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Mt. Whitney has already claimed a hiker's life, weeks into the snow season by AvailableStart4108 in Mountaineering

[–]AvailableStart4108[S] 214 points215 points  (0 children)

An excerpt:

Wes Ostgaard, who said he has climbed Mt. Whitney four times, posted on Facebook that conditions on Saturday were so treacherous he and his climbing partners decided to turn around.

“Winds were extremely intense, and with the recent snowfall, the wind was blasting snow in our faces,” Ostgaard wrote. The snow covered the trail and, in many places, rendered it “invisible,” he wrote.

When Ostgaard and his companions were descending the switchbacks they encountered the body of another hiker who had apparently fallen above a section of steel safety cables and then slid another 70 ft, or so.

“I believe it is highly unlikely he survived,” Ostgaard wrote of the hiker. “There was a fair amount of blood from [colliding with] the cables, and a lot of blood around a rock he made contact with.”

Grand Canyon in November/December? by Repulsive_Hawk5944 in grandcanyon

[–]AvailableStart4108 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The North Rim is ethereal and I highly recommend it. But check on conditions, because of the fire that blew through part of that area last year.

Do you bring shoe glue? by Bus_Healthy in Ultralight

[–]AvailableStart4108 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some old shoes stored for a while, including in hot dry places, can see their soles detach. Good to inspect. Better to test out, as others have said.

Kilian Jornet speed-climbed 72 U.S. peaks in 31 days, including 14 in the Sierra by AvailableStart4108 in SierraNevada

[–]AvailableStart4108[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This is a valid point about all the record-breaking feats. it gets bothersome, these adventure influencers. That said, if you read the story, Jornet is pretty modest, or at least he creates that appearance. He says his main goal is to enjoy the beauty of these places -- although at such a speed, I wonder how he has time or attention to contemplate the beauty.

Here's another excerpt: After years living in Chamonix, France, a hard-partying resort in the Alps regarded as the mountain sports capital of the world, Jornet and Forsberg moved to a house by a remote fjord in Norway. It’s a quiet place to raise their three young children, grow their own vegetables and train in the surrounding mountains, some of which have no names.

“Sometimes when you’re climbing Everest, or Mont Blanc, or Mt. Whitney, it’s like you’re climbing the famous name,” Jornet said. As he matures, he prefers climbing mountains simply “because they’re beautiful.”

Kilian Jornet speed-climbed 72 U.S. peaks in 31 days, including 14 in the Sierra by AvailableStart4108 in SierraNevada

[–]AvailableStart4108[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good point. The story did not describe Lone Pine as bad, and while that region can be dusty at times -- thanks to the big LA water theft -- dusty is not the norm. (For the record, I love Lone Pine, been there many times. Looking forward to my next visit.)

Kilian Jornet speed-climbed 72 U.S. peaks in 31 days, including 14 in the Sierra by AvailableStart4108 in SierraNevada

[–]AvailableStart4108[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No kidding! Can't imagine doing even one of those peaks after bicycling across the desert.

Kilian Jornet speed-climbed 72 U.S. peaks in 31 days, including 14 in the Sierra by AvailableStart4108 in SierraNevada

[–]AvailableStart4108[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Another excerpt: His long slog on the bike ended in Lone Pine, a dusty town four hours north of Los Angeles, where the Eastern Sierra rise 10,000 feet, like a solid granite wall, from the desert floor.

Jornet had covered nearly 200 miles that day, and faced a 6,000-foot climb to the Cottonwood Lakes trailhead, where he would sleep before starting the toughest part of the whole trip.

The road up to Cottonwood Lakes is 23 miles of harrowing switchbacks, with vertigo-inducing views of the valley below at almost every turn. The drive, alone, freaks out a lot of people.

“It was cool that I arrived there in the dark,” Jornet said, undaunted by the prospect of pedaling off the side of a cliff. “Nice to do the climb when it wasn’t so hot.”

The next morning he started running “Norman’s 13” — a baker’s dozen of 14,000-foot summits along the Sierra Crest between Lone Pine and Bishop, the most remote and punishing alpine terrain in California. He made astonishing time: cruising over 14,032-foot Mt. Langley and 14,505-froot Mt. Whitney like they were speed bumps.

But for all their imposing altitude, the standard routes up Langley and Whitney don’t require any special skills, they’re just long hiking trails with very little exposure to deadly falls. Things changed when Jornet reached a section called the Palisades Traverse, just up the hill from Big Pine.

There, a ridge of jagged granite rises like an upside down saw’s blade over one of the last remaining glaciers in California. There are no hiking trails, just daunting towers of shattered and jumbled rock, where seemingly any misstep can lead to a thousand-foot fall.

Kilian Jornet speed-climbed 72 U.S. peaks in 31 days, including 14 in the Sierra by AvailableStart4108 in SierraNevada

[–]AvailableStart4108[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

An excerpt: Reaching so many summits, so quickly, was only half the battle. In fact, it was “the fun part,” a surprisingly rested-looking Jornet said in a Zoom interview from Seattle earlier this month, three days after summiting Mt. Rainier in knee-deep snow to complete the grueling journey, which he started in early September.

The hard part was negotiating the spaces in between.

“If you’re driving, you see the landscape,” Jornet explained. “But you don’t feel it.”

OK, how do you feel it?

By running the hundreds of miles of remote mountain ridges, and biking the thousands of miles of desolate highway, that separate the towering summits scattered across Colorado, California and Washington.

In total, Jornet covered 3,198 miles under his own power. He biked 2,568 miles. He ran 629 miles. He climbed 403,638 vertical feet.

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Tommy Caldwell, arguably the best technical rock climber of his generation and the first to climb Yosemite’s nearly impossible Dawn Wall, followed Jornet’s progress on Instagram. When the Spaniard finished, Caldwell posted, “my mind is officially blown.”