An intense training session on Mt. Hood, for Denali

I thought that I understood how intense a snowstorm could get; however, any complacency I had on that front was dashed on our training event this past weekend, on Mt. Hood.

On my expedition to Aconcagua, in South America, we hired mules to take a lot of our gear up to base camp.  On Denali, *we* will be the “mules” taking our stuff up to base camp, using sleds.  We expect to have somewhere from 45 to 65 pounds on our backs, and somewhere between 45 and 65 pounds in the sleds.  So, in our training, we’ve been wanting to build up to that.  We checked the mountain forecast and saw winds of up to 70mph (112kph), temperatures around 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18C), and about ½ foot (~15cm) of snowfall predicted.  What a fantastic weekend for checking out our gear!  While we hope that we don’t have to ever actually climb through such weather, our camp *has* to be able to endure such a storm.  So, late afternoon on Saturday, my team, consisting of Candi and Oleg, and my tent mate, Ron, headed up from Timberline Lodge at about 6,000ft (1828m) with our destination being the top of the Palmer Ski Lift at 8600ft (2621m), about 2 miles (3.2km) away from the lodge.  It’s a pretty common training ground, but we were the only ones seeking it, this particular weekend. . .

At our start, we were greeted by sunshine and mild weather.  *This* was going to be a piece of cake!!!   We roped up, mostly as we would if we were on the glacier on Denali, so that we would get practice working as a rope team, here, before we get to Denali, so that there would be fewer kinks to work out when we get to Denali, as there will be *plenty* of new kinks to work out, there! 

We made decent time up the hill, with Oleg breaking trail the entire way (if I had broken trail, we would have gone about ½ the speed, as I proved a couple of weekends ago!).  We followed the chairlift the whole way to the top of the Palmer.  It was amusing watching Oleg stop, shine his light on one of the ski-lift support structures, turn to shine his light up the hill, then shine his light at the top of the ski structure, and then forward, again.  I was wondering why he was doing that, but when he was obviously staying put, and signaled me to come up, it was clear – there wasn’t the usual flat snow cat road at the top of the Palmer - just snow - and lots and lots and lots of it!  We’re all used to seeing the cable going from the ski structure into the chairlift building, but all we could see was the top of the last ski-lift structure, and the cable going into the snow, and no building (this picture was taken the next day):

. 

See the cable going into the ground on the left side of the picture?  The top of that structure looked like:

At the time, I was taking a picture of our equipment, and only realized, later, that I’d not taken a picture of just the structure.  We are usually looking way *up* at this part of the structure, but now, we were at the same level.

The top of Palmer, here, was our planned camping site.  By this point, the winds were pretty steady – maybe a little over 20mph (32kph), with snow coming down.  It was dark, as well – around 9:30pm, although with all of the bright snow, not pitch black dark.  With our heavy sleds and backpacks, and having to break trail the entire way, it had taken about 4 and ½ hours to get here, when, typically, when we’re climbing it with normal climbing packs, and without snow shoes, it takes about ½ that time.

We started to build a camp.  Candi and Oleg worked on theirs and Ron and I worked on ours.  We first dug out a flat place for my sled, so that we would have a safe place to keep that (I’d anchored it in, prior to this, but it was on a slope), and then scooped out enough to put the tent on a relatively flat area in the side of the hill.   We put up the tent as the winds increased, anchoring it very solidly in the back, where the wind was coming from, and the front.  We also put our packs inside of the tent to weigh it down, even before we got the tent poles up, as added insurance that the tent wouldn’t fly away.  We didn’t bother too much with all of the extra tie-down places on the tent, which we would usually anchor down so that the wind didn’t flap in the wind, but we didn’t have the anchors readily available, and neither of us were that worried about that aspect, I guess.  And maybe we were in just a little too much of a hurry to get out of the wind and snow.  When we did get into the tent, it was fine, except that with the wind blowing outside, there was no way that we were going to light a stove, which, when being started/primed, emits very high flames.  We opted for a cold “dinner” of our snack bars, and tucked in for the night at around ½ hour after midnight.  We were both quite tired.

I had a nice, warm sleep, until Ron woke me up, telling me that the snow was piling up on the tent.  I rolled over and told him that if he wanted me to do something about it, to let me know, as otherwise, I was going back to sleep.  He let me know.   Probably because the snow was collapsing his side of the tent, it entered his brain that it was serious well before it entered my brain.  He told me that we really needed to relieve the pressure of the snow on the tent, and so he was going to go out and do something about it.  The wind was absolutely howling.  I realized that I needed to pee, so suggested that I should go out, since I needed to pee, anyway, and put on my boots, and my balaclava and great big down jacket – I already had on my wind pants and layers of long underwear, which I’d been sleeping in.  I couldn’t find my headlamp, but it was so light, with all of the snow, that I didn’t think that it would matter much.  I put on one of my warm pair of mittens, and unzipped the door on my side of the tent, and the whole tent shifted! There was no way that I could zip it back up – Ron would just have to deal with the wind racing by.  Fortunately, the wind hadn’t shifted, so the entrance was still pointing downwind.  The first thing I noticed, besides being blown by snow and wind, was that everything in the front of the tent was completely buried in snow.  I couldn’t see Ron’s shovel, which I thought we’d left at the front of the tent, so I made my way to the back of the tent, and found my shovel, picked it up, and almost lost it to the wind!  The wind practically ripped it out of my hand- and catching it before it flew away cost me a sprained thumb, but, at least I had the shovel.  I noticed that the sled in back of the tent was completely buried under about 1 to 1.5 feet (1/2meter) of snow, and started digging, there, thinking that I would dig there, and then on Ron’s side of the tent, from the back of the tent, so that I was always facing downwind.  Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get to the bulk of the snow that was weighing down primarily the front of the tent, so I moved around to the front, and had to face into the wind to shovel.  I shoveled for a while, and was just getting hammered in my face, so decided to take a breather, and stuck my head into the tent.  Ron gasped when he saw me – he told me that there were all sorts of “ornaments” hanging down in front of my face.  I reached up, and realized that all my frizzy hair had collected over an inch of snow, so that it was as if I had a hairdo of tennis balls hanging down, everywhere. 

Ron said that the snow on the tent situation was a little better, because he could now move the side of the tent a bit.  He told me that he couldn’t find his boots, though, which had been in the front of the tent.  I looked around, and couldn’t find them, either – they were buried, inside of the tent, with that part of the tent completely covered in snow.  Ron warned me to be super careful that I didn’t rip the tent with the shovel.  I went out, again, and worked some more on it.  I was really proud of myself for getting some really large chunks off of the tent, and then, wait a minute!  Where’s the tent?  I yelled at Ron that I needed his light (to be shining through the tent).  I didn’t know whether he heard, but I couldn’t see the tent.  But I was right next to it!  I was sure of it!  I stretched my arms out, feeling around for it, and finally felt it, and then had to continue feeling around it to find the entrance way.  It was getting smaller, as the wind started drifting the snow both in front of, and curled around into the tent!  

The storm was dumping more snow, even as I’d moved so much away from the tent.  Ron told me that we needed to get Oleg and Candi’s help.  With the memory of standing next to the tent and not being able to find it, freshly in my head, I told him that there was no way that I could go over there.  I was remembering their tent as being about 40ft away.  I was quite worried about getting lost on the way there, even if I went on my hands and knees!  I’d never been in such blinding snow, before.   Ron noticed that I wasn’t wearing goggles, so offered me his, but I couldn’t get them small enough to fit on my head (why I didn’t just go and get mine is a mystery to me!), and something happened to the strap of his headlamp, when he tried to give that to me, so I just when back out and tried harder to get rid of the snow.   I did try to go over to Candi and Oleg’s tent, but got scared of getting lost as soon as I cleared my tent.  I screamed their names, but there was no way that they could possibly hear me, even if they’d been 5 ft away.

I started shoveling the snow that was piled up around the front of the tent, and thought that I’d found Ron’s shovel, so I dug even more vigorously, and then felt with my mittens – oops – that wasn’t a shovel, that was his helmet, which I knew was *inside* the tent, and so I knew that I’d likely damaged the tent, just what Ron had been warning me *not* to do.  I couldn’t do anything about it, at that point, though, and just tried to move more snow away.  I finally dove back into the tent, and asked Ron if maybe he could use *my* boots?  He told me that he’d been wondering the same thing.  He told me that he’d need the parka and some mittens, as well, since all of his stuff was still buried.  He was able to use my boot shells with his inner boots, miraculously, even though they are about 2 sizes too small for him.  I gave him my parka and my warmest mittens, and then he went out. 

He worked a while and made tremendous progress.  He put his head in long enough to tell me that Candi and Oleg were up, as he could see their lights.  He went over there to check on them, and came back with the report that they were “doing the same thing” – dealing with snow around their tent.  I was able to find my headlamp, and while Ron did more shoveling, pushed out the tent from under the snow, and I was able to find his boots and the rest of his gear.  I was also able to finally close the tent, but before I did so, I shoved out all of the snow that had accumulated – huge chunks of it.  The next morning, Ron discovered that I’d managed to shovel out one pair of my fleece pants with all of the snow, and it neither got buried, nor blew away.

After greatly relieving all of the stresses on the tent, Ron returned.  The inside of the tent was wet.  Snow was coming in through the vents that I hadn’t remembered had some additional zippers for complete closure.  Our sleeping bags were wet, and my down compressor jacket was wet.  I went into my sleeping bag, anyway.  After a couple of hours, it started to get light, and I asked Ron if he’d slept at all.  He hadn’t.  We’d both been lying there, shivering the whole time. 

The wind hadn’t abated, but the snow seemed not to be accumulating as much.  We started talking about how to pack everything up, while staying sheltered, and how to get the tent packed, as a final move.  I’d never been able to pee, so I was now getting desperate.  While I’d practiced several of the various techniques for peeing inside of the tent, I’d given up on them all in favor of just going outside.  But, then, I’d never experienced a storm like this one, and realized that I couldn’t bare all in these driving winds.  I rearranged my water supplies (which we fortunately had plenty, so that we didn’t *have* to melt snow) so that I could have a “pee” bottle.  Ron didn’t want to hang around for some reason, so he got up and conferred with Candi and Oleg while I emptied my bladder into the bottle.  When he returned, he graciously emptied the bottle for me.  And since everyone always asks me about this – no, I didn’t use one of those funnels, although I have one, and Candi swears by them.

Oleg and Candi had suggested that we wait about 3 hours to see if the wind would die down.  It was a sensible idea.  Ron and I decided to eat food.  We still didn’t want to light a stove inside of the tent, so we finished off whatever we had, which for me happened to be a lot of candy, as well as a granola bar.  Yum.  Black licorice and Hot Tamales (a cinnamon candy) for breakfast!!!  Nutritious!

We started packing.  In the light, I noticed the zippers for the vents, and finally closed them, so that it stopped snowing inside of the tent.  Ron noticed the shredding I’d done to the front of the tent, and tried to accept some of the blame for it, thinking that he’d contributed to it on our previous outing; but, I remembered that one of the two of us had put crampon points in the ground cloth at that time, but that the tent, itself, had been fine.  No, I’d managed to shred the tent all by myself, thinking that I was unearthing Ron’s shovel.   Good thing the tent was mine, and I had only myself to blame!

We finished up the packing, stuffing the tent and ground cloth into my bag on the sled, and then worked on getting the sleds all configured.  While going up the hill, it wasn’t necessary from a sled control point of view, to be roped together, but while going down, it was quite necessary, because the person *behind* the sled winds up actually controlling it, and preventing it from passing the person to whom it is attached.  We elected to rope up quite near each other, just so that it would be easier to communicate, and also easier to control the sled in front of us, even though we wouldn’t be able to do that on the glacier. 

We had a lot of troubles with the sled that Candi was pulling, and had to stop a couple of times to rearrange it.  I snapped this picture after one of those times:

Candi (green blob) is in front, with her sled (red blob with black bag) behind her. Oleg (orange blob) is right next to her sled, with his sled (blue blob) behind him and right next to Ron (big blue blob), with his sled (red blob with black bag on top) behind him.  The rope from that sled is leading to me.  There was still a driving, snowy wind, but compared to the previous night, this was *nothing*!  

Before this whole weekend started, Oleg didn’t like the weather forecast and had apparently decided not to join us!  However, Candi had no way to reach us to tell us not to show up at her house, so she decided, what the heck, she would just go with Ron and me.  Somehow, Oleg’s mind was changed in the process, so I was shocked that, on the way down, Oleg was positively smiling!  When we were in the parking lot, he said something like “Wow! That was FUN!!”  I could only think of Mark Twight’s famous (to climbers) quote “It doesn’t have to be fun to be fun.”  However, as I was later to learn, Candi and Oleg’s night was nowhere near as eventful as Ron’s and mine was.  Their tent held up just fine.  All of their clothes and their sleeping bags, pads, etc. were *dry*.  The only complaint that they had was that their outside vestibule got snowed in.  I had a hard time sympathizing.  They had even boiled some water the previous night, inside that outside vestibule, so that they could eat a “nice” dinner.

I’ve heard stories about Denali’s storms, and I’d been worried about not having an external vestibule for cooking, but this Mt. Hood storm convinced me that I absolutely need another style of tent (it’s on order – FYI, climbers, I’m buying a Trango 3.1 to take, instead of the EV3).  It also convinced me that I need to have a pee bottle, just in case. . . 

In analyzing the snow on the tent situation, we decided that our big problem was not leaving enough space between Ron’s side of the tent and the snow wall that we put the tent next to.  We should have left at *least* 2 feet, and then, likely, the 2 foot gap would have been filled, and even if we still had snow on the tent, it likely would not have been as bad as it was.  And to get from my tent to Candi and Oleg’s, during the night, even if I couldn’t see, I could have used the rope as a safety line.  It turned out that their tent was more like 10 or 15 ft away from mine, but in that storm, it seemed so much farther!  Ron, who actually went over there, told me that he was surprised to see how close the tents actually were, in the daylight!

Ron suffered severe windburn on his face, which has only just now cleared up (it took a week).

One thing that didn’t go as forecast – the temperature must have been around freezing, and not around 0F/-18C, or all of our stuff wouldn’t have gotten so danged wet.  Where is the cold when you need it, eh?

So, I’m thankful that I am living in a place where we can experience harsh conditions in order to ready ourselves for potentially harsher conditions!  I wish you all “helper” experiences on the way to your great experiences!

leora

Anticipati​ng Antarctica

Back in May, I mentioned that this year’s big trip is to Antarctica for celebrating the 11/11/11 birthday of my travel buddy, Ed. Well, the trip is almost upon us.

The plan is for the two of us to meet up on November 2nd at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport in Texas (me flying from Oregon, and Ed from Arizona), and then flying on into Buenos Aires, Argentina, where we have to switch to the domestic airport across town (we’ll probably take a taxi), and then on to Ushuaia, at the very southern tip of Argentina. We should make it to that town around 6:30 in the evening, enjoying the spring season, which should be well under way, down there. In a move that is a little against our tradition, we’ve reserved a hotel for the whole time that we’ll be down in that town.

Ed and I were talking about the location of Ushuaia – it’s at the 55th parallel in the southern hemisphere. I couldn’t find any notable towns in Canada that appear on the corresponding parallel in North America. It’s sort of the southern tip of a little finger of Alaska, and is halfway through provinces like British Columbia and Alberta. In Europe, it’s a little north of Belfast, Ireland, and runs pretty much through Newcastle in the U.K. It’s roughly the southern tip of the Scandinavian Pennisula, and runs through the southern part of Russia. It’s just fun to consider where we’d be in the northern hemisphere if we were near the corresponding parallel.

We expect that we’ll be doing some hiking and exploring while in the area, and then we get on the One Ocean Navigator (also known as Akademik Ioffe) on the 8th with about 94 other passengers. I’m hoping that we’ll have a night of calm channel travelling, before the 2 days of rough Drake Passage crossing in order to get to the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula – an arm of land that looks as though it was torn off from the mainland that lies to the east of the peninsula. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to actually touch the continent on Ed’s birthday on the 11th. If everything goes as planned, we expect to spend up through the 17th doing sea kayaking, snowshoeing or hiking, and at least one night camping out. The whole point of going with this particular company was to be able to be active while down there. We may or may not get to cross the Antarctic Circle. We’re expecting that the weather and existence of ice in the water to play a big part in determining where, exactly, we’ll be going after getting to the peninsula area. And no, I won’t be doing any climbing while there, which is sad, as there are quite a few nice mountains, in Antarctica, and some on the peninsula, itself.

I think it’s on the 18th, we have to turn around and head back to Argentina. We’re expecting to go from the boat to the airport on the 20th, and spend the entire day getting over to Mendoza, Argentina, where Ed wanted to spend a few days. I’m hoping that we’ll get a whitewater rafting trip in, while there, before we take off on the 25th for the long trip back to the US, which is routed through Miami, Florida.

We’re both hoping that between what we’re bringing, and what the boat is providing (waterproof parkas and bibs, Wellington boots, and dry suits for the kayaking), that we’ll always be nice and toasty warm. Besides, it’ll be Spring! In spite of the season, something that I read mentioned that the water is just about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 Celcius), so I’m really, really, really hoping that there will be no splish-splashing around in the water!

They say that we’ll take about 4 or 5 times as many photos as we plan on taking, so I hope that I’ll have enough memory in my camera. I’m also hoping that Ed will take his normal array of spectacular photos. I’m beginning to expect that I’ll have the crappiest camera on the boat, but it’s small, supposedly waterproof and shockproof, so it quite suits me with the paces I put it through. . . .

Don’t expect any email while I’m down there!

Oh – I have written up some of my summer climbs, but they’ve all been written as trip reports, or discussions on www.CascadeClimbers.com, so written for consumption by mountaineers. If you’d care to take a gander at them, one is here: Failed attempt at Glacier Peak, another here: Steel Cliff Route up Mt. Hood, and another writeup in the comments at the very end of this post Adams Glacier route up Mt. Adams. This last climb was one of my favorites this summer, since it was technical, involved a lot of route-finding through the crevasses, with no assurance of success, and had fabulous weather. My partner was also able to take what I thought was a great picture of me on a snow bridge, in the middle of a huge crevasse in what we were hoping was a route out of the crevasse field:

Looking forward to touching the, and my, 7th continent,
leora

A couple of trip reports

These trip reports were designed for mountaineers, but I thought that I'd put links to them, here, since some folks might be interested in reading them.

This one is about a less-often done route up Mt. Hood, Steel Cliff:
http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1023692

And this one is about a failed attempt at a mountain in the Northern Cascades, Glacier Peak:
http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1025177/What_should_have_been_a_Glacie#Post1025177

Safe travels. . .

leora

The Universe Delivers

Many times, I feel just plain lucky. I choose to say something, and discover something helpful. I’d like to think that those times outweigh all of the times I choose to say something that I later regret. . . This missive is about one of the fortunate times.

One of the guys at work, Matt, was having a devil of a time trying to get an opportunity to climb our local, highest mountain in Oregon, Mt. Hood. He took the local mountaineering group’s basic mountaineering class (something I’ve helped to teach in the past), and signed up for a climb. I was going up every weekend to either climb or teach, and he was maybe climbing to the top of the Palmer snowfield (which is really the start of the significant climbing of Mt. Hood), and turning around and going home, or his climb was being cancelled for one reason or another before even getting to the mountain. 2 weekends ago, I was trying to get someone to climb a technical route with me, and failed, so I asked Matt if he wanted to accompany me for a south side ascent (the most climbed route). He jumped at it. We had great weather, including high clouds that kept the sun off of the top of the mountain until we could get up there, thus avoiding the dangers of ice falling down onto us.

Here are a couple of shots of the sunrise:


And:

That’s Mt. Jefferson peaking out through the cloud mass that the sun is lighting up.

We were successful and had just stunning views of all of the surrounding mountains, and the cloud shrouded valleys, below. We headed down, and got to a safe spot, the Hogsback. Matt was telling me how beat he was. He ate, and I suggested that perhaps a snooze was in order, as soon as we got to the base of Crater Rock, out of the way of any possible avalanche, ice, or rockfall danger, since the sun was blazing at this point. We went down to the base, and tried to snooze for about an hour. We then headed down, with Matt telling me that he was having a splitting headache, and no amount of water seemed to get rid of it. As we got down to the top of Palmer, with 2 miles and about 2,200ft in elevation still to go, he told me that a migraine was coming on, and that he wanted to put a wet towel on his head and sleep in the dark, but all we had was bright sunshine and a ways to go. I started to wonder if there was *anything* that I could do to help him. I realized that I could take his backpack, and then he would just have to worry about getting his body down. I took his pack, and strapped it on my front. He’s a tall guy, so it stuck up a bit, but wasn’t really much of a problem – with all of the water he’d drunk, it was pretty light. We kept going down. With a little over a mile to go, and still another 1000ft left to drop, we came across two guys taking a lot of pictures. One of them turned to us with that “can you take a picture for us” look in his eyes and he may even have asked it, aloud, and I answered him, that of course I’d be happy to do so. I took their picture with the top of the mountain behind them. They started asking questions about what we’d done, and I was answering. Matt was suffering. We turned around to go down, as did they, but they were still behind us. I decided that I wanted to know where they were from, since they’d been speaking another language when we’d approached, and were obviously tourists. I yelled back the question about where they were from, and they called back “Israel.” I’ve been there, years ago, and despite having relatives there, which should make it more attractive to me, just didn’t care for the heat. Just like Florida, I have a hard time returning, and have yet to. I told them about that, and then mentioned that we have a team of Israelis whom we work with at my company. I so rarely mention what company I work for. I don’t know why – perhaps because many people, in places I’ve visited, give me a blank stare when I do . . . This time, I thought, let me just mention the company. I told them that I work for Intel. They both piped up, “me too!”

We started chatting about all of the people we know, quickly establishing that we knew some of the same people. And, finally, we got around to exchanging our own names. One of the guys, Muhammad, offered to reduce my burden by taking Matt’s backpack from me. He was happy, because he felt like a mountaineer, and I was happy, because it was easier to see without it. As we continued down, I started thinking about the ride home. I’d not gotten any sleep the prior night. I’d woken up at around 6am on Friday, worked all day, and tried to sleep at a colleague’s place, but was never successful before having to pick up Matt at 10pm, and starting our climb at midnight. At this point, it was nearly 3pm the next day, so I’d had 33 hours of no sleep. I told Matt that I was sorry, but I would have to sleep some before I would be able to drive home, so his agony would continue, since for sure, he was not able to drive. Steed, the other Israeli, piped up that he and Muhammad could help drive. At first, I thought that this sounded impossible, but then I realized that they would have just 1 car between them, and could split up, with one driving me, and the other Matt, since likely, they would be staying somewhere on my way home. I asked if they could drive a manual transmission. Of course, they could – they didn’t grow up in the US, where automatic transmissions are the norm!

So, when we got to the parking lot, we moved Matt’s stuff into Steed and Muhammad’s car, so that Muhammad could take Matt home, and Steed took over the driving of my car. As I curled up to go to sleep in my car, with Steed driving, I thought of my friend Mary and what she would say to this, “you had a complete stranger drive your car while you slept!!!!! Are you crazy??!?!? “ I told Steed about this thought as I went off to sleep, and his only comment was “I never did show you my badge!” (He was referring to the Intel badge that we all get as proof of our employment.) He dropped himself off at his hotel in Portland, and by then I’d had enough sleep that I could make the 3/4s hour drive back home without incident.

Steed and I wound up going hiking the following day with one of my interns, with Steed driving his rental car. We returned really late, and Steed got tired while driving, so I took the wheel (fortunately, any Intel employee can drive an Intel employee rented vehicle), and as I did so, mentioned that I was happy to be able to repay the favor from the previous day!

Here’s a picture of me from after that hike, with Coldwater Lake behind me, and some of the low mountains north of Mt. St. Helens:

I’m still amazed at how well this all worked out. Oh, and Matt recovered, nicely – just slept the whole way home, and then that night, and felt quite fine, and very happy that he’d climbed his first mountain, and Mt. Hood, at that.

May the universe put out friendly tentacles, at just the right time for you, too.

leora

The Good, the Bad, and the Tragic

The good news is that my travel buddy and I are going to celebrate his 11/11/11 birthday by traveling to Antarctica!!! We'll be flying to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then on to Ushuaia, at the very southern tip of Argentina, where we'll hop on a boat, take off across the dreaded Drake Passage (everyone tells me that it's very rough!), visit a sort of arm of land that projects out from the continent, called the Antarctic Penninsula, do some kayaking, and, if the weather permits, an overnight campout on the continent, a little more kayaking, and then return back to Ushuaia. We'll be on a ship called the One Ocean Navigator (also known as Akademik Ioffe) and get to spend about 6 days wandering around the Antarctic Peninsula.

The bad news is that we've had to postpone the Denali expedition until next year, due to Candi's back injury. She's spending the year getting her back up to snuff. Meanwhile, Tom and David are climbing Denali, now, as I write this, with a guide service. Candi, Oleg, and I are currently planning to climb Denali as a threesome, with which Candi is now comfortable. This makes the planning, skills practicing, communications, and likely the whole climb much simpler. It does narrow the safety margin a bit, so practicing together will become even more critical. We did a navigation practice several weekends ago, climbing Mt. St. Helens in a whiteout, which was really fun. There was only one other team on the mountain. I put some wands in on the way up, and we took compass bearings and made a mental note of the altitude of each wand. There was one wand in particular, in the middle of a vast snowfield, that I never expected to see again, on the way down, because we spaced them so far apart, so that relatively vague readings on the compass would get us near, but perhaps not near enough, in such whiteout conditions, to make out a wand, but we found them all, which was quite gratifying.

Our summit shot gives some indication of the low visibility:

Can you see the edge of the crater rim behind me? I sure can't! And in case you can't tell, I'm the one standing, and Candi is sitting.

Now, compare the above to what it looked like on a clear day, earlier in the year, when I went with my friends Rita and Gil:

This was taken looking east, where you can see the edge of the rim in the near distance, and Mt. Adams in the far distance. (JM stands for "Juvenile Myositis.")

The tragic news is that my wonderful next door neighbor, Steve Allen, was killed, yesterday, in an explosion of something called an hydraulic accumulator that he was working on at his work place, Stimson Lumber. It was apparently under pressure, when it wasn't expected to be. This was the neighbor of whom I wrote in an earlier leoralore, when I was having my water difficulties. Steve didn't like to hear about my climbing exploits, because they made him too nervous. . . Little did we know, when we discussed my climbing, that his work would wind up being so deadly. He was a truly wonderful man. He touched many lives, and always in such positive ways. It's heart-wrenching to have to talk about him in the past tense.

Please, all - stay healthy and alive.

leora

Denali: Background and Another Snow Session

By the comments and questions I received, I realized that I didn’t set up my Denali Planning leoralore very well. . . I got the most “grief” from my uncle who told me of his surprise that I would be “climbing” a Denali (Chevrolet Sports Utility Vehicle) or an Expedition (a Ford SUV). Although he was kidding me, I went back and read that missive and noticed that not once did I ever refer to it as a mountain! So, let me introduce Denali, properly!

Denali is also known as Mt. McKinley. It’s located in Alaska, and it’s the tallest mountain in North America at 20,320 feet (6193 meters). Being the tallest, it’s also a magnet for people all over the world who want to summit the tallest mountains on each continent. So, there will be a lot of us on the mountain. . . For us, the plan is to start our trip sometime in May of 2011, and finish sometime in June, reserving an entire 4 weeks to do the trip, including taking all of the flights. The expedition starts at 7,200ft (2195m) on the Kahiltna Glacier, where we’ll be dropped off by a small plane that has us and our gear. We then plan on climbing the 15 miles (24 kilometers), with about 13,120ft (4000m) elevation gain, to the summit via the most common route, the West Buttress. If we’re lucky, the entire time on the mountain will be around 16 days, but if there are storms or what not, it could take longer, hence the reservation of 4 weeks. . .

So, that’s the background information. In November, we did a snow session practice on Mt. Hood with four of the six of us. Both Oleg and Tom were on international trips, so couldn’t join us. Candi and I went on snow shoes, and Denis and David went on skis.

Here is Candi gearing up. Her and my snowshoes are at her feet, and she’s putting the finishing touches on getting her backpack ready, while mine is lying behind her:

Denis and David were able to hustle up much faster than Candi and I were:

Candi is the obvious person in the picture, and Denis and David are the two dots dead center in the picture, near one of the ski lift pylons. Our visibility came and went throughout the afternoon. Mostly, it went. . . However, it cleared up as we set up camp, giving spectacular sunset views:

And the top of the mountain became visible:

Soon after this picture (that’s the back of Candi’s head), we had dug out platforms in the snow for our tents, tied them down, and had gotten started melting snow for water, when the moon came up in the east and the sun went down in the west at the same time! I took pictures, but they didn’t come out, well, so imagination is probably better than lousy pictures. . .

With the weather looking so great, and the snowpack looking pretty great, we decided to try to make it to the summit the next day. We were camped at about 8,650ft, which seemed so low to me, that I didn’t bother to make sure that I was properly hydrated. I just wanted to get to bed and make sure that I got enough sleep before attempting to climb early (5am) the next morning (everyone wanted to get back home, early, so we had to get up early to do the climb to make it back down in time).

Both Denis and David woke up before 1am and took in the fact that there was a full moon and clear skies. They also noted that it was quite cold, but knew that it wouldn’t get much warmer and decided to make the move to summit, then, instead of going back to sleep to get up at the previously agreed upon time. I was feeling like crap, so I was thinking more sleep would be nice, but I had been cold (a 40-below sleeping bag just doesn’t seem to do it for me, unless I also have an inner bag!) all night, and didn’t think that it would get much better, so, yeah, what the hey – I decided to give it a shot, then, too. Candi agreed. We all started up, and I was as slow as molasses. Candi stayed back with me, and Denis and David skied steadily up and out of sight. When I got to around 9600ft (2926m), I threw up! I thought of Joe, who’d gotten ill just around this elevation a couple of years ago, and the 3 of us who were climbing “with” him, not noticing and trundling on up. . . At the time, I couldn’t believe that he’d gotten Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) at such a low elevation – yes, it’s certainly POSSIBLE, but I’d never known anyone who did – at LEAST make it to 10,000 ft (3048m) before succumbing to AMS if you want to call yourself a climber, for Pete’s sake!!!! Anyway, here I was at 9600ft, and retching. I was pretty sure that there was nothing that I could do to make myself better enough to keep climbing, so I called up to Candi and told her that I was turning around. She told me she’d join me, even though she was feeling very strong. I ran down about 100ft just because I thought it would help me not to retch, anymore, and used my cell phone to leave David a message that we were turning around (fortunately, the cell phone SOMEtimes works on the south side, and it appeared to be working, then). I had no more AMS issues, and by the time Candi and I arrived back at camp, the sun was rising:

We took a “Cure JM” (Cure Juvenile Myositis – the disease for which we are hoping to raise research funds with the Denali climb) picture to the east. Yes, that’s a sea of clouds, below us, in the distance behind Candi. And Candi is quite bundled up because we judged it to be around 14F (-10C), or possibly colder.

The guys turned around at the Hogsback due to super-deep snow, and met us just as Candi and I were leaving camp. Since their trip down was going to be faster on skis, we took off, doing some gear exchange with them when they passed us on their way down.

As a practice session, it wasn’t the best, since we pretty much didn’t practice anything that we would need to do on Denali, except deal with cold and melt snow for water. If I needed a reminder, which, apparently, I did, that hydration is important, I definitely got it. But it was ok that we didn’t practice any of the other stuff that we’d need to do on Denali, since we intended to have other sessions later in the 2010 year, and in 2011, including everyone. However, as what happens with expeditions many times, things change. Our December session didn’t happen, because Denis dropped out (an expected change in jobs wasn’t going to be conducive to taking a month off), David and Tom got busy, and Candi sprained her back.

Soon after, David and Tom dropped out, deciding that they would go, instead, with a professionally guided group. This increases the chance of success of the climb, so it’s quite understandable. However, it’s not the type of climb that I’m interested in. I told Candi about this newest development, thinking that she would still insist on 6 people for the team, and I was ready with a bunch of ideas about how to obtain the additional 3, but to my surprise, she’d already thought about just doing a 3 person climb, and was now ok with the idea. Three people climbs are a HECK of a lot easier to arrange, plan, practice for, etc. On the actual climb, we won’t have the added security of having an additional team to help haul out us out of a crevasse, should one of us fall in, and we won’t have as many options if one of us gets ill, but the coordination and preparation, which are a pretty huge part of the expedition, will get much, much easier.

However, Candi still has a sprained back.

So, are we going, or not? Well, we don’t know. We’ve decided to give it until the end of January. If her back is fine at that time, then we will go as originally planned. If it’s not, then we’ll be forced to put off the climb for a year.

There are advantages for me, personally, either way, so I’ll just wait until the end of January for that decision, and meanwhile, continue the planning and getting ready, as if I were to go, since some things need to be done whether it will be this year, or next year.

May your dreams come true!

leora

Snow, as ordered. . .

When I booked my trip to Michigan in December, I was actually hoping that there would be snow, but I guess that I was hoping that it would already be there. Instead, there was snow when I landed, but just a dusting, and that’s about how much there was until, of course, I was supposed to leave. Saturday night, the weather first got warm (a few degrees above freezing – it’d been in the 20’s and teens Fahrenheit (about -5 to -12C) all week) and it rained, and then later, with the quote “be careful what you wish for” ringing in my ears, I saw some 3 inches of snow pile up outside, ensuring a nice icy layer under a nice blanket of snow. United Airlines rang the house at something like 4am to say that my 7pm flight was cancelled, so they put me on one early in the morning. My Mom woke me up at 5:30am thinking that maybe would could make the flight if we got up and out within the hour. I felt that it was already too late to make such a flight, even if we left at that moment, which none of us were prepared to do. I logged in to see if I could find out the scoop, online, and when I tried to check in for the new flight, it wouldn’t let me do it “until 24 hours ahead of time”. That’s when I realized that it was scheduled for the next morning. I went back to bed to deal with it in the morning. On Sunday, it just snowed and snowed and snowed – we got about 6 inches or so, with high winds that drifted the snow so that there were places where the snow was much deeper. The early morning flight wasn’t going to work for a number of reasons, including the storm not being over by the time we would have to leave my folks house, so I rescheduled the flight for later on Monday.

This allowed me time to go for run in the drifted snow and wind (that was a workout!), and shovel us out, and for that, I used the yooper scooper. I’m not sure how “yooper” is actually spelled, but I spell it that way so that people pronounce it, correctly. A “Yooper” is someone from the U.P. (Upper Pennisula) of Michigan. We pronounce the letters, when we talk about the U.P., and so the people who live up there become the U.P.ers, or, more fondly, the yoopers, because they tend to be of Scandinavian descent, and therefore have that long drawn out accent. Anyway, I believe that the Scandinavians brought with them a type of “shovel” that they used back in Scandanavia. It looks like this:

Since the only place that we know of people using it is in the U.P., we, naturally, call it a yooper scooper. Note, in the above picture, what you can do is scoop up the snow, and then slide it up and over other snow, and then tip it up to dump it. This snow was very heavy, and I was able to move an amazing amount by using this technique. It was still hard work, but I don’t even think that I could have shoveled the whole driveway with a regular snow shovel without getting an extremely sore back.

Monday brought nice sunshine, showing us all of the beautiful snow:

We made it to the airport without an accident, which was quite a miracle given the many spinouts, and my parents were able to make it back home without an accident, although there was a little slipping and sliding that occurred. . . (Michigan doesn’t allow studded tires or chains).

And I thought that everything was hunky dory for leaving, until just before they boarded my plane – the agent called me up and asked for my paper ticket. I handed him my boarding pass that I’d received from the Continental ticket agent. He said, no, no – he needed a ticket – the boarding pass said that there should be a paper ticket. United had put me on that Continental flight, but it seems that they’re not quite one company, yet, and somehow the agent that put me onto that flight made a mistake and didn’t make the ticket electronic. The guy said that I would likely miss the flight since I needed a United agent to reissue the ticket as an electronic ticket, but no United agents were there – he sent me off to two different United gates, but no one was at either one. When I returned to his counter, I asked them if it were possible for them to actually call United, since at this point, going back to the ticket counter (outside of security, which is what they were suggesting) would ensure that I wouldn’t make the flight. An agent did so, and everything got fixed in time for me to get on the plane (the last person, but I got on!).

As a parting shot – here is a cardinal eating seeds embedded in suet during the snowstorm:

May your winter be what you want it to be, and may you be healthy and safe.

Leora

Planning for Denali

About a year ago, while running with a friend, Candi, during lunchtime, she mentioned that she was interested in climbing Denali in 2011. That sounded great to me – I was definitely interested in climbing Denali, but I wasn’t interested in doing it in 2010. 2011 sounded perfect. Candi wanted to have 6 people on the team – 3 for each rope team, and 2 teams in case someone fell into a crevasse. A team self-rescue would be much easier with 6 people, total. Neither of us wanted more than that – too many personalities to deal with! I immediately thought of 2 of my regular climbing partners, who I was sure would want to join us, David and Tom. David was an immediate “yes!” We started putting feelers out for who would be interested in such an endeavor in 2011 (Denali climbs typically happen sometime in May through July). Several people started to express interest.

Candi, David, and I took the local mountaineering organization’s Expedition Class in January-March of this year. My primary purpose in taking the class was to learn how to deal with sleds, which are primarily used in Alaska. It was also good to get refreshers on the high altitude medicines and to get tips from others on their expeditions.

The three of us started planning climbs together to get some experience climbing with each other. Denali is quite the commitment – likely 3 weeks, and potentially 4 weeks, mostly on a glacier, together, constantly working together, either climbing, digging/sawing/building camp, melting snow, cooking/eating, taking care of each other in case of illness, or discussing the weather, next day’s plans, etc. Good/compatible team selection is frequently cited as the number 1 criterion for a successful expedition. Our three-some climbs didn’t work out due to weather and our crazy schedules, but we all did get some climbing in during the summer, just not necessarily with each other. . .

We finally decided that we needed to start meeting, regularly, to make sure that we were making progress toward our goal. Candi, David, and I started regular once a month meetings in June. David got some preliminary info on logistics (flights, shuttles, climbing fees), Candi talked to folks who have guided on Denali, and I created spreadsheets. . . We met with a member of a previous successful Denali climb, made some basic decisions, such as what route we’d take, and we came up with a schedule for when we would get together to climb/practice. We decided to do the practices, also on a once a month basis starting in October. We met for our first practice session this last weekend, and for this month’s meeting, I came up with the preliminary Denali climb schedule. At the meeting, looking at the schedule, it was starting to become real. And then we looked around the table and noticed that we had 6 people - and that these 6 were also the same 6 who showed up at the training session (I’d invited more). It’s starting to feel as though we have a team!

Before showing a couple of pictures, I’d like to explain that Candi has a friend, Mason, who has Juvenile Myositis (JM). She found out that there are many promising theories or avenues for research for curing this disease, but that the research is underfunded. She asked if we’d mind using our climb for helping to raise funds for JM research purposes. Of course, we all said that we didn’t mind and would help out, and one of our monthly meetings dealt with fundraising for curing JM. With that in mind, Candi and Mason’s Dad had a couple of banners made, and Candi and I have been taking photos with the banner ever since, as we climb and also prepare for the Denali climb.

Here is a shot of us working on the basics of a crevasse rescue system. Oleg is in back having “arrested” the fallen climber (me) and sled (my weight and that of the sled are on the rope that is clipped to his harness, out of sight – he’s using the rock to brace himself while I weight the rope, as if I were in a crevasse), and Candi is working on creating a Z system (something that makes it easier to haul out a climber rather than just trying to pull on the rope by one’s self), using the handy rock as the anchor. Tom is helping by holding the other end of the banner. . .:

And here we all are during a break for lunch after everyone practiced setting up a Z system:

Left to right we’re: Tom, Leora, Denis, Candi, David, Oleg.

The following picture shows Denis in the foreground, and you can just see David in the sun in the background. Both are practicing climbing out of a crevasse by “climbing the rope”, and having to deal with getting around the sled. We did all of this practice on a sunshiny day, without the snow, to make sure that we all had the concepts down. Later, we’ll do these things in the snow. Most, if not all, of us have practiced this, before, but practicing them, together, is important to see how we all work with each other and to make sure that we have a team understanding of what is expected:
I’ve climbed with every one of my teammates at least once, but they have not all climbed with each other. We’ll have to fix that! We have sooooo much more to do before we go on the climb, but it’s rather exciting to see it take shape, a year after Candi and I first discussed it. . .

update time

The last thing that I sent out was a plea for folks to do some web voting to help a friend’s grandson. He didn’t get the $5,000 prize we were looking for, but a relative came through with the money to help ensure that Joshua got the care that he needed. In spite of that, and the constant and consistent love, attention, and care of his parents, Joshua recently slipped away. Thanks to those of you who voted, and those who followed Joshua’s journey (documented at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/joshuatruini/journal).

For an update on me, I continue to enjoy the job I moved to in November at the end of 2009. After almost doubling the size of the team, the hardware that the majority of the team was working on went through some project redefinitions, and, as a result, added some angst about the future. However, much of my team is working on the software for the new direction of the hardware, and the rest of my team gets to work on some new projects. It puts the team in turmoil and stress, but I’m hoping that as part of the management team, I can help to reduce the amount of turmoil that they see, and get them happily situated in projects suited to them!

My parents and I went on a cruise around New Zealand in the beginning of April, which will be the subject of the next “leoralore,” if I can get it completed! And I’ve continued to do some teaching of mountaineering skills as friends ask for help. This year, the avalanche danger was quite high during most of the weekends in which I was able to climb, so while I may have gone out a few of those times, if I did, I turned around. So other than a climb in mid-April, I was “summitless” until the beginning of July, when a couple of friends and I spent Independence Day weekend in Mt. Rainier National Park, far from any fireworks, enjoying the spectacular stars at night, and the fierce wind the last 1000 feet or so of the Mountain. I finally worked out that the left side of my face and lips suffered windburn, from which I’ve now recovered. After that, I climbed Mt. Hood several times, once on a south side route, and a couple of times on the fantastic north side. This photo is of me by one of my wonderful climbing partners, as I was front pointing the last bit of where the Sunshine route meets the Queen’s Chair:

And here’s one the previous week, of me, just a little higher up than the previous picture, looking down onto our camp, circled in yellow:

That’s most of the happy stuff. . .

One of the biggest blows to my emotional stability has been the loss of one of my close friends, whom I’ve mentioned a couple of times over the years in these stories: Monty. When his wife left a message on my answering machine, I knew that something was wrong. I was sure that he was either critically or fatally injured. I wasn’t prepared for the truth – he joined the growing number of middle-aged men who have committed suicide. Since Monty was hugely popular, and a prominent member of various volunteer and other organizations, I was sure that there would be a write up on the web, somewhere, to which I could refer, but nothing showed up, anywhere, for a couple of days, and since I’d spared his wife from giving me any details since I knew she’d been calling folks all day long, I was able to completely deny reality. Intellectually, I knew that it had to be true, but I couldn’t bring my emotional self in line with the intellectual. When, finally, someone called me to discuss it, the emotional self caught up and severe grief set in. I was pretty useless at work for almost 2 weeks, although the work gave me something other than my grief to focus on, so I continued to try my best at it.

Many of my friends want to make something worthwhile come out of this. I know that I should do so, too, but I’ve not found a way for me to do so in any way that is meaningful to me, and in any way that mitigates the tragedy for me. I sure hope that he’s in a better place. . .

So, on the tails of this, and now, functioning pretty normally, emotionally, I took my pre-planned vacation in North Carolina, visiting my high school and college buddy, Jeannie, and her family, as well as meeting a high school friend whom I’ve not seen since within a few years of high school graduation (thanks go to Facebook, where we hooked up), and attended another friend’s family reunion as a guest. Sort of weird, when one considers that I’ve missed at least one of my own family reunions, but I used it as an opportunity to put a date on actually visiting Jeannie, since it had been over 6 years since my last visit (as with many things, when one can do something “any time,” one never does them, at all. . . ).

A note to those who do family reunions: this friend’s (Tracey’s) family does reunions in a pretty impressive way – where people representing different branches of the family stand up and give significant updates on their branch of the family to the whole gathering, and there is even a note-taker!!! Does anyone else do this? I liked the concept and might try to get our family to do at least the update thing at one of our family reunions. . .

May this find you all well.

leora