mvs

Get well Kurt, all the best to you, and many adventures to come!

I have just passed judgement on you right now, without any of the relevant qualifications! Who let me in here?

Actually "Fingerlocks or Pine Box" has a nicer ring.

damn, that was creepy. to know you are about to fly over a wi3 pitch is not good. glad you guys are ok. time will help!

The www.kexp.org podcasts are awesome.

The Renton outcrops have gotten a lot of guff, but if you just have some patience and keep walking down the old road behind the school you'll see the cliffs on the other side of the river. They're not as high as the (pretty overinflated) report mentioned, but there are a few somewhat mossy routes to be done. Beats staying home if you're stuck in town. Just ride your bike over and bring a chalk bag.

Rudy climbs hard trad routes too, I have seen this occur on multiple occasions.

Hey it's a long flight, but there is plenty of ice to use that gear on!

Dan, come fix my wall up, I have a little basement room with a chain link fence around it. I've been hooking stuff on with biners and slings. Pretty nifty, but yours looks cleaner.

Not a big climbing year for me, mainly about having kids and moving to Germany, but I did get to climb Sleese NE Buttress with Theron and Aidan. That was an awesome trip, a great realization of a longtime goal. Merry Christmas everyone!

That is a beautiful statement about a life well lived.

Thanks for words of wisdom about the accident I had a few weeks ago. Just an update that I'm fine and Mat's knee is recovering pretty well (torn acl), it's not for sure yet, but we are hoping for a full recovery of that. This thread is great, I wish I had some unique perspective to add. I can say that in the weeks since then that I feel like I've enjoyed the best parts of climbing as people refer to it (living in the present, "self-overcoming"), but I've also over the years gotten addicted to some kind of praise from other humans for what I did and that motivation subtly changed my judgement and what I valued from the experience. Like, by definition a south face could never be as good as a north face? It reveals a lack of imagination on my part - I felt the sting of recognition when Lowell used that phrase in another context a few pages back. I feel a little wiser, and suspicious of my motives when they involve stuff like "people back home will think that's cool!" To put myself on the psychologist couch, I grew up as the proverbial 98-lb weakling, still can't throw a ball worth a damn, and I got a real ego boost from playing a game with such connotations of strength and adventure. I think of that now as a bad habit I picked up as I gained experience. Live and learn... As for the question, which I never answered: if I knew I would die climbing, and by stopping right now I could avoid that, I would stop. I don't think I would have said that before, I would have said "yeah, but life isn't meant to be lived forever and...to have truly lived is to..." kind of statements. Before, in my inner dream world of climbing, I just saw these amazing vistas, "k2-like" guitar solos and guys crunching up ice slopes in great weather - really cinematic! But now, though I still enjoy that kind of thinking, there is a kernel of black and white thought, where sober-faced people discuss what happened, remnants of families gather in rooms, and brief newspaper articles state both the question and the answer. That part demands the answer "no" - despite the fear of killing a precious part of the self, I would be proud to do it.

Like the U.S., Germany also has big differences in affordability, depending where you are. Unfortunately, Munich is a lot like San Francisco, rents are high as is cost of living. So it must be at least a little higher than Seattle, it's hard to tell for sure without being here for a while. But like Seattle, the mountains are close, and I don't mind paying more for that. The city itself is really flat though, you don't get a nearby Cougar Mountain kind of thing, you have to go ahead and commit to at least an hour drive to get hills. Then they rise up pretty quickly. Also, house prices don't go up very quickly here, so it's not like by renting you are missing out on huge valuation increases. People don't get to deduct interest from their mortgages. The U-bahn/S-bahn trains are amazing, and bike lanes on most streets make riding to work fun too.

He was also mine, and he did great. He sold our house quickly and negotiated well on our behalf, probably due to the steely glint in the eye that comes from a Joburg obsession . John helped us make informed decisions about strategy and took care of all the little things that came up. Here is a photo assault of house pictures he had made: I contacted John just because I knew him through climbing, and I'd like to believe in a world where that sort of thing always works out. Well it did for me. Work with one of our own, work with Juan. ps - John, come out to the Dolomitis for some climbs, just watch out for that pulled pin on Musterstein .

Yesterday I had a terrible experience that made me feel pretty close to dying. My thoughts in those moments of falling were incoherent, but two things came to the fore. First, I felt regret and sadness, a simple sadness. What a shame, I thought, that my life, this special (to me), fascinating thing is going to end for such a stupid mistake. Secondly, I saw my wife and children. There was no time to think of anything more specific than that, it's just that they filled my thoughts, and were "overlayed" with the same feeling of sadness. Not to open a whole side story, the basic facts are that a friend and I were climbing in Austria, on a 6+ gear/bolt route (like 5.10b?) in the mountains. We were halfway up, and past the crux. I wasn't strong at the grade, I was getting tired, and on top of that I misunderstood the guidebook (I thought I had an "easy" pitch). I also ran it out on easy ground above the bolted belay. I got to a hard spot, clipped a piton and backed it up with a nut. A few feet above things happened fast. My crucial (only) foothold broke off, but I held on. Then the rope came tight and popped the nut out, I was just at the worst angle right next to it to allow this to happen. Then I hesitated. Up or down? Can I climb down? Can I climb up? Okay up, it gets easier in 4 feet. Arms weaker than I expected owing to holding on when the foothold broke. Reaching, struggling for a jam in a pocket, feet pasted in a quasi-lieback. Fingers beginning to slip. Nothing good for feet. I chose to fall, one second before I would have no control. But of course, the pin at my feet rips out, and because I ran it out on easy ground above the belay (something I had entirely forgotten about, actually), and because my nut was gone, I was set up for a deadly fall. It was both quick and took a long time. During the fall I saw the piton fly wildly out above me, then I somehow flipped over and saw lower parts of the mountain coming towards me, now strongly feeling the regret I mentioned above because I'll surely be killed, I just have to wait a little while. But my friend caught me. It was a 60 foot factor 2 fall, and it tore a thick strip of flesh from both sides of his belay hand. The rope somehow tore another strip from his neck, and wrapping around his leg, stretched a ligament in his knee painfully. I was upside down with the rope wrapped around my calves. I hit the wall on my back, but I had a pack on, so it didn't seem to hurt. In fact, I was almost completely ok, while my friend was groaning in real pain. I am hobbling around today, with purple, bruised calves, abrasions on my hands and every single muscle feels brutalized, but my belayer might have a serious knee injury, and the wound on his hand would make you wince. We made 6-7 double rope rappels and walked back to the car. It is still sinking in somehow. Just writing this now I started shivering uncontrollably(?). I have cast a critical eye on what steps and illusions of my own led to the fall (there were plenty). I also see through my friend hobbling down the mountain that my mistake in the mountains has caused pain for someone else (not just physical too, he has dreams of things he wants to accomplish, and a big knee injury could kill them). You can't imagine how thankful I am when I think of my little boys, and when I think of my friend stopping my fall at a high cost. I think a very clear lesson is there for me - that I have to change concrete things about myself. If I fail to do this I will surely die climbing. If I succeed, then I could still die at any moment sure. But I believe I have individual traits/behaviors that would make a moment like what just happened come again. And I can't expect such a forgiving world or dare I say angels next time. Of course, it is embarassing to post about an accident just one week after cheerfully moving to europe, "bon voyage!", feeling really excited, on top of the world. But that is part of it. I don't want this post to further entrench anyone's viewpoint. It is just a letter from someone who feels like he came back from a country of sadness.

I'm so sorry to hear this, it is terrible. I met him when he was taking photos of Gordy skiing the couloir on SEWS. He said he felt safer on steep snow with skis on than with an ice ax and crampons. My prayers.

Well the house is sold, the cars are sold, and we are moving to Germany. I will miss the excitement of checking for cool trip reports here after a great weather weekend. And my occasional forays into "spray" have given me plenty of yuks. Keep the flames burning, keep up the wild first ascents, the days of granite, of snow, and truly delicious blue skies on pitch 5. If you come to Munich, drop me a line and we'll quaff some steins! -- Michael -- ripsawridge@gmail.com Always my favorite "graemlin":

maybe why we have "moderators" and "spray forum", etc. http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html anyway, interesting read with beer.

Congradulations, this place has been so much fun! (mvs, #14)

Can we have like a fireworks celebration, with the pictures broadcast on a skyscraper wall, with Harry Majors comments read out in a stentorian voice over a loudspeaker? Jeez, that was a great TR and adventure!

Recently I soloed 20 feet of 5.6 grippy granite, and got seriously chided because I've got kids. I can only imagine the holy hell for this one! What does CK route mean? Certainly Killt?

Hey how long is the drive out there from Seattle, anybody know?

Yes, Primer was strange but good! I was so pathetic in 7th grade, the coach gave up in disgust and put me and the other wierdos in a field of our own with a big red bouncy ball to hit around while the real kids played tag football. It got worse from there. Hiking and climbing was something I couldn't be ridiculed at (until now because of my constant spraying ). I'm in a geek profession too.

make us a movie, Alex, we know you have a camera!

Thanks folks! It's Theron's video camera, just a small panasonic unit. We've been using it for over a year now, it can really take a beating. It definitely takes more time to get that footage, we have to thank Theron for making sure we do it. John, I think your movie would become a cult hit, playing in damp, musty home theaters from Chiliwack to Government Camp. Certain lines and sound effects would enter the lexicon. Let's see it, for sweet Jesus' sake!