Alpine Climbing

So the weather here is pretty much terrible for climbing so that means more time for scanning…

• More favorites added.
• Photos from a trip to Mount Arapiles in Australia.

More gallery updates:

• Added a new gallery for my second Yukon trip in 1996 to the King George and Queen Mary peaks. This is a big gallery with fifty pictures!
• Finally added a picture of Paul K to the people gallery. This is long overdue as he and I have been on four major trips together.

So I own both these jackets. The DAS I mainly use for belaying while ice climbing as it’s really too bulky and heavy for all but the coldest alpine trips. The Puff Jacket is usually what I usually take on alpine climbs. I’m talking about them both here as I really think of Puff as the DAS’ little lightweight brother.

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Doh. Don’t drive your truck into a snowdrift on the side of Steven’s pass. It’ll look all bent like mine does. Not that I’m really complaining my passenger and I got to walk – or drive – away from this unscathed, plus the truck is fixable.

The moral of this tail is… accidents don’t just happen and there’s rarely one root cause. I mean it’s not like I was driving along and suddenly decided to take a hard left across oncoming traffic and into the barrier. Suffice to say it all started with not getting enough sleep and ended with choosing to pass a slow truck as we neared the summit and included several other mis-steps in between.

Read Accidents in North American Mountaineering and you find the same thing. Many accidents have a whole list of contributing factors that start many hours or even days before the actual event; the party was too slow or started too late, they chose to climb in less than ideal conditions, they took too much or too little equipment or they made a navigation decision and were off route.

When I think back about most of the near misses I’ve had they started with a seemingly innocuous decision that turned out to be bad, which in turn led to another one. Worth thinking about…

I managed to break myself a bit deadlifting last week at Crossfit. I can’t help but look on the positive side… I managed 120kg (1.3 x body weight) a year ago I couldn’t have even got close.

Thankfully Ben at Redmond Physical Therapy was able to get me into his busy schedule – as an “alumni” and all. After an hour of examination, some massage and icing I can stand up straight again. Progress! Hopefully there’s time to get fixed up before the end of the winter alpine season – not that there’s been much of that this year.

There are now over four hundred photos in the gallery! Recent updates include:

• Added a favorites gallery. Only a few pictures so far, more to come.
• Updated the gallery for this summer’s Waddington trip and added more pictures.
• Fixed up the World Map page – which was having some “issues”.

The latest issue of the (British) Alpine Journal just arrived in my post box. I’ll fess up right now… Simeon and I wrote an article on Good Neighbor for this edition and also snagged the cover photo.

There’s a stack of (more interesting) stuff in this year’s volume; Mick Fowler, Julie-Ann Clyma and Roger Payne, plus Steve House and the Rupal face.

Makes me actually want to go climbing again. After a couple of disasterous forrays into the Cascades this winter with nothing to show for it except a bent up truck moral has been a bit of an issue recently.

Copies are available direct from Cordee – yours for twenty six quid.