"Because it's there."

[thør]

And have you ever waked inside a glacier - ice tunnels hollowed out by sub-surface meltwater?

You need a trip to Alaska......

 

[butters]

You need a trip to Alaska......

Tell me all about it and it'll feel as if I've been. Sometimes I get confused as to whether I've seen the film or not if I've read the book. It's as vivid.

 

[thør]

Tell me all about it and it'll feel as if I've been. Sometimes I get confused as to whether I've seen the film or not if I've read the book. It's as vivid.

Film?

Books?

Poems?

None do justice.

You could walk in that ice cave. It's not restricted from nor is it overflowing with people. You can hear the ice. You can't get the same feeling from any media that you can get here. Up the hill from the house, the city is in view, but make no mistake, the place is very wild.

 

[Peregrinator]

what time of day/night does the lighting make the ice look the most fascinating, Perg? To you, since it probably differs for individuals.

And have you ever waked inside a glacier - ice tunnels hollowed out by sub-surface meltwater?

To me, pitch black or glaring sunlight. Both are magical.

Closest I've come:
The sky was visible most of the time. Pic is from Advanced BC in Kyrgizstan.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/Peregrinator/IMG_6505.jpg

that looks so beautiful, and so slippery. glissade is an erotic word. A poet I know wrote a piece about hands glissading down to the jutting rock, stuff like that. lol

I'd love to see the poem.

 

[butters]

Film?

Books?

Poems?

None do justice.

You could walk in that ice cave. It's not restricted from nor is it overflowing with people. You can hear the ice. You can't get the same feeling from any media that you can get here. Up the hill from the house, the city is in view, but make no mistake, the place is very wild.

Does ice speak with many voices, or the same in many tones? Do different glaciers speak in different languages? the language of the rocks, the scour, the melt and the freeze, the high winds and low cloud, the singing of ice-crystals answering the moon ...

what? sorry, you were saying?

yes, I need to go there in person. Sadly, I doubt I ever shall.

 

[butters]

To me, pitch black or glaring sunlight. Both are magical.

Closest I've come:
The sky was visible most of the time. Pic is from Advanced BC in Kyrgizstan.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/Peregrinator/IMG_6505.jpg


I'd love to see the poem.

I'll ask her tomorrow - I'm sure she won't mind. I think she has posted it up on a site we both belong to anyway, so I'll check.

 

[butters]

To me, pitch black or glaring sunlight. Both are magical.

Closest I've come:
The sky was visible most of the time. Pic is from Advanced BC in Kyrgizstan.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/Peregrinator/IMG_6505.jpg

Did it whet your appetite for more?

 

[Peregrinator]

Did it whet your appetite for more?

It was certainly an interesting place. A constantly changing canyon, sort of, with a soundtrack of scraping and cracking and booming.

 

[butters]

It was certainly an interesting place. A constantly changing canyon, sort of, with a soundtrack of scraping and cracking and booming.

bingo! this is the sort of detail I need to spark a chain reaction of imagination. Don't worry about me, my mind fills in the gaps and finds the beauty even if I've never seen it.

 

[Byron In Exile]

I found if I hyperventlated consciously, I was better off. And I can breathe pretty normally at rest even at 15,000. Still, you're right; if there's any time constraint, it's a lung-buster. My abs were sore after that trip.

You can do that, if you think of it... But sometimes it's too late for that. You just start gasping uncontrollably. That's the most awful thing.

But, if you move up slowly, then your system has time to build up the red blood cells you need to carry oxygen.

These climbers of Everest... seriously. They should hang out around the base-camps longer. They aren't getting acclimated.

 

[Peregrinator]

You can do that, if you think of it... But sometimes it's too late for that. You just start gasping uncontrollably. That's the most awful thing.

But, if you move up slowly, then your system has time to build up the red blood cells you need to carry oxygen.

These climbers of Everest... seriously. They should hang out around the base-camps longer. They aren't getting acclimated.

Acclimatization is so idiosyncratic, it's hard to state a formula for everyone. And you can't acclimatize beyond 18,000 anyway. At that altitude, wounds don't heal. It's a death zone, and called that for good reason.

RBC count and capillary permeability are just the short term parts of the equation.

 

[veryblueeyes]

Awesome pic, Perg.

 

[tinylittlegnat]

if people climb mount everest because its hard why do they go up the easy side?

 

[Peregrinator]

Awesome pic, Perg.

Thanks. My friend Laura took it.

if people climb mount everest because its hard why do they go up the easy side?

Even the "easy" route on Everest is no joke. But the real challenge is the weather, meaning subzero temps, and wind. There are many routes; Mallory was on a route from the North side when he died. The SW Ridge is the "trade route," but even as experienced a mountaineer as Jon Krakauer felt compelled to comment on what a spectacular climb it was.

Here's a pic showing the second most popular route. The most popular one is the righthand skyline.

http://www.alanarnette.com/images/mteverest/everest/everest_route_north.jpg

 

[thør]

The Alaska Wilderness Classic

From the ADN.com:

"There were points in the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic where Fairbanks racers Forrest Karr and Steve Taylor wondered if they would be able to go on.

For Karr, it was on the fourth day of the 160-mile bushwhack across the Alaska Range.

"We were hiking on a ridge line between Trident and Hayes glaciers," said Karr, the UAF athletic director. "I just couldn't walk because of my Achilles.

"I took codeine to help with the pain, but that didn't do anything," he said. "I just couldn't keep going."

Karr's Achilles had pooling blood on the back of the tendon. The two hikers decided to cut off a piece of the back of Karr's shoe.

"It really solved the problem," Karr said. "It just took the pressure off that tendon."

For Taylor, the low point of the backcountry race came on the fifth day as they hiked along gravel bars on the West Fork of the Little Delta River.

"My knee and ankle had exploded in pain," Taylor said.

Both were so swollen he could barely walk. He tried soaking his ankle in the ice-cold glacial-fed river, but it didn't help.

After a night's sleep, "it was still pretty painful but not as bad," Taylor said. "That and the fact we were a day closer to the finish was enough to keep me going."

In the end, Karr and Taylor took 7 days, 6 hours and 1 minute to complete the Classic course. That was about four days behind the winning team of Bobby Schnell, Chris Robertson and Andrew Skurka, who finished in a brisk 3 days, 17 hours and 54 minutes. Fourteen of the 26 racers who started the race pulled out.

Karr and Taylor said the Classic, a backcountry race in which competitors carry their gear, find their routes across mountains, swollen rivers and wilderness bushwhacking, was the hardest thing they've ever done.

"Your arms are covered in scratches, your clothes are shredded, you have blisters on your feet, your joints are swollen up and you're asking, 'Can I keep going?' " Karr said.

Taylor agreed: "You can't stop and make camp and snuggle up in a sleeping bag," he said. "Mentally it was very challenging to stay on top of your game the whole time."

The race was a drastic change of pace for both the 33-year-old Karr, and the 32-year-old Taylor, a project coordinator for the borough parks and recreation department.

"It was one week of just focusing on nothing but surviving and moving across the country as efficiently as possible," Karr said.

Challenges included:

• Crossing the waist-deep Delta River in 60 mph winds. Karr was knocked off his feet and ended up swimming and scrambling across the river. Fortunately, he was wearing a flotation device.

• Fording several swollen, glacier-fed rivers such as Jarvis Creek, the Delta River, East Fork of the Delta River and Gillam Creek.

• Hiking over the Granite Mountains. "Probably not the optimal route," is how Taylor put it.

• Hiking across the Hayes, Gillam and Trident glaciers. "Those glaciers are amazing," Karr said.

• Nearly getting run over by a caribou. Karr whistled at the caribou as it ran down the trail toward him, only about 15 feet away.

• Trying to stay awake while packrafting the final 20 miles down the Yanert River after hiking 18-20 hours per day for six days. "You blink once and you're asleep," Taylor said. "I woke up one time and I was beached in the left channel."

• Karr, who suffered a half-dollar-sized blister on one of his heels, couldn't wear shoes for a week after the race. Both racers suffered swollen feet that Taylor called "pretty gross looking."

"You should see my feet," Karr said two days after finishing the race. "You wouldn't believe it."

BREATHTAKING

From the start, Karr and Taylor wondered if they were getting in over their heads.

"Everyone was telling us their packs weighed 19 pounds with everything and ours were 33 pounds," Karr said.

Karr didn't know how he could make his pack any lighter.

"I felt like we needed everything we had," he said.

Karr and Taylor planned to finish the race in six days. They each started with 11 1/2 pounds of food but by Day 5 they were running low.

"When it became apparent on Day 5 that we weren't going to get done in six days we started rationing our food," Karr said.

On their last day, they ate only a "handful of seeds and half a packet of dry, instant oatmeal, he said. Karr, a workout fanatic, lost eight pounds during the race and Taylor lost five.

Despite the physical and mental challenges, both Karr and Taylor may do the race again.

"The route is gorgeous," said Taylor. "You're right up in the mountains the whole time. Sometimes it makes you feel kind of small."

Finishing the Classic provides spectacular memories.

"I love Alaska, but when you go out and do things like this, you love it even more," Karr said. "It's truly breathtaking.""

 

[tinylittlegnat]

Thanks. My friend Laura took it.


Even the "easy" route on Everest is no joke. But the real challenge is the weather, meaning subzero temps, and wind. There are many routes; Mallory was on a route from the North side when he died. The SW Ridge is the "trade route," but even as experienced a mountaineer as Jon Krakauer felt compelled to comment on what a spectacular climb it was.

Here's a pic showing the second most popular route. The most popular one is the righthand skyline.

http://www.alanarnette.com/images/mteverest/everest/everest_route_north.jpg

it was a carlin joke that jumped into my head.

are you good enough to go up there?

 

[Peregrinator]

it was a carlin joke that jumped into my head.

are you good enough to go up there?

I'm "good enough" in the sense of the technical skills required. The SE Ridge is not especially demanding in terms of climbing ability; any moderately experienced climber can make any given move on the route. The real test is the gut-check, the ability to suffer sleep deprivation and hypoxia and arctic weather. It's a pain-fest more than anything. You just have to have an immense ability to keep putting one foot above the next. Like, at a three-breaths-per-step pace. Given that, I'm not sure I want it that badly. There are other, lower (obviously), more technically challenging peaks I'd be more psyched for.

 

[thør]

Sherpa trains on Mount McKinley

http://media.adn.com/smedia/2009/08/23/22/392-4634370.26421.original.standalone.prod_affiliate.7.jpg

From the old ADN.com:

"DENALI NATIONAL PARK -- PhuNuru Sherpa does not climb the world's highest mountain for thrills. It's his job.

The job is dangerous, often deadly. That's because many of the sherpas working for expedition climbing groups on the more than 29,000-foot-tall Mount Everest don't have basic skills necessary to do the job safely. PhuNuru wants to change that.

"We have a big problem on Everest," he said.

The 29-year-old married father of two girls spent a month this summer in Alaska getting job training on 20,320-foot Mount McKinley. He also spent three weeks on 14,411-foot Mount Rainier in Washington. It turns out that Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America, was the perfect classroom.

PhuNuru was part of a five-person mountain patrol. While on McKinley he joined in a half-dozen rescues, including helping a climber suffering from high-altitude pulmonary edema, a woman buried in an avalanche and a man who lost his sight. About once a week PhuNuru brought rescue supplies up the mountain.

"If something needed to be done, his pack was on and he was ready to go in five minutes," said Brandon Latham, a mountaineering ranger on McKinley.

PhuNuru joined McKinley's high mountain ranger patrol on June 3. He had barely settled in when rangers at the 14,200-foot camp got an emergency call. Two men who were roped together had fallen a couple of thousand feet.

PhuNuru was one of the first rescuers to reach the climbers.

"Me and two friends go running up there, take some oxygen, some medical kits and everything we can carry," he said. "We go there and they both already dead."

PhuNuru helped recover the bodies of Dr. John Mislow, 39, of Newton, Mass., and Dr. Andrew Swanson, 36, of Minneapolis. The bodies were flown off the mountain.

Four people died on McKinley this year. Since 1932, 106 people have been killed on the mountain -- about half as many as on Everest. Thirty-nine bodies remain on McKinley. As many as 150 bodies remain on Everest.

PhuNuru received a scholarship from the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation in Bozeman, Mont., to come to the United States for training. Alex Lowe was one of the world's most talented mountaineers who twice summitted Everest. He died in an avalanche in the Himalayas on Oct. 5, 1999, where his body remains.

"He loved the people in Nepal and Tibet," said Jennifer Lowe-Anker, president of the foundation and Lowe's wife when he died. "He talked to me about how scary it was, how untrained any of them were on the mountain."

In 2004, the foundation established the Khumbu Climbing School in PhuNuru's village in Nepal. About 30 students were in the first class and about one-third had already summitted Everest, but not one of them knew how to tie a figure-eight knot used in rock climbing to secure climbers to their harnesses, Lowe-Anker said.

"Many were using what they called yak knots, kind of a granny (knot) tied a hundred times. They now know how unsafe that was," she said.

PhuNuru, who has summitted Everest four times, is an instructor at the school. When he returns to Nepal at the end of October, he will share what he learned.

The knowledge will save lives, he said.

"All people (are) trying to go to summit and people get sick on the mountain and taking them down is very critical," PhuNuru said.

PhuNuru said his goal is to establish a professional rescue team on Everest.

Even though more than 200 people have been killed on Everest, the mountain has no rescue team. If a climber needs help, it is up to expedition guides to decide if a rescue should be attempted. Sometimes that means telling clients who have paid tens of thousands of dollars to summit Everest that their dream will have to wait. Sometimes it means that help comes too late.

That was the case with British climber David Sharp in 2006. Dozens of climbers who were headed to the summit walked past Sharp lying in a rock alcove on Everest as he froze to death.

By the time the decision was made to send a sherpa to help Sharp, it was too late. The sherpa pulled Sharp from a rock alcove and placed him in the sun and gave him oxygen, but his limbs were frozen in place. He couldn't walk, even with assistance. Sharp was placed back in the alcove where he was found dead the next day.

A week later, sherpas rescued another climber who was left for dead near the same spot.

Author Nick Heil wrote about the infamous 2006 climbing season on Everest in which 11 people died in his book "Dark Summit."

"It is an extremely risky proposition to try and stage a body removal up high," Heil said. "Nowadays people are kind of prepared when they go up to a place like Everest to see corpses."

Some of the bodies of people who have died on Everest are within sight of the climbing routes, remarkably preserved in the extreme cold. PhuNuru said it would be better to get the bodies off the mountain, but Heil said removal is not always possible.

"After a season or two these bodies are effectively welded into the landscape," he said. "You literally have to chisel them out."

PhuNuru said body removal pays better than other jobs on Everest but many sherpas find the work distasteful. For those who want to do it, the rescue and roping techniques he learned this summer will be useful, he said.

"We don't want to leave any body on the mountain," PhuNuru said."

 

[thør]

Yeah, Daryl!

http://www.alaskamagazine.com/images/stories/Letters0909_miller.jpg

"Your June article about Daryl Miller (“The Man and the Mountain,” Page 22) confirms why I enjoy Alaska magazine so much. I only wish I had experienced half the adventures that Mr. Miller has experienced in his lifetime. However, I must say that I was incredulous at climber Gren Hinton’s attitude about the National Park Service’s “responsibility” to rescue climbers who have put themselves in dangerous situations. When Mr. Hinton’s most excellent adventure turns to crap he thinks the park service—which I pay for with my tax dollars—should just come riding in like the cavalry in some old western movie and save the day. How foolhardy! I applaud Daryl Miller’s response, that a climber’s emergency is not necessarily the park service’s emergency.
—Kurt Oswalt
Uniontown, Ohio"

A letter to Alaska Magazine

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

*reads* Be prepared! Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts learn those words early.

 

[thør]

*reads* Be prepared! Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts learn those words early.

yupper!

 

[thør]

g-night, all

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

G'Night thor. Sweet dreams.

 

[thør]

This is a short blurb in today's ADN.com I was going to post it my Anchorage thread because I normally post local Alaska stuff there, but I decided it would be best posted here. It seems that some tourist took a fall on Mt. Marathon down in Seward and he died. I'm sorry to read that this happened but I do not think that we need to be posting a bunch of signs there. The trail goes up and comes back down. It's not that hard to find. It's Alaska, dammit! Watch your ass on the mountain!

" SEWARD -- A Minnesota doctor has died of injuries suffered in a fall at Mount Marathon and the man's brother wants Seward to post more signs on the trail to warn climbers.

KTUU said 49-year-old Joe Hengy suffered multiple injuries Sunday, but it was the head injury that ultimately claimed his life Wednesday. He cart-wheeled off a cliff near the bottom of the mountain.

Joe Hengy's brother Matt wants to meet with city officials about putting signs on the trail to direct those unfamiliar with the mountain to the safest way down.

Seward's Fire Chief David Squires talked with Matt Hengy and said the concerns will be discussed. Squires said city staff, police and fire officials will be involved in the discussions.

Squires said just two people have died on the mountain in the last 25 years, although there have been numerous injuries.

The Hengy family says two is too many."

Story with comments.

So, I was to Seward today saw that there is a warning sign at the bottom of the mountain. It's been there for 11 years! Evidently, some folk can't read. I'll download the pics of the sign, later.

 

[Peregrinator]

So, I was to Seward today saw that there is a warning sign at the bottom of the mountain. It's been there for 11 years! Evidently, some folk can't read. I'll download the pics of the sign, later.

Because warning signs always save lives...