Havasu Falls

A few pics from a week at Havasu Falls.

Into the Wild

After waiting for over a month, I was finally able to see Into the Wild... and it changed my life. If you haven't seen the movie yet, you may think that I'm exaggerating-I'm not. The movie, based off the best-selling book by Jon Krakuer, and inspired by the true story of Christopher McCandless and his great adventure to find himself, was written and directed by Sean Penn. The movie started off a little slow, and I was worried that it was going to be a disappointment. Especially, after having thoroughly enjoyed the book, literally, not being able to put it down once I picked it up. Needless to say, I was not disappointed by the movie; on the contrary, I think that the movie might actually be better than the book- that never happens.

Jon Krakuer, in the book, did an amazing job of investigating the cause of McCandless's death and the motives that he had for disserting his family and hitchhiking cross-country. He showed the similarities between Chris's life and those of other young explorers, including one of his own adventures. In the movie, Sean Penn followed every detail in the book and did a great job of capturing the nature of Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) and all of his adventurousness, ideology, and the unforgiveness that led him to his ultimate, and fatal, adventure in Alaska; the story of Christopher is a classic all by its own merits but Penn did a fantastic job of capturing the true story behind a troubled adventurer.

Emile Hirsch along with the rest of the cast does a great job of portraying Chris' life and his adventures. By the end of the movie, you might be crying but you will definitely be questioning who and what's important in your life; the movie challenged me to forgive a few people in my life that have injured me and to try and love... everyone.

Watch this movie if you like adventure, epics, humanity, and traveling or if you have come to the realization that people make honest mistakes. Watch this movie if you believe in spiritual journeys and challenging the norms of society. Watch this movie (mom and friends) if you want to understand why a little about me and why I do the things I do; though the comparison to McCandless is only minimal. Do not watch this movie if you are judgmental and think that if someone hitchhikes cross- country and backpacks into the wild to survive off the land is deranged freak. Do not watch this movie if you think that just because someone dies in the wilderness that he is an idiot and did not know what he was getting himself into. That's the nature of the wilderness and that's why we go, if we didn't want a challenge, or a thrill, of something new and challenging we would stay in the box where it is "safe".

The Day I Took on Blackbeard!

Another awesome week, I went climbing 5 times this week, 3 times in the gym and twice outside.

Rough n' Readies
First, I went down to Las Cruces to go climbing with the outdoor Adventure Program, the program that my brother used to work for. We went down to to the Rough n' Readies again and I was able to see a lot of old friends.


Kenny just above the crux of Rough Rider(5.11a) on the Reddi-Wip Wall at the Rough n' Readies. Photo by Jonathan Dunn



Kenny "The Chainsaw" finishing up Halitosis Monkey (5.10c) on the Original Wall at the Rough n' Readies. Photo by Jonathan Dunn



Mike pulling through an Unnamed route (5.8) on the North End Wall at the Rough n' Readies after not climbing in over two years. Photo by Jonathan Dunn



Kenny climbing on Halitosis Monkey (5.10c) on the Original Wall at the Rough n' Readies. Video by Jonathan Dunn

Sorry Matt that I didn't get any pics of you this weekend but you'll notice that they're aren't any of me either.


El Rito
Then today, I went up to El Rito with Lexi and Sean for some more great climbing. This was my first trip to El Rito and I thought that all of the routes were really fun even though it was pretty chilly today.



Sean's a beast. Photo by Jonathan Dunn



Lexi gettin' it done, Unknown Route on Schoolhouse Slab at El Rito. Photo by Jonathan Dunn



Sean on the Tooth Fairy (5.10 b) on the Gnar Wall. Photo by Jonathan Dunn



Jonathan Dunn on the crux of Blackbeard (5.10c/d) at the Pirates Wall in the El Rito Climbing Area. Photo by Alexia Seebeck

We only climbed 4 routes today because of the weather but all the routes were fun and I thought that Blackbeard was one of best routes I've ever climbed.

Sorry I don't have a lot of time to post a better blog but I'm just climbing too much these days; like that's possible.

I Wanna See Booons!

I went to the Balloon Fiesta this morning with my sister, Cherith, and my two nephews, Dylan and Ethan, or just E. The only way I can describe it is—out of control. It started when my sister woke me up at 5:30 in the morning and continued the entire drive to the Balloon Fiesta Park while Dylan screamed from the back seat, "I wanna see boons, I wanna see boons!" Alright kid, we get the point already; this was Dylan third balloon fiesta and little E's first.
Dylan waving goodbye to the "boons."

These are a few of the pics I was able to take with a monster tied to my arm.













Somehow Cherith was lucky enough to get the kid that slept through the whole thing. Me, I had Dylan: running around me and getting me tangled up in his leash, wanting me to pick him up just to have me put him down five seconds later, and he always wants to see the camera while I'm trying to take a shot.

The Best Climbing Story Ever Told!

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine was asking me about climbing and was curious to know what about I find so intriguing. She asked if she could borrow one of my climbing magazines but I told her she probably wouldn't get much out of it. Later that night, I remembered an article, one of my favorites pieces ever written; I think this describes true climbing and why I love it. This is one of the best climbing stories ever told by the one of the best climbers in the world.

"Serious climbing treads a thin line between recklessness and calculated risk, the path marked only by intuition, a capricious and often flawed instinct"
-Greg Child

Red ink. K2 1996. How we measure success and failure in climbing…
By Carlos Buhler

We plunged forward down a steep slope of scree, returning us to the valley floor of the Shaksgam River. A 1000 foot detour up the river bank avoided a crossing of the swift, icy currents that braided through that remote and deserted Karakoram canyon. My Russian companions and I had had pitifully inadequate nourishment for the past three days and our energy was spent. Our food supplies had run short about two weeks earlier as we hauled our gear off the K2 glacier to where the camels could pick us up. After two and a

half months on K2's North Face, we had little fat left to fuel our exhausted bodies. When I saw the group of trekkers I felt a surge of emotion. It had been eighty days since I'd left the last signs of civilization in Mazar.

A dozen smiling, inquisitive faces gathered around. "How are you doing? We heard about your group. Do you need any food?" I was speechless for a few moments. I had run out of blood sugar and my thinking was drowsy. To my surprise, the conversation that followed made me uncomfortable. As the only fluent speaker of English, I was bombarded with questions. These trekkers wanted to know the details of our climb; after all, they were on their way to K2. "Did you guys make it?" "Who summited?" "We heard somebody died. How did it happen?" They were all legitimate questions and yet I felt uneasy about answering them. No one person had summited. No one person had died. We had been thoroughly intertwined throughout the endeavor. The world beyond my five senses had been temporarily frozen in time. Together we had collectively stood atop and then died on K2. For some reason, I could not yet individualize the events that had occurred. We were a team that had struggled and pushed until there was no more strength. And now we were going home, those that had survived.

I am troubled by a trend in climbing towards appraising the value of an effort, or the achievement of an individual, by yield alone. Where a team is involved, the behavior of the group is overlooked while the apparent success of the individual is put on a pedestal. The questions asked by the public are understandably simplistic and focused on product. Yet those familiar with climbing are beginning to take on the same traits.

Sitting in the mess tent after our ascent of K2, we were a team that had distributed among ourselves the work of ascending the mountain. Everyone did the share that they could. The job of climbing from the last fixed rope to the summit was no more significant than the job of hauling tents and rope between camp III and camp IV. Yet once back at home, the differentiation is enormous. The media wants to single out individuals.

We, the climbers, are usually the most guilty offenders. While the world of climbing has gained advantages by becoming more mainstream, it has also become more narrow sighted (competitive?). To more accurately gauge the accomplishments of our labor, we have devised a sterile mental checklist as a scale of achievement.

We often greet each other after a climb asking the same questions associated with a win or lose game -- "How'd it go? Did you get up the thing?" It's no secret that, based on the answer, the interviewer will make an immediate assessment of the individual and her endeavor. If the subject didn't manage to cover the accepted terrain of the climb in question (in a style demanded by the jurors, whoever they are), he/she is compartmentalized as only one more of the bidders. The subject falls into the defensive position of having to come up with some explanation. Enticed to feel that her efforts have been futile, she tries to justify the outcome with something like, "Four other teams were also on the route and they failed because of the same bad weather."

In the event of "success" (in the jury's accepted style), there's a magical promotion of the subject's status. A new notch is hewed into her totem pole of life accomplishments. The competitive interviewer seeks primarily the impact: How will this new bit of news affect the way the game is played? How far down will the other players slip as the success of this competitor enters the record books?

In sport climbing the standings are clearly reported in the columns of any of a number of journals and magazines that are published. In high altitude mountaineering the lists are kept just as carefully and methodically. Chroniclers of the latest efforts of the world's "lung's on legs" enter the season's newest figures into their books and recalculate the latest standings. The names of the gallant who went without O2 are entered in green while the names of the wretched souls that sucked the precious gas somewhere on the mountain are entered in red. It doesn't matter where they inhaled the damning stuff. Their names are forever recorded in red ink. Any number of meaningless subsets can be drawn up using the statistics that are entered along with the names.

I am as guilty as they come! I recently sent one such chronicler, Xavier Eguskitza (a Basque living in the United Kingdom), on just such a search. I asked for the subset of climbers, among 8000er "collectors," (as he calls them) that had ascended the world's three highest peaks. This was a relatively simple request, and didn't seem to cause too much excitement. Then I asked for the subset of these strange and pitiful creatures that had done all three peaks (Everest, Kangchenjunga, and K-2) by routes other that their "normal route". The chronicler had kept all sorts of data on hand, but this particular subset had not occurred to him. (And probably for a good reason, too! Who could care?) Nevertheless, there was a flurry of excitement as my source realized that all his book keeping could actually supply such a subset and he went at the task with a vengeance. "Give me a few minutes. I'll call you right back!" Within twenty minutes I had a phone call back (from the UK., no less) with the list of three. I was impressed with his work.

Xavier was emphatic about getting the correct and up to date information from this season's Karakoram mountaineering expeditions. Though he had tirelessly collected most of the '96 news from the North side of K-2, he had a few birth dates and names missing from the Russian team out of Togliatti that I had been climbing with this summer. It turns out that this year more people summited K-2 than in any other year (29; two more than reached the top in 1986). However, according to Xavier, more people used O2 to reach the top than ever before as well (17 of these 29 climbers). When he glided over the list of oxygen users in '96, Marco Bianchi's name was among them. He is one of the successful new breed of 8000 meter peak baggers that has sprung up in the last five years in Europe. I had been along with Marco this summer as we were both attempting K2 by it's stunning North Ridge.
I inquired about Marco's name appearing in red ink, thus denoting the inhalation of oxygen on his recent ascent. Marco had climbed Everest's North Ridge without O2 in 1995 and I knew he was proud of the accomplishment. On K2 this year he had reached the summit without oxygen accompanied by his Italian partner, Christian Kuntner and the Polish man, Krzysztof Wielicki. I knew the story well. On the descent, Marco and the other two had been forced to bivouac before making it back to the 26,250 foot camp four. The following day, the exhausted climbers had descended to camp three (24,500') where they had spent another night. The next morning Marco was too weak to stand. Fortunately for him, the Russians had stocked an oxygen bottle and a medical kit with injectible drugs at every camp. With precise directions from base camp by transceiver, the proper drugs had been administered and Marco was able to stagger down to Camp two by late that night. Without the strength to continue, the Russian team had brought him into their huge snow cave and held a mask to his face throughout the night in an effort to keep him alive. The following day, Marco made it to base camp and got the treatment that he needed to survive. His blood pressure was measured at 70/30 when he reached the Polish doctor waiting for him at the foot of the North Ridge. Piotr Pustelnik, his teammate who administered the injections, confided to me later, "he had already crossed to the other side of the rainbow."

"That's being a little bit harsh, isn't it?" I said to Xavier. I wondered how Marco would feel after pushing himself to the limit and then finding out he was registered in red. The poor man probably would have refused the gas had he been conscious enough to understand the consequences. "It's just a collection of butterflies, all these notes," Xavier said in defense. "Oxygen is oxygen, it doesn't matter where on the mountain he inhaled it."

Fixed ropes, oxygen, alpine style, or high porters. Big team, small team, winter or not. Red points, pink points, hang-dogging, and on-sights. New route, trade route, hand drilled, or placed on rappel. Clean climbing, hammerless, aided or freed. How many summited? How many camps? How many days? How many died?
"It might be more significant to keep track of who returned without frostbite", I said dryly. "It probably tells more about the climbers judgment than whether or not they used bottled oxygen." I thought grimly about the piece of my left big toe donated to the Gods of Dhaulagiri on a cold day. But I realized it was pointless for me protest. Does anybody care how destroyed the brain is of a champion boxer? Or how many knee reconstructions keep a great quarter-back throwing touch down passes?

Do a climber's teammates still want to go climbing with her/him after the climb? This is the question, of course. But it never gets written into the record books because its so damn subjective.

Front pointing down the exposed northern summit slopes of K2 this August, I was desperately trying to find the fixed line we had placed earlier in the day. I was sure that if we found it, Igor's and my survival was certain. But I was wrong. Even fixed line could not get us both down alive. I forgot to take into account the hypoxia, de-hydration, hypothermia, and hypoglycemia...on top of the interrupted sleep patterns of the previous few days. Igor lost his strength and died as a result. He was clipped to our fixed rope and descending with me. So close to our tent; so close to home.

There is no way to quantify such a loss; not to his parents, his wife or his beautiful son, Sasha. How do you respond to a nine year old's question, "Why did my father die on K2?" All the record books in the world can't give him an answer. I sat down on the floor and did my best to explain to Sasha what happened that night.

Rob Hall told me on K2 in 1994 that he used oxygen on the big peaks in order to avoid the risk of frostbite. But it did not save him, or the others, on Everest this spring. What good are the records when the outcome is death? Marco climbed to the summit of K2 and descended alive. Whatever the rest of the world records about his ascent won't change what happened inside of Marco.

Having an audience and peers in the sport is good for us. It enables us to measure ourselves against others in an effort to make sense of our lives. We are human and our tendency is towards keeping score. But I try to focus on the internal side of the equation. I have to listen carefully to my inner soul as I reflect on my experience and that of others. This is the side we really need to take with us. No one can take the experience away. Nor should I be tempted to exaggerate, understate, or skew its value by a categorization of the event. Putting a score on our climbing adventures is an unavoidable consequence of living in a society containing a wealth of climbers. But we're missing the mark if we forget the growth and rejuvenation of our spirit that led us to climbing in the first place.

Ice Climbing... On Rock!?!

Last Sunday, I went with the UNM Mountaineering Club to Big Block, in the Monzano Mountains; while there, I learned this is the place that locals go to practice dry tooling.

Two days later I came back to try my luck...
We arrived at the crag rather late, arriving around noon and headed immediatly to the High Wall, west of the Main Wall. The routes looked like fun and I was eager to climb so I threw on my harness and shoes as fast as I could and jumped on the wall, route 2. As soon as I jumped on the route, I remembered that I had no idea what the hell I was doing and all of my excitement turned to panic. I remember thinking that the whole dry tooling thing was a little sketchy; who goes rock climbing with ice tools? It be like a cat trying to climb a pane of glass (this might be a bad analogy but it works for me). Awkward at first, with a little trouble trusting my holds, it got a little easier as I advanced up the wall; learning how to move, which holds to use and where to place my tools on different holds to keep my tools from slipping off the wall. I guess I wasn't too bad at this, my first time ever dry tooling, and I never fell on that first route.



Me tiptoeing up Route 2 (D 4 /5) of the High Wall at Big Block. Photo by Kenny Dunn

I can't find anything online with any ratings for any of the routes but I believe it is a 5.8 or 5.9/M4 or M5. Kenny led the route after me and did a good job, probably better than me but you won't hear me say that.


The High Wall; routes are numbered from left to right.

The second route I tried to climb is the farthest route to the west, almost to the dihedral; this route is not shown on the photo. The start of this route was a little tricky and by my third of fourth move there was only one ledge that I had to match on; this ledge was tiny. When I tried to pull myself up on this ledge and up to the next hold, it gave out and I dropped a couple of fairly large size rocks down; removing the entire hole. I tried once more but couldn't find another hold and had to abandon the route.

Kenny led the third route which is the far east route on the same wall, route 1; he did a good job leading this route but the top of the route was really crappy with a lot of scrambling. When I followed, I skipped the crappy upper section of the route. I fell a number of times on this route, though the route was easier than the first one.



Kenny on Route 1 (D 4 /5) on the High Wall at Big Block. Photo by Jonathan Dunn


For more information on dry tooling...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry-tooling

http://www.mountaineering-scotland.org.uk/pitch-in/drytooling.html