New Oversight on Climbers’ Fee Increases

/ Andrew Szalay / Leave a comment

As you know, the usage fee for climbing Rainier increased from US$30 to US$43 and the fee for attempting Mount McKinley / Denali is proposed to be raised from US$200 to US$500 for the purpose of funding the parks’ climbing safety and sanitation operations. The climbing community has been actively and professionally advocating that the US National Parks Service should consider alternative means of funding those costs without burdening climbers with excessive fees.

As a lobbyist and former Congressional aide, I have to hand it to the American Alpine Club (AAC), the American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) the Access Fund for getting Senator Mark Udall (D-CO), the Chairman of the National Parks Subcommittee, to ask National Parks Director Jonathan Jarvis about his agency’s increase and proposed increase at a hearing on the administration’s budget held on March 30, 2011 (see the video by clicking here and going to 37:35). Chairman Udall even asked about charging international climbers a higher fee than American climbers, as is done frequently overseas.

Having such questions asked during a Congressional hearing demonstrates and provides several things: 1) The AAC, AMGA and Access Fund have raised sufficient interest and concern about the issue from a key Congressional leader; 2) Congress will be monitoring the National Parks Service’s actions on this issue and expects the final decision to be well reasoned; and 3) Keeps the door open to further and possibly renewed discussion with the National Park Service.

If you are a member of the AAC, as I am, or the AMGA and contribute to the Access Fund, you can be proud of their efforts. They’ve taken a strong step up to providing for an appropriate resolution to the usage fee increases.

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Dolly Sods: The Mid-Atlantic’s Tundra

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Yesterday almost felt like summer around here. If my wife didn’t expect me to go to work every day, I might have called in and took a “golf” day. Only it wouldn’t be golf. But the experience made me think of possibilities and one geographically curious region.

While most of West Virginia’s Monongehela National Forest is tree covered, there is a region known as the Dolly Sods that are a left over from the ice age. It’s a region elevated away from most the region’s typical heat and humidity and has a landscape with more in common with northern Canada than Washington, DC, which is just 170 miles east.

The terrain is technically not exotic in the scope of earth, but its terrain combined with its unique qualities for the region make it interesting. It includes northern hardwoods and laurel thickets at the lower areas of the Dolly Sods Wilderness, while smaller red spruce and heath barrens are higher up, and stereotypical rocky-barren areas are throughout the preserve.

I visited several times around 2003 and 2004 and sometimes camped around the 80-foot cliffs that are typical in some portions. I can’t recall whether that was officially condoned or not, but it gave me a great position to watch the birds and contemplate a rock climb.

If you visit, keep in mind winter lasts a little longer there than the surrounding region and roads may remain closed, so access will be left to hoofing it. In addition, I should point out, that Dolly Sods is the more popular region, but the other tundra-like wilderness of the Monongahela is Flatrock and Roaring Plains just to the south of Dolly Sods Wilderness. In fact, the National Forest Service has said that its designation of Dolly Sods as Wilderness may actually detracted from it by attracting more visitors. That cannot be said about Flatrock and Roaring Plains, which is designated as Backcountry.

Both are great destinations for hikers — and some climbers — in the Mid-Atlantic region. Bring the Ten Essentials and some gaiters, and enjoy the great north closer to home.

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The Messner Saga on Nanga Parbat

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Nanga Parbat. (All rights reserved)

Reading anything by Reinhold Messner translated from the original German can be arduous, at least for me. His poetic language, I’ve been told, works best in German so it sounds awkward in English. Of course, we read his books because of who he is not because of his mastery in prose. While his book like the Crystal Horizon are benchmarks in literature about the sport, his 2003 book The Naked Mountain, is part of the controversy that surrounds the legend of Reinhold Messner.

I read The Naked Mountain several years ago when it was released in the United States. It’s about his climb up Nanga Parbat (26,660 ft./8126 m.) in 1970 with his brother Gunther. In short — as I have had it explained to me by a couple of sources — they climbed the Rupal Face (shown above) despite expedition leader Karl Herrligkoffer intent for Reinhold to summit alone. Reinhold and Gunther topped out without a rope and bivied near the summit in bad weather. Exhausted and unable to get help, they decide to descend via the Diamir Face on the other side from which they came. They become separated and Reinhold lost track of his brother, and later he suspected Gunther was lost in an avalanche. Reinhold wanders back to base camp weak from the climb and an emotional wreck.

Reinhold was accused by the other members of the climbing team, including Herrligkoffer, of abandoning his brother just to traverse Nanga Parbat for the bragging rights. Messner responded with defamation lawsuits. Since then the controversy hasn’t gone away. Messner reopened the wound with publication of this book.

From afar, it’s odd that Messner was entangled in such controversy, though it probably had more to do with strong personalities and ego than the facts. He broke several myths about mountaineering, especially about high altitude climbing in the Himalaya. He climbed light and fast and without supplemental oxygen when many speculated that there might not be enough air up high to sustain a climber. His overall respect by the public and climbers not on the 1970 expedition cannot be denied; he was even elected to European parliament for the Italian Green Party a period.

According to the 2004 American Alpine Journal (see page 448), two other books also published in German were released to counter what was said in The Naked Mountain. However, the printing of English translations of Between Light and Shadows by Hans Saler and The Traverse by Max Von Kienlin were prevented by court order. Both argued that Reinhold was only seeking self-glory and sacrificed his own brother to have it. It probably did not help Von Kienlin that his wife Ursula left him and briefly married Reinhold Messner in the 1970s.

In 2005, Gunther’s body was discovered on the Diamir Face, disproving Von Kienlin’s and Saler’s argument that Reinhold abandoned his brother short of the summit to die just so he could go up one side and come down the other. The egos in Von Kienlin and Saler appear to still be there, saying that it could not be Messner’s brother. I for one believe Reinhold Messner and hope he and his brother find peace.

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Beards and High Altitude Climbing

/ Andrew Szalay / 3 Comments

As I reported on Twitter on April 1, 2011, there appear to be more benefits to beards in high altitude climbing than just the extra layer of fur between us and the snow and ice. According to the Wisconsin Institute of Physiological Performance Science, beard growth increases oxygen flow to some degree in the body at altitude where oxygen is scarce.

The Institute studied several Everest climbers on the same expedition; about half were encouraged to grow a beard while the others were encouraged to shave. At various levels on the mountain, the Institute’s scientists recorded the climbers respiratory index (RI) levels — an indication of oxygen in the body. Guess who had more O2? The climbers with the beards were able to process up to 15 percent more oxygen, according to the study.

The results in this study were probably accurate, but I wonder about several things: 1) was the sample size of the group sufficient to make this determination — all the reports thus far have not stated the size of the pool; 2) the experiment has yet to be replicated; and 3) more importantly, is the 15 percent higher RI noticeably a superior experience (reflexes, alertness) in high altitude climbing.

The theories being tried for why climbers with beards have a higher RI range from the idea that oxygen clings to the beard in higher concentrations than in open air, to the beard hairs increase air flow around the nose and mouth.

In regards to replication, the scientists at the Institute appear to be trying to do so in a pressure chamber. We’ll see what results come. For now, I am a little skeptical, but that’s the scientific process, I think.

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Mount Huntington’s Second Winter Ascent

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If you’re following on Facebook or Twitter (@SuburbanMtnr) you probably already heard that Alpinist, as well as others, have announced that Jason Stuckey and John Frieh made the second ascent of Mount Huntington (12,240 ft./3,731 m.) in winter. According to Frieh’s blog, The House of Frieh, both Americans sended the West Face Couloir by the Nettle Quirk Route in an impressive and returned to the base in just 23 hours on March 19-20, 2011.

These two alpinists met by chance at the Anchorage Airport a month earlier. They soon hatched the plan and acquired good information on climbing the mountain in winter from Colin Haley, who made the first winter ascent in 2007 with Jed Brown, and also current weather information from pilot Paul Roderick and alpinist Mark Westman.

The history and the lines of the mountain are captivating. Located in the Alaska Range, several miles south of Mount McKinley/Denali and rises up from the Ruth Glacier, it was first summited in 1964 by the great French alpinist Lionel Terray. Terray was part of the first successful ascent of an 8,000 meter peak with Maurice Herzog on Annapurna.

The second ascent set up the events that may have made one of the greatest contributions to mountaineering literature: In 1965, four members of the Harvard Mountaineering Club, including now-author David Roberts topped out and then, on the descent in the dark, a spark flew and Robert’s partner vanished. He chronicles the events in The Mountain of My Fear, which he wrote in one sitting without re-reading or editing. It was and remains a unique piece of climbing literature.

With this rapid, fast and light ascent on Huntington by Stuckey and Frieh, the impressive stories of the mountain continue. Well done, guys!

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Cross Country Hiking and Wilderness

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When Andrew Skurka visited Washington, DC and spoke at National Geographic’s Headquarters, he described the sense of being in Alaska and the Yukon in wilderness, “with a capital W,” as he said. He saw more bears than people and explained that he had more in common with the caribou, moose and other animals crossing the far north.

At one point Skurka said, “Food and sleep are just enablers.” They were what empowered the caribou, moose and bears to travel and stay alert. It was no different for Skurka.

In several of his presentations, Skurka has explained that he was so far away from civilization and immersed in wilderness that he had never been more vulnerable and exposed to the natural world — a world that weather, animal-survival instincts, food, water, shelter, sleep and terrain trumped all higher needs of life, such as companionship, education and advancement that people like me strive for on a typical day in Peaklessburg.

Skurka deprived himself of everything except the absolute essentials (part of his fast and light philosophy) on his long hikes and challenged himself a great deal to reach his sense of wonder about wilderness. I’ve experienced the same feelings, though no doubt on a smaller scale. If you have gone backpacking or climbing, particularly solo, when you start out, all that matters is your destination and your enjoyment. But the idea of enjoyment (and later, bragging rights, perhaps) shifts to fundamental desires for food, water and sleep.

These basic priorities open us up to new sense of connection with the land and wildlife around us; suddenly we want the same basic things they want. And wilderness really does deserve to be capitalized.

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