mountaineering

Moses was the original mountaineer

ha yeah i mean people did set foot on mountains in the past but the origins of mountaineering as a thing thing can be dated to around the time of the industrial revolution

I don't believe I linked it here earlier, but this article from 2007 is worth reading. What it's like to be in Everest Base Camp for a month: http://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/asia/nepal/mount-everest/High-Times.html

HIGH TIMES
You were told that Everest base camp is an insult to the true spirit of mountaineering. (Harrumph.) But why weren't you told about the excellent bars, the butter people, and that friendly Playboy bunny from Poland? The author spends a month at the world's most exclusive party town.

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/dvd/fox/soundofmusic/SOM1_L.jpg

command-f butter people

What are the chances of dying while climbing Everest? I've read everything from 1/60 to 1/10, and you could argue that it's not the best place to look for experienced risk-aware level-headed climbers; either way they don't sound like great odds compared to any kind of driving.

butter people can only exist at a certain altitude cos they start melting once they descend below the tree line

http://durbutter.com/durbutter.gif

Amazing panoramic gigapixel photo of Everest, Lhotse, base camp, and the Khumbu Icefall: http://www.glacierworks.org/the-glaciers/pumori-spring-2012/

HFS, I just zoomed in on that photo and saw just how small base camp and the climbers are in comparison to the mtn

what is this? a base camp for ants?

http://theadventureblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/first-8000-meter-summiteer-maurice.html

Sad news from France today, where we've received word that Maurice Herzog has passed away at the ripe old age of 93. If his name is familiar, it is because he was the first man, along with climbing partner Louis Lachenal, to successfully summit an 8000 meter peak.

Herzog and Lachenal climbed their way into the history books back on June 3, 1950 when they made the first successful attempt up Annapurna, the tenth highest peak in the world at 8091 meters (26,545 ft). Even more remarkable, considering the time, they actually made the ascent without the use of supplemental oxygen. The climb was not an easy one by any stretch of the imagination however, as the summit team, along with two companions, spend a night camped out in a crevasse on the descent. They had one sleeping bag between the four men and as a result, they suffered severe frostbite. Herzog himself had lost his gloves on the way to the summit and ended up having all of his toes and several fingers amputated in the field.

Ironically, Annapurna was the first of the 8000 meter peaks to be summited, but is now considered to be amongst the most challenging of those 14 mountains to climb. It wouldn't be successfully conquered again until 1970.

After his harrowing climb, Herzog published a book about the adventure entitled Annapurna: The First Conquest of an 8000-Meter Peak, which has gone on to be one of the best selling mountaineering books of all time. The book has been translated into 40 languages and has sold over 12 million copes across the globe, inspiring generations of mountaineers that followed. He also served as the Commissioner of Youth and Sport in France and was the mayor of Chamonix from 1968-1977.

(his book is one of my all-time faves)

putting that on my to read list

Man Makes History by Climbing 1,500-Foot El Sendero Luminoso with No Net

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX_rh8Qugt0

honnold is nuts

no thank you and good day sir

Off my comprehensibility scale. Gbx, in what sense does the yds rating only go to 5.13? Whats the disti ction being drawn there vs 5.14s or more?

Wow, no, 15 seconds into that, I'm going to be sick.

o_O

hoping that's like old Batman films and he's just crawling around the floor with the camera at a funny angle

Cool video from an airplane flying around Everest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HziXPKFpLu4

I just finished reading the book about the 1999 expedition that found the body of George Mallory, Ghosts of Everest. I knew the expedition leader way back in my college days. Incredibly, when the climbers first reached the area where they intended to search, they located Mallory's body in less than 1.5 hours. At ~8000m you can't walk very far in that time.

Searching on -name of mountain- + gopro turns up some great videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW_6eO6VMpk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKq-3H04SkQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUMHPnV8qz0

ueli steck is the greatest living human

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjRGHGV_MVI

not like as a kind giving loving human, but as a specimen, aliens would harvest him

Let's climb the most insane route on the most notorious climb ever - the Eiger North Face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MELPIlqCU74

RIP royal robbins

what a handsome man

https://www.royalrobbins.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/05-Royal-Portrait1.jpg

^^ People who are (barely) not River Wolf

i saw rw recently and id say that's more than a bit generous

but im sure he appreciates it

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/features/athletes/alex-honnold/most-dangerous-free-solo-climb-yosemite-national-park-el-capitan/

Renowned rock climber Alex Honnold on Saturday became the first person to scale the iconic nearly 3,000-foot granite wall known as El Capitan without using ropes or other safety gear, completing what may be the greatest feat of pure rock climbing in the history of the sport.

instant legend status

i'll be amazed if he makes it past 40yo

i don't think i can ever watch footage of what he did. reading that article made me sweat

can't wait to watch it tbh

Climbers have been speculating for years about a possible free solo of El Capitan, but there have only been two other people who have publicly said they seriously considered it. One was Michael Reardon, a free soloist who drowned in 2007 after being swept from a ledge below a sea cliff in Ireland. The other was Dean Potter, who died in a base jumping accident in Yosemite in 2015.

John Bachar, the greatest free soloist of the 1970s, who died while climbing un-roped in 2009 at age 52, never considered it. When Bachar was in his prime, El Capitan had still never been free climbed. Peter Croft, 58, who completed the landmark free solo of the 1980s—Yosemite’s 1,000-foot Astroman—never seriously contemplated El Capitan, but he knew somebody would eventually do it.

“It was always the obvious next step,” says Croft. “But after this, I really don’t see what’s next. This is the big classic jump.”

reardon's death was kind of a bizarre accident iirc, but worth noting that croft (a hero of mine as a teen) is one of the only prolific soloists who got out alive, and i think that's because he stopped trying to push technical standards while free soloing. i think he continued to do it (and may still, even in his dotage), but i'm not sure he did anything harder/more bold than Astroman.

as he says, there's not really much left available to honnold that doesn't involve more technical difficulty (which greatly increases the already astounding risk of human error) or more objective hazard (like some kind of remote alpine wall, like the trango tower or mt thor on baffin island).

xp i too am pretty excited to watch, though i will probably have sweaty palms the whole time

he doesn't seem to have much reason to stop. not much close family, lives in a van, lives for climbing

and i don't expect he will, tbh -- i suppose he could try to free solo the dawn wall but, from a technical pov, that's like an order of magnitude harder

if it's been free climbed, it can be free soloed, would be his outlook i'd imagine

his life insurance is presumably a bag of chips and a sausage roll for whoever scrapes him off the valley floor

nice

went to a mountaineering event at caltech a while ago and was impressed by some of the video footage of some dudes

dear ilx: please see Free Solo (documentary about Alex Honnold, who free soloed El Capitan last year)

it isn't just a bro'd out depiction of what (imho) is one of if not the singular athletic accomplishment of the last oh hundred years, it's a pretty intriguing portrait of the person that did it

also it'll make your palms sweat

i really want to see this

it's very good!

even if you don't care about or even hate rock climbing/mountaineering as a selfish dangerous pursuit

I'll try to see that. Honnold is pretty amazing.

definitely looking forward to this

i don't have an issue with rock climbing being selfish or dangerous, i just find the personalities of climbers to be annoyingly alpha

over the past 5 years or so i’ve discovered that mountain climbing docs are one of my favorite things. i love watching ppl do stuff i would never in my life even attempt.