Watercolor, the sublime, and the Alps

Being a bit of a bumpkin, I thought J.M. Turner on painted oil seascapes. Little did I know; a short and delightful article from the 1979 Alpine Journal.

http://www.alpinejournal.org.uk/Contents/Contents_1979_files/AJ%201979%2031-35%20Amstutz%20Turner.pdf

MAX VO2 ... for all you training geeks

https://www.uphillathlete.com/max-vo2-myth/

REMEMBERING THE 60s

Heading home from NYC ... had some extra time to see a great exhibit on the sixties at the NY public library. However, even though only mid-afternoon it was a zoo getting to Penn station because of the Grammys.

Peaks, passes, Islam, and the Taliban

A wonderful book review of Steve Swenson's Karakoram, on one of my favorite websites ... Footless Crow.  Another destination that will probably have to wait until my next reincarnation.  Back in the day - 1992 - I was slated to go on an expedition to Gasherbrum II with Mike Brochu, an expedition with great sponsorship by L.L. Bean. I opted to go to Columbia University instead and get my masters degree ... oh, as a consolation prize I went to the Kahiltna glacier (again) after graduation; I failed on the south face of Hunter but got up Denali again. 

I'll put this book on my must read list. 

http://footlesscrow.blogspot.com/2018/01/karakorum-matters.html

Continental Divide Trail

https://m.youtube.com/watch?ebc=ANyPxKry2_qh71PKKnNgbwLr_2z7u7mvIkx4IcZXZDUJuOi2qbj9d_4tJctvGRk0LamqXjpjGwXEY1M6rw0XzAs4t0QFR0FQDQ&time_continue=261&v=ExP3ikM_wko

Climate Change and glacial collapse

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/climate/glacier-collapse-avalanche.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur&referer=https://t.co/FZaj5Irs6D

BLAST FROM THE PAST ... 1980 ice climb with Jonathan Waterman and Mike Young

QUOTE OF THE WEEK ... teddy roosevelt

An important essay in the Mountain Journal which begins with a Teddy Roosevelt quote ... " When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present or 'Not Guilty.' "

http://mountainjournal.org/an-unprecedented-assault-on-american-wilderness

My go to winter jog, when time is tight ...

A hilly, out-and-back, 2-3k run on the dirt Old Mountain Road, that I often do just as it is getting dark, with our puppy Stash. It is just across the street and the road is always plowed and well sanded. 

No alpinism here, but we have all driven through these towns with watering holes like this ...

This short, and quite funny, piece comes from one of my favorite rags, Mountain Journal.  I have read Gretel Ehrlich's stuff

Hut to hut ... let's have another ski adventure before we are too old

Obviously the Alps are an option, but Canada, Colorado, Washington, heck maybe even the Andes are options too.

https://www.rei.com/blog/snowsports/north-america-gets-its-own-slice-of-hut-to-hut-skiing

College Carnival Races

Today Lucy raced a 5k classic and finished 27th out of a field of 83. She was the top St. Lawrence skier, and she earned 7 points toward an NCAA championship berth.

She definitely was disappointed, however as I talked to her afterwards, I mentioned that she actually skied quite well ... the disappointment was that she and her coach went with klister instead of skate skis and double poling. The top 10-15 gals were all on glide wax. As you can see from the picture near the end of the race (the other racer is going into the lap lane), she has a darn good double pole.

Tactical error ... live and learn. Tomorrow is the 10k skate.

Assuming Gary is going to do this?

Unfortunately, I have my college ski mountaineering buddies coming up to the "dacks that weekend to ski Marcy and the toll road. I also need to be in Middlebury on Friday for the NCAA Regional Ski Championships.

David Hochschartner (Hock)

Executive Director

North Country School

Camp Treetops

Round Lake Campus 

Gear list for your hut to hut ski tour

https://www.uphillathlete.com/hut-to-hut-ski-touring-gear-list/

Risk in the Mountains ... it is rare that the New York Times covers such a subject

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/opinion/sunday/keep-our-mountains-free-and-dangerous.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fsunday

Skiing 1k laps in the back pasture at sunset

Desert Solitaire

I read this terrific Ed Abbey book many years ago.  Given what the new administration is doing in the southwest, this short essay remarks that it is time to read it again. So, as soon as I finish re-reading Dougal Haston's novel CALCULATED RISK, I will start on Desert Solitaire. (On a different note, Haston's novel tells us a lot more about him than his autobiography, including how and why he dies.) 

https://www.adventure-journal.com/2018/01/opinion-desert-solitaire-relevant-ever/

Ski mountaineers, alpinists, rock jocks, nordic racers, backpackers, downhill skiers ... are we paying enough attention to climate change?

I think not!  I will try and cover news and views more faithfully in this blog moving forward. It seems that these groups should be in the forefront of climate change activism ... I fear that is not the case. 

https://www.adventure-journal.com/2018/01/warming-arctic-behind-winters-crazy-weather/

Easy run at dusk on the Old Mountain Road

The 22nd annual Mountainfest ...

Many thanks to the Mountaineer store in Keene Valley for bringing back Steve House. His Saturday slide show was awesome, and although I have seen it before, this nine minute video of his solo of Repentance and Remission is never dull. Both routes were on my list in the late 1970s, although it's obvious from the video, they will obviously have to wait until my next reincarnation. 

https://vimeo.com/22993356

Skiing the toll road

Well below freezing when we started, it was probably a balmy 3 degrees when we headed back down.

Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association nordic races ... a.k.a ... College Carnivals start today

Yesterday's 5k classic was cancelled, as the temperatures in Maine did not drop until late in the day, and so it was not firm enough for grooming. Today's race is a 5k freestyle, using three laps of their 1.7k sprint course. It is an interval start, with racers going out in the order of their USSA points. Lucy is ranked 13th of the 90 racers. (Tough field, as four gals just got back from Anchorage, and were named to the U23 World Championship Team later in the season. Then of course, there are also two hot-shots from Europe.) The picture below is from a December race in Canada where Lucy was on the podium.

BLAST FROM THE PAST ... retreat from the West Rib of Denali

What else can you say about our first trip to Alaska in 1979 except it was a debacle: Don (NPS mandated foursome) was a whimp and slow so the Cassin was out; we got a bad batch of blazo for our stoves in Talkeetna; the white gas leaked and tainted our four week supply of fruitcake; the stove blew up; never mix and match snowshoes and skis in the same expedition.

There was some good news though: three of us have remained friends; the green puffy parka that I lent Mike when his sleeping bag burned up still warms me on belays; it is clear that if you have enough single malt stashed on the kahiltna glacier you can trade for almost anything (except a stove).

Skiing the highest peak in each western state

A fun little video; it reminds me that you do not need a permit to Nepal, a flight to Patagonia, or Alaska to go on an expedition ... hop in your car and just go ... in my case head out the back door and run the 130 mile Northville-Lake Placid Trail or its equivalent.

https://www.adventure-journal.com/2018/01/one-mans-mission-ski-every-high-point-american-west/

Yesterday a nice tour and today yuck ...

Blow my mind, a few days ago it was -29 degrees and today it is 47 degrees! Please, please, please let's not lose all our snow.

Seracs

In the mountains they are often dangerous, a pain in the ass, and something to be avoided, definitely not admired. However, this short video, shot in Chamonix, shows them as an integral part of the sublime mountain landscape around Mont Blanc.

https://vimeo.com/249101922

No Laughing Matter ... the three amigos

http://mountainjournal.org/montanans-central-to-radical-trump-agenda

Skiing Heritage magazine ... humorous cartoons and great history pieces

Google books has many years worth of this magazine online. Well worth a look.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK ... michael kennedy

"All mountain landscapes hold stories: the ones we read, the ones we dream, and the ones we create."

I found this gem in FREEDOM CLIMBERS by Bernadette Malcolm.

The historic Thunderbolt Trail on Mount Greylock

Gary and his son James skinned up this trail built in the 1930s by the CCC. It was one of the Class A race trails on par with the Nosedive at Stowe.

Norway started the great skiing explosion in the mid 1800s

Read the full article ...

https://books.google.com/books?id=SlgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA12&dq=Nansen&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis1JfxtMHYAhWPS98KHQ27AuUQuwUIJzAA#v=onepage&q=Nansen&f=false

World Junior Team Trials

One race was cancelled because the high temperature of that day was -15 degrees. She made the team, and the day this picture was taken, the temperature was a balmy -3 degrees. Unfortunately, she will probably decline this opportunity to ski in Estonia, as her big goal is a top 15 at the NCAA championships, which start a day or two after the World Juniors. Hopefully, in the upcoming years she will have other great biathlon opportunities.

At -25° I cancelled my Sunday morning sauna ...

however it is going up to a balmy +6 degrees this afternoon so I may take a sauna then.

Easy tour with -40 degree wind chill

Fifty minutes breaking trail in wind blown snow using AT gear.

Well worth looking at if you ice climb ...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?ebc=ANyPxKrs8Xrbom3OWGn1roCgneqvxCnf-uKcKl16f-QPgelQSy4u6gODgjzKSK2MbnlEGHkAmEjHiD0ZaIqmSrDfYE8CNA3M8Q&v=5RKwAyscHFM

Freedom Climbers

As a slightly fanatic climber in the 1970s and 1980s I certainly followed some of the exploits of these top Polish Climbers. I also heard stories about them from Brits that I climbed with in the Alps in the 1970s. I even had a two degrees of separation experience with them in the early 1980s. 

The first encounter with these truly hard men of Poland, came in 1975 which was my first summer climbing in the Tetons. Staying at the Climber's Ranch I had a few short term partners that I hooked up with, before I met Petr, a recent immigrant who was a mathematics professor at the University of New Mexico.  We climbed together several weeks, and aside from the language difficult, our other challenge was that we had to carry two separate racks, as he had pitons and refused to climb with those "new things" (stoppers and hexcentrics). I have never climbed with anyone who ran out as much rope as he did. Being young, relatively inexperienced, and stupid, and also not knowing what a factor 2 fall was, I used to marvel at him running out 100 feet from the belay before he pounded his first pin.

Then again, in the late 1970s Jonathan Waterman introduced me, and I occasionally climbed with an ex-patriot Glaswegian named John Thackray.  John lived in Manhattan, wrote for the Economist magazine, and eventually was also the editor for the American Alpine Club Journal.  He seemed to know everybody ... and on one ice climbing trip in the early 1980s to New Hampshire, or more probably, the Adirondacks he talked about joining up with some Polish hard men in the Himalayas.  He wanted to know if I fancied coming along!  The deal was the two of us would provide the greenbacks (something like $2000 each) and the Poles would drive overland with gear and food. This all sounded quite nice until I asked about the objective; "oh, a four person, alpine-style ascent of the South Face of Annapurna."  Well, I had read Bonington's account and knew I was in way over my head.

The Poles put up two routes on Annapurna in the 1980s. The link below is from a nice review of Bernadette MacDonald's FREEDOM CLIMBERS. 

http://footlesscrow.blogspot.com/search?q=Freedom+Climbers

BLAST FROM THE PAST ... snow physics at NCS

Larry, our earth science teacher, is starting his first day of the snow physics unit. Essentially this six week course is the equivalent of an Avy 2 level seminar. His introductory slide, is a scan of an 8x11 student handout I made 30+ years ago when I designed the course. Needless to say, he is both a far better teacher, and the technological tools are far better today.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: from Elisabeth Coxhead

Elizabeth Coxhead's rationale for climbing: "A sport is advanced by the handful of people who do it brilliantly, but it is kept sweet and sane by the great numbers of the mediocre, who do it for fun."

Her novel, set in the 1950s, ONE GREEN BOTTLE was the best climbing novel I have ever read. This link to an article about Elizabeth Coxhead on the website Footless Crow is well worth exploring.

http://footlesscrow.blogspot.com/2010/12/in-search-of-elizabeth-coxhead.html

Robinson Jeffers poems as a lens to view what's happening today

An engaging essay, although how many people can manage the epiphany of a retreat in the Pyrenees, to manage this insight?  It does make me want to stoke the fire in the Fossil Cabin and dig out the collected works of Jeffers! 

http://www.hcn.org/issues/49.12/essay-climate-change-confronting-despair-in-the-age-of-ecocide

Oh to be young again ... Canadian north faces

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bbB3dKUqK4Q