I remember when I first heard the term. Charley Mace and I were a couple pitches up a mellow, fun route in Clear Creek Canyon, trying unsuccessfully to outclimb thunderstorms, and talking about climbing, ego, and the like. One mutual climbing acquaintance kept coming up, one whose ego had come to define his persona, his […]
My paternal great-great grandfather, James T. Norton (1844-1883), was a man of few words. Or, at least that’s what his journal from 1865 indicates. It’s been sitting near my desk for years. I’ve scanned the pages, faded scribbles in pencil recording minute datapoints about each day with little fanfare: weather, movement, rations, commands, engagements. Even […]
Mesmerized. There’s no other way to put it. The scene unfolding before me was captivating, subtle hues of warming a jagged Himalayan sea, blues morphing, glimmers of amber and crimson flashing on distant ridges, shadows etching an impossible landscape. It was still frigid here, sunlight not yet penetrating the frigid shadows of the West Ridge […]
There’s nothing easy about climbing mountains. They’re big, cold, and dangerous. You get sick, you get tired, your head hurts and your muscles ache and your lungs burn. And, on Everest, all of that is magnified in therarefied air most often occupied by jets. But, to me, these are not the hardest parts of climbing […]
Sometimes we learn the most profound lessons in the most surprising of places and from the most surprising of people.
(I planned to write, well, finish and post, my thoughts on Mallory & Irvine's summit day today, but it needs a bit more work, and frankly I've been swamped. So, that'll have to wait till next week. But, in the meantime, I came across this post and inspriational story...enjoy.) I say it a lot - […]
I suppose we go to Mount Everest, granted the opportunity, because—in a word—we can’t help it. Or, to state the matter rather differently, because we are mountaineers…. To refuse the adventure is to run the risk of drying up like a pea in its shell.
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