Quote:
Originally Posted by Kybosh
Thankfully, I haven't had any really intense situations in the mountains yet. Glad everyone seemed to be ok from your group.
On a somewhat related note, Phanuthier, have you read Steve House's book Beyond the Mountain? It won the Mountain Literature Award in Banff last year. This is, hands down, the best mountaineering and general climbing book that I have ever read. He relates his experiences in such a human, fragile and honest way, which I find lacking in many other climbing works. Although our climbing experiences have been very different, I found myself relating with Steve over and over on many things beyond just climbing.
Hell, I recommend this book to anyone. Even people that have never even set foot on a mountain. |
Cool I might give it a try.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sclitheroe
I don’t think its a particularly great story. There’s no lesson learned, no reflection on what could have been done better, nothing to pass along to to other less experienced climbers, etc. Just a harrowing tale caused by unfortunate circumstances and probably a healthy dose of poor judgement (why did you summit if you saw storms inbound and knew they were going to hit you?)
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We sumitted because I didn't know what Party 1 wanted to do. At the point where they were (Pitch 5-6) the anchor bolts were spaced 50m apart (really runout) so if they wanted to bail, they wouldn't be able to. The only way they could bail was to tie two 60m ropes together for a 60m repel, so they needed our rope. By the time we got up to the 5th pitch, they were long gone and thus we were not able to bail because we needed two 60m as well. One of the guys in the 1st party was one of my best friends, so there was no way I was going to leave him behind.
There are things we could have done better, but I don't know how this is gonna affect me. I'm not really a fan of mountaineering or any sort of alpine climbing, I just wanted to knock off all the possible major classics in California, and I did them all this summer. Between all the hiking, waking up early, navigating, dealing with weather, danger etc I think it would have to take a really good ascent for me to want to do another full day, mountaineering trip. (Compared to sport climbing or bouldering)