Alpine Climbing

So I finally crumbled and signed up for Twitter. You can follow me at:

http://twitter.com/AdeMiller

Lots of cool people in the blogosphere use Twitter. Maybe if I use Twitter I’ll become cooler by association. Yeah right… There’s no hope for me until I get my teeth whitened.

I’m really just trying to figure out what the whole lightweight blogging thing is all about. It sort of seems interesting but I can’t quite figure it out… yet.

So it’s been a long time in coming but there’s finally a new guidebook to the Adirondack’s. My friend Jim Lawyer has been working on this in his “spare” time. With nearly two thousand routes covered that’s a lot of ground to cover. You can buy it here:

http://www.AdirondackRock.com/

This has been a work in progress for quite some time now but the authors have finally gotten it to the printers. Order now and you’ll have a copy before the snow melts.

Technorati Tags: Adirondacks,climbing

I’m a big fan of John’s photos and blogged about the latest batch a while back. John’s finally got the recognition he deserved with a full feature article of aerial alpine porn in Alpinist 21. You can check out more of his photos on his web site too.

So having blogged a couple of times about climbing blogs I was shocked to discover that they come in three flavors; “good”, “bad” and now “not really a blog at all”. Climbing.com has these “pro Blogs” which aren’t really blogs at all. For blog read promotional press release.

I picked up this from the All Climbing blog, who obviously visits climbing.com more frequently than I do and covers why these aren’t blogs pretty well. Climbing magazine’s degree of just not getting new media is funny. “Subscribe” still refers to the print magazine not an RSS feeds. How quaint!

Incidentally Alpinist has a readers blog although you have to login to post comments and it doesn’t support trackbacks. So not everyone in the publishing business doesn’t get the blog thing.

Back in May I posted a list of climbing blogs. Since then I’ve found some more…

Dave MacLeod Climbing
Online Climbing Coach
The Mountain World
Mount Rainier Climbing

I actually came across a couple more but they were either about Everest (yawn) or not that exciting. It turns out you can be a really good climber but this isn’t reflected in your blogging. Ho hum…

John Scurlock has been at it again. This time flying around some of the other ranges in BC taking fantastic shots of the climbing and skiing potential up there. Check out his latest photo galleries.

There seem to be very few climbing and mountaineering bloggers out there. Here’s some of the more interesting ones (Everest doesn’t count):

News feeds…

RSS – Hot Flashes Climbing News
Alpinist Newswires
All Climbing Blog – climbing, bouldering, mountaineering, and training

Personal pages…

Clark’s Climbing Blog
Eric Horst’s Climbing and Training Blog
Lynn Hill Blogs : A Rock Climber Blogs

Steepandcheap.com RSS – Not strictly climbing but pretty much crack for gear whores.

If you know of any other good ones then leave a comment!

So last weekend I spent a damp morning in Leavenworth planning this summer’s Peru extravaganza and drinking far too much coffee. Given that planning a trip to Peru doesn’t exactly take a whole heck of a lot of time that left me with a few hours to kill while things dried out. Someone at work had leant me Michael Crichton‘s “State of Fear”…

The books is pretty much run of the mill Jurassic Park fare with an interesting twist in that it includes real environmental data. A bit like Oliver Stone’s JFK included real footage of the assasination, although Crichton makes a much clearer separation of the two. I have to say it kept me entertained but also pissed me off.

You can read more about why the scientific arguments presented in the book are incorrect here and here. While I have a scientific background (Physics) I’m not going to better the information presented there. I would like to make a couple of more general points.

• Mr Crichton claims of being unbiased seem a little hollow given that his books have a fairly consistent theme;

“Crichton’s works are consistently cautionary in that his plots invariably portray scientific advancements going awry, often with worst-case scenarios.”
– Wikipedia

• His argument is that science can be bought – which I partially agree with. Thus the entire scientific community is getting on the band wagon and writing grant proposals to follow the money. This simply doesn’t jive with his other theory that the environmental community is using scare tactics because it’s financially outgunned by corporate concerns. If this were true surely scientists would all be writing grant proposals for big oil companies.
• Crichton also points out that not all scientists agree on global warming. This is true. Not all scientists agree on Einstein’s theory’s either – it’s actually quite rare for any community to agree 100%, especially on a complex issue like global warming. Computer models are difficult to create and interpret and drug trial like experiments simply aren’t possible with a patient the size of planet Earth.

So I’ll get off my soapbox now. Suffice to say global warming is a serious issue that anyone into the outdoors and winter sports in particular should be concerned about. The less superficial might also like to contemplate the effect of a couple of feet rise in sea level might have on somewhere like Bangladesh.

Mr Crichton should stick to what he’s best at, writing mildly entertaining stories.

So it’s the funny time of year. A bit of cragging to be had when the weather cooperates but for the most part the alpine is a little on the soggy side. Maybe hit up the seracs on Mt Baker this weekend.

What else is there to do? Watch movies on the internet. No not those sorts of movies.

A couple of things that I came across this week for your viewing pleasure…

Steve House and the gear he took on Nanga Parbat

Gym Jones workout videos

Have fun…