Month: August 2011

Hurricane Irene and the NE Backcountry

/ Andrew Szalay / Leave a comment

With Hurricane Irene making landfall, most of the media and public’s attention is on the storm’s impact along the heavily populated areas and along the coastal regions of the eastern seaboard – and for good reason. But the impact in the northeast backcountry will be severe too and nobody is talking about that!

As of Saturday, August 27, 2011, the path of the storm is expected to travel from Cape Hatteras northward toward Long Island and then into New England dumping huge amounts (eight-plus inches) of rainfall and distributing it with the help of intense, sustained winds. The saturation and the gusts has the potential to damage property but also the mountainsides of the White Mountains, Green Mountains and the Adirondacks.

Heavy rainfall can cause mudslides and flood rivers. Winds will likely be stronger in the mountains than in other areas in the storm’s path because of the differences in atmospheric pressure at various altitudes among the mountains’ microclimates; the air will be unable to move over or around a mountain and will be forced to compress and funnel through valleys and over ridges at furious speed. This will likely cause areas of trees to be impacted by blowdown.

Hopefully it goes without saying, stay off the trails and the peaks over the next few days. Don’t worry, the adventure will continue even after the damage is done.

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Source: LakePlacid.com

Delayed Summer and Winter Dangers on Mount Rainier

/ Andrew Szalay / Leave a comment

It’s been a strange season. Earthquakes normal on the western portion of North America has now hit the east coast; though it hardly qualifies as a “big one” to westerners. And in the western mountains, summer arrived late.

On Mount Rainier, summer is normally welcomed with a great deal of unofficial pomp and circumstance. With May/June coming around, the flowers start to bloom in the alpine meadows, unusual signs of life on the snow (yes, the snow) show up, and throngs of automobiles bringing tourists, hikers and climbers pass through Paradise, Longmire and Sunrise.

Interestingly, in 2011, winter and spring lingered much longer than usual… well into summer. Unusually high amounts of snowfall throughout the mountain ranges of the west coast of the US. In fact, the mountain meadows, like in Paradise Valley, have come alive at last. The alpine wildflowers are blooming now in late August – a phenomena that normally occurs months earlier.

Several hiking trails throughout the park were inaccessible and closed to “normal” summer hiking. Snowshoes or skis, ice axes and snow shovels were necessary tools to carry even in July.

But for those that were there in the wintry summer may have seen the mountain in an altogether different light and understood how harsh and exciting a winter environment the mountain can be in other parts of the year. More people were able to see the watermelon snow – an algae that grows on the snow at higher altitudes around Mount Rainier National Park that looks red as if a watermelon’s juices dripped all over.

But with all of these lingering winter conditions are the dangers that make winter and spring exciting and dangerous (both of which are mutual, in my book.) The watermelon snow could be harmful to your system, so be sure to use snow for drinking water elsewhere. Be sure to be prepared for backcountry winter travel and the dangers of avalanches. Winter traction and stability tools are also essential.

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Sources: 1) Yuasa, Mark, “Wildflowers Finally Visible on the Hillsides of Mount Rainier National Park,” Seattle Post Intelligencer, August 21, 2011; 2) Schmoe, Floyd, A Year in Paradise, Mountaineers, 1999.

Two Mountaineering Classics by David Roberts

/ Andrew Szalay / Leave a comment

When I visited Alaska, I did two things everyone else does when they go: I hiked up Flattop Mountain outside of Anchorage and took in Denali. I did a lot more than that, but it was taking in the view of a lesser peak southwest of Big Mac that I really wanted to see! Through my binoculars I saw Mount Huntington (12,240 ft / 3,731 m). To me, it’s almost mythical.

Mount Huntington was first climbed in 1964 by French alpinist Lionel Terray of the Annapurna first ascent team. It’s also one of the most beautifully formed peaks in the Alaska Range. But what puts it on the map of mountaineering lore are the events that mountaineer and author David Roberts captures in his first book, The Mountain of My Fear, originally published in 1968.

The story tells of the second ascent of the mountain including the planning and the relationships with his teammates. The story focuses on the eerie event on the descent when the team of four split up. Roberts and partner Ed Bernd rapped down but in a flash, Bernd vanished with only a spark in the night, undoubtedly falling to the Tokositna Glacier. Due to the separation and the incoming storms Roberts endured five days alone in a lower camp. It sounds simple, but Roberts has a way of articulately saying what was in his mind and connecting the hearts of other climbers, which is what makes it such a great read!

Roberts explains in his autobiographical book, On the Ridge Between Life and Death: A Climbing Life Reexamined (2005), that Roberts wrote the manuscript for The Mountain of My Fear in one fantastic push. It was mainly an exercise in therapy. The apropos title comes from the poem “The Climbers” by W.H. Auden.

The experience on Mount Huntington was actually the second of two epic adventures in Alaska that Roberts was among the primary architects. The other was when he and Don Jensen planned to make the first ascent of Mount Deborah (12,339 ft/3,761 m). The peak has an enormous prominence among the other features surrounding it and it is remote. Sometime after writing his first book, Roberts wrote Deborah: A Wilderness Narrative (1970). While Roberts thinks it is the literary of the two, most readers feel it is far dryer. I disagree.

Deborah is not as profound and moving as The Mountain of My Fear, it is like many other climbing stories about flying into the mountains, climbing, struggling in alpine style, and trudging out of the backcountry. It’s actually a worthy model for a lot of those of us planning a grand ascent. The drama of the story, and what makes it somewhat a downer, is that even before Roberts departed for Alaska, he knew his heart was not in this expedition and certainly not committed to Jensen as he ought to be.

The Mountaineers Books published both of these works in one volume in 1991. I bought my copy in the Denali National Park gift shop; I hadn’t even seen it on my local bookstore shelves back home. I’ve read both twice and return to them periodically. I recommend reading both in gulps rather than sips. Their worth the purchase and certainly the time.

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Mountaineer’s Remains Given up by Glacier

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In the Tyrol region of the Alps – the same region where Reinhold Messner is from – the remains of a climber that went missing from the town of Matrei in 1957 was found.

The report from the Associated Press gives limited detail, but the remains were likely discharged from the glacier it was found near. Only bones and a hiking boot were found.

Such discoveries are made occasionally at the edge of glacier. Glaciers move at their own slow rate, advancing somewhere around six to twenty inches per day. Some people like to refer to them as frozen rivers, though that description is imprecise, it illustrates that it is not static. Airplanes that have crashed on mountains have vanished completely, presumably being covered in fresh snow, or buried in avalanches and slowly joining the glacier. Parts of the plane and its contents may show up decades later.

Presumably, this missing climber from Matrei either fell to his death or stumbled into a crevasse. This is the dark, tragic and lonely part of our sport.

Rest in peace, climber.

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Source: “Remains of Mountain Climber Found After 54 Years,” Associated Press, August 12, 2011.

The Guides of Mount Rainier

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To date, 1981 was the worst year on Mount Rainier in terms of climbing deaths. That year, eleven climbers died in an ice fall along the Ingraham Glacier. Lesser incidents happen frequently and people get hurt from the various occupational hazards of mountaineering every year on the mountain. Often when trouble happens, someone whips out their cell phone and dials 911 and then maybe the Global Rescue Hotline.

The climbers in danger often get through to a dispatch involving the Washington police or to the National Park Service. However, it isn’t the park rangers or the police that often arrive first, but rather the professional mountain guides from Alpine Ascents International (AAI), International Mountain Guides (IMG), or Rainier Mountaineering, Inc. (RMI), the three guide “concessions” permitted to lead groups on Mount Rainier by the National Park Service. They’re presence is nearly perpetual throughout the busy climbing season from May through September.

The Rainier guides’ often serve as first responders to their own groups and other climbers ascending and descending the slopes independently. They can respond with first aid, technical equipment for a crevasse rescue, leadership and an enhanced line of communication with other help providers. Notably, guides must be physically fit to endure a slog to the summit but then have the stamina, whenever necessary, to go the extra mile for when something horrible occurs.

Their knowledge of the mountain and its conditions are invaluable in these circumstances, but perhaps the most crucial element is their “bedside manner.” Most guides are hired not because of their climbing resumes (they often become star climbers after serving as a Rainier guide) but because they have both the knowledge and fitness required but also the ability to teach the skills of climbing and have patience doing so. They will show you how to get your harness on, tie into a rope party, and slow themselves down to go at their client’s pace.

The Rainier guides have a lot of admirable qualities, whether you experience an accident or are being shepherded up the mountain, just based on their job description and how they have been utilized. Regardless of the proverbial safety net around the mountain, we should all be stronger, more knowledgeable and have more patience too. Those things keep us all safer.

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Sources: 1) 2009 Accidents in North American Mountaineering, American Alpine Club, 2009; 2) Mount Rainier National Park website; 3) Filley, Bette, The Big Fact Book About Mount Rainier: Fascinating Facts, Records, Lists, Topics, Characters and Stories, Dunamis House, 1996; 4) Viesturs, Ed, with David Roberts, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the Worlds 14 Highest Peaks, Broadway Books, 2006.

Rainier’s Cramped Camp Muir

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If you’re trying to reach Mount Rainier’s summit (14,410 ft./4,392 m.), most climbers pass through Camp Muir on its southern face. It makes sense. At 10,080 ft. (3,072 m.), it is the most accessible fixed camp to any trailheads to get you in position for the summit day, assuming you are trying to get up and down in two to three days.

It is named for John Muir (of course) because it is located at the same location that he, Philemon Beecher Van Trump and five others camped in during the ascent of August 1888. The site was suitably protected from some of the winds that strike the mountain by the nearby rock features. Since then, the area has been a common halfway point when ascending from the Paradise Valley.

The first hut was built there in 1916. It was the size of a large bathroom or a small bedroom and its stone walls were three feet thick. In 1921, a bigger hut was established and the 1916 structure was made into the Park Company’s guide house on the mountain and later into a cooking house used by the guide concessions. Today, the National Park Service says there is enough space to sleep 110 people there. But when they say “space,” they don’t mean within the walls of the buildings. While the camp is first come first served, permits from the National Park Service regulate the capacity of the Camp Muir area. Don’t be surprised if you need to pitch your tent nearby.

Climbing guide author Mike Gauthier recommends navigating by compass on the ascent; fog, white out or other conditions of low visibility can make the terrain very difficult to read. He also says a map from the park rangers with compass bearings to Camp Muir is also very helpful. Once you arrive, you can take a rest and take in the view, like at the Mount Rainier National Park’s new Camp Muir Webcam.

The route to the summit from Camp Muir takes several different paths, while the path to camp from Paradise is one herding trail. So in many ways, the route fans out from there, and the 110 capacity is often met in the popular summer months and around the weekends.

It has to be said: This is not a route to gain a wilderness experience. It is popular, crowded and often uncomfortable. People pack into the fixed shelters and sleep very close. Everyone still shares the established toilets. As Bette Filley put it in her book, The Big Fact Book About Mount Rainier, “Some have described Camp Muir as half way to Heaven, while others claim it’s half way to Hell.”

The key is to keep in mind you’re climbing to the summit and not Camp Muir. It’s just a check point along the journey.

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Sources: 1) Gauthier, Mike, Mount Rainier: A Climbing Guide, The Mountaineers Books, 1999; 2) Filley, Bette, The Big Fact Book About Mount Rainier: Fascinating Facts, Records, Lists, Topics, Characters and Stories, Dunamis House, 1996; and 3) National Park Service website.