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Everest
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Other mountain tales
Kautz Glacier
My first free solo
Soloing El Cap
My First Wall
Same Wall, Years Later
The NA
Transcendental Ice
Lunar Ecstasy
Desert Moonlight
First Trip up the Nose
October 2007: Done with the move back to San Francisco and loving being back in the City. First trip to Yosemite after getting back my buddy Josh and I did an amazing trail run from Tuolumne to Hetch Hetchy down the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne. Here's a pic of the reservoir:
Some more reading from Ed's reading list.
Come Be My Light, The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta, by Mother Teresa. Through private letters and commentary, the collection provides an amazing window into the inner spiritual life of one of the greatest saints of our time.
Ultramarathon Man, Confessions of an All Night Runner, by Dean Karnazes. This man is insane.
The War of the End of the World, by Mario Vargas Llosa. An epic in the tradition of Marquez which tells the story of the Brazilian uprising at Canudos.
Mergers & Acquisitions, by Dana Vachon. A hilarious account of one man's experience in JP Morgan's investment banking analyst program.
September 2007: Big trip to Needles over Labor Day weekend before starting my new job in California full time. The picture below is of my climbing partner and me on top of the Witch Needle after doing the worst 5.9 on the planet. Note to self: "tunnel variation" routes should be avoided.
August 2007: Not a lot of adventure to report. I've been cranking with work and spending a lot of time traveling back and forth to California and other points far and wide. I did manage to get a weekend in Tuolumne in a couple weekends ago. The goal for the weekend was to trail run / hike Cloud's Rest and Half Dome from the meadows (rather than up from the Valley). I thought it would be a lot more flat and casual. Boy, was I wrong. The loop (including a 2 mile shortcut from Cloud's Rest to the Half Dome trail) along the ridge that looks down on Tenaya Canyon turned out to be 22 miles on the nose with about 6K feet of up and down. Good fun but way, way tough at altitude.
A few more reading recommendations:
More Sex is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics, by Stephen Landsburg. An econmist's slightly tongue-in-cheek approach to using incentives to solve the world's problems.
The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The sequel to Fooled By Randomness. Both spectacular must-reads, the Black Swan examines the role of outlier events in determining our economic, social and personal fates.
Thirteen Moons , by Charles Frazier. Loosely historical fiction about a white man taken in by Indians in the late 1800s. Outstanding subtle and slightly black humor.
July 2007: Went up and did the Diamond again, it was good fun. We did Pervertical Sanctuary, which I think in retrospect is a highly overrated route. The one long sustained pitch is definitely super-mega-classic, but the other pitches are pretty chossy, and the wide pitch totally SUCKS. I battled my way up it, but the Diamond definitely got the better of me that day.
June 2007: Well, Wildflower was pretty much a bust. I think in retrospect it was a little aggressive to plan a half-ironman two weeks after my first ultra. The run on the tri was one of the most painful long runs I've ever done... I had the energy but my legs were just filled with lead. Oh well, I guess there's always next year.
I also got a light and fast run at Dreamweaver, in Rocky Mountain National Park. The route was in pretty good condition, with lots of snow and a couple vertical pitches of ice. We did it in eight hours car-to-car, or something like that, entirely simul-solo (the only way to fly on an easy route like that). Kudos to my partner Robbie who battled through illness to get it done.
May 2007: Not much personal climbing to report. The Desert Rats 50 mile was 21st of April and it went really well. I finished in 10:50 and only contemplated quitting maybe 15 times. Basically once per mile between 35 and 50. Yikes, that's a long way. Results are posted here. The Wildflower Half Ironman is coming up... finish one race and taper for another!
A friend of mine sent me an email the other day that started with something like "I just saw you on You Tube..." which is almost always bad. But, in this case it's all good: my partner from Everest, Rex, put together some video clips from our trip, including some pretty sweet summit footage. The video is embedded below or linked here.
April 2007: The ice in Colorado is pretty much out, but the great long routes in Rocky Mountain National Park are coming in. It was such a long nasty winter, I suspect it will be a late Spring season in Colorado this year. In the meantime, I've got two non-climbing related goals on the horizon: the Desert Rats 50 mile (my first ultra) and the Wildflower Half Ironman. Both awesome races. I also want to urge you to action. After the spectacle of Dean Potter soloing Delicate Arch, Johnny Law and the powers that be have convened to create a Climbing Management Plan for Arches National Park. The period for public input on the Plan is now open. Here are Sam Lightner's comments from Mountain Project. And here is the link to form you can use to submit your comments to the Park. Hit "Comment on the document"
Regardless of whether you like run-out dirty tower climbing in places like Arches or not, we all need to defend the right to climb, albeit responsibly and with minimum impact. Do your part.
Recommended Reading:
"Murdering
the Impossible" by Caroline Alexander. National Geographic,
November 2006. An in-depth, insightful profile of Reinhold Messner
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, by Laurence Gonzales. Fascinating look into what equips people to cope with life and death situations of all kinds.
Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller. One man's compasionate exploration into faith and growing up.
Finding Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The psychology behind moments of pure concentration and happiness.
High Exposure, by David Breashears. Autobiography of the world's best high altitude cinematagrapher.
Simply Christian, By NT Wright. The basics of post-modern Christian faith from an intellectually honest perspective.
When Not Seeing is Believing, by Andrew Sullivan. Time Magazine, October 9, 2006. An inquiry into doubt, fundamentalism and the role of faith in solving the world's meta-problems.
