Himalayas Photos

The embedded slideshow below will play on its own, but it may take a while to load. Turn on the captions using the button in the lower left corner.

Alternatively, you can go directly to the online album by double clicking the slideshow or by following this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/jay.a.schneider/HimalayasFall2009#. I recommend going to the online Picasa album as you'll get larger, better quality pictures, and it also gives you the option of seeing where the photos were taken through Google Maps.

Himalayas Pt. 1: Welcome to India

Hi All -

It's been a while, but I'm back to civilization, with all fingers and toes accounted for. I'm going to try to get the past few months in the Himalayas up on the blog over the next week or so in several sections.

The journey to get to the mountains was a pilgrimage in its own right. After 24 hours on planes, we took a 12 hour bus ride, driven by a highly-skilled psychopath we'd later dub “the Magic Man” for his stunning ability to pilot an awfully large automobile at alarming but impressive speeds through tight mountain roads and over-inhabited village streets. Highway travel in India was thrilling as always: the brightly colored buses passing by; the on-road menageries of monkeys, donkeys, dogs and sacred cows; and the sense that vehicle size and driver courage/aggression/recklessness trump supposed traffic laws. Being well endowed in both vehicle size and these requisite qualities, riding with the Magic Man was like watching an avalanche from too close: simultaneously trying to appreciate power and grace while being viscerally afraid for lifeforms, both your own and others in your path. Most people chose to avoid this emotional vs. intellectual incongruity by popping Dramamine (1) and passing out for most of the jolting ride.

After the road petered out to smaller than the width of the bus, we switched to jeeps. This was like an amusement park ride, with the jeeps in tight caravan careening at high speed through driving rain and kicking gravel off the road and down truly terrifying precipices.
We arrived at Song, the trailhead town, in the same downpour, shouldered our packs and headed 1,000 feet up a continuously vertical trail to the rest house. I spent the night dehydrated - a rookie move - with nausea and a splitting headache. It was a tough night, and I awoke in the morning to more rain and a stray dog sniffing my sleeping bag. Welcome to India.

Your man in the monsoon,
Jay

Notes:
1 A strong anti-motion sickness drug with the (in this case fortunate) side effect of drowsiness

An Alpine Start Defined, Sort Of

Several of you have asked what an alpine start actually is. Technically speaking, it has to do with getting up at miserably early hours in the miserable cold to attempt hare-brained stunts, generally involving mountains. But that's just semantics.

When I think of an alpine start - and the excitement, nerves, challenge, and yearning tied up in the idea - I think of this passage from the great French alpinist Gaston Rebuffat:

This evening, as I write these lines, the desire seizes me to breathe the night air for a few minutes. It is winter, and cold. Hemmed in between two black masses of houses, fringed by the roofs of my narrow street, the stars seem to be moving slowing as I advance. "It's cold," I say to myself, "that's a good sign. The snow will be hard."

How stupid of me! Am I not in Paris, in the Rue des Grands-Augustins? But my street leads on to the quays where the Seine, with its sentinel trees, and the quiet night combine to recall nature, even in the heart of this great city. It is both early and late. It is the hour when mountaineers go out on to the hut terrace to scan the sky, test the wind and the snow. It is cold, and cold nights mean fine days. It is the time to light the lantern and start out....

Here in Paris I dream of high hills.

- Gaston Rebuffat, Paris, 1953

It's nearly 2AM here in Seattle, and I'm off to the Himalayas tomorrow morning. I'll be off the grid for the better part of the next two months: I won't be posting to this blog or replying to your emails/texts/facebook pokes until late October. Catch you on the flip side.

Here in Seattle I dream of high hills.

Jay

Guest Blog: Up a River Without a Paddle

Eight people cling to a thin blue rope – the only thing keeping them from being swept away from the boat and each other – as they are tossed through whirlpools and rapids. Only their blue, bobbing helmets and orange life preservers are visible. No, this is not another of Jay’s Woofer scenarios, this is a part of our trip down the Thompson River.

Jay and I arrived at Kumsheen Rafting Resort, outside of Lytton BC, on Friday night to enjoy two days of rafting. Not only did we have an awesome tent cabin (complete with propane lamp) and a great view of the trains coming and going on either side of the Thompson (which have a surprising habit of ending up in the river), but we also found that the resort had a short disc golf course (1). Our first day was spent paddle rafting down the Thompson River, which includes rapids such as Devil’s Gorge, Jaws of Death, and Devil’s Kitchen (see a pattern?) (2).

While no one was tossed out of the boat, there was plenty of swimming (including a section, described in the opening paragraph, where everyone except the guide hops out of the raft and pulls it through the rapids). The only mishap we had was when Jay dropped his paddle into the river (3). The Thompson River was also great for wildlife viewing, and we saw four very cute black bears (including a mama and two young cubs), ospreys, and bald eagles.

The second day was spent power rafting (which allowed us to run bigger rapids and run them more than once) on the Fraser River, home of Hell’s Gate, the highest volume commercially run rapid in North America. While paddle rafting was a fun and exciting ride, power rafting was great if you like to be crushed and battered by massive walls of water. If you’re thinking of 15 feet high waves cresting (and smashing) over the bow of our raft, you have a good idea of what running the Fraser Rapids was like. Fortunately, for power rafting we were all given water proof coats and pants. The effectiveness of these additional layers was, however, brought into question when, after being spat out at the end of the Sailor Bar rapid, Jay emptied a quart of water out from the interior of each of his pant legs.

After surviving our two days of whitewater, seeing two gold pans that claim to be the largest in the world (one in Alaska and one in BC), and making a very damp drive back to Seattle, Jay leaves for his NOLS course tomorrow morning, where I hope that he is able to obtain photographic evidence of a yeti.

The sister of your man without a paddle,

Carrie

Notes:
1 Sadly, we appear to have been the only ones appreciative of the disc golf course, as we were the only ones to sign up for the tournament on Saturday night. On the upside, Jay came in 1st place and I came in 2nd.
2 Jay and I don’t have pictures from rafting as both of us actually like our cameras. These pictures, courtesy of the World Wide Web, should give you some idea of our experience.
3 He claims he did this in the course of saving someone else from being tossed overboard on a rapid. That's not exactly what I thought I saw, but who am I to say?

North North America

I spent the last week and a half in the great Alaskan unknown driving back down to Seattle with my sister after she finished her summer internship in Anchorage. The highway from Anchorage to Haines, AK (750 miles) took two days; the largest city we passed through was Tok, AK, a handful of roadside motels and a few gas stations. Things to do in Tok:

The weather, as it often is in Alaska, was inclement, and, as a result, we took few pictures during the drive. We were happy to reach Haines and found the town charming and the people consistently friendly(1). We had the better part of a day free, and I made a quick hike up a nearby mountain, Mt. Ripinski. Rain and mist were constant companions, but it was a good day out. Looking up towards the summit from the ridge:

Looking down on the town of Haines through the clouds:

I didn’t see anyone during the hike, and I was (justly) worried about stumbling upon a bear. Every few minutes I’d make noise and clap to make my presence known. As I was descending I started clapping as I rounded a corner… and found myself face to snout with a moose. This thing was huge: roughly six feet high at the shoulder and more massive than a horse of the same size. We had a few how’s-this-going-to-go-down seconds looking at each other before I slowly backed up around the corner. The moose trotted up the hill, and that was that (2). The gravest threats to life and limb came during the walk back from the base of the mountain through the outskirts of Haines in several encounters with unleashed “dogs” (3). Apparently the thing to do if you’re a dog in Haines is lie in wait for a lower-48er to come along and then sneak up behind him. Then, when you’re a few feet away and your presence is realized, bark and snarl like you haven’t been fed in days. This happened three times.

From Haines we caught an overnight ferry to Prince Rupert in British Columbia. We camped on the deck...

... and the views were spectacular:

The ferry’s bar was the icing on the cake. If I'd been of age in the 1973, I hope I'd have been drinking in places like this:

We were on the ferry for a total of two and a half days. It was a great experience I'd recommend to anyone with a few days to kill in that corner of the continent.

Your (usually dog-loving) man in AK,

Jay

Notes:
1 Close to a polar opposite from my visit last winter to Valdez
2 In combination with the Wyoming Moose Incident, I think this means "I Got Moose in Different Area Codes"
3 Term used loosely here. Cross-breeding with wolves was clearly evident; additional breeding with other large land mammals (e.g., bison, bear, hippo) not unlikely

woofering

It’s early evening in the Tetons. The sun is setting over a hill to my left. A picturesque creek gurgles in front of me; I’m walking across the uneven rocks of its bed. The sky is azure and cloudless. Flecks of blood dot the pale stones. There is no wind. A woman to my right is on her knees, screaming uncontrollably. The temperature is dropping as the sun sets pleasantly. Blood flows down from her cheek from her eyeless socket.

The 10-day curriculum of the Wilderness First Responder (1) course - an intensive crash course in wilderness medicine - is packed with hands-on scenarios intended to simulate the actual stress and chaos of an emergency in the backcountry. The exercises are creative and, like the one above, use realistic makeup and props. It may sound hokey, but the theatrics work: I graduated from the program on Wednesday but can’t get some of the images out of my head, even if they were just training exercises. One of my other favorites was when, one cloudless morning, the instructors mentioned that it looked like it would rain and we should probably bring appropriate gear. I was puzzled but threw my jacket in my bag. During the exercise - a rescue of an unconscious patient at the bottom of a waterfall - they soaked us with hoses.

The course itself was terrific: the curriculum was practical, focused and thorough, and the instructors were top notch. I'd enthusiastically recommend it to anyone with an interest in leading groups in the backcountry.

The highlight may have been the nighttime rescue scenario. It was nearly dark as we were treating our patient's compound fracture when a bull moose popped out of the bushes 40 feet from us. Despite the very real danger - bull moose are actually the most irrational and dangerous wildlife in the Tetons this time of year - it was thrilling to watch from a distance (our patient was magically healed and we got out of the way) as it ambled through where we had been, lazily eating leaves. I didn't have a camera, but fortunately one of my teammates is a talented artist and captured the moment:
After roughly a month in residence at the Grand Teton Climbers' Ranch, I'm back in Seattle today. I'm flying up to Anchorage, AK tomorrow morning to meet up with my sister, and we'll be driving down through Alaska to Haines, AK and then taking a ferry through the Inside Passage to British Columbia. After a few days of river rafting in BC, it's back to Seattle by the end of August and then off to the Himalayas on Sept 2.

Your man in AK,
Jay

Note:
1 Wilderness First Responder = WFR, or "woofer" to those in the know

Not Bad to Wake Up To

The Tetons this morning, coming out of the fog after a mid-summer storm last night:

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Down in the Bayou, Pt. 2

When we told people at the wedding reception that we were going frogging, we got a uniformly reluctant and concerned laugh. Finally one person said, "Have y'all heard of [non-blog appropriate four letter word] water moccasins(1)?" I stayed in the boat.



[Press the caption button in the slideshow to get photo comments, or double click on the slideshow to go to the Picasa album]

Thanks to A. Barnette and J. Vail for photos.

Note:
1

Down in the Bayou, Pt. 1

Down in Louisiana with Pomona classmates T. Woo and A. Barnette for the wedding of our college friend L. Bishop. After a cursory tour of Baton Rouge, we drove northwest, three men in a rented, midsize soccer-mom minivan, purposely sans-navigation to encourage exploration. Our first stop was at Wal-Mart to buy frogging clothes (more on that later), and we scored these sweet hats:
We running early, so we took a turn off the highway towards a blank area on our subpar map from Avis. After we turned onto the backroads, T. Woo decided he'd be more comfortable with the door open. A. "Your Safety is Our Priority" Barnette capturing the moment (while driving with other hand):
We got pretty backwoods:
We happened upon this cool old general store...
... and after we told them we were going frogging that night, they showed us this vintage frog "gigger" (the sharp metal jaws at the end snap shut):
Later that night we had a cookout with crabs, shrimp, etc., and T. Woo pressed the locals into service (1):
The real highlight of the day was frogging at night. Suffice to say it took place on the bayou under the cajun moon, and there were gators involved. Pictures and details forthcoming in a post soon.

Your man on the bayou,
Jay

Note:
1 Sadly, this is not T. Woo's first brush with questionable child labor practices. Several years ago in Baltimore leaving the Preakness Stakes horse race, T. Woo found himself behind his group after stopping to buy a burger. For a few dollars, he enlisted the services of a Tracy McGrady jersey-wearing 10-year old with a shopping cart. Witnesses report T. Woo sitting in said cart, repeatedly shouting "Hurry up, McGrady" between bites of burger as the kid pushed him up the hill.

The Rest of the Tetons

Clark and I did manage a few productive things other than the Grand and scaring kids off play structures. The last week, with no particular rhyme or reason:
Those are the Tetons, once again. Pretty self-explanatory. Last gratuitous mountain shot of this range, promise.

Several high quality climbs are accessed by taking a boat across Jenny Lake. This is the lake from aboard the first morning boat at 7AM:
After the boat ride, we had to deal with this ascent:
Our climb for the day, Baxter's Pinnacle, is above Clark's head. The scramble to the base of the climb took us a little less than an hour; it turns out this is one of the shortest approaches in the range. Teton approaches are blood-suckingly brutal: they are long, steep, start at high altitude, end at even higher altitude, and then you have to actually climb. Longtime Teton climbers describe the experience in creative, non-blog-appropriate combinations of four-letter words.

Climbing on Baxter's Pinnacle:
Waiting for Clark at the belay:
View from the summit:
We also made a trip to Yellowstone during a rest day. This steaming-hole-in-the-middle-of-an-otherwise-fairly-normal-looking-landscape summarizes most of the attractions:
The teeming masses of humanity in Yellowstone were an unpleasant shock after the relative solitude in Grand Teton. Our first stop was Old Faithful; the parking lot reminded me of a county fair, with rows of RVs punctuated by the odd rental car alarm going off. I'll spare you the aural and photographic evidence.

It's a testament to the park, that, after the traffic jams and Disneyland-ification, it still retains the power to awe. Some of the geologic formations are right out of science fiction:


And, all joking aside, I really liked the Post Office:
Lastly, I'd like to thank Clark for being an excellent climbing, camping, and suffering partner... and in particular for not dropping me on belay.

I'm off this weekend to a wedding in deep Louisiana and then back in the Tetons for a week and a half to take a Wilderness First Responder course. Look forward to mobile updates of alligators and gumbo....

Your man in the Bayou,
Jay

Rest Day

Rest day today at Jackson Hole playing frisbee golf, but we couldn't help getting extreme....

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Grand Teton Trip Report

This will be a long one, so for those of you who aren't my mother or some other unusually-involved follower, I won't hold it against you if you give it the skim....

Day 1: Approach
We left the Climbers' Ranch (5,800 feet) at the end of the worst hail storm we'd seen yet. We climbed with heavy packs for the next several hours through intermittent rain showers. The approach trail was consistently steep, and our sea-level bodies felt the altitude. We were exhausted when we stumbled into our base camp on the moraine at the foot of the Middle Teton Glacier (10,500 feet). This picture is looking up from our camp over the glacier to the Lower Saddle between the Middle and Grand Teton, which is out of view to the right. Look closely and you can see the bergshrunds (cravasses at top of a glacier separating the ice from the mountain) about halfway up the photo:
It's rock, snow, and SPF 70 sunblock up here. The weather was variable throughout the day. Note the ominous clouds swirling in the valley below our camp:
As we set up camp, the altitude hit Clark, and he came down with nausea and a severe headache. After a few rounds of vomiting, we decided to abandon our plans for the Middle Teton in favor of acclimatization the following day.

Day 2: Scouting and Acclimatizing
A night at altitude helped us significantly, and we were both feeling stronger in the morning. We spent the day hiking up to the Lower Saddle (11,500 feet) and scouting our route. This is the Grand Teton from the Saddle. Our route, the Exum Ridge, is silhouetted against the sky; the summit is just barely obscured in the fog.
Day 3: The Climb
We set our alarm for an alpine start at 3:30AM, although we didn't need it as neither of us was asleep when it went off. We were out of camp by 4AM. We climbed for the next few hours through steep 3rd class (1), and some easy 4th class terrain:

We reached Wall Street Ledge, the beginning of the technical portion (i.e., 5th class) of the route, shortly after daybreak. Ascending up Wall Street Ledge with first morning light hitting Middle Teton in the background:
As I was setting up anchor at the top of the first pitch, the climbing ranger who gave us our climbing permit a few days earlier appeared around the corner. He was free soloing (2). We briefly discussed how he was going to descend without a rope, and as he was leaving I said, "Well, you'll probably be up there a bit before us, but you're welcome to rappel down with us if you'd like." He was polite enough not to laugh in my face at this unintentional hubris: I didn't appreciate it at the time, but at the speed he was going, he would be off the mountain and home with his family before we'd summit.

We also made the acquaintance of Jack, a 60-something hardman trying for his 42nd summit of the Grand. Jack had his hands full guiding an inexperienced party up the route but was gregarious and polite to a fault. Given the concern we had for routefinding over the coming 9 pitches, we were encouraged to have Jack not far behind us in case we had questions.

The next several pitches progressed smoothly over easy 5th class and some extended periods of 4th class terrain. This picture is looking down the route with the Middle Teton in the background; Jack's party is on the ledge a pitch below.
The next two pitches were easy, but we belayed them anyway. We later realized that most parties simul-climbed (3) these portions as we saw Jack et. al. gaining ground on us. At this point Jack shouted up to us that we'd be better off taking a variation through a notch 25 feet below us. This seemed odd to us, but we didn't want to argue with 41 ascents. I led the awkward downclimb to and through the notch, up a meandering offwidth crack and then back around... to a spot 25 vertical feet above Clark at the belay station. Evidently Jack's beta was going to be questionable at best. As Clark followed the lead to retrieve the protection I'd placed, we were passed by a different, large group that was making good time simul-climbing. Thus began the antics.

The party was composed of two strong climbers leading two three-person rope teams. We noticed that some of the party seemed significantly less experienced, and, as the route steepened, these followers appeared increasingly uncomfortable simul-climbing. Clark and I opted to set up a proper belay station after a hundred feet, and I led, following the last of the two teams through the crux pitch (4). While purely psychological, I've found the feeling of "exposure" (i.e., the natural fear from being high on a rock wall) can be cumulative throughout a day of climbing. As the party in front of me reached the crux pitch, one of their climbers froze halfway up the pitch and started sobbing. The uncertainty we'd seen several hundred feet earlier had apparently built on itself, and the exposure on the crux pitch was too much for her, even though she was on a proper belay by this point. While she made it through the pitch uninjured, it took 15 valuable minutes (5) for her to get herself together. We took several lessons from this episode: 1) The party's leader should have better evaluated the competence and comfort level of his group. Members of the group were clearly uncomfortable, and this party should have started belaying earlier; 2) The importance of communication cannot be overstated, and proper communication can actually be challenged by increased group size. In a large group it is essential to foster a spirit of open communication, so that the weaker members of the group could have felt comfortable expressing their unease in the earlier exposed simul-climbing.

The next several pitches proceeded quickly, and we reached the "open book", a beautiful 90-degree corner on the ridge above the Grand's West Face. The fog that had enveloped the route for most of the morning lifted for a few minutes, and this was a thrilling, albeit only moderately difficult, pitch with the West Face providing several hundred feet of exposure below on the left. Right around this point I told Clark, "Assuming we make it through this with all our fingers and toes, this will be probably be the coolest thing I've done in the mountains."
The temperature continued to drop as we reached the 13,000 foot mark, and the route, which had formerly been wet in spots, now took the form of ice. This portion would have been easy in dry conditions; it was somewhat more difficult navigating the sometimes-icy footholds and icicles around the handholds.
The fog settled back in as the route continued. By this point it was around 1:30PM, and we'd been working for over nine hours. This jamcrack on the crest of this ridge was tricky but was especially fun (note the lead climber on the crack towards the top of the picture; the summit is above but obscured by fog).
This crack proved to be the last technical pitch before the summit, although we still needed to cross one final snowfield.
After the snowfield, we made the summit (13,770 feet) after a hundred feet of easy 4th class scrambling. Clark's summit dance:
The climb up until this point had proceeded fairly smoothly: we never got seriously off route, which had been a major concern, and, while climbing had taken longer than it should have, we had moved deliberately and safely.

Throughout the day I had wondered when the mountain would expose our relative inexperience.
We had painstakingly researched our ascent route, both in guidebooks and through speaking with anyone we could. We were rewarded for this diligence with a relatively uneventful ascent. While it seems a painfully obvious oversight in retrospect, we hadn't paid the same attention to our descent route. We knew that we were to descend via a series of rappels to the Grand's easiest route, the Owen-Spaulding, and then downclimb from there. But as we paraded around the summit snapping pictures, it dawned on us that we couldn't find any rappel anchors, and the route down was not immediately obvious. Enter the bush league.

Downclimbing through the snow and sometimes-icy rock along an uncertain route was the only part of the day I'd file under "Distinctly Unpleasant." Fortunately, this is a popular route and we were able to follow tracks to the first rappel down an icy couloir. We'd heard that all the rappels could be made with a 60-meter rope, but our third rappel was not so. Halfway down the rappel I came over a bulge and could finally see the bottom; our ropes were swinging in midair, easily 25 feet from the ground. Clark and I shouted back and forth discussing options. A nearby gully was quickly dismissed after we witnessed rock- and ice-fall. We were debating a few mediocre options when our man Jack appeared at the top of the route. His party was using double ropes, so the rappel length issue became moot, and the "Jack: Friend or Foe?" question was finally put to rest (6). This picture shows a member of Jack's party in the free-hanging portion of the rappel:
An obvious lesson learned, the remainder of the descent proceeded without incident. At the Lower Saddle, nearly 14 hours after we left:

Your man with ten fingers and ten toes,

Jay

Notes:
1 The "class" of a route relates to steepness and difficulty. 1st class is walking on flat ground; 4th class is scrambling on steep terrain that doesn't require a rope; 5th class is technical rock climbing requiring a rope and protection placement
2 Free-solo = solo climbing without a rope or any protection
3 Simul-climbing = roped climbing without an anchor over easy terrain. The leader sometimes places protection between members to avoid the party being pulled from the wall in the event of a fall. However, more often the terrain is simple enough that there isn't risk of a ground fall.
4 Crux = the trickiest or most technically challenging portion of a climb
5 The use of the word "valuable" here is not hyperbole: in alpine climbing at altitude the risk of afternoon thunderstorms makes efficiency not only a prerequisite to summiting, but means that wasted time is a very real safety issue
6 Friend, in case that was unclear

AAC Climbers' Ranch

We ended up not climbing today, due to a variety of reasons, not least of which were the forecasted afternoon thunderstorms that have now finally materialized.

We spent several hours at the Climbers' Ranch sorting gear and dialing in our systems. Here are a few more pictures of the place:

As we were finishing up, a guy struck up a conversation with us. He was clearly pretty knowledgeable and gave us some great pointers. We started talking to him about his background, and he mentioned he had just returned from a solo trip to Baffin Island. Baffin is up in the arctic circle and is one of the least hospitable places on earth: like a frozen Mordor with polar bears instead of Orks. We did some homework, and it turns out he was the recipient of the AAC's 2009 outstanding young climber award - before he made this expedition. The trip report (1) is one of the most jaw dropping things I've read. I'm calling it now that this climb wins several awards this year.

After a few days of inactivity, Clark and I are itching to go and will be on the 7AM boat (2) tomorrow across Jenny Lake headed towards some big rocks.

Your man rubbing shoulders with rock stars,

Jay

Notes:

1 Note to my dear mother (my primary reader base): that's a hyperlink. Click it.

2 Not exactly an alpine start, but we're getting warmed up

The Tetons are Real Mountains, In Case You Were Wondering

Got into Grand Teton National Park last night. These are big mountains. We're staying at the American Alpine Club's Climbers' Ranch; this is the view from the cabins.

This place is amazing: $10/night for AAC members with bunks, cookroom, laundry, climbing library and lots of legit climbers (1).

More details and pictures shortly.

Your man slightly intimidated by the Tetons,

Jay

Note:

1 A group we are not members of, at least yet

So This Is How It Begins (With A Whimper, Not A Bang) (1,2)

I moved out of the apartment and left San Francisco today, so I suppose that makes it official. Some 300 miles after Reno, after passing a few truck stops and two prisons (and not much else), I ended up here:

Hopefully the Tetons tomorrow will bring more picturesque accommodations.

I hope to update this blog often and look forward staying in touch with all of you.

Your man in Elko, NV,

Jay

Notes:

1 Just so it's out there: footnotes will be used freely and may be injured in the making of this blog. If that sort of graphic violence bothers you, you may want to consider other blogs

2 Apologies to T.S. Eliot and fans for the butchering