Month: November 2011

Snow or the Lack Thereof

/ Andrew Szalay / 1 Comment

The other day, Edelweiss and I were talking about the absurdly warm November we’re having here in Peaklessburg. Actually, she talked, I grumbled.

We really don’t get enough snow and my neighbors annoy me when they shun — often vehemently — the thought of the white stuff. Rain could be flooding into their basements ruining their beloved, extensive and valuable collection of classic rock LPs and they would sigh and say, “Well, at least it isn’t snow.”

So Edelweiss, in her endless wit, suggested a very appropos statement to put on my tee shirt:

Let it
SNOW
Dammit

I grew up in snowy Upstate New York, and I probably have an unusual appreciation for snow, even among Upstaters. But for me, winter was always more exciting. Summer existed solely for short-wearing activities: hiking, rock climbing and baseball. But winter was for greater endeavors, including skiing, ice climbing, snowshoeing, snowball fights… And there is nothing quite like Tim Horton’s coffee and a donut on a cold, snowy day! Yes, even on the grey-sky slushy kind.

I’m jealous of anyone with regular access to some mountains and wintry precipitation. Or maybe you’re fortunate to have time to take off and head to Bozeman, Montana for the ice climbing festival (December 9 and 10). Enjoy!

So if you’re someplace cold that gets the flakes en masse, be grateful. There are snowless children at the equator.

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Climbing Books that Bind Us Together

/ Andrew Szalay / Leave a comment

The other day something really interesting happened during my commute to work in Peaklessburg. I actually came  across someone reading a climbing book. Well, I thought that was pretty remarkable, at least.

The crowd around me during my ride to and from the city usually blends and blurs into the tracks, tunnels and sidewalks. I usually read my book or review white papers from work and mind little else. The passengers, including me, rarely interact with one another except to say excuse me unless you are travelling with a colleague or friend.

When I come out of my self-focus and raise my eyes to observe my neighbors, I usually see them with their smartphones, iPods, e-readers, Grisham novels, Wall Street Journals, business magazines and trade papers. I never see anyone with anything related to climbing. But then, suddenly, I did and I struck up a brief conversation about the book on the history of climbing in Yosemite.

For me, these chats are normally confined to the virtual world and the rare occasion I can attend my Section meeting of the American Alpine Club, so the face-to-face was invigorating. It made me really want to go to the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival next year.

Our talk was short so we only had time to mention important points, like how the routes developed, the gear Royal Robbins and Yvon Chouinard used and what people really meant by “dirtbag climbers.” While we had our preferred specialties (rock versus ice and alpine,) we were both sufficiently well read to hold a substantive conversation. After ten minutes, I passed my card for this blog and I got off at my stop.

This reinforced for me why mountaineering nonfiction matters. This includes literature, like Steve House’ Beyond the Mountain, to guidebooks, like Jonathan Waterman’s High Alaska, and the American Alpine Journal. These works are not only the stories about climbers like us or those that we admire and insight into climbing opportunities, they reinforce the platform of where climbing as a sport is today and help us advance what’s possible as well as give us a common language.

Climbing books allow us to see what has been done by others, stare at the   possible and how the impossible later became possible often a combination of innovation, naivety, boldness or arrogance, knowledge and experience, and luck. The knowledge of other’s experiences of all of those factors can enable us to be inspired as well as connect with other climbers better.

Climbing is not truly a spectator sport and climbs are personal things. Their stories — written — give more insight than photos and film. What’s in our hearts and what binds us is captured on the routes we ascend and the stories we share.

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The First Flatiron, a Naked Climber and Some Mushrooms

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By now you have probably read about the infamous half-naked climber of the First Flatiron. He’s been rescued and he’s been charged with possession of a controlled substance: a mushroom, believe it or not. But the amusement hasn’t stopped there.

This has been a source of light-hearted humor for me in what has been an otherwise hectic week at work. It’s also made me think of controlled substances in wilderness, be it alcohol or drugs.

Immediately I thoughts of David Roberts bringing the “victory brandy” on his Alaskan expeditions spring to mind. (Yes, I know, it’s scary that my mind jumps right into climbing history!) I also think of Jon Kraukauer smoking a joint on the Stikine Ice Cap during his solo trip to Devil’s Thumb. In both instances, there was some regret from enjoying them, mainly brought on from exhaustion and some level of dehydration. Not that there is ever a perfect condition to partake, of course.

Bringing the intoxicant of choice into the wilderness (or the fringe in the case of the First Flatiron,) sounds tempting and really ought to left to a rest day. This “half-naked” climber clearly was not resting. I have this horrible image of Zach Galifianakis (the character Alan) running around the apartment from The Hangover running through my head.

To the half-naked climber, in the future I would recommend doing what I prefer to do: Enjoy the day in the backcountry, only carrying the essential gear, and after completing the route or hike, guzzle some water and go back to town for some pizza and beer.

There are few things as satisfying as those two things! I think you’ll be hard pressed to disagree.

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Denali’s Southeast Spur and Boyd N. Everett, Jr.

/ Andrew Szalay / 6 Comments
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Denali Rising Stark. (All rights reserved)

It’s a shame that when I’m researching a particular climber the only thing that routinely comes to the forefront are brief reports of his untimely death. In these instances remembering that our sport is hardly mainstream and most people do not care to the degree I do. But the public’s attention is usually brief and dismissive of climbers accomplishments and art except when tragedy strikes.

So be it. We get it.

But Boyd N. Everett, Jr. didn’t settle for that.

Everett was an alpinist that, according to his friends that knew him, wanted the community to know about and understand more about climbing. He was a nerdy, reserved securities analyst for the Lehman Corporation from New York City by day, and a frequent visitor to the ‘Gunks and organizer of aggressive mountaineering expeditions on his days off. He also taught climbing lessons to youth groups, shared countless slide shows to church groups and other audiences, and later made films of his climbs.

He was an unassuming presence most people never took seriously as a climber if you hadn’t climbed with him. In fact, even in Talkeetna he was the subject of ridicule prior to his historic first ascent of Denali’s Southeast Spur in 1962. He carried around his briefcase in town for days until the weather cleared and his team could attack. Many others in New York had no idea of his climbing interest and accomplishments until late in his life. It seems he started coming into his own then.

His accomplishment on the new route on Denali was a remarkable feat in logistics and bullheadedness. They dealt with hard ice, tunneling and rough weather. The route require endless step chopping, rock climbing, climbing cornices and seracs at 10,800 ft. (a section known as “The Fluting,”) and overcoming an overhanging ice wall . One pitch at 10,700 ft. took the group all day to overcome because of the hollow snow and difficulty in setting up protection. At the end of the Spur, the team, knowing they didn’t have sufficient food supplies for all, sent Everett and partner Sam Cochrane to the South Summit.

Everett wrote the quintessential treatise on climbing in Alaska in those days, The Organization of an Alaskan Expedition, which, according to Jonathan Waterman, was copied by untold numbers of dreamers and climbers that wanted to do something big. His leadership and vision also took himself and his teams of climbers to the four highest mountains in North America and to an attempt on Dhaulagiri (26,795 ft./8,167 m.) It was the 1969 attempt on a new route on Dhaulagiri in the Himalayas that cut his life short in an avalanche around 16,500 ft. along with six of his teammates.

There are two records that I am quite impressed by and one I’ve always wanted to duplicate. Everett held the world’s highest recorded game of bridge on Mount Logan (19,551 ft./5,959 m.) He also hit one heck of a golf drive over the side of Mount St. Elias! I’ve always wanted to carry a ball and a club up to the top of some peak and whack it for everything I could in some sort of sense of victory, freedom, and endless space. I can imagine how Everett might have felt in his follow through.

Everett has a memorial fund established in his name that is now part of the ongoing American Alpine Club Mountaineering Fellowship Fund Grant. It was initiated from an endowment from his estate. It’s a fitting way for this man to allow his life to contribute more to climbing, just as he wanted others to know more about and understand climbing better.

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Sources: 1) Waterman, Jonathan, High Alaska: A Historical Guide to Denali, Mount Foraker, & Mount Hunter, American Alpine Club Press, 1999; 2) 1964 American Alpine Journal, pp. 167-8; 3) 1968 American Alpine Journal, pp. 498-500.

Mountain Drool: The White Tusk

/ Andrew Szalay / 1 Comment

Last year I reported on a rarely thought of mountain. It’s not the biggest anywhere, except its own range, and it isn’t even in North America, where I tend to focus my obsessive energies on climbing. No, this one is lost among a lot of peaks in Peru, and I thought it was worth returning to today.

This beauty is Huaguruncho in the Cordilla Central region. It’s name means The White Tusk and is the 24th highest peak in Peru. And it is rarely climbed. It is approximately 18,963 ft./5,780 m., but its precise elevation is uncertain.

According to the 2004 American Alpine Journal, the British made the first ascent in 1956, a Norwegian-American team in 1970, the Japanese in 1975 and by the Spanish in 2003. According to Alpinist magazine it was climbed by British again last year, in 2010, creating a new route.

Seems ripe for some other lines to the top.

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Our Military and the Mountain Tradition

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Last weekend I was going through a stack of books I acquired through a donation to my local section of the American Alpine Club and I came across a reprint of the American Alpine Journal from 1946. Don’t get too excited; it’s not really that old. My copy is the reprint from 1991 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the creation of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, which was established for specialized mountain warfare during World War II on November 15, 1941.

The 1946 volume — marked as “Special War Number” — contains articles on the service of members of the American Alpine Club where they were involved in the mountains or employed their mountain knowledge. It was also the first edition of the journal printed since the beginning of the war, the only hiatus in publishing the journal since it started in 1929. Paging through it, there is an article on the 10th itself by Albert Jackman, about the effect of high altitude on humans by Charles Houston — who would later write the definitive treatise on that topic, an article on the improvements on equipment by Bradford Washburn and several more pieces on other matters.

One thing was clear from reading these articles: the war’s unique problem was its global scope, which meant it would be fought on all imaginable terrain. That introduced challenges especially for the Allies of the US, Canada and Great Britain; they had not before fought on alpine mountains, though the Nazi and Italian forces, in particular, were trained and prepared to do so. The Ally militaries turned to experienced mountaineers to fill in the knowledge gap — many of whom included pieces in this journal.

The preface to the 1991 reprint puts the effect of the war on mountaineering and climbing in general into proper, historical perspective. While grand climbing accomplishments were halted, there were significant advancements in other areas. Without the challenge of winning the war on all fronts — including in the mountain ranges — the innovation in climbing gear would not have occurred at such a rapid pace. The biggest improvement was the development of the virtually unbreakable nylon ropes we use today. Before then, they were made of hemp and other fibers… and they broke, with relative frequency. (Thoughts of the legendary fall on the Matterhorn spring to mind!) By comparison, William House writes, “[T]he best grades of [hemp rope] could be stretched only to approximately 13% of their length before breakage, whereas the nylon rope would stretch over 39%.”

In addition, the role the veterans of the 10th Mountain Division played a significant role in creating America’s mountain culture after the war. They established many ski resorts throughout the United States. I first learned of the 10th through my trips to the Adirondacks and the Whiteface Ski Resort in particular. Later I started coming across memorials for the unit on backcountry trails, like the one on the western side of Mount Washington in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. We may not think of or realize it, but the mountain enjoyments we enjoy in the United States — especially skiing — was made accessible because of the World War II veterans of the 10th.

It’s easy to say on Veterans Day (or Remembrance Day in Canada) that we wouldn’t know the life we enjoy without the sacrifice of those that paid the ultimate price. While that’s unequivocally true, we also appreciate the contributions of the veterans that survived the war and how they have shaped the world we enjoy.

So, happy 70th birthday to the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, which Tuesday, and have a happy Veterans Day tomorrow!

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