Alpinist 6

[Paco]

Sweet photo on the cover!

[Winter]

Has anyone gotten it in the mail yet? I was recently given a subscription, and I want to know if its working. Thanks.

[willstrickland]

Haven't received mine yet Chris...but mail takes a little longer up here too. Funny, I got a sub for x-mas too and they sent me the #5 for my first issue (which ended up being fine even though I already had #5 because I traded the extra #5 for a #1)

[skyclimb]

That looks freakin Sickkkk

Nice relaxing day ridge romping

[savaiusini]

I got #6 last week too. Also as a X-mas gift subscription...

Mine came with a gift pack of all the previous issues as well! Their website is sold out of all but #5 now, I think...

[Ryan]

Good issue, I love Alpinist!

[Jedi]

I got 6 last week and I live on the East Coast.

 

Will, I'll trade you your #1 for my daughter's SpongBob Square Pants 2nd issue of Patrick & SpongBob steal a balloon on free balloon day. COME ON MAN! That's a killer deal!

I'm still looking

Jedi

[John Frieh]

I heard the ones on Washington are bigger...

[forrest_m]

So I’ve gotten a bunch of emails & PMs since #6 came out, and everyone thinks Mark’s photo on the cover is awesome but they have questions:

“why are you belaying from on top of that huge cornice?” When I got to where Mark took the photo and could look back and see how overhung it was, I asked myself the same question. Beyond the edge there was an almost-vertical wall of snow and it was the first “reasonable” place and I was out of rope. I knew it was a cornice so I did jump up and down a bunch to test it.

 

“why are you facing backwards?” (Most popular question) Of course there were no anchors whatsoever (I’d used both pickets on the pitch), so I made a big stance facing down towards Mark to belay him up. Also, his pitch started by traversing down around an intermediate pinnacle. That stance is actually facing the direction of pull for most of the pitch, and I couldn’t really change in the middle.

 

“what’s going on with the ropes?” After Mark traversed down, he had to make some sketchy moves but still hadn't been able to place any pro, so he flipped one of the ropes over the other side of the cornice to protect the move. (smart!) Later, I had to untie from one of the ropes because it had dug into the underside of the cornice and I couldn’t flip it back.

 

For a more subjective view, I’ve pasted in something I wrote about it shortly after getting home. People who don't like wordy TRs should probably stop here.

 

________________________________

 

 

I’ve read about people who were so scared that their “bowels turned to water,” but this is the first time I’ve experienced the sensation firsthand. Whether due to a diet of Clif Bars and Ramen, the altitude, or simple fear, I’m immobilized, all my being focused on keeping my sphincter tight. I know beyond any reasonable doubt that a release of pressure is going to result in me shitting my pants. I thought that hard core alpinism meant clenching your teeth, but I’m learning that it sometimes means clenching your cheeks as well.

 

Above me, the cornice we’ve been traversing rears back into a narrow fin, one foot wide and dead vertical for 30 feet. At the top is a bizarre mushroom formation, like a half-inflated surgical glove whose fingers have sagged until they are resting on the palm. To reach the fin, I’m forced to edge well beyond the cornice fracture line and I half expect to drop through Hermann Buhl-style or collapse the entire thing with every step. After a minute of deep breathing, I’m able to continue, but now I’ve added soiling my only set of clothing to my list of worries.

 

When I finally get to the fin, only some aspects of the situation improve. I’m no longer treading on an overhang, but the exposure increases as well. I start flailing around in the deep, loose snow. There is a core of more or less solid material in there; a picket driven into ice, even aerated coca-cola ice, inspires some confidence. Upward progress is measured in cubic feet of material excavated as I whack away at the slushy snow that bars my way. With one foot flat on the arête, the other frontpointing out right, and my hammer shaft jammed horizontally into the outside face, I send tons of material down to the glacier 6,000 feet below. By the time I reach the top of the pinnacle, I’ve reduced the angle by 20 degrees and carved a body-sized trench through the mushroom at the top. Cavalierly, I slice its remaining connection from below and shrug it over my shoulder like a running back slipping a tackle. It falls free for two hundred feet before impacting the slope and sliding away out of sight. Finally, I can throw my leg over the top to straddle this toothy blob of snow like a horse. My stomach is wracked by another series of spasms – it feels like my entire intestine is trying to wriggle out my ass. I’m not even half way through the first pitch of the Happy Cowboys, and already I’m very unhappy.

 

When I finally manage to get my shit together – it’s my day for learning the literal meaning of phrases – I finish the pitch and bring Mark up to my belay. It’s a cupola on top of an ice cream cone, beautiful and comfortable but without even a suggestion of an anchor besides the hole I stomp out. We can see another vertical stretch ahead, but the terrain in between is hidden behind the walls of my hollow. Driven by wishful thinking, I say the magic words:

 

“That wall looks like it’ll be kind of hard, but I think it’ll be easy getting over there…”

 

Mark looks at me sadly. I should know better by now. Underneath all the snow, the Happy Cowboys are a series of rock pinnacles, and the gap between the one we are on and the next is essentially a crevasse delicately plastered over with a narrow rib. With no protection available, Mark flips one rope onto each side of the cornice that separates us and eases forward. The snowbridge dissolves like a cigarette left to burn in the ashtray. Mark can barely stem across the remaining gap, traversing another fifteen feet before he can diddle in some decent pro into the only exposed rock we encounter all day.

 

I begin to simulclimb behind Mark as he disappears down the back side of the pinnacle. Beyond the vertical wall is a section of downclimbing followed by a tenuous traverse along a leftward-arcing knife edge that eventually cuts back right around a small rib. I’m feeling out the move past the crest when the rope begins to pull me hard. “Don’t pull!” I yell, but the rope is straightening out from a parabola to a chord as Mark heads down a short slope out of earshot. I’m close to panic again, between my harness and the corner a hundred feet away, the rope is no longer touching the slope, and its pulling me towards the void with the eagerness of a kid in the candy aisle at the supermarket. I’d love to run forward, but the next twenty feet is going to be extremely delicate. Another tug almost rips me out of my steps. At the top of my lungs: “Aaaargh…. STOP!!!” A long pause. The pressure on my waist eases slightly.

 

I breathe easier when I get past the next bump. Mark, though unable to understand anything I was yelling, guessed my predicament. I untie from the second rope and attach all the gear I’d cleaned so that Mark could pull it up to him. Neither of us is willing to be at a single location again. We’ve both seen the size of the overhangs that we are forced to traverse, and we know that only possible safety is in being at opposite ends of the rope. “If one of us goes over, the other has to be ready to jump off the other side,” Mark had told me at the start of the ridge “Really. I’m not joking.”

 

And so it went for several more hours. It never gets as hard as the pinnacle pitches again, but it is continuously “interesting.” Every downclimb features a crevasse at the bottom, a fact which I prove by falling into each in turn. Finally we jump the last slot and plow through deep snow to a small flat spot at the base of the Changabang arête. We had only been climbing for eight hours, and had planned to brew up and continue, but now we begin setting up the tent. There’s no discussion necessary. Our fried brains are completely synchronized, demanding relief from the tension. I drop my pack, look back the way we’ve come, and with what I hope sounds like sang froid, declare “I don’t want to do anything like that ever again.”