 feet below the 14,115-foot summit. The approach is more akin to a Chamonix cable-car lift than the usual American wilderness slog: To get to the route, you drive up the Pikes Peak toll road ($10/person), park at 13,400 feet, and follow the so-called Hero Traverse for an hour. But you have to be fast: The road doesn't open until 9 a.m. in late fall, and there's a $100 per hour fine if you don't make it down to the gate by 5 p.m.

There's also the problem of knowing if the road will even open for the day. We started calling on Monday afternoon, hoping to climb the route this week, but the toll road was closed on the upper mountain Tuesday and Wednesday because of snow and high winds. With a better forecast for Thursday, we called again Wednesday afternoon, but the staff wouldn't commit to opening the road the next day. Since we live two hours' drive away, we decided to pack both rock and ice gear, plan to arrive soon after the gate opened at 9, and hope for the best. When we arrived, we were told the road was only open to the 16-mile mark—two miles short of the Hero Traverse—but with clear skies overhead we figured they'd probably get the road open by the time we got there. And that's what happened: A ranger had blocked the road just above the parking area, but that was OK with us. We had no intention of driving to the summit.

I had never been on Pikes Peak. Although it towers 8,000 feet over Colorado Springs, the mountain seems like a bland hump from a distance. I was surprised at how beautiful and complex the peak appeared up-close. Negotiating the Hero Traverse into the north face cirque, we saw countless pink-granite buttresses and intriguing gullies. The views made me want to return in spring, when this basin is filled with corn snow, and in summer for high-altitude rock climbs.

We turned a corner and were happy to see a line of white ice on our route, deep in a dark corner. The late road opening had forced perhaps the latest alpine start I'd ever experienced—we didn't rope up until around 11:15—but the three-pitch route went smoothly: A thin ribbon of sticky ice and short mixed steps; a very steep chimney with ice on the left wall and rock on the right, made awkward because both of us wore packs; and a long, somewhat tedious escape pitch of steep snow with occasional tenuous chockstones to surmount. At nearly 14,000 feet, we were not moving quickly, but even so we were back at the car by 3 p.m. There, we found a flat tire on Jack's car.

Changing a tire at 13,400 feet in mid-October is no joy, but we still had plenty of time to spare before the 5 p.m. penalty hour would begin. Even with the flat and a stop for a repair on the way home, we were back in Boulder less than 12 hours after leaving—one of the strangest and yet most satisfying alpine days I've done in years.

The Wisdom of Will

2009-10-14T09:33:00.004-06:00

Will Gadd has been posting a fascinating series of mini-essays on training and competition at his always-excellent blog, and his "Random Training Thoughts #5: Mental is particularly interesting. This paragraph really jumped out at me, vis-à-vis my own climbing:

"Worry about the things you can control, and get them right. Don't show up with your blown-out laces about to break. Be well-fed, well-hydrated, well-dressed, etc., etc. This a really deep well to look down once you get going on it..."

So true. Basically it's piss-poor preparation equals piss-poor performance. We all know it, but how often do we look deep into that well and make the changes we ought to? Speaking specifically of competition, Gadd continues:

"You can't control other people's results, or even your own. You can only control how well you perform. If you perform well you'll get a good result, but worrying about the result is wasted energy."

I rarely train intensively for my sports, and I compete even less often, but Gadd's advice just as well to the "non-competitive" climbing I love, especially alpine climbing with its many variables. If you prepare well, make good decisions about the things you can't control (weather, snow conditions, etc.), and enjoy the climb itself more than the summit, you'll be a happy and successful climber.

But don't take my word for it. Read Will's excellent posts for yourself.

Altitude: It's More Dangerous Than You Thought

2009-10-13T07:41:00.002-06:00

A number of years ago, I climbed from the 14,000-foot camp on Denali to the Football Field at 19,500 feet in six or seven hours. I was very well acclimatized to 14,000 feet, and I didn't feel any symptoms of acute mountain sickness other than being very tired. Yet, according to an article in the October Outside, I likely experienced some brain damage during this ascent.

Douglas Fields, a climber and neuroscientist, reported on the work of Spanish neuroradiologist Nicholás Fayed, who has studied brain scans of mountaineers returning from relatively low peaks around the world. It's long been known that high-altitude mountaineers may experience some permanent changes in their brains—and resulting loss of function—after climbing over 8,000 meters without supplementary oxygen. But Fayed and colleagues are documenting abnormalities in the brains of climbers on peaks as low as Mont Blanc (15,771 feet).

The good news? Doctors believe that proper acclimatization—averaging no more than 1,000 to 2,000 feet per day of ascent during a big climb—can prevent this kind of damage. The bad news? Few climbers have the time or patience to go that slow.

Taking the Tools for a Walk

2009-10-12T06:33:00.008-06:00

The Setup:
1) The road past Brainard Lake to the Indian Peaks trailheads was open unusually late this fall.
2) Ice has already been climbed this month on Pikes Peak and in Rocky Mountain National Park. Jack Roberts, my climbing partner, had climbed near Longs Peak just a couple of days earlier.
3. Jeff Lowe had said "good mixed lines" occasionally form on the north side of Little Pawnee Peak, above Brainard Lake.
4. Snow had fallen off and on in these mountains for a couple of weeks, the perfect setup for melt-freeze autumn mixed climbing.

The Reality:
1. About a foot of snow on the ground at 11,000.
2. Almost no ice. Seems like it's been too cloudy and cold in this drainage to form ice. No melting, too much freezing.

Oh well. Sometimes you just have to go look for yourselves.

If It's Good Enough for Steve Climber, It's Good Enough for Me

2009-10-10T10:53:00.002-06:00

"Depending on the conditions, I wear any and all of the Archwood Flextrek packs." —Steve Climber, the outdoors' ultimate enthusiast.

OK, this clip is a year old. But it hasn't been on the Mountain World before, and it's still pretty funny. "You can dominate the landscape!"

Exaggerated Snow Reports? Say It Ain't So!

2009-10-09T06:43:00.014-06:00

Loveland opened Wednesday with an 74-inch base and eight inches of fresh powder. A-Basin will open today, but later than scheduled because they're still digging out the chairlifts. Believe it? Then you likely also trust the resorts' regular snow reports. Dartmouth professors have proved what we already know: "Ski resorts self-report 23 percent more natural snowfall on weekends," even though "there is no such weekend effect in government precipitation data." Amusingly, the study noted that such exaggeration fell sharply last winter after people started posting real-time iPhone reports at SkiReport.com.

BTW, the part about Loveland and Arapahoe Basin opening this week is true. Colorado has had an exceptionally cold, wet fall. Really.

Department of Weenieness: Slab Division

2009-10-08T18:18:00.008-06:00

Is it just me, or does it seem crazy that slabs—the routes that feel least secure to climb, where you might grease off at any moment, and where it's nearly guaranteed that you won't fall cleanly into empty space—are almost always protected with widely spaced bolts? Why aren't slabs better protected?

Of course there are historical reasons for this. In the old days, climbs were established on the lead, and the leader could only stop moving and hand-drill a bolt if he could find a ledge or a minuscule foothold to stand on. No wonder the bolts were far apart. Today, almost every bolted climb is established on rappel, and the only limit to the number of bolts the first ascensionist places is stinginess. Or is it? There's also a weird foreshortening effect that somehow makes bolts look closer together (from the ground) on low-angle terrain than they do on overhangs, and this works against adequate bolting on slabs. A line of bolts that would look perfectly natural on a steep limestone sport climb might look obscene on a granite slab. And it's a kinesthetic too: You tend to cover ground much quicker on slabs (once you stop quaking and start moving), and so you come up on the bolts quicker.

Still, grade for grade, most climbers are much more likely to fall from a slab climb than a vertical climb, and for historic, aesthetic, and kinesthetic reasons, they're going to fall a lot farther. It just doesn't seem right.

[Photo: Jason Kaplan/MountainProject.com]

Wednesday Morning Time Waster: Cross-Country Snowboarding. It's phlat!

2009-10-07T13:09:00.003-06:00

Wednesday Morning Time Waster: Wrangell–St. Elias

2009-10-07T12:49:00.010-06:00

If this doesn't make you want to go to Alaska, nothing will. Click here for a gorgeous narrated slide show of a 33-day tour of Wrangell–St. Elias National Park: 25 days on foot, eight days in a raft. Zero days on trails. Zero non-ranger visitors encountered. Incredible photos.

Anyone know Gnarwhale, who posted this on Teton Gravity Research, or the other folks in these photos? I'd like to give credit where it's due. This is one of the best trip reports I've ever seen online. Tip of the hat to Fitz Cahall for pointing it out. Update: According to a comment below, Gnarwhale is Jim Harris from Salt Lake City.

Events You'll Never See in the USA

2009-10-06T21:51:00.003-06:00

The Pro BASE World Cup: BASE jumping for distance and speed. Uh-huh. Picture this in Yosemite Valley. Not gonna happen.

Book News: Desert Towers, Kor, Skinner, and More

2009-10-01T08:46:00.010-06:00

Steve "Crusher" Bartlett came by the other day to show me the layout of a super-cool new book he's doing on the desert towers of the Colorado Plateau. It's a collection of Crusher's research and personal anecdotes, plus other people's stories. (He's reproducing my 1997 story from Rock & Ice about tower routes in Utah's Monument Basin; that's me belaying Dave Goldstein on the cover, during a hammerless ascent of the Shark's Fin's wicked-steep northeast arête.) The coolest thing about Crusher's book, which he expects to have out in early 2010 (Sharp End Books), is the wealth of historical photos he's managed to dig up. I found a few old familiar shots of Layton Kor and the like, but I'd never seen dozens and dozens of the other images in the coffee-table book.

The digging Crusher has done is a huge service to fans of climbing history, and it makes me wonder what other great photos from important American climbing areas are languishing in elderly climbers' closets, the Kodachrome slides slowly fading. Hopefully, other climber-authors will be as inspired as Crusher has been to root out these gems before they're lost forever.

A couple of other interesting books in the works: Stewart Green and Cameron Burns are both working on Layton Kor books (a scrapbook of Kor stories and a biography—amazing there hasn't been one yet), and Joe Josephson is writing a book about Todd Skinner.

The Stone Masters: California Rock Climbers in the Seventies, with photos by Dean Fidelman and text by John Long, will be available any day. Should be very good, and very popular, though I confess I'm just about over the whole Yosemite in the ’70s thing.

Finally, three esteemed Canadian authors and photographers, Chris Atkinson, Kevin McLane, and Marc Piché, are teaming up on the Alpine Canada Book Project, which will produce two books: a selected-climbs guidebook and a coffee-table book, both about Canada's finest mountain routes. Due out in 2010. Interestingly, the books are being copublished by Elaho Press and Arc'teryx, the gear and clothing maker, just as Patagonia Inc. recently published Steve House's memoir. Have we come to the point where enlisting a big corporate backer is the only way to get important climbing books published?

Kor in Rifle

2009-09-29T06:41:00.002-06:00

Mike Pont recently told me a fun story about the early climbing days in Rifle, Colorado, where he was part of a small crew that bolted many of the classic sport routes in the limestone canyon, back in the early 1990s. Decades earlier, Layton Kor had aid-climbed a couple of routes in the canyon—just a few of the hundreds of new routes he established throughout the American West in the 1950s and ’60s. One day, Kor was fishing for trout in Rifle Creek as Mike and Kurt Smith bolted routes in what would become the Wasteland cave. Kor strolled over to watch the two climbers blasting in bolts with a power drill. "Man," he said, "if I'd had one of those things, you guys would have nothing left!"

Kor, now 70, lives in Arizona and is suffering from kidney disease. Climbers Stewart Green and Steph Davis have organized an online effort to raise money for his deductibles and copays. The Layton Kor Climbing website is packed with great Kor photos and fun prizes for donors. Kudos for this cool effort to help out one of America's greatest rock climbers.

Friday Morning Time-Waster: Tight Turns

2009-09-25T06:46:00.002-06:00

Skier and helmet-cam videographer Cody Townsend was coy about the location of this amazing slot, but Steve Romeo of TetonAT identified it: the Terminal Cancer Couloir in Nevada's Ruby Mountains. Skiing Magazine posted the same clip and did a little interview with Townsend.

Q. Can you...give us some tips on how to ski a narrow shot like this?

A. When it comes to skiing a couloir fast, i.e. no mountaineer jump turning, the key is to get a little bit of slide out of the end of your turn. If you full carve slalom turn it, you'll be going out-of-control fast in a matter of moments. The little "slarve" (sliding-carve, aka McConkey Turn) at the end of your turn helps control your speed but it still allows you to keep your tips down the fall line. My last piece of advice: Be in very good shape. It was such a tiring climb and ski that my legs felt like Jet Li had used them for kicking practice once this thing was done.

McSparseness: Find the Dark Spots on the Map. Go There.

2009-09-24T07:31:00.007-06:00

This brilliant map, created by photographer Steve Von Worley, visually represents the density of McDonald's restaurants—all 13,000-plus of them—in the Lower 48. The bright lights of the Golden Arches sprawl across the map in constellations of human yuckiness. So where can we find American wilderness—the black holes of happiness on this map? Best to quote Von Worley himself, who writes on his blog:

"As expected, McDonald’s cluster at the population centers and hug the highway grid. East of the Mississippi, there’s wall-to-wall coverage, except for a handful of meager gaps centered on the Adirondacks, inland Maine, the Everglades, and outlying West Virginia. For maximum McSparseness, we look westward, towards the deepest, darkest holes in our map: the barren deserts of central Nevada, the arid hills of southeastern Oregon, the rugged wilderness of Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains, and the conspicuous well of blackness on the high plains of northwestern South Dakota."

Von Worley calculated that the farthest you can get from a McDonald's in the continental U.S. is in north-central South Dakota: 145 miles by car or 107 miles as the McNugget-hungry crow flies. I'll bet there's a Subway that's closer.

[Tip of the hat to Clyde Soles for pointing out this gem.]

Link of the Week

2009-09-23T07:33:00.007-06:00

There's a great post and discussion at Lou Dawson's Wild Snow site about skiing the 8,000-meter peaks, sparked by various media reports that American Dave Watson "skied K2" this summer. He didn't: He skied on K2, starting from about 8,350 meters on the 8,611-meter peak and descending the notorious Bottleneck on skis; Watson continued down to Camp 3 at ca. 7,250 meters, and then rappeled about 650 meters, past Camp 2 and House's Chimney, before skiing down to advanced base camp. A superb outing, but not a ski descent of K2 by almost anyone's definition.

The definition of "ski descent," and the details of what has been skied on 8,000-meter peaks, is the subject of a long and fascinating series of comments from Watson, the Swedish high-altitude skier Fredrik Ericsson (who also attempted K2 this summer), Andrew McLean, and many other experts. It's a comment trail that stands out for both the caliber of the participants and the civility of the discussion. Well worth reading.

In the photo: Dave Watson's tracks on K2, from the Bottleneck down to the Shoulder (courtesy of K2tracks.com).

Gear I'm Liking

2009-09-21T06:01:00.011-06:00

Here are five pieces of equipment I've been using lately that have become real favorites:

Petzl Reverso 3 belay device. Clean, lightweight, and versatile—this device does it all.

Mountain Hardwear Runout climbing pants. Super-comfortable. Fit well under a harness. Look good enough to wear out to dinner—at least until you smear them with chalk and aluminum grime from your rope.

70-meter ropes. I'm mostly using a Mammut Infinity 9.5, which is incredibly burly despite its slender diameter, but the real point is how I've more or less completely switched over to 70s. A 70-meter cord weighs about 15 percent more than a 60 in the pack, and it's definitely a beast to coil. But the extra length comes in handy so often, whether it's stretching the rope on alpine routes or eliminating an extra rap line while cragging.

Black Diamond C3 cams. My go-to cams for small placements. Though these cams only have three lobes, they feel more secure than similarly sized four-cam units. I'm only using the two largest sizes (red and yellow). Must fix that.

CiloGear 45L WorkSack. Disclaimer: CiloGear is expected to start sponsoring this blog soon. But that doesn't affect my view of this 45-liter pack, which I love for its light weight, clean design, and load-carrying flexibility and comfort. I've only used the pack for backpacking and cragging so far, but there's fresh snow in the mountains above my home this morning—ice season may begin this week!

Alex Honnold: The AAC's Young Climber of the Year (Friday Morning Time Waster)

2009-09-18T07:15:00.011-06:00

Alex Honnold will receive the American Alpine Club's Robert Hicks Bates Award for young climbers (25 and under) in October. Talk about well-deserved! At 23, Honnold already has a list of accomplishments that's broad and deep. Check out the video below for just one aspect: extremely difficult desert crack climbs.

Mountain Movie Clichés

2009-09-17T09:36:00.009-06:00

Attention filmmakers: Enough with the clichéd time-lapse scenes of clouds whipping by mountain peaks! These are usually shot at dawn or sunset, so you get an alpenglow wash across the screen along with the cloudscape. How many mountain films open this way? Far too many. Yeah, we're in a dramatic mountain setting...we get it!

Cliché No. 2: Prayer flags snapping in the breeze.

Cliché No. 3: POV down a gaping crevasse while walking across a ladder in the Khumbu Ice Fall. Move on. We're so over it.

Got a mountain-movie peeve of your own? Share it in the comments.

Highest Tree in the Rockies?

2009-09-14T10:27:00.006-06:00

In late August, Dave Goldstein climbed 13,803-foot Vestal Peak in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, and about 100 feet below the summit he found a small fir tree. This isn't a shrub or wind-stunted krummholz—the tree (probably a subalpine fir) stands thigh-high. It's growing on an east-facing ledge, with a six-foot rock wall behind it, at around 13,700 feet (4,175 meters).

The usual tree line in Colorado is no higher than about 11,700 feet (3,566m). Is this climate change? Or did this seed just find an unusually sheltered spot to take root? Either way, this could be the highest tree in the Rocky Mountains. Have you seen one that's higher? Let me know.

San Juans Peakbagging, Day 3 and Out

2009-09-12T07:37:00.016-06:00

Still damp from the previous day's storm and with no tent to capture our body heat, neither Dave nor I slept well at 11,000 feet in September in our one-pound down bags. Still, the morning dawned clear, and so we packed up and began the the three-mile hike to Jagged Mountain, leaving most of our gear at the cabin. The ground was still wet in No Name valley, but few other signs of the storm remained, and the walls of Monitor and Animas glowed pink across the valley.

Jagged is one of Colorado's few technical mountains—its summit is a 500-foot-high turreted fin, cresting on one spire at 13,824 feet. To reach Jagged's north face, you hike to a 13,000-foot pass and then traverse steep grassy slopes to the base. The route is rated 5.0 to 5.2, but it's mostly steep scrambling up well-trodden grass hummocks and short boulder problems. Good luck sticking the landing if you blow it, though. We carried a 120-foot length of thin rope and a few pieces of gear, but the only time we actually belayed was when we got off-route in the first few feet and had to traverse a delicate, wet slab to regain the correct line.

On top we looked over to Sunlight, Windom, and Eolus, the 14'ers we'd hoped to climb the next day. We could see Pigeon and Turret, and retrace the rough route we had followed through the Ruby Creek basin to get to No Name. But black clouds already were building over Jagged by 10 a.m., and so we hastily downclimbed and rappeled. (A 120-foot rope is perfect for the three rappels on Jagged, by the way.) By 1 p.m. we were back at the cabin, and we decided to push for the railroad tracks. We walked down No Name Creek, following a good trail until the Animas River, where the route devolved to a game trail through dense patches of blowdown. We spent the night by the tracks, outside an old shed we planned to use for shelter if it rained, and then caught the train back to Silverton in the morning. Once again, the day had dawned clear, and of course we kicked ourselves for not pushing over the pass into Chicago Basin the day before—tent or no tent. But we'd already done plenty—12,000 vertical feet and three peaks in two and a half days. And later in the day, as I was driving home, Dave called me from Telluride. I could hear the rain slapping his car. "You should see the sky—it's completely black," he said. "I can't see a single peak." So I guess we made the right call.

San Juans Peakbagging, Day 2.5

2009-09-11T06:54:00.007-06:00

Just after we crossed Ruby–No Name Pass, the storm hit and we scurried down through a boulder field, looking for shelter from the graupel and wind. Eventually we found a hole that we could crawl into. As the storm eased, we emerged and saw a world gone white.

We picked up our packs and continued down steep grassy slopes toward No Name Creek. I had worn boots for this trip but Dave had chosen approach shoes, and now he slipped and fell repeatedly as we plunged into a wet, icy forest. At the foot of the pass, we pushed through a broad stand of head-high willows, soaking us to the skin. After climbing two high 13'ers and crossing two high passes—nearly 5,000 feet of vertical gain and more than 6,000 feet of loss that day—we were tired and ready to stop. Then, as we emerged on the faint trail on the north side of No Name Creek, Dave asked, "Hey, can you check my pack to see if the tent poles are still there?"

Nope. The sleeve of poles and pegs had been stripped from his pack during one of his tumbles or in the dense brush. Dave volunteered to march back through the willows to the last place we had stopped for a break, but it was hopeless. The poles were gone. (Since I had last fixed the poles to Dave's pack, I should blame myself, but I'm only human. Let's split the blame 50-50.) We had four nights ahead of us, a forecast promising a "monsoonal surge" from the remnants of Hurricane Jimena, and no tent.

Dave had read of an abandoned mining cabin a ways down No Name Creek—farther from Jagged Mountain, but perhaps offering a bit of shelter—and so we headed that way. The cabin's roof had gaping holes but was intact in one corner, and as we brewed hot drinks and stripped out of wet clothes, we rigged the tent as a tarp inside the ramshackle structure. It seemed better than nothing. Continuing our full plan—Jagged Mountain and then the high traverse to Chicago Basin for two more days of climbing—now seemed out of the question, given the gloomy forecast. But we could still climb Jagged in the morning, assuming we got any sleep that night.

San Juans Peakbagging, Day 2

2009-09-09T15:54:00.010-06:00

Pigeon Peak was easier than we'd been led to expect—the route was purported to have some 4th class climbing, but we scarcely even used our hands. But the view from the top was spectacular, including a look to the northeast to Jagged Peak. We hoped to sleep at Jagged's foot that same night, and it looked a long, long way away.

After dropping back to our packs at around 12,000 feet, we contoured around Pigeon's south side and up to a saddle at about 13,100 feet. From here we climbed the west side of Turret Peak (13,835 feet) and quickly dropped back to the saddle for lunch. We’d been following two guys from Texas who had been surprised to see us show up in the remote campsite below Pigeon (“We thought you were ghosts!”), but now we left them and plunged into the isolated Ruby Creek drainage. We wouldn’t see another soul for about 24 hours—a huge contrast with busy Chicago Basin, just to our south.

Ruby Creek may be the most wild and beautiful spot I’ve seen in Colorado. It's ringed by 13’ers bristling with gray and orange granite buttresses, many of which have never been climbed. A braided creek winds across the flat floor of the upper basin, like a scene from Alaska or the Canadian Rockies. Although the Ruby Creek drainage has been frequented by Outward Bound crews and other hikers for years, it appeared untrammeled. If a grizzly had splashed across the creek or a wolf loped across the tundra, it wouldn’t have seemed the least bit out of place.

Black clouds piled up as we climbed toward Ruby–No Name Pass to leave this magical basin. After an ill-advised creek-side detour through some willows, I’d lost Dave—he was far ahead. Fearful of the impending storm, I pushed as hard as I could to catch him. We crested the 12,800-foot pass, and then, just down the other side, wind and hail slammed into us. Our plan for the coming days was about to be severely altered.

San Juans Peakbagging, Day 1

2009-09-08T12:38:00.010-06:00

Dave Goldstein wanted to bag the four high 13'ers in the Weminuche Wilderness that he hadn't already ticked, and I'd never climbed any of these remote mountains in southwestern Colorado, so we laid plans for a five-day trip that would take in all four peaks by traversing some high, trail-less passes. In the end, we only got three of the four peaks, in two and a half days, but the experience was unforgettable.

Although you can walk to the isolated outpost of Needleton, where our approach began, most backpackers take the Durango & Silverton Railroad. For $89 round-trip (including a $10 charge for loading your pack into a boxcar), you can ride the historic narrow-gauge train for an hour instead of walking an eight-mile trail. No brainer.

All of the other hikers on the train were headed to Chicago Basin, the high camp for three Colorado 14'ers. Dave and I turned in the opposite direction. After about a quarter-mile of pleasant walking, we started clambering more or less straight uphill, with only an intermittent scrape of a trail to follow. The train had dropped us off just before 4 p.m., so we had only about three hours before dark to climb 3,500 vertical feet to the foot of Pigeon Mountain (13,972 feet). Fortunately, we did not get lost, and by evening we were pitching our little tent at the base of the west face. We dove into the tent early—the next day was going to be huge.

Across the Alps the Hard Way

2009-09-01T11:25:00.011-06:00

Canadian Max Turgeon pulled off a lovely solo, self-supported, unmotorized traverse of the Alps, from Chamonix to Trieste, climbing classic big faces along the way, over 18 days in August. The stats are impressive: 1,236 kilometers of cycling, with 12,879 meters of elevation gain; 6,990 vertical meters of hiking; and 6,080 meters of climbing. But what's really impressive is how little gear he carried. The equipment in the tiny bike pack and day pack in these photos is it. Turgeon slept in gites and huts and bought food along the way. And he didn't change his clothes. At the end, "I almost threw them in the garbage, he said, "because I was afraid they wouldn't let me on the train."

Enjoying superb weather, Turgeon soloed seven classic Alpine routes: the Cassin route on the northeast face of the Piz Badile, the Vinatzer-Castiglioni on the south face of the Marmolada, the Wiessner route on the northeast face of the Civetta, the Spigolo Alvera-Pompanin on the south face of the Tofane di Rozes, the Spigolo Dibona on Cima Grande, the Spigolog Demuth on Cime Ovest, and the Skalaska route on the north face of Triglav in Slovenia. On Day 18 he swam in the Adriatic Sea.

Now that's a summer vacation. Well done, Max!

So Close...

2009-08-31T08:24:00.004-06:00

Stefan Griebel and Charlie Nuttelman finished the Longs Peak Triathlon in 10 hours 36 minutes—that's about six minutes shy of the fastest known time for the round-trip from Boulder to the northernmost 14'er in the Rockies by bike, running, and climbing, set by Neal Beidleman and Kevin Cooney way back in 1990. The two lost time because of big crowds on the Diamond during one of the last perfect weather days of the season, along with the tactical goof of stashing climbing shoes on Broadway, part way up the east face of Longs Peak, instead of the base—Nuttelman was forced to solo the 500-foot North Chimney (up to 5.6) in his running shoes, slowing him considerably. Despite running down from the summit to the trailhead in 1:09 (!!!), they couldn't make up enough time. Still, the two were philosophical about the effort. In a great trip report posted on his blog, Nuttelman said, "This journey will remain vivid in my memory for the rest of my days. More importantly, I knew that we had left everything we had on the table; record or no record, there is much satisfaction out of knowing that you tried your best and gave it your all."

In the photo: Charlie Nuttelman (left) and Stefan Griebel relaxing at the end of the Longs Peak Triathlon. Photo by Bill Wright.

Le Mot Juste

2009-08-30T18:25:00.006-06:00

A small group of climbers stood around the kitchen at the end of a fun party. (My wife and I had hosted a dinner for the dZi Foundation with guests Jim Nowak, executive director, and Ben Ayers, Nepal director.) Naturally, we started comparing injuries and tweaks: the hand that wouldn't open fully, the loose shoulder, the creaky knees. Said Nowak: "It's an organ recital."

Friday Morning Time-Waster

2009-08-28T05:57:00.005-06:00

Coloradans Stefan Griebel and Charlie Nuttelman are attempting to set a new record for the so-called Longs Peak Triathlon today, and you can track their progress live because Griebel is carrying a SPOT tracking device that's uploading to this web page. The Longs Peak Triathlon has several permutations, but each involves biking from north Boulder to the Longs Peak trailhead (43 miles), running up the trail to the base of the east face (6.5 miles), and climbing the Diamond by the Casual Route (5.10); some aspirants do the round-trip. The fastest known time for the variation Griebel and Nuttelman are attempting—a round trip with gear cached on the mountain —is 10:30 (Beidleman-Cooney, 1990).

Griebel and Nuttelman left the intersection of Broadway and U.S. 36 in north Boulder at just after 5 this morning. As I write, about 1 hour 20 minutes later, they are part way along the steep climb up South St. Vrain Canyon. If all goes well, they should be back in Boulder by midafternoon.

Beyond the Mountain: The Slide Show

2009-08-27T15:31:00.003-06:00

In my review of Steve House's Beyond the Mountain earlier this week, I neglected to mention a key theme that runs through the book: partnership. Indeed, as House says in a new narrated slide show at the Tin Shed, "I see [this] as a book about partnership." I can't argue, and his short online show on the subject is well worth watching. If you want to see House speak about his climbs and partners in person, he begins an extended book tour next week.

Annals of Obsession

2009-08-25T10:32:00.003-06:00

Climbing all 14 of the world's 8,000-meter peaks is a game that few have chosen to play—Ed Viesturs is the only American to complete the task. It's expensive, dangerous, and it usually requires many years of commitment. (Viesturs spent 16 years bagging all of them.) So imagine the obsession that would prompt someone to climb them all again—that's what Basque climber Juanito Oiarzabal has announced he'll do. The 53-year-old, who finished his first round on the 8,000-meter peaks in 1999 and then lost all his toes to frostbite while descending from the summit of K2 in 2004, told ExplorersWeb, "I already climbed seven of them twice, so the project is definitely underway.” Oy vey.

Beyond the Mountain

2009-08-24T05:35:00.011-06:00

Steve House's first book, Beyond the Mountain, may not be a masterpiece, but it's the rare climbing book that I felt compelled to read cover to cover in just a few sittings, and it's certainly the best work about modern extreme alpinism in many years. And unlike some recent books on the subject, Beyond the Mountain is not just a collection of previously published articles but an entirely new work. The result is a revealing—but ultimately inconclusive—look into the life and mind of an extraordinary climber.

I used the word "extreme" above deliberately, as House is one of the rare American climbers whose feats—solo and with various partners—deserve the term, and because his uncompromising approach has often appeared extreme to other climbers. The book is framed by House's three attempts on Nanga Parbat spanning most of his adult life. Although he begins his prologue by writing "I've never been a storyteller," he is, in fact, a skillful writer. His accounts are rich with detail, and he is good with dialogue, capturing the distinctive voices of his willful partners. I'd read or edited accounts of many of the climbs covered in Beyond the Mountain, but the stories of his new routes in Alaska, the Canadian Rockies, and Pakistan still felt fresh. And some of them were entirely unfamiliar: House's teenage exposure to hard-core European alpinism during a school exchange to Slovenia, his first expedition to Nanga Parbat, a terrifying solo crevasse epic in the Mont Blanc massif.

The book's epigraph is the Bonatti quote, "What is there, beyond the mountain, if not the man?" For House and his peers, they are one and the same: The style and difficulty of one's climbs distills the essence of the climber himself. With their exceedingly high standards, House and his partners have been faulted for their elitist attitude toward climbs and climbers that don't measure up. However, I found less of the alpine "Brotherhood" in Beyond the Mountain and more humility and self-deprecation. House recognizes that whatever exalted state he may find at the crux of a hard climb is fleeting, that "success is empty," as he writes in his prologue. "When I climb, I know I will descend. When I grow to love my partners I know that they may die.... The sum is zero, and so the goals become the plotlines to our lives." Is such a plot meaningful enough to sustain a man, to complete a life? Are the sacrifices—the failed marriage, the meager material rewards—worth those gossamer successes, those few transcendent moments in the mountains? Such questions may be unanswerable, and perhaps wisely, House doesn't try to give us a firm answer.

(He is also honest, and not too apologetic, about the taints of his chosen super-light style of alpinism: the littering of excess gear abandoned on summit pushes, the climbs "completed" without summits.)

House's storytelling didn't always work for me (particularly in the chronological back-and-forth of the final Nanga Parbat tale), and the book could have used another proofreading. But on the whole Beyond the Mountain is a richly rewarding work. Above all, House succeeds in humanizing an activity—an extreme—that few humans will ever experience.

Dreaming of Zion

2009-08-20T06:39:00.007-06:00

I spent a lot of time in Zion during the ’90s, doing many of the classic walls and putting up two new aid routes, but I barely scratched the surface of the free-climbing potential. After perusing Bryan Bird's new Zion Climbing: Free and Clean from Supertopo, I'm fully stoked for some all-free (or at least attempted all-free) return trips to southwestern Utah's stunning national park.

The new Zion guide follows the now-fully-dialed Supertopo format, with clean presentation, detailed topos, color photos, and a smattering of historical essays. Renan Ozturk's phantasmagoric paintings also enliven the pages, though you'll be squinting if you try to copy one of his topos to carry it up a route. Most of the classic free and aid big-wall routes are covered in depth, including details on Zion's notoriously difficult descents. But I'm most excited about the many, many cragging areas I'd only heard rumors of: Cragmont, Kung Fu Theater, the Confluence, and more. There's soooo much to do.

Looking over the routes I've done, I found the topos and descriptions to be clear and accurate, with one exception: The topo to Wigs in Space on Red Arch Mountain has a number of inaccuracies, including not even showing the crux pitch, a fun 5.11 up double finger cracks. (The topo calls it C1; there's a good description of the route on Mountain Project.) Since both of my new routes in Zion were aid climbs with extensive use of pitons and beaks, I had to ask Supertopo publisher Chris Mcnamara why he didn't include nailing routes. He gave a good answer: "Because nailing routes change so fast—by the time five people climbed a route, it would be way different. Also, I just don't think Zion nailing is that sustainable. If someone doesn't go up there and actively create nut placements, a lot of those nailing routes are just going to turn into beat-out eyesores."

I also wondered why Bird, a Zion local, didn't include the fantastic climbs of the Kolob Canyons, in Zion's high country, even though he did cover a route in the intriguing Eagle Crags south of the park entrance and a couple of the white domes to the east. Bird: "I didn't feel as thought I was the right guy for the job. I have climbed a ton of routes in the main canyon, but very little in Kolob." Anyway, part of the Zion experience has always been exploration. It's cool to leave a bit of mystery to some of the routes.

Not Ready for Prime Time

2009-08-18T07:39:00.006-06:00

Backpacker magazine produces super-cool "fly-over" trip reports on big hikes, using Google Earth technology, video, and other whiz-bang techniques. In conjunction with my feature article in the July-August issue about a big loop hike through Rocky Mountain National Park, the mag created this five-minute online tour. It's a slick piece of work by map editor Kris Wagner and the rest of the Backpacker.com team—if you can get past my cheesy segments. One comment on YouTube nicely summed up my performance: "1:22 to 1:37 is pretty scary...."

Prismatic

2009-08-17T13:51:00.007-06:00

For the last few months, I've been wearing Five Ten's Prisms as my primary rock shoe. When I first got the Prisms, I was skeptical of Five Ten's patented Faceted Edge Technology, in which two sections of the outside edge of the sole in the forefoot are squared off for greater contact with the rock. Was this a gimmick? I mean, who thinks so much about outside edging? Once the shoes were broken in, though, I didn't care if my backstepping performance had improved: I just liked the shoes. They're snug yet comfortable, well-constructed, and they feel super-precise on the kind of small-hold technical climbing that I prefer.

And a funny thing has happened: As I've worn the shoes, I've found myself paying more attention to my outside edging, and maybe feeling a bit more comfortable in a goofy stance on small holds. I'm still curious how well the Prism' faceted edge technology will fare in a resole. Assuming a good resoler can make them work, I give the Prisms a thumbs-up.

Photo: Not making the best use of the Five Ten Prisms' patented Faceted Edge Technology. Moosehorn crags, Utah. Photo by Chris Blackmon.

No Consolation

2009-08-12T13:32:00.017-06:00

"He died doing what he loved."

My wife hates that phrase, and after resisting for years, I'm coming to see her point. But wait, you say: Surely it’s better to die in an avalanche while skiing untracked powder or by falling from a favorite crag than to be mangled in a car crash or waste away in a cancer ward. Right? I used to think so, but this sad summer, when so many friends have died while climbing, “doing what he loved” feels like a feeble attempt to ease the pain of the living. The statement is accurate, but it's nowhere near adequate.

Last week my friend Craig Luebben was killed while climbing in the North Cascades. He was 49. Last week, too, the great Italian alpinist Riccardo Cassin died at home at age 100. Cassin, of course, didn’t shy from risk. He began climbing new routes in the early 1930s, when gear and techniques were still primitive, and he completed major new routes in the Alps (including the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses), on Denali, and in Peru during a climbing career that spanned about half a century.

Craig also enjoyed the pleasures of risk, especially earlier in his climbing life—I remember once in the early 1990s watching him solo the Rigid Designator ice column in Vail one afternoon, and then learning that he had already free-soloed Bridalveil Falls and the Ames Ice Hose, on the other side of the state, that same day. However, as Craig aged, married, and had a daughter, Giluia, he dedicated most of his time to reducing risks for climbers: through guiding, teaching, writing instructional books, and field-testing gear. Although he succeeded on very difficult and sometimes dangerous climbs, he was among the most methodical and careful climbers I’ve ever tied in with. For the most part, he avoided high-altitude mountaineering, climbing’s deadliest game. Yet Craig died young and Cassin lived to 100 and died in bed. It doesn’t seem fair.

I know for certain that Craig Luebben did not want to die “doing what he loved.” He loved his young family—he loved living—too much to take any satisfaction in seeing his life cut short while climbing. When I saw Craig last—ironically, at a memorial in July for Jonny Copp, Micah Dash, and Wade Johnson—he told me with his big, enthusiastic smile how much he had enjoyed teaching Giulia to ski, and how much he looked forward to skiing with her this coming winter. Craig wanted to grow old and ski and climb and hike with Giulia and Silvia until his creaky bones could move no more.

I’m struggling this summer. Right now, climbing seems excessively dangerous and cruelly unfair—it cuts down even the most cautious among us. Yet I continue to climb. And though I can’t imagine a life without climbing, the loss of several friends in one summer makes continuing feel like a form of madness.

Three days ago I stood beneath a crag in the Uintas in eastern Utah, satisfied with the route I’d just led, pleased to watch my wife smoothly climbing above me, relaxed and happy in the warm sunshine at 10,000 feet, and I found myself staring at the fingers of my right hand, loose but ready around the rope a few inches from my belay device, and suddenly I had a vision of how easy it would be to make a careless mistake and let go at the wrong time. We were sport climbing on half-pitch routes—among the safest climbing that’s possible—yet my belay hand seemed too weak, the margins too thin, the responsibility too great. I wanted to call to Chris to come down to the relative safety of the flat earth, to take our chances with the perils of I-80 and irreversible aging. But I didn’t. She was having too much fun; I was having too much fun; this is what we do.

My friend and colleague Kelly Cordes just wrote a beautiful short piece in the new Alpine Briefs about his struggle with the death of Jonny Copp this summer in China. In one passage, Kelly wrote:

…We console ourselves with talk of inspiration and memories, and how the ones we lost wouldn’t want us to be sad. We whisper wistful “if onlys,” but it remains undeniable that the risks were part of the person, as all of our experiences make us who we are—that the close calls and willingness to go came with the love and laughter and joy and inspiration, and you can not go back and remove one component from an integral whole. It was him. All of it.

I couldn’t agree more—the risks, the difficulties, the frustrations, and the joys of climbing shaped Jonny and shaped Craig, and they’ve shaped me, too. But I don’t want to die doing what I love. I want to die like Cassin, looking back on a lifetime of doing it. The lesson for me in Craig’s death—and Jonny’s and Micah’s and John Bachar’s, and so many others over the years—is not to quit climbing. The lesson is to focus more intently when I’m doing it, so I can draw even more from climbing’s infinite trials and gifts, and so, with great care and a bit of luck, I won’t die in the process.

Wednesday Morning Time Waster

2009-08-12T06:27:00.002-06:00

A fun video of Renan Ozturk and Zach Smith's recent trip to the Ruth Gorge in Alaska, where they did a 12-hour ascent of the classic Cobra Pillar on Mt. Barrill and made a serious attempt on the "Tooth Traverse," an elegant dream of a link-up from the Sugar Tooth to the Moose's Tooth. This video was first posted in the Journal section of Black Diamond's rich and active new website—an excellent time-waster in its own right.

Alpine Briefs 4

2009-08-03T16:55:00.001-06:00

The fourth edition of Alpine Briefs has been published. Check it out!

Mysteries of the North

2009-08-01T16:18:00.004-06:00

Nancy Hansen, the NewsNet editor for the Alpine Club of Canada, spotted this unusual climber car at the parking lot for Bugaboo Provincial Park on July 23. This stretch limo drove some 40 kilometers of logging roads to park at the trailhead for the granite spires of the Bugaboos. (The posts around it support wire fencing designed to keep porcupines from gnawing on hoses and tires.) But what climber-celebrity began the rugged approach to the Bugs in such style? David Lee Roth? Arthur Sulzberger Jr.? Tom Cruise?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Thursday Morning Time Waster

2009-07-30T09:54:00.002-06:00

Jon Griffith's short film of Ueli Steck last winter setting the speed record for climbing the north face of the Grandes Jorasses by the Colton-MacIntyre (and a harder variation) in less than three hours. Griffith's website has details and killer still photos.

Twisted

2009-07-24T09:42:00.005-06:00

I just finished four days of reporting for the Outdoor Retailer Show Daily, the daily newspaper of the trade show. It's a hard but fun gig that I've done two summers now, and a fresh way to participate in a show I've been visiting for well over a decade. This was the 10th anniversary of the tornado that struck downtown Salt Lake City during the trade show's set-up day, killing one person, injuring dozens, and wiping out more than 300 exhibitors' booths, including the one I was helping to set up for Rock & Ice. For the last day of the show daily, I wrote a column remembering the tornado.

For those curious about the tornado, here's my original text:

When the tornado struck, we were standing just outside Pavilion I, one of two football-field-size tents that housed Summer Market exhibitors before the Salt Palace expansion. We were lucky: We could see the storm coming. Even so, the tornado that struck Salt Lake City at 1 p.m. on August 11, 1999, Summer Market's set-up day, created some of the most terrifying and yet ultimately gratifying memories of my life.

I was publisher and editor of Rock & Ice magazine, and we were setting up a portable climbing wall outside the pavilion's main entrance when the sky turned green and began swirling ominously. Down the street, we saw roof panels flying off the Delta Center (now the Energy Solutions Arena). A whirling mass of dust and debris headed toward us. I looked for cover and saw only the Wyndham Hotel (now the Radisson) across South Temple—to get there we'd have to race toward the tornado, but it was our only choice. I screamed at the friends around me to run. We dashed into the lobby just as the tornado roared past and filled the air with glass.

Outdoor Retailer show director Kenji Haroutunian, then an account executive at his first show, was working near the Wyndham, too. “As a climbing instructor, I've been on rescues, including fatal accidents, but this was by far the most intense triage situation I've encountered,” he recalled. Nearly 100 people were injured by the 10-minute storm, a dozen critically, and one man—Allen Crandy, a set-up supervisor working inside Pavilion I—was killed.

Stunned, my small staff and I wandered around the wrecked pavilions as ambulances and police arrived. With no booth to set up, we gaped at the destruction and wondered what would happen next. Most of us just wanted to go home. It seemed impossible that the show could continue.

But over the next few hours, something amazing happened. Haroutunian said show officials soon began hearing from exhibitors—he recalls that Kelty was among the first—offering to share booth space with vendors who'd been in the pavilions. By late afternoon, when hundreds of anxious vendors packed into the Marriott, a tentative plan was in place: Day One of Summer Market would be canceled, but the show would go on. Dozens of exhibitors offered to share their booths with one or more displaced companies—Timberland ended up with 12 guest exhibitors--and the city scrambled to find rooms for attendees staying at the badly damaged Wyndham.

The Rock & Ice staff shacked up with our friends at Five Ten, and we cobbled together a pathetic display of the magazines and business cards we'd salvaged from the wreckage. But our meetings went on without a hitch. Climbing magazine, our arch-rival, reshuffled its demo schedule at the indoor climbing wall and allowed us to host a full slate of the events we'd hoped to put on outside Pavilion I. Throughout the Salt Palace, similar stories were unfolding.

“The show was obviously different, and it was tragic of course, but it was also really cool,” Haroutunian said. “It became a contest of who could be the most generous.”

That generous spirit continued after the show. The Outdoor Recreation Coalition of America passed the hat and collected more than $100,000 for a relief fund, which came as a huge relief to my small business when insurance wouldn't cover thousands of dollars of damage to our rental car.

I still have a souvenir of the tornado on my desk: my calculator, which I discovered in the wreckage outside Pavilion I, its surface twisted into a spiral by the force of the storm. It reminds me that the outdoor industry is blessed with a spirit that, when put to the test, can be more powerful than Mother Nature herself.

Beautiful Ten Sleep

2009-07-18T16:24:00.001-06:00

The Spinner

2009-06-11T10:38:00.001-06:00

All this spring I tested the Black Diamond Spinner set-up for leashless ice tools. I went mostly leashless a couple of years ago, but I’ve always worried about dropping a tool on big climbs. In fact, I’ve had a couple of scary bobbles. But I haven’t been able to buy a commercial tether in the States—Grivel made one, but I’ve yet to find it at a shop—and I’m too inept to make my own. The Spinner, which will be available this fall, is a sweet solution to the leashless dilemma. It girth-hitches to your belay loop with a 360° swivel device to minimize tangles, and it’s outfitted with easy-to-use clips for your tools and bungied tethers that extend to full arm’s reach for high placements.

The Spinner really eased my mind on long mixed climbs in Rocky Mountain National Park and Chamonix. I could climb quicker without having to worry every second about dropping a tool, and sometimes I’d let one tool hang from its tether while I fiddled with gear or bare-handed a move. Only occasionally did the tethers get in my way, and now and then I had to untwist them, but I think this is just a matter of learning how best to use such tethers—it’s not a flaw of the Spinner set-up. Plus, the tethers are rated to 2kN—that’s probably not enough to hold a fall if your feet cut out and you drop hard onto your tool, but it’s more than enough for body weight, which does offer a measure of comfort.

The Fang grips that I’d installed on my old Viper tools covered the clip-in holes, so I had to thread a loop of thin nylon tape behind the Fangs as clip-in points; they’re ugly, but they work fine. Newer Viper and Cobra tools don’t have this issue.

All in all, the Spinner is a great simple tool at $49.95—a total bargain for the peace of mind it offers to leashless climbers.

Beetle Mania

2009-06-10T07:04:00.003-06:00

How will pine beetles affect outdoor recreation in Colorado? It ain't going to be pretty. I wrote about the problems hikers and backcountry skiers will face for the next decade or more in the summer issue of Elevation Outdoors.

Jonny's Gifts

2009-06-09T08:06:00.002-06:00

I never climbed with Jonny Copp, but I’d bump into him everywhere: at the foot of a sandstone crack at Indian Creek; just after dawn at the Glacier Gorge Trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park (gusty winds making us all wonder what we were doing there); post-climb at a picnic table above the Black Canyon; sharing photos on a laptop at his “office” in Amante coffee shop in Boulder. Each time was the same: an extended hand, a huge smile, an encouraging word. He always seemed so happy to see me (a longtime acquaintance but not a close friend); he appeared genuinely thrilled that I was out there with him, sharing similar experiences, sharing possibilities. He made me want to try harder. These were Jonny’s gifts. He had the gift of enthusiasm, of seeing the possibilities in others and nudging them forward; he bestowed these gifts unselfconsciously and without hesitation; and he inspired me (inspires me!) to try each day to do the same for others—perhaps his greatest gift of all.

RIP

2009-06-07T20:45:00.004-06:00

There will never be another quite like him.

Support the search for Jonny Copp's missing partners, Micah Dash and Wade Johnson. Donate here.

Ghost Dancers

2009-06-07T11:26:00.014-06:00

Punishing but rewarding. That sums up the long day that Jack Roberts and I "enjoyed" in the Indian Peaks on June 6. The target was the northeast face of Paiute Peak (13,088 feet). I've never seen a record of any ascent of this face, though it's quite likely that it has been climbed—it's a big target and not very difficult. But the face is hidden from the east, and the approach is arduous. The only practical way to get there during snow-climbing season is to climb over a high shoulder of Mt. Audubon (or its summit), descend into the Coney Lakes basin, and then traverse to the base of Paiute. This is not an easy thing to do.

Jack and I mounted our bikes at the gate on the Brainard Lake Road just after 5 a.m., rode to the trailhead, and then hiked up the east ridge Audubon to a saddle at around 12,700 feet. Because of some illness issues, we were moving very slowly, and it was after 9 a.m. before we crested the ridge. The view to the other side was stunning but discouraging: We would have to traverse nearly a mile across broken ridges and frozen couloirs, while descending more than 1,000 feet. To make matters worse, a brutal, cold wind whipped over the saddle. Our hands were freezing, and we nearly bailed, but instead we decided to "take a look." In the end, it required nearly two hours of hard, somewhat dangerous work before we could reach the base of Paiute at around 11,500 feet. In hindsight, I think the best approach would be to continue over Audubon's 13,221-foot summit to the Audubon-Paiute col, and then descend to the north from there, or to drop straight down one of the Coney Couloirs from Audubon's east ridge and then walk up the valley floor to Paiute. Either way, it's a big approach. It took us more than six hours; a fast party would likely still need four hours.

By this time, the snow had softened significantly (much of the face was still in the sun until after noon), so we didn't need a rope as we kicked shin-deep steps up the central couloir. We had carried a rack because of the big headwall at the top of the face, and even just a few hundred feet below the top we still weren't sure where the route would go. But just when we were wondering if we'd have to escape by rock-climbing to the left or right, a hidden, body-length-wide slot snaked up to the left. We roped up partway along this for a short ice step and then carried on to the top, popping out within a few vertical feet of Paiute's summit. Good stuff!

A long glissade, snowshoe trudge, and bike ride awaited. But it was all downhill now. By the time we reached the car, we'd put in a 12-hour day, of which less than two hours was spent actually climbing. This route may have been climbed before, but we think it deserves a name, and we propose the Ghost Dancer Couloir. It's a superb outing...for those who don't mind a little punishment along with their rewards.

Sniglet

2009-06-04T16:03:00.008-06:00

A friend—I can't remember who—once made up a great word to describe climbers' habit of testing out hand holds and finger jams on man-made structures. You know how it goes: You're walking down a city street or climbing a stair well, and casually, almost without thinking, you find yourself crimping the edge of a brick or slotting your hand in the crack between two concrete slabs. We all do it. Unfortunately, age and decrepitude being what they are, I can't remember the term he/she came up with.

Hand-jive?
Grappling?
Brailling?

Man, it's right on the tip of my tongue.... This is a sniglet that's sorely needed. If you've got a good name for this common climber behavior, let me know.

Monday Morning Time Waster

2009-06-01T07:18:00.006-06:00

Dodging Storms on Mt. Hagar

2009-05-27T05:33:00.005-06:00

I wasn't optimistic when Mike and I drove up to Loveland on Sunday, hoping to ski a 13er called Mt. Hagar between rain storms. We had to hike through puddles and small, raging torrents of meltwater to reach the first snow. But higher up the snow was actually pretty decent, and though we had a brief rain shower and a longer snow/graupel event, we also had some blue sky and sun, giving us nice views of the surrounding peaks, including the craggy Citadel (13,294 feet).

On Mt. Hagar's 13,195-foot summit the clouds were thick, but we still hadn't heard any thunder, which was weird, considering what we'd see later. Mike went first off the rocky top and immediately buried an entire leg in waist-deep slush. After the extrication, we gingerly traversed away from the rocks and into a broad chute where there was better snow. Our first turns sent a slush river, three to four inches deep, streaming toward the bench 800 feet below, but underneath was a firm, sun-baked layer, and the skiing in and out of the flowing slush turned out to be fun rather than terrifying. Strangely, the snow just got better the lower we went, with a steep, 400-foot slope of near-corn at around 11,500. As we walked out, the rain started in earnest, but we still had heard only a few faint rumbles of thunder. Then, during the drive home along I-70, we entered one of the most violent thunderstorms I've seen in years—it dumped up to two inches of rain in parts of metro Denver. For whatever reason, we'd escaped it all on Mt. Hagar.

Pillows

2009-05-23T06:22:00.005-06:00

Back in March, Greg Sievers and I did a probable new route on the north face of Andrews Tower in Rocky Mountain National Park. At the time (left photo), the cornices atop the initial gully were big enough to make us choose a cold day for the route and climb as fast as we could. Now, they're the size of dump trucks. Greg snapped the photo on the right during a ski tour last week, two months later. For scale, the distance from the bottom of the photo frame to the top of the cornices is nearly 100 feet. Those are some big pillows... but I'm guessing they wouldn't feel too fluffy on your face.