Norman_Clyde

Not Greenlake, Zeke's on Phinney. I still have a grudge against Zeke's for swallowing up my old neighborhood favorite Guido's on 65th, and I like MAD pizza a lot better, but I won't make waves, especially since it's going to be on a Tuesday and my chances of making it there are slim. But if the pizza idea takes off, I'll push for MAD in Fremont or Lake City on a Thursday next time.

When I applied a few years ago, they had some additional form for me to fill out, but in the end I don't think it cost me a dime extra, because the company only charged extra for people who climbed in the Himalayas or Denali, or at least above 14K. Based on that experience, I suspect there are decent life insurance policies available for most Cascade climbers. The actuaries know that once you're over 40, you're still more likely to be one of the unexpected heart attacks than the unexpected avalanche victims.

It's true that diuresis/dehydration will raise your hematocrit, but i don't think this is the mechanism for acclimatization. Just having a higher hematocrit due to a lower blood volume will not improve oxygen delivery. You need a higher total body red cell mass to do this, which takes a few days at least. It is likely that at least some of the AMS symptoms are due to a mild degree of brain swelling, basically the near end of the spectrum with the far end being cerebral edema. Recovery from AMS symptoms, i.e. acclimatization, is often associated with a significant diuresis (volume loss through increased urination). I believe that the reasons for this are still unclear. Even if you're hoping to pee off extra liquid, you should not seek to correct your fluid "imbalance" by restricting fluids on a climb. Better to drink as much as possible, and sleep with a pee bottle so you won't have to get all the way up. A Nalgene bottle dedicated to the purpose is wide enough at the mouth that women can use them without accidents. (I've seen it work.)

Rainier may not be high altitude compared to the Himalayas or Denali, but I wager that more American climbers get AMS on Rainier than on all other world mountains combined, because so many more people climb Rainier. So Rainier is pertinent to this discussion. Normal respiration is driven not by low oxygen, but by high CO2 in the blood. When you hold your breath and your lungs want to burst, it is the CO2 buildup that feels bad. Low oxygen doesn't hurt, it just makes you suddenly get dizzy and pass out. People pass out from hyperventilating because blood flow to the brain is also CO2 driven, so when you lower blood CO2, you simultaneously reduce cerebral blood flow. You can reduce perfusion till you pass out, if you try really hard. Also, if you hyperventilate for so long that you have no respiratory drive, then you stop hyperventilating and forget to breathe for 2 minutes, you might pass out from lack of oxygen, but this would be even harder to accomplish. At altitude, normal breathing doesn't give you enough oxygen, and I believe that your breathing gets driven at least partially by hypoxia. You have to breathe faster to get enough O2, which reduces your blood CO2 levels. This throws off your blood pH, and also the interplay between CO2 drive and hypoxic drive probably is part of what leads to the periodic breathing of altitude, so called Cheyne Stokes respirations, where your respiratory rate varies at rest. Diamox increases the dissolved CO2 in your blood by inhibiting excretion of bicarbonate in your urine, thereby balancing your CO2 a little bit. This seems to help correct the periodic breathing. Also, adaptation to altitude involves peeing off extra fluid, for unknown reasons, so taking a diuretic is helpful maybe just because you pee more when you take it.

This is a little off subject, but I'm curious how many of you have taken Diamox in order to prevent AMS. I've prescribed the stuff but never felt the need to take it. I have also had a few mostly sleepless nights at high camp on the WA volcanos. To me this is just part of the experience, and I'd have to feel sicker before actually taking anything, but I do wonder if I'd feel a lot stronger on summit day if I took a pill. Anybody who has tried high camp with and without Diamox who can put in their 2 cents?

I vote to have it on a Thursday sometime soon.

If pizza is on the ballot, I vote for MAD pizza in Fremont, or better still, the new MAD in Lake City. The Lake City place is a lot bigger. I know, I never show up anyway, but if I can get pizza there, I'll skip dinner after work and go to Pub Club directly.

I'm just headed down there on Friday! We go once a year to see a few plays. We thought about moving to Ashland when the rain was driving us insane back in 1999, but there are already plenty of doctors in town. Also, real estate costs were more like you'd expect to see in California (but you probably know this). Good rock seems like the one thing the area doesn't have: after all it's got great running and biking trails starting right out of town, Mount Ashland all of 20 miles away, Mt Shasta and Mt McLaughlin right around the corner. You could do worse. But I have no clue where to find the closest sport climbs.

Gravity at the poles is greater, because the earth's surface is closer at the poles to the center of mass. This effect even alters the passage of time very slightly. I will need to look at my physics and astronomy books to make sure, but the theory of relativity shows that time passes more slowly in the presence of a gravitational field. So if you spend enough years at the poles, you may live longer. Or maybe it will just seem longer.

Air pressure and temperature are not necessarily related. you will realize this intuitively if you think of pressure relating to 1) the total number of air molecules per unit volume and 2) the average energy of each molecule. Temperature relates to the average energy. The number of air molecules per unit volume will determine the density, and will affect the pressure only if the density changes while the energy of each molecule remains constant. If you pressurize air that is at a constant temperature, as with a bicycle pump, it will heat up. But if an air mass cools without any restrictions on its ability to contract (i.e. an open system like the atmosphere), it will become more dense without necessarily changing in pressure. Very cold air at sea level is very dense-- the reason why sound travels so well in cold air, and planes can take off with less runway when it's cold. But the cold air has less energy per molecule, so it is not higher pressure even though it's more dense. I've always understood the transfer of oxygen into the blood to relate to partial pressure of oxygen, so to breathe cold dense air does not put more oxygen into your blood if the air pressure does not change. I've read in several places that the atmosphere is thinner at the poles, and I understood it to be due to the effect of the earth's rotation. Apparently the air pressure at the south pole, which is only a few thousand feet above sea level, is the same as at 10,000 feet at the equator. I just tried looking it up in my astronomy book to find the answer, but had no luck.

I tried going up the main face in late July 1998, a very warm day, alternating between small mushy snow patches and loose muddy rocks. The guidebook called this a class 2, as I recall, which may be why some more casual hikers have tried it and gotten themselves killed. It really sucked in summer conditions, and I eventually backed off to go the other way. But in the spring this direct route ought to be fine, if snow conditions are stable. There were huge avalanche paths into Surprise Basin below the peak, which had lasted well into summer.

Ran the Chuckanut Mountain 50K yesterday. Recovering today. Put in a new water heater this afternoon. Doing dishes for the remainder of the weekend.

Of course I'm making big generalizations that won't apply to each and every individual. I am an M.D., but what I posted is not so much what I learned in school as what I learned over several years of intense competitive endurance athletics (triathlons, then running). Glasskowkiss, my opinion is that a person's body will respond a lot more readily to training than to supplements or drugs of various kinds. No athlete in the USA has any reason to become deficient in the basic building materials for muscle. I haven't read all the studies, but the recent ones showing that creatine works only show a slight increase in muscle strength in the setting of resistance training. If you compared someone taking creatine and not exercising, versus someone not taking creatine but exercising, I bet that exercise would beat creatine hands down. I still say that if fatigue in your leg muscles is the problem, then work on strengthening your leg muscles. If you're at your physiologic maximum, then this won't make you stronger, but you may be more at risk of injury. If you are careful about how you increase your activity, it should be safe to try.

I did the Chuckanut 50K yesterday, which has further diminished my enthusiasm to go after a 24 hour Wonderland circuit. 31 miles in 5 hours was a suffer-fest extraordinaire. It's amusing to read my own post of a few weeks ago, when I claimed to have thrashed myself on the 18 mile trail portion, because by yesterday I was already looking at that training run through rose-colored glasses, thinking I had felt more or less fine afterwards. Well, if by a few weeks from now I have become delusional about the self-inflicted punishment I endured yesterday, I can go back to this thread to jog my memory.

This is definitely not a cardio or circulation problem. It's muscle fatigue, as you say. Therefore, you need to increase the strength or endurance, or both, of your running muscles. Speed work will make you faster, and will increase your endurance somewhat as well, because your maximum aerobic pace will increase, therefore your standard running pace will not be so close to your max as it was before, therefore you will get a little less fatigued. But if you want to build muscle endurance, you need to concentrate your efforts on muscle work, i.e. long slow distance or weights, or hill running. But this latter is a big cardio challenge as well, and you want to avoid activities that preferentially challenge the parts of you that are already strongest. Long slow distance has been overrated in the past, and it's fairly boring, but a long run of this sort once or twice a week may get you where you want to be.

There is a big coffee table book, written in something like the late 70s, describing the Bavarianization, with lots of interesting before and after photos. The gay pioneers ran the place right at the turn to Lake Wenatchee, the one that was called the Squirrel Nut Tree until last year. The funniest part about reading the Leavenworth book is that it is blissfully ignorant of the gay pioneers being gay. It describes them as "business partners"-- right. I imagine that a few of the wiser Leavenworth residents figured it out, but were respectful (and smart) enough to keep quiet.

The NW avalanche center has posted a report that this past weekend a snowboarder in the Mt. Hood area (I think) triggered an avalanche that carried him into a creek bed, where he was buried 4 feet deep for 20 minutes. Then it says that his buddies were able to perform a beacon-assisted rescue, and that he was dug out unharmed after a 20 minute burial. This outcome is so unusual that I don't want to wait until next year's ANAM to read about it (if it even makes it in as a backcountry skiing incident). Anybody have the whole story?

Better get your tickets fast. Now everyone will be itching to hear The Man tell his stories.

This must be an atypical weather system, because it's snowing in the mountains without dropping any precip here at sea level. Streets are dry in Seattle this morning. What weather expert can tell us why this happens?

This problem is definitely from pressure on the nerves from the boots being too tight. It almost always comes back, but it can take months. The first time I got this was on an Outward Bound trip when I was 18. My entire big toe had no feeling for three months, all from one descent of Grandfather Mountain. If you can't make your boots fit any more loosely, you need more boots or this will continue to happen. (My One Sport leather boots will sometimes do this to my left foot, which is a little bigger than my right, but only if I lace it too tightly, so the boots are still usable.)

Stevens to Snoqualmie on the PCT is something like 62 miles. I don't have any figures on elevation gain and loss. This would be easier as a one day event, since you could probably do it dawn to dusk in June or July (if you moved fast). I emailed Krissy Moehl of Montrail about Wonderland Trail times, and she mentioned that group that does it in 3 days, but I don't have their names and haven't contacted them. Probably worth doing if anyone is going to seriously go after this as a goal. Ever since yesterday morning, when I thrashed myself running up and down Chuckanut Mountain twice in 3 hours, I've been less than fully enthusiastic about a 93 mile ultra-suffer fest. I guess it depends on how fast I recover.

Have only seen a fluke in stores....wouldn't even know what to do with one of those. I have a big fluke that I bought right after reading Freedom of the Hills and concluding that flukes must be superior, because the angle of the cable through the snow caused the force vector to be more truly perpendicular to the piece, meaning the pull would not tend to pull it out, etc. etc. I have never used it either. I've used my pickets, but never have had to catch a fall on them, so of course I still don't know what's better. I still carry the fluke sometimes, and I figure I'll use it eventually. It has a nice long cable held in place with copper grommets, so the angle of the cable is fixed in the correct position. I think in very soft snow it would probably be superior, but I haven't yet climbed in snow that was both extremely mushy and steep enough to warrant a belay (except on a solo on Mt. Deception's E. face, a series of little mushy snowfields of 45 to 55 degrees, surrounded by loose rock; the pick would glide through the snow like butter when I tested it; probably a good thing I backed off and went up another way).

I am once again tied up with family stuff and can't make it. Next full weekend free is 4 weeks from now. I will hope to get up to Muir at least before April. Good luck you guys.

This is the westernmost peak in the Tattoosh range. There is a trail on the southwestern side that ascends a few miles from Longmire to just below the summit. The trail is not at all exposed, but when you get to the top you have a very nice and somewhat exposed view northeast toward Rainier and Paradise. There is a little 3rd class climbing from the top of the trail if you wanted to summit. The above description is only true in summertime, of course. I would guess in winter that you could snowshoe or ski up the same side the trail is on. It seems most likely that this was not a "climbing" accident, but a ski injury or some similar non-climbing related fall, unless someone had decided to climb the steeper side.

I have thought about talking to sponsors, but I'm not planning that yet. After all, if too many people get interested, someone's going to finish ahead of me. I don't want to do it all by myself, though, especially the night portion. It's going to be very hard to do any real running on the Wonderland at night, I bet. I think the best plan is to start and finish at Longmire, head out clockwise, to get the steepest part done first, and so the last portion from Panhandle Gap to Longmire is more generally downhill, and close to the road in case assistance is required. PP, if I actually do this and you're interested, you can run the night time portion with me. I am sure I will need the company at that hour.