"Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks. Great success shooting the knife into the piano. The woodworms are so bad and eat hell out of all furniture that you can always claim the woodworms did it."
--Ernest Hemingway
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jpsmyth - Apr 4, 2012 1:13 am - Voted 10/10
MotivatingGreat trip report. Thanks.
PellucidWombat - Apr 5, 2012 3:07 pm - Hasn't voted
Re: MotivatingI'm glad you enjoyed it!
LuminousAphid - May 14, 2013 12:51 pm - Hasn't voted
Reading more of these..."We were both thoroughly soaked and becoming mildly hypothermic. I was covered in rime ice, already had the "umbles" and was beginning to get the "stumbles" and both Eric and I had been shivering non-stop for the past 3 or 4 hours."
"he saw that our "Mostly Sunny" weather window had changed to "80% chance of snow, 1-3" @ 13k'"...We were tempted to pack up camp then and there and just keep climbing"
...and I officially take back my comment regarding no one having the right to question your decisions. Some of your decisions, which you openly admit to but don't seem to see any problem with, are far from the best ones. I think your experience in more "extreme" mountaineering has left you with an overconfidence and a skewed sense of risk assessment. This shows in what mrchad pointed out in your 2010 Shasta report when you stated that you didn't feel you had anything to learn since you did everything right, and then there's this little gem:
"There are some valuable lessons for other climbers to learn from the tragedy as well – the decisions I made that got me down the mountain alive."
How about lessons on when to turn back (even if it's before you summit)? When to realize that the weather might come earlier than you expected? When to decide, "Maybe I shouldn't be doing this in the first place, too many unknowns"? mrchad is totally right, you are arrogant and have too much confidence in your superiority over mother nature. This is why people think mountaineering is unreasonably risky and dangerous, because people like you often make bad decisions which put you and your partners at risk
edit: also if you are going to flaunt with epics, do it in your own mountains. We already have enough people needing rescue around here each and every year
PellucidWombat - Jun 3, 2013 2:32 am - Hasn't voted
Re: Reading more of these..."This is why people think mountaineering is unreasonably risky and dangerous"
Well there we go, this is the point where we can agree to disagree, and on this point I can't/won't argue with you because it is a personal decision on what risks are worth doing, and what risks are careless versus being reasonably prepared and living life. At this level, I can only say each of us is entitled to our own opinions and I can't judge you deciding it is too risky to do much mountaineering. It is risky, and you can't rule out risk, only be prepared to mitigate it and still even then, take a change. My attitude is you do that in many other ways that you don't elevate to the same level as something as 'flashy' as climbing, and the rewards I get out of it are worth the price. I have probably had as many (or more) near death encounters on my road bike than in the mountains from careless drivers (I almost got T-boned last week when I had the right-of-way). In fact, the closest I personally came to dying, related to a climb, was DRIVING back from Mt Shasta when a car was driving the wrong way on the freeway, straddling both lane lines. Good thing I wasn't dabbling on my smart phone on that straightaway, or otherwise distracted while driving . . .
If we were overconfident about Liberty Ridge than we would have only brought supplies for the 3 days we expected to climb it in. We expected the possibility of a storm hitting us high on the mountain, even with a good forecast, and prepared for it. The weather forecast changed drastically after we had left (which is common, and we were prepared for, hence 5 days' provisions for a 3-day climb, and a good GPS with waypoints previous marked), and us knowing about it was an unexpected (and very modern) convenience. We were high enough on the route that it was debatable whether bailing was safer than pushing up and over and leaving sooner to get through the worst before the weather broke.
I really don't see how you think we were overconfident in that once we saw that we were beginning to get hypothermic, and that a GPS track wasn't sufficient for safe travel in the storm, we decided to stop while still in control, warm up, hydrate, eat, rest, and wait until conditions were safer to travel (knowing that no system was heading our way, just lots of regional instability in the forecast - as per the NOAA forecast discussion). We stopped while in control, got better, and as soon as conditions were safer to travel, we navigated down the whiteout without incident. I can point out many many ways this could have gone badly, but didn't, if had not been prepared or charged ahead once things got bad. ANAM is full of them and we were fully aware of what has happened before.
"also if you are going to flaunt with epics, do it in your own mountains. We already have enough people needing rescue around here each and every year"
Yeah, you really showed how closely you looked at these reports about us outsiders in 'your' mountains. Tom was from Vancouver, Nastia was from Portland, and Eric was from Olympia you jackass. And what exactly are 'my' mountains?
I'm not arrogant. I've personally had a number of acquaintances and friends maimed or killed in the mountains over the past 6 years (NOT with me, as Chad would claim), and every one makes the dangers that much more salient, but I don't pine about it online to an audience. But perhaps I come across as arrogant because I don't give respect to POS like you. If you really cared in talking on a sincere level, I am just a PM away, and you can start by directly asking me questions in a constructive or clarifying way, and not throwing prior judgments and accusations at me from incomplete or vague information. I have had many such conversations with people in PMs or in person and I HAVE adjusted either how I do things, or how I view things, after having such discussions. One small example is even though it wouldn't have helped Tom, I was convinced to put in the time and money to get trained and certified as a Wilderness First Responder, as this can make such a huge difference on any outing in the backcountry or high on a rock wall - and I intend to keep up with my certification. I show much more humility and genuine feelings and doubts to those people because they approached me with respect and as a decent human beings - there no need to launch into public attacks with half-assed accusations that show your lack of sensitivity. In those cases I am not inclined to talk to you respectfully, openly, or seriously. That's not arrogance, that is just weeding out all of the obvious BS.
pchernik - Apr 5, 2014 6:23 pm - Hasn't voted
ThanksThanks for the great trip report!