mountaineering

It's awful MANLY.

go 4 it!

bring a gurl

try the presidential range

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

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

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

one more reason O'Reilly is an idiot, btw

like, what's with the caps?

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

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

does anyone else on ILX like climbing/mountaineering?

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

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

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

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

my friend took this in kananaskis country on the wkend

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

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

those clouds are rad!

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

someone buy me these

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

it's spectacular there, from what i remember.

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

^^^^ that is glacier

bad rock, tho :-/

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

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

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

xp ooh, i need to see that

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

ts: alpine style v. siege climbing

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

^^^ dreamy

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

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

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

gasherbrum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

michael rooker is fucking classic in that movie, too

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best climbing movie is still Touching The Void

Best climbing book:

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

We really need some Patagonia in here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

"improving" = improvising

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

aused = amused

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

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

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

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

a big journalist did it and ran away

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is there a pub on the way back?

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

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

Skiing down Everest from the top

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

holy shit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

hence the queues

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

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

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

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

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

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

getting yr doordash burrito delivered as a treat for summiting

I watched it. I dug it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

but yeah, agree to disagree.

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

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

he truly "sent it"