Weather has taken a whole new meaning for me since being in
Patagonia. When the forecast says one thing, you can count on the
fact that you will get that weather as well as a plethora of other
weather accompanying it! And everything is magnified! If the weather
calls for precipitation, expect to get wet. Even if you have the top
of the line, brand new gore-tex suit of “armor” you can guarantee
that you will get wet (if you doubt this, feel free to ask anyone of
my team who collectively have spent thousands of dollars on the best
money can buy only to find out that “guaranteed waterproof” is
complete and utter bullshit!!) Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING is
waterproof on the ice cap. If the forecast calls for high winds,
stand your ground because its likely you'll be blown off your feet!
IF the forecast calls for precipitation AND high winds, you better
buckle up and pray because its going to be a hell of a day....or
week!
Sitting and waiting for a bit of weather to pass before we advance
our camp up to Keyhole was nothing short of a frustrating stint of
“what the hell”. We had been waiting in near perfect weather for
the better part of 2 weeks and then when we finally got the chance to
advance, we had to wait even longer! You may think that sitting out
weather in the valley on dirt and among trees shouldn't be that much
different than 6 kilometers away camped on snow sheltered by handmade
snow walls, but, it could mean the difference of losing gear, getting
everything completely soaked and then frozen, becoming beyond
exhausted keeping your tent and snow walls from getting buried, and
consequently becoming completely demoralized knowing that you have
waited days, weeks, months, years for the opportunity to experience
this whiteout version of frozen hell.
The weather cleared and we moved camp from the shelter of trees in
puesto camp in the soler valley up to Keyhole where we had cached all
of our gear and rations. Time for the real fun to begin!
Keyhole, we learned, wasn't even on the ice cap proper. We had a
matter of a few hundred meters to travel before reaching the infamous
ice cap. But we had some much needed training to do before we could
venture out onto the land of frozen bareness and survive. The first
of which was building a wind wall to protect each of our three tents.
The tents we use are top of the line Hilleberg expedition
mountaineering tents, the best money can buy. However, it is still
only a very thin piece of nylon fabric that separates you from the
raging bull that bears down upon you without mercy we like to
affectionately call Patagonian weather. In order to subsidize the
damage caused by the wind and horizontally falling snow (snow doesn't
fall down on the ice cap...there's no such thing...it only comes
blasting horizontally from the side) we build wind walls. Wind walls
are just what they sound to be....walls of snow to protect against
the wind. You create a quarry and “mine” large blocks of snow and
ice to build a 2-3 foot thick, 5-6 foot high fortress around your
tent that inevitably falls down, deteriorates, and is rendered
completely useless in a matter of days and in some cases hours.
Building each wall takes about a minimum of 3 hours and is akin to
doing hard labor on a chain gang. Needless to say, our backs weren't
exactly prepared for the destroying power of shoveling out and
lifting huge blocks of snow and ice for hours at a time!
Once built, wind walls must be continuously maintained because
they will always deteriorate. Sun melts them, rendering them weak and
useless. Rain deteriorates them, rendering them weak and useless. And
wind will laugh in your face knowing that these measly little snow
forts you have encased yourselves in is all you have to protect
yourselves against her ferocity! JAJAJA!
This is mountaineering! A dream in the making, a goal we have
aspired to, a hell we have willingly put ourselves in! Yee haw!
The best was yet to come!
Friday, October 25, 2013
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Tiny ropes and tiny caribiners (and other highlights from patagonia) part 2
Its always a bit frustrating when you circumstances dictate your
reality for you without your consent. However, this is how, I
suppose, most of our lives occur. I don't subscribe to the thought of
manifest destiny or the whole concept of everything happens for a
reason or even the concept of creating your reality...at least not
fully. Some would and do argue these points with more vigor than
people argue about different organized religions. But usually, as
with arguments with religion, the two different sides haven't changed
their opinions about anything!
Sitting and waiting for things to happen, worrying about things that are beyond your control is often a waste of brain power. Its easy to logically come to this conclusion as I’m sure all of you would agree with my thoughts. But how do you stop yourself, your mind, from going crazy with these exact thoughts of what do about things that are completely out of your control? Why do we immediately consume ourselves with things that we cannot change? It creates so much unneeded stress in our lives that can, in theory, be avoided if all we do is ignore the ramblings of our mind as it encroaches on our consciousness and creeps into and consumes every ounce of brain power rendering us uselessly stressed out.
I have sat for hours at a time, days on end just blinking, thinking, and inevitably....feeling stressed about things I cannot control. Its been quite the steep learning curve over the last month. I have found that spending time alone with your thoughts is actually a good thing. About a week into our ice cap expedition all my electronics were dead and there wasn't a day of sun in the forecast to even possibly recharge any of them with a solar charger. All I had was my inner voice to hang out with and talk to. And so I did...
Sitting and waiting at Palomar camp we were able to do minimal classes due to not having the proper equipment to actually practice and implement skills that we will need and use on this trip as well as throughout our careers as guides. However we did have some miniature carabiners and some pea-cord that we rigged up and practiced rescue techniques and some other rope and knot work on a very tiny scale!
Palomar camp was amazingly beautiful, however given our circumstances it made the gorgeous weather , views of towering peaks and surrounding waterfalls seem a bit more glorious as we wondered and contemplated our next move. What happens if the horses didn't arrive with our gear? What if sickness and injuries continued to plague us and we are unable to accomplish our goals we set out before this expedition? These and other scenarios, that were beyond our control, were plaguing our minds and adding to the stress and frustration of the situation. Then, without a care in the world, clipitty clop clippity clop, Don Ramon and his wife come trotting out of the woods with the horses and gear we've been waiting and praying for! There were definitely mixed feelings at this point among some of the team members. Not everyone was stoked on leaving the plush grass and sunny skies and the comforts of Palomar camp but nevertheless, we were set to move!
When we arrived at Puesto camp, we still had no gear after caching most of it up to keyhole, our entrance onto the looming ice cap. Productivity was at a stand still, yet again. However, on our second cache run a couple of days later, we retrieved one of the ropes and a bunch of technical gear so while we waited for injuries and infections to heal, we could practice practical skills we'd need while on the ice cap: namely crevasse rescue techniques. But there was one small problem: we weren't even on snow yet! So, again, this was mostly practicing a theory of the skills we would have to be masters of in case of a real emergency. At least it took up the better part of an afternoon which would have inevitably been spent staring off into space thinking of the “what ifs” in life.
Meanwhile, the weather forecast wasn't all sunshine and teddy bears anymore and we had to sit out two more days of weather before moving to Keyhole.
To be continued...
Sitting and waiting for things to happen, worrying about things that are beyond your control is often a waste of brain power. Its easy to logically come to this conclusion as I’m sure all of you would agree with my thoughts. But how do you stop yourself, your mind, from going crazy with these exact thoughts of what do about things that are completely out of your control? Why do we immediately consume ourselves with things that we cannot change? It creates so much unneeded stress in our lives that can, in theory, be avoided if all we do is ignore the ramblings of our mind as it encroaches on our consciousness and creeps into and consumes every ounce of brain power rendering us uselessly stressed out.
I have sat for hours at a time, days on end just blinking, thinking, and inevitably....feeling stressed about things I cannot control. Its been quite the steep learning curve over the last month. I have found that spending time alone with your thoughts is actually a good thing. About a week into our ice cap expedition all my electronics were dead and there wasn't a day of sun in the forecast to even possibly recharge any of them with a solar charger. All I had was my inner voice to hang out with and talk to. And so I did...
Sitting and waiting at Palomar camp we were able to do minimal classes due to not having the proper equipment to actually practice and implement skills that we will need and use on this trip as well as throughout our careers as guides. However we did have some miniature carabiners and some pea-cord that we rigged up and practiced rescue techniques and some other rope and knot work on a very tiny scale!
Palomar camp was amazingly beautiful, however given our circumstances it made the gorgeous weather , views of towering peaks and surrounding waterfalls seem a bit more glorious as we wondered and contemplated our next move. What happens if the horses didn't arrive with our gear? What if sickness and injuries continued to plague us and we are unable to accomplish our goals we set out before this expedition? These and other scenarios, that were beyond our control, were plaguing our minds and adding to the stress and frustration of the situation. Then, without a care in the world, clipitty clop clippity clop, Don Ramon and his wife come trotting out of the woods with the horses and gear we've been waiting and praying for! There were definitely mixed feelings at this point among some of the team members. Not everyone was stoked on leaving the plush grass and sunny skies and the comforts of Palomar camp but nevertheless, we were set to move!
When we arrived at Puesto camp, we still had no gear after caching most of it up to keyhole, our entrance onto the looming ice cap. Productivity was at a stand still, yet again. However, on our second cache run a couple of days later, we retrieved one of the ropes and a bunch of technical gear so while we waited for injuries and infections to heal, we could practice practical skills we'd need while on the ice cap: namely crevasse rescue techniques. But there was one small problem: we weren't even on snow yet! So, again, this was mostly practicing a theory of the skills we would have to be masters of in case of a real emergency. At least it took up the better part of an afternoon which would have inevitably been spent staring off into space thinking of the “what ifs” in life.
Meanwhile, the weather forecast wasn't all sunshine and teddy bears anymore and we had to sit out two more days of weather before moving to Keyhole.
To be continued...
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Pooping in a bag (and other highlights from Patagonia)
There's
something to be said for having the luxury of a porcelain throne to
do your dirty business. But well beyond that, how many of you have
longed for a piece of dirt to lay your eyes upon and dig yourself a
glorious cat hole to poop in? This is exciting not for the reason you
might think. Although I'm sure many of you have your own pooping in a
hole horror stories, I'd be willing to bet that very few (if any
aside from MTS) have had to regularly go outside in whiteout
conditions in subzero temps with the wind nuking ridiculously strong
and attempt to poop in a little plastic bag! This was my reality
while on the Patagonian Ice Cap! Let me tell you, it was glorious to
finally get back down from the ice cap into the Soler Valley and be
able to poop in a hole in the ground!
Ok ok....enough about pooping, I’m sure you don't want to hear about my bodily movements as much as you do my adventures!
I'm currently sitting in the Miami International Airport awaiting my connecting flight to Spain where i will have 6 weeks of rock climbing to attend to! But first let me share some of my ups and downs from Patagonia!
After spending a week on the bare ice glacier of Exploradores at the far northern reaches of the ice cap, we finally embarked on our expedition to experience and conquer the elusive and foreboding ice cap! Or so we thought! We drove 6-7 hours to the little town of Puerto Bertrand where we got dropped off and boarded a boat that would take us to the beginning of the Soler Valley. From there we would trek up with our first set of rations and all our personal gear to meet the horses carrying all of our climbing equipment and the next 4 sets of rations. In a perfect world, this would have taken one day from the boat to the first camp, John's Camp, another long day to Palomar Camp, then a third, fairly short day to Puesto Camp where we were supposed to meet the horses and start shuttling up our gear and rations up to the entrance to the Ice Cap, Keyhole. That is, of course, if everything went as planned...
Everything was going perfectly to plan until about hour 3 on day one when one of our team became quite ill with some sort of stomach virus or intestinal problem. We pushed on through the next day and arrived at Palomar camp with beautiful sunny weather and a magnificent views of numerous unnamed peaks on the distant ice cap. And there we sat....waiting. My tent mate, the sick one, was bed ridden (or tent/sleeping bag ridden is more accurate) for 3 days with frequent emergency runs to the”bathroom”. But luckily, or not so luckily, we were stuck there soaking up the sun and supreme weather twittling our thumbs waiting for the Gaucho, Don Ramon, to bring the horses with the rest of our gear....so, without the proper gear we were dead in the water....sitting and waiting.
Sitting and waiting....its becoming something quite synonymous with expedition climbing in tumultuously weathered locations...aka the northern Patagonian ice cap. The mental game of an expedition is so much more intense than the physical aspect. You can train your body to withstand pain, to get stronger or to push longer and harder, but when you aren't being physically strained to your absolute limit, the mental game of waiting is excruciating. Your mind is constantly wandering. Constantly calculating the what ifs of occurrences that could or could not be happening now, in the past or in the future of your life, the expedition and everything in between. Some would argue that you can train your brain. Train your mind to withstand such turmoil and strain. But the truth is there is nothing like going through days, weeks, and longer and facing your own demons on your own. I'm sure I’ll talk more about this....it takes time to decompress, to understand what you've learned and faced. So I’ll ramble on more about this in future blogs....
Finally, the stomach virus cleared up and the horses came and dropped our gear off at the next camp! We had movement! We had movement until a different team member obtained a massive hole in the front of his ankle from shin bang and could hardly walk (let alone hike with massive loads over difficult terrain) due to infections and swelling....back to sitting and waiting....
We made it to Puesto Camp where some of us were able to do some cache runs up to keyhole, the entrance to the ice cap. And then we sat and waited. Waited for our glorious weather window to disappear and for our mates' shin bang to heal so he could walk!
Let's do a quick recap....we waited for 4 extra days for the horses to arrive with our stuff, then another 3 days due to injuries. At this point we've had fantastic bluebird weather....so, in classic Patagonian style, the weather decided come right when we were able to move onto the ice cap.
To be continued....
Ok ok....enough about pooping, I’m sure you don't want to hear about my bodily movements as much as you do my adventures!
I'm currently sitting in the Miami International Airport awaiting my connecting flight to Spain where i will have 6 weeks of rock climbing to attend to! But first let me share some of my ups and downs from Patagonia!
After spending a week on the bare ice glacier of Exploradores at the far northern reaches of the ice cap, we finally embarked on our expedition to experience and conquer the elusive and foreboding ice cap! Or so we thought! We drove 6-7 hours to the little town of Puerto Bertrand where we got dropped off and boarded a boat that would take us to the beginning of the Soler Valley. From there we would trek up with our first set of rations and all our personal gear to meet the horses carrying all of our climbing equipment and the next 4 sets of rations. In a perfect world, this would have taken one day from the boat to the first camp, John's Camp, another long day to Palomar Camp, then a third, fairly short day to Puesto Camp where we were supposed to meet the horses and start shuttling up our gear and rations up to the entrance to the Ice Cap, Keyhole. That is, of course, if everything went as planned...
Everything was going perfectly to plan until about hour 3 on day one when one of our team became quite ill with some sort of stomach virus or intestinal problem. We pushed on through the next day and arrived at Palomar camp with beautiful sunny weather and a magnificent views of numerous unnamed peaks on the distant ice cap. And there we sat....waiting. My tent mate, the sick one, was bed ridden (or tent/sleeping bag ridden is more accurate) for 3 days with frequent emergency runs to the”bathroom”. But luckily, or not so luckily, we were stuck there soaking up the sun and supreme weather twittling our thumbs waiting for the Gaucho, Don Ramon, to bring the horses with the rest of our gear....so, without the proper gear we were dead in the water....sitting and waiting.
Sitting and waiting....its becoming something quite synonymous with expedition climbing in tumultuously weathered locations...aka the northern Patagonian ice cap. The mental game of an expedition is so much more intense than the physical aspect. You can train your body to withstand pain, to get stronger or to push longer and harder, but when you aren't being physically strained to your absolute limit, the mental game of waiting is excruciating. Your mind is constantly wandering. Constantly calculating the what ifs of occurrences that could or could not be happening now, in the past or in the future of your life, the expedition and everything in between. Some would argue that you can train your brain. Train your mind to withstand such turmoil and strain. But the truth is there is nothing like going through days, weeks, and longer and facing your own demons on your own. I'm sure I’ll talk more about this....it takes time to decompress, to understand what you've learned and faced. So I’ll ramble on more about this in future blogs....
Finally, the stomach virus cleared up and the horses came and dropped our gear off at the next camp! We had movement! We had movement until a different team member obtained a massive hole in the front of his ankle from shin bang and could hardly walk (let alone hike with massive loads over difficult terrain) due to infections and swelling....back to sitting and waiting....
We made it to Puesto Camp where some of us were able to do some cache runs up to keyhole, the entrance to the ice cap. And then we sat and waited. Waited for our glorious weather window to disappear and for our mates' shin bang to heal so he could walk!
Let's do a quick recap....we waited for 4 extra days for the horses to arrive with our stuff, then another 3 days due to injuries. At this point we've had fantastic bluebird weather....so, in classic Patagonian style, the weather decided come right when we were able to move onto the ice cap.
To be continued....
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