I’m watching Meru now. Am 30 minutes in to the 90 show and it is BADASS.
So there is a Meru Peak, Uttarakhand IND; and a Mount Meru TZA. This is the one in India not Africa (Tanzania).
I’ve been to Table Mountain.
I got to the top via cable car. I was traveling with my grandmother (who had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro fifteen years before, probably in her late sixties) and a group. (Grandma needed a companion who could keep her on track. She didn’t need constant babysitting, but she needed more attention than a group of the sort she was traveling with was prepared to give, so I got invited. By the time of the South Africa trip, her health was such that when she said “I’ve climbed Mount Kilimanjaro” people looked over her head at me for confirmation that this was a thing she had done. )
I had no idea Table Mountain was so risky, although I except your opinion that most of them are idiots.
Also, once upon a time, my grandmother, my parents, my little brother and I were in the Adirondacks, near Mount Marcy. The weather was . . . iffy, and some of us were a little tired after our previous day’s adventure canoeing across seven or eight ponds or lakes.
We headed out, and met up with a park ranger on her way in, who had stationed herself nearish the trailhead, to encourage people to make good choices-- choices that would not result in her needing to rescue them. She recommended a spot that might have a view that was well short of the peak of Mount Marcy, and the group of us headed off. I don’t think we found the view, but we had a nice hike, and turned around at an appropriate time and headed back in. On the way, we saw a sign for Mount Marcy, and Grandma was triumphant because she’d found where we had made the wrong turn.
Nope, no wrong turn. Just one elderly lady who didn’t know how to turn around before getting to the top, and a group who didn’t think hiking with her in that weather all the way to the top of Mount Marcy sounded like fun. 5,343 Feet Highest point in the Adirondacks, highest point in New York State. Not an impossible hike for an amateur, but would not have been fun for that group on that day.
Thanks for this recommendation. Meru was very good.
More about Meru — Jon Krakauer’s narration is good too.
I have been up some routes on that mountain that definitely require a beer after the exit from the way down.
One was up a very, very unused valley where one person went 10 to 15m ahead, while the rest of us hid behind large boulders bcause of rockfall, and we did that stretch slowly, one by one, with the lead telling us the route. Meanwhile, loose rocks were raining down around us…
Then the next person did the climb, again with the loose rocks raining down.
It was quite scary, so I was pleased when we all got to the top.
Meru was really good. That route, that whole ascent with aids…the weather, the massive drops and exposure. Jeez…
I think Jimmy Chin is one of the most unrecognized climbers around. His photography is awesome. Hard to believe he climbs with cameras as well as all the other gear.
sidenote: Conrad Anker, the real “leader” of this trio, was the one who found George Mallory’s body during the 1999
Anker cowrote a book on the subject.
Agree 100%. He also filmed Free Solo as Alex Honnold free solo’d El Capitan. To quote the wiki page,
“Prior to filming, directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (then, wife and husband) struggled with the ethical ramifications and decisions behind creating Free Solo, knowing Honnold could die on camera.”
… and …
“Ultimately, they decided to go through with the film and devoted some time to documenting its own production process, with Chin and his camera crew discussing the challenge of not endangering climber Alex Honnold by distracting him or putting any pressure at all on him to attempt the climb. According to Vasarhelyi, filming without endangering Honnold was achieved only thanks to careful planning and practice.”
➜ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Solo#Production ■
Free Solo, been saving that one for awhile. (in a similar vein of all or none risk taking, Dark Wizard is up for viewing, the story of alpinist/climber/wingsuit flyer Dean Potter) Honnold appears in it as well. I have not watched it yet.
Some good news …
Not that I’m the lady in question, but I have seen/hiked trails at Devil’s Lake State Park in Baraboo, WI that have some in especially steep places on particular trails (they also have a lot of trails that don’t that are much easier, including at least one wheelchair accessible trail).
Cumberland Gap also has a few places with railings.
Whether or not railings and handholds are appropriate to a particular location, in my opinion, depends on a lot of factors, from willingness to fund such things to expected users of such trails. But yes, there are places that have such features on their hiking routes.
This is amazing. It makes Beck Weather’s survival seem trivial in comparison. I hope he shares his story of how he was able to survive and climb down.
That’s wonderful! A good news story at last.
I am so happy for him. I am waiting for the full story. His team summitted late on the 28th with 2 climbers and 2 sherpas and he somehow got left behind. An interview with one of the climbers said they took three days to get down which makes little sense since the ladders were pulled on 5/29 and there was no indication of the entire team being still above the Khumbu Icefall. They helicoptered another team from camp 2 so it is unlikely they would have ignored four other people still coming down and the climber made no mention of having to cross the Icefall without ladders. I want to see the full timeline.
Busy day on Everest Thursday,
That must be an old post. The climbing season is over and the ladders were pulled on 5/29.
Jeeze. Reminds me of Chilkoot Pass in the Klondike. How exclusive can an ascent be with hundreds of people a day?
It was May 20.
Well, it’s not hundreds per day. It was hundreds on that day. But from what I can tell that day had over 50% of the yearly total for this year.
And many of those have done it multiple times (one person was going for the record and summited for the 32nd time).
So while it’s certainly not as exclusive at is used to be, the total number of people that have summited Everest is only in the thousands. Possibly approaching 10,000 soon. I would say doing something that fewer than 10k people have ever done is pretty damn exclusive.
To the extent exclusivity is the issue, that’s fair enough. But is it really the issue? I can count on one hand the number of people who have stepped out my door and run 5 miles in the past year, so that’ super exclusive. But of course no one cares (or anyway, I hope no one cares).
Personally, I think climbing Everest is just a meme. People spent a few decades trying really hard to summit Everest, then a couple guys actually did it. At the time it was impressive, and IMHO it’s just been riding that wave ever since. I only hope that in my lifetime people will come to see how utterly banal climbing Everest is. I mean, find another challenge already.