Glaciers

The Argentiere Glacier is almost 9 km long and 1.5 km wide in the widest spot.  It's been there for thousands of years and will be there for thousands more.  Glaciers are amazing masses of ice, capable of telling such a story, and every so often, they spit out some tourist that tried to prove Darwin wrong.

I'm standing in our backyard here in Chamonix;  for anyone that hasn't had the pleasure, it is one of the most sublime places on the planet.  I have a glass of wine in my hand that some American claims is perfect, by some coincidence, there's a British woman that agrees.  I would never try and tell someone that wine or anything else is perfect, it happens to be subjective and personal.  To me, wine is simple, you would either buy the bottle again or you wouldn't.  I would definitely buy this one again.  It's not the wine that is capturing my attention, it's the river.

We have this boulder in the stream that creates a small eddy behind it, the eddy is our dunk pool.  From the hot tub, it is a short dash to a nice 3 C glacial stream, the Arve.  Due to the warm temperatures, the Arve has been higher than usual and deposited just about the right amount of silty sand behind the rock, creating a nice little beach.  You see, the Arve is almost exclusively glacial run off, where we are it is from the the Argentiere and Le Tour Glaciers.  A bit further down, the Mer de Glace dumps it share from the Mont Blanc Massif.  What strikes me as I stare at it is that it doesn't even know I'm here.  I'm sure there is some militant global warming geek that's about to tell me that it will be gone in 5, 10 or 50 years, but he clearly can't do the math and interpret the laws of thermodynamics.  The thought that leaps into my head, is that some of the water going by me has been waiting for 10,000 years or more to be reintroduced into the cycle of nature.  It's on its way to Lac Leman, then onto the Med.  Somewhere along the way, it will get picked up again and fall as precipitation.  Maybe some of it will get caught in a thermal current and end up at the bottom of the Atlantic for another 10,000 years or more.

So what?  Well I think my point is that we're basically irrelevant.  I'm about to travel half way around our planet to climb a mountain and I'll be walking over some of the biggest glaciers in the world.  Why?  I guess its part of what makes me tick.  People have told me lately that I have a good life, I can't argue with that.  I think I feel sorry for the people who don't know what makes them tick.  The thought that really sticks with me is that once I'm gone and my grandkids or the next mutation of the human race is standing beside this river, it still won't know we're here.  Enjoy it while you're here.

D

14 Days to go...

The clock is ticking and we're now a mere two weeks from the departure date.  This is leading into the last real push for training, four days, 6-12 hrs each coming up.  I've now scaled back the risk factor, no more climbing or high mountaineering, just plain biking and hiking.  Why?  Because it would be the perfect lead in to a country and western song to get injured right now and have to cancel the trip...

The last week was on the intense side as well.  A long hot bike ride, two days at a mountain hut climbing, more climbing, then more climbing, followed by a couple of days off.

One of my standard rides, Col des Montet, Barrage de Emosson, Col de la Forclaz, generally 3 1/2 to 4 hours for me.  I think due to a bit of jetlag and having a week off, I felt like I had a piano tied to my ass while I was riding.  Actually started to worry me.  Even more the next day, we walked into the Envers des Aiguilles hut, about a 3 hr hike, and I had to go take a nap after lunch.  It all started to come together after that nap though.

Saturday afternoon, La Peige, a short route, about 250 m vertical only about 5 mins from the hut, rated as 6a+ and pure granite.  The view from the top is always fantastic.  To add to this, there were ice/rock slides non-stop across the valley from the Tacul.  Funny about the huts, the food is never fantastic, but I can never get enough.  Envers is at about 2500 m, slept like a baby, well with the exception of about 20 mins where my neighbour jumped on me and then someone was snoring so loud they woke everyone in the room up...

Crack of dawn, literally, and we were fed, watered and on our way to La Fleur du Mal, a slightly longer route in the area.  What was incredible was the heat at this time of day, even at 2500 m, 6 am, it must have been 20 C.  It's 500 m vertical, mostly in cracks and again, pure granite climbing.  Up to 3000 m at the Deuxieme Point de Nantillons.  Quite a bit more physical than the previous day but we were still down in about 5 hours, just in time for lunch and a leisurely stroll back to Montenvers to catch the train down.

Feeling a bit tired, I thought something in Italy would be a nice change.  It was also so hot up there that it was becoming a bit dangerous so I was off with my friend Benji for a day there.  We left Cham at 7 am, thinking that a 3-4 hour climb would have us back at the car for noon.  Couldn't have been more wrong.  The route we chose was not only hard, but wet, making some sections close to impossible.  It was a long corner route and several sections had water running freely.  To boot, once we were out of the shade, it was about 34 C, probably more in the direct sun.  The bar owner thought we were crazy when we finally got down and found a place for a drink; two cokes, a large bottle of water, two ice creams and whatever else you can give us.  We couldn't stop laughing at the old italians in a card tournament there, constantly yelling at each other, I wish my italian was better.

The last day of the push was the Arete des Papillons, straight above Chamonix.  Luckily, this is north face and we were in the shade the entire morning.  Aside from some obnoxious American guide, the route was fantastic.

So there you have it, time is going so fast now, I'm still looking for the best pair of mitts to take as well.  All in the details right?

D







www.livestrong.org

22 Days to go...

So the countdown continues.  After about six days of fighting with bad weather and trying to adapt to sleeping in an altitude tent, I was on my last bit of rest before I leave.  Three days of fishing in BC on the St. Mary’s River just outside Kimberly.  A short trip, too short, that requires me to stealth in and out of Calgary without telling most people I was there.  A nice evening with my inlaws for brother-in-law Fraser’s birthday, then off to BC.  A stop to see the Croasdale’s in Columbia Lake, then onto Kimberly.

Fraser’s birthday was really fun.  I came straight off the plane from Frankfurt and was 

off to    Heritage Park for an eveing on the Moyie.  As I didn’t grow up in Calgary, the Moyie was new to me.  Complete with Jazz Band, food and cash bar, we cruised the expanse of the Glenmore Reservoir for 2 hours.  I was so thankful for the cool fresh air of the Calgary summer evening, that was all that was keeping me awake.  Funny thing was, about 15 minutes into the evening, this old friend of mine walks up the stairs, Matt Coffey.  Sorry for the aside...  Matt and l lived together in residence about 20 years ago, 2nd Floor, Rundle Hall at the University of Calgary.  We sort of kept in touch, random meetings in Calgary for a few years, then nothing.  About a year ago, I was going to meet Kathryn and her office for dinner in the west end.  Given the time I had, I either went to the restaurant about ten minutes early and had a drink, or went to her office and walked over with the gang.  Three quarters of the way through my Gin and Tonic, Matt walks through the door.  He ended up joining us for dinner and we had a good catch up.  Random meetings with old friends are great.  

One of the highlights of the evening was winning the trivia contest.  Twenty random questions about the Moyie, history, and maritime knowledge, the Abbott family + me was 14/20, enough for a tour of the wheel house.  Most of the passengers looked at each other quizzically as we changed course randomly and the ships horn was sounded.  A few minutes later, my proud mother-in-law Carol, descended the stairs from her stint as pilot with a wide grin on her face.

Next we were off to see Ken and Anne at Columbia Lake.  Ken has been a friend and mentor to me for the last ten years or so, starting when I was a keen graduate student.  but more interesting is that he’s always been a keen climber and outdoorsman.  He is also an  avid collector of old books.  Scanning his collection, I found a nice little book on Climbing and Mountaineering written in 1956, three years after Sir Edmund Hilary summitted Everest.  Complete with a chapter on ski-mountaineering, I am tempted to mix up his recipe for wax which contains:  Stockholm Tar, Resin and a Gramaphone Record.  Ken was kind enough to give me “The Alps as seen by the Poets”, a collection of various works about mountains published in 1912.  Sad that it was such a short visit.  

The three days of fishing on the St. Mary's was great, the weather was a bit tough with some thunderstorms but still, fishing is always a great was to spend a day.  Mike and Brian, our fishing guides, were fantastic as always.  Brian was so good, he even managed to catch the biggest fish.  Sean made the trip up from Seattle, always great to see him.  Morgan and Lisa came out from Vancouver as well, first time for them fly-fishing which is always fun.  Lisa went home with a bit of a war-wound, she hit herself in the face with a fly, then nearly pierced her ear.

So not much about mountain climbing today but I figure there’s lots more of that to come...  I'm sitting here in Chamonix, staring at Mt. Blanc on a beautiful morning.  Probably worth the trip in the next couple of days.

Where is Manaslu?

For those of you a little more technically inclined, there's another expidition that has a nice Google Earth App:

Manaslu

If you need Google Earth: Google Earth

Preparation so far...

As my mother will tell me, "you need to train for something like that...", perhaps overstating the obvious. I've been on the ropes with achilles and ankle problems for the better part of 2-3 years now. The good news is that some minor surgery back in December seems to have solved this. I spent most of the winter in Chamonix, it's easier to count the time I wasn't here in fact. Getting back into shape was always going to be a long road, when I look at some of my pictures from my triathlon days its hard to imagine what happened.

One of the highlights of the winter was skiing the North Face of Mt. Blanc, we couldn't have hit a better day. Not only was there little wind on the summit, a micro-system had dumped about 60 cm of fresh snow. It was a great day, dropped by helicopter at about 3800 m, then about a 3 hour hike to the top. Followed by almost a 4000 m descent as we skied right down to Chamonix.

I think the turning point, meaning when I actually felt like I was getting in shape, was when I rode the Route des Grandes Alpes with a good friend of mine, Guy Townsend. We rode from Megeve to Menton in three days. The last of the three being the toughest, 200 km and just under 5,000 m of climbing, which took us about 12.5 hours. Man was my ass sore after that...

Since then, I've done a ton of great climbs, both classic rock and mountaineering. Some memories that stand out are the Aiguille de Midi to Aiguille du Plan route, a first test of my pre-acclimatisation and where I witnessed some classic mountain stupidity by a pair of British tourists. There had just been an accident in Chamonix so crevasses and general safety was at the forefront of my thoughts, not that they are ever that far...

Here's how it went:

Me: there's alot of crevasses here, you may want to put some distance between you

Them: Ok, thanks. Do you know if you can get to the refuge from here?

Me: which refuge?

Them: There's more than one?

Tchouky: yes, and the snow is not stable. Your only way out from here is to turn around and go back.

Them: Ok, thanks.

About an hour later we watched as the mountain rescue helicopter came to pick them up and all I could think was perhaps Darwin did have a point...

Early July was a great indicator that we were getting ready, the Kuffner Ridge in the Mont Blanc massif. It runs up to the summit of Mt. Maudit and is a mixed of snow and rock. The summit of Maudit is 4465 m. After a shocking 1 am wake up, we left the Refuge des Cosmiques. The route would take us across the Glacier du Geant and back round up to Maudit. Unfortunately, the weather had come in a bit which prevented us from bolting on the climb to Mt. Blanc. I think we were both surprised as we passed most of the other climbers and found ourselves back at the refuge for about 10 am. Needless to say, I had a pretty good nap that afternoon. Another classic alpine safety moment as we pass a pair of climbers on the way down: "Phil, you didn't tell me it was going to be this hard!" says the second in the group. I start thinking to myself, is there anyone I really don't like so much that would drag them up Mt. Blanc and tell them it was easy?

So those are the highlights, toss in a bunch more riding (followed the TdF, a great weekend in Cannes), climbing and altitude work and I'm starting to think I'll be ready. I've just finished setting up my altitude tent so all my sleeps from now on will be from 2000-6500m.

D

Manaslu

Here it is; Manaslu, the 8th highest peak in the world standing at 8163 m. In March 1923, in an interview with The New York Times, the British mountaineer George Leigh Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, and replied, 'Because it's there'. I don't really have a better answer than this as to why I'm going.




I'm going with my friend and guide, Tchouky, with whom I've been skiing, climbing and mountaineering with him for about 4 years now. We talked about climbing Cho-Oyu last year but the situation in Tibet has made climbing there a bit uncertain. As this will be my first high mountain ascent, the peak needed to be on the moderate end of difficulty, i.e. not a technical climb. I find it somewhat ironic that people use moderate and difficult in the same sentence when talking about a peak over 8000 m.




We will leave on September 6, with a return booked for October 20. The schedule allows for the long approach trek as well as a good weather allowance for climbing. Manaslu is somewhat famous for large snowfalls in the climbing season, I read a report from the spring of this year where there was 1.5 m that fell on the base camp overnight. On the advice of Keith Sanford who was there in 2007, I set out to find a set of skis that would suit the climb. We're still working on this. Best case on timing will leave us with a couple of weeks to spare in Thailand, worst cast is having to push back our return.


I'm going to try and post a bit about my training and general preparation, then I hope to keep it up during the climb. From the start, I need to say thank you to my lovely wife who is putting up with me while I prepare.










Map of Nepal














Relative Location of Manaslu























Manaslu Region