“Giant Slurpee Machine” In Yosemite

Frazil ice flowing in Yosemite Creek in the spring.

Mountain Hiking In Mexico

This is an account of hiking 3 peaks within a day’s trip of Mexico City. And he started in a subway for the first one.

“I met a group of friends in the subway, and we headed south toward Ajusco, a peak rising from the edge of the city like a lookout tower. At the last stop of the train we caught a cab, which — in about 30 minutes — took us the remaining miles to the base of the mountain, past roadside roast chicken stands, paintball courses and patchy soccer fields.

After our taxi dropped us at the side of the road near a final, lonely restaurant, we headed straight up the slope, through light forest and over an irrigation ditch, until we eventually stumbled onto a well-worn path. I had chosen Ajusco as a warm-up for more demanding hikes, but its sheer elevation and sweeping vistas are still more than enough to take your breath away”

The Achilles Tendon Of Neanderthals

I’m not quite old enough to have ever raced against any Neanderthals, but it looks like I could’ve outrun them.

“..the back of the heel bone where the Achilles tendon attaches, was proportional to the runner's efficiency. The shorter this distance, the greater is the force applied to stretch the tendon - and the more energy is stored in it. This means that people with shorter distances are more efficient runners, using less energy to run for longer.

Raichlen then turned to Neanderthal skeletons, and found that our distant cousins' heel bones were consistently longer than ours. Neanderthals, he concludes, would have lost a race against Homo sapiens.”

Storing energy in my tendon, is a skill I use most every day as I sit on the couch and watch TV. I am purposely storing enough energy in my tendons to race to the kitchen, hunt down some sandwich meat, gather some chips, and get back to the TV before the commercials are over.

Do or Do not.

A Purpose For Knowing How To Climb

Here’s a good reason for learning rope skills and how to climb – so you can rescue stranded animals on cliff faces. Do you have a “special kinda way with animals” too?

Speak Up, Not Down

What we say to ourselves has a large effect on how well we do. For example,

“Don't try—do. Create goals that relate to effort and actions (which you can control), and not end results (which you can’t). Speak down: “I’ll try to do it without falling.” Speak up: “When I start to get pumped, I’ll shift more focus to my footwork and keep moving up.”

Several other tips at the link. I am positive that positive thinking can make us feel less negative. Or, maybe that’s totally wrong. I am always getting this wrong. I wish I could do better.

Get Over Anxiety By Scaring Yourself

Feeling anxious all the time? Then maybe rock climbing’s the answer. At least according to this article.

“Dr Sallee McLaren who’s both a rock climber and a clinical psychologist specialising in anxiety believes it can work for a number of reasons.

“I think it’s helpful with all anxiety problems because it enables people to enter into a deep level of concentration that helps push anxious thoughts away”

So next time you’re just barely hanging onto the rock, and you’re wondering how much farther you should climb before you can either clip or take that screamer, just remember how little anxiety you have right then.

Climber Jewelry

Check out this jewelry that Aleya is making from old nuts.  Pretty sweet, and a perfect gift for those climbing gals who are so hard to shop for (we're not really that hard to shop for).

Compromise Comfort For Security In Anchors As Well As In Life

A short video from a course on self-rescue taught by Angela Hawse thru Picks With Chicks. One thing she says in the video is that you might have to compromise comfort for a safer anchor. To me, that’s just like real non-climbing life – we frequently sacrifice comfort for security.

Has Climbing Reached The End Of The Frontier?

Peter Beal discusses the recent attempt to film a climb of Cerro Torre by rap bolting it.

“It seems to me that there is an instinctual understanding out there that we are truly at the end of the frontier phase of climbing. Not everything has been climbed, but now everything can be climbed. It is not the murder of the impossible as Messner puts it….But I think the whole project of a ‘free ascent’ of an immense wind-buffeted rime-encrusted spire seems petty and media-driven in the first place. What is missing is not adventure but purpose. We are at the saturation point, squeezing what we can out of the most spectacular walls and summits while we can. What does a ‘first ascent’ mean when anything can be climbed, even by so-called ‘fair means?’"

[ED: I bolded the term “what is missing is not adventure but purpose.”]

There is quite a lively discussion at the link about whether or not climbing has a purpose. And quite a discussion here of “Murder of the Impossible” a term Reinhold Messner used to describe the bolting of routes. I personally don’t think climbing has an important purpose – not like raising a family, holding a job, taking care of your family/friends/neighbors. I also think it can be fun, exciting, allow us reach personal goals, discover new areas of the world, build friendships, etc. And I, for one, am convinced without the bolting that was done to make so many routes safer, there would not have been the explosion in the popularity of climbing that has happened in the last 20 years or so.

Drytooling Plywood

The recently ended ice festival at Ecrins had some climbing on, what looked to me, plywood.

L'Ice Ecrins 2011 from Lukasz Warzecha - LWimages.co.uk on Vimeo.

Easy Circuit Training

A reasonable argument for climbing easy boulder problems continuously for 30+ minutes.

“I can find 30 or 50 short problems that allow movement of virtually any type on all kinds of holds and features, ranging in difficulty from 5.6 to V5. So occasionally I will spend 30, 45 minutes or more climbing continuously on this kind of terrain, never stopping to figure out moves or try the problem twice. I also try to work in downclimbing and traversing to connect problems, always trying to maintain the flow of movement.”

Why does this help make you a better climber? Read his article for the 5 ways.

Desert Crack Climbing

A video of Steph Davis climbing at Indian Creek in Utah. (Don’t know why she’s grunting so much, it’s only a 5.13 trad.) Notice at the 2:17 mark – right at the end – how overhanging the route is.

 

Learning to Fly from steph davis on Vimeo.

Another Amazing Survival Story

I heard this woman on the radio last night. She lives by herself near ANWR in Alaska. Here’s a brief video interview describing her life, including a short version of how she survived a grizzly bear attack by:

• Stitching her own scalp
• Getting a rifle, crossing a river with two dislocated hips, and then killing the bear
• Going to her house, radioing for help and then collapsing on the floor …..
• Where she waited for 10 days for help to arrive

Winter Fun

Lisa, John and their friend Sparky went camping last weekend up north near Tofte. They had a fabulous time as shown in the slide show below. On Monday morning, the first dog teams from the John Beargrease Sled Dog Race showed up. Ask Lisa about all the fun details.

Les Hiberant - Lisa & John 1-11 from rgsletten on Vimeo.