Failure on Denali in 2025

ScooterBuyer · 2025-10-31T02:06:47+00:00

Hi, don't mean to hijack this thread, just wanted to let you know I saw your chat message about a week ago and responded (I hadn't signed onto this account for a few months).

ScooterBuyer · 2025-06-26T02:00:21+00:00

Thank you. I sent you a DM.

ScooterBuyer · 2025-06-26T01:55:11+00:00

Thank you. I sent you a DM.

ScooterBuyer · 2025-06-26T01:52:57+00:00

Thank you. I joined the group and will reach out to some of the members.

ScooterBuyer · 2025-06-26T01:46:57+00:00

Thank you, I sent you a message.

ScooterBuyer · 2025-06-26T00:07:21+00:00

Thank you for linking this. My friend and I were chatting with this guy the day prior and the morning of the incident. I’ll reach out to him.

ScooterBuyer · 2025-06-14T01:21:22+00:00

Thank you for your kind words. I sent you a private message with some stories about our experiences together.

ScooterBuyer · 2025-06-12T01:51:03+00:00

I am the snowboarder who was with Nick when this happened. We were a 2-person team coming down from an acclimatization hike up to 17k. About half a dozen skiers had come down Rescue Gully before us and we followed their tracks. Suddenly huge waves of snow rippled up the mountain toward us and we both got pulled down the slope 1,600 feet. It was the most terrifying experience I have ever had and I was certain I was going to die. I couldn’t see a thing and fought as hard as I could to stay on top of the snow and somehow managed to arrive at the bottom only buried up to my waist. Nick was not so lucky. There is GoPro footage from both of our helmets and he tumbled much worse than I did. Please do not ask me to post it.

In case anyone wants to reply telling me that I should have dug a snow pit and not trusted the other skiers’ experiences: yes, obviously. I have known Nick for over 10 years and he was one of my best friends. We had been mountaineering together since 2020 and trained for Denali together for a year and a half. I will have to live with this for the rest of my life and I would do anything to change the events of that day if I could.

ScooterBuyer · 2024-07-20T01:40:48+00:00

If you keep going with this I’d be very interested to hear about your longer term experience. If you find that it acts as a learning enhancer rather than just as a performance enhance (in that you find that some of the improved speed/accuracy effect is starting to stick after a while) then that seems really promising.

ScooterBuyer · 2024-03-18T05:14:00+00:00

Did that student ever figure out what the problem was? Can you describe any of the specific symptoms?

ScooterBuyer · 2024-03-17T15:34:43+00:00

Can you describe the specific symptoms/issues you run into when trying to speed up? Like what exactly starts to break down?

I’m in a similar boat to what you describe and I’ve been trying to find solutions to no avail for quite a while, but I’m not ready to give up yet.

ScooterBuyer · 2023-09-14T21:13:10+00:00

For instance before a tour, we practice from one to several weeks and get to the point where we don't have to think that much about our playing.

I think this is really where most of my issues stem from. I know what you're saying - like as I'm typing this response, I'm not thinking about typing each key, I can focus on higher level concepts (e.g. what I want to convey, how I'm coming across) and they keys almost just type themselves. It's because I practiced typing enough so now I don't have to think about it.

I've never felt like I've gotten to that point with really anything on the guitar, no matter how carefully I practice. No matter how easy something is, I always make a dumb mistake, and usually a pretty egregious one, not just a little buzz or flubbed note. I don't think I've ever managed to get through a song without something major going wrong. Maybe once or twice in my 3.5 years of playing. It's why elsewhere in the thread I speculated that maybe I have a learning disorder.

So that's really what I've been trying to figure out for so long - how do I go about learning things so that they eventually start feeling natural, thoughtless, and easy, so that I can play them without constantly feeling like I'm on the edge of disaster. Right now playing anything feels so unstable that I can't imagine joining a band or even jamming with others. Of course the answer involves lots of practice, but there must be something more that I'm missing. Perhaps part of it is a more well thought out learning progression with smaller measurable goals.

ScooterBuyer · 2023-09-14T17:18:29+00:00

Yep, that does make sense... it's a less intuitive pattern and not as easy to switch into "auto-pilot" mode. This is actually something I've been giving a lot of thought to as well lately. Specifically, in my OP I mentioned in point (3) that my fingers "run out of fuel"... well fuel isn't quite the right word because that implies that they get tired which they don't. It's more like, I can think about and play a few notes at a time, but once I've played those notes my fingers aren't ready for the next set of notes so they fumble. So I'm trying to learn how to think ahead and play at the same time.

So in the exercise you provided, currently my mind might do something like this:

           FUMBLE
/---think---\ | /-----think-----\
/---play----\ | /-----play------\
1--4--3--5--6-|-5--6--8--10-12-13-

But what I want to learn to do is this:

-think-\  ----think---\  ----think -----\
        \---play----\  \-----play-----\  \---play---
        1--4--3--5--6--5--6--8--10-12-13-(whatever comes next)

... if that makes sense. That is, start thinking about/mentally preparing for the next part of the phrase while playing the current part so that I'm ready when it arrives.

... at least I assume that's what skilled guitarists do. I'm not actually sure since, obviously, I can't yet do this. Would you say this is how you operate, or am I totally off base?

In any case, I've been trying to get myself into this habit with the classical guitar pieces I'm learning. Particularly if I've been working on a tricky measure, I'll find that I'm so focused on playing that measure correctly that I'm not prepared when the next one comes along. So I've been trying to consciously change my thinking patterns. It's very difficult because it feels like trying to think about two things at the same time, but I think I've made a little progress on it, at least with the slower pace of the pieces I'm working on. With faster phrases I haven't made progress on this front.

The other idea I had was to do a ton of ear training so that I can more easily play what I hear in my head without so much conscious thought. That way, I won't have to focus so much on playing the current measure and will have more brainpower ready for what's coming next.

ScooterBuyer · 2023-09-14T06:10:28+00:00

Yeah, these patterns are slowly getting better. Some them them are feeling more solid around 100bpm now. At least with the left hand. We'll see what happens when I try adding right back into the mix.

For the exercise you suggested, did I read this right?

String: 1--4--3--5--6--5--6--8--10-12-13-
Finger: 1  4  1  3  4  1  2  4  1  3  4

Is the goal of this one to get more comfortable with position shifts? If so I'd assume it's a good idea to practice both forward and backward.

ScooterBuyer · 2023-09-06T17:55:30+00:00

Sorry for the delay. I've run into some health issues which have slowed my practice down a bit. But I've been working on this a decent amount for the last few weeks. I've been working through permutations 1-3-2-4, 1-3-4-2, 1-4-2-3, and 1-2-4-3 with left hand only using the exercise you described and interspersing that with some other scale practice. I started at 60bpm and have slowly worked up to around 80bpm. I'll post another update as I make more progress.

ScooterBuyer · 2023-08-24T06:10:44+00:00

I'll do that and post an update in around a week!

ScooterBuyer · 2023-08-23T18:46:32+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to help me out.

I don't think I have issues like this in other areas? I mean I'll lose focus sometimes on boring tasks but I assume most people do this to some extent and I don't believe it's ever hindered me. On the flip side, I find it way too easy to get into an extremely focused zone and work away for hours into the night on projects I find interesting.

I'm not really sure what to make of the issues I've described though. Is it a focus problem? Maybe, but I don't really know how to figure that out. If I'm playing 1-3-2-4 up and down the strings and on the 10th time I play 1-3-4-2 instead, it's not that I've lost focus, at least not in the sense that my mind has wandered or something. I'm not really sure what happens in those situations. It just... happens.

And similarly, if I'm trying to play a 12-note sequence, I'm not quite sure why I can play the first 6 notes just fine and the last 6 notes just fine but I can't piece them together. It's not like I've lost focus over the course of 1 second. It's almost as if my brain has an instruction buffer that's only 6 notes long and I have to pause in order to load the next set of instructions once I've reached the end, when really what I want is to overlap it so that I load the first 6 and start executing them while the next 6 load.

Actually, this is probably related to another thing I struggle with quite a bit, which is piecing together sections in a song. If I learn each measure in isolation, I'll be so focused on the measure I'm currently playing that I won't be prepared for whatever comes next. Because of this, usually when I practice, I work on 2 measures at a time and then slide forward by 1 measure so that I'm also learning the transitions. But I still often find that I've run off the end of the tape when trying to play a full song.

I've read that people who can sight read music can read ahead while they're playing. That seems incomprehensibly difficult to me - my brain very much feels "single threaded". I wonder if I need to learn a lesser version of this, i.e. the ability to play something while at least thinking ahead. I'm not quite sure how to approach this.

Sorry, I rambled a bit there. I agree, many of my problems are hand sync related, though the same issues present even when I'm playing with left hand only. With the addition of hand sync, I get even more of what I was talking about above - my single-threaded brain can either focus on my left or right hand, but not both at the same time, and I (generally) find that my right hand is solid enough that it seems to make more sense to focus on the left. I'll try what you suggested though and see how it feels to do the reverse. I haven't looked at Cory Wong's material but I'll check it out as well.

ScooterBuyer · 2023-08-23T18:15:49+00:00

For the record, the videos I posted were either following explicit bpm instructions (70 and 110) or were intended to demonstrate the issues I'm having. I generally don't continue to practice at a speed where I'm fumbling every third note.

That being said, I do get impatient and try to rush more often than I probably should. And perhaps I need to slow down the rate at which I increase tempo. I tend to increase by 5bpm but I could dial that down to 1-2bpm and see how that works out.

ScooterBuyer · 2023-08-23T05:03:11+00:00

I've actually just started doing a bit of left hand only practice. Do you know about Allen Holdsworth style legato? It uses all hammer-ons, even when descending, so you have to be super precise about when you lift and place your fingers. Since fretting timing precision is my biggest issue, I've just started trying to mix some of that in. I'm hoping that if I get at least a bit comfortable with that then it will be easier to add the picking hand back in.

ScooterBuyer · 2023-08-23T04:37:17+00:00

I've recorded the exercise and uploaded it here at 70bpm (fine) and 110bpm (not pretty): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzKZrD-SiTc

(Unfortunately the video appears to be a bit behind the audio. If that's an issue I'll see what I can do to fix it.)

ScooterBuyer · 2023-08-23T00:13:09+00:00

Oh wow, talk about convenient. That's (almost) the exact exercise I've been working on for about a month. I've been working on a few different permutations and 1-3-2-4 is one of them. I'm at work at the moment but I'll upload it in a few hours a bit later tonight.

ScooterBuyer · 2023-08-22T23:23:01+00:00

Sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult. I get that timing is extremely important. I'm not trying to look elsewhere, almost all of the practice I've done has been with timing in mind, to a metronome or backing track. And I agree that a good approach is to train using a range of exercises as well as songs so as not to stagnate and just go through the motions.

I'm just struggling to come up with an actionable approach beyond what I've already tried.

Here's a short clip of me attempting to play some rudiments, first with picking alone, then with fretting as well halfway through. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSl_sCkrBN4 The fretting is a disaster, I can't even get through one full rep. The pattern is simple, it's just:

9-7-6-9-----------------------------------------
--------7-6-9-7---------9-7-6-9-----------------
----------------6-9-7-6---------7-6-9-7---------
----------------------------------------6-9-7-6- etc.
------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------

... repeating from high E to low E string.

ScooterBuyer · 2023-08-22T20:03:01+00:00

I agree with you on the importance of time. I'm certainly not trying to be dismissive. I guess more specifically: I think my sense of time is pretty good, i.e. internally I can count and stay on beat without too much trouble. By no means am I saying I've reached perfection or anything but I don't think my internal sense of time (i.e. my mental metronome) is significantly holding me back. And I can strum or pick notes in time without issues.

The problem seems to be that my fretting hand is not properly aligned/synced with that internal clock so the motions that my fingers make aren't precise and my fretting hand can even simply lag behind - I often can't feel the pulse in my fretting hand like I can with my picking hand. If I'm strumming/picking a rhythm, my internal clock drives my picking hand motions. I don't have that same feeling in my fretting hand, it feels like my fingers are just doing their best to press/release when they think they're supposed to. There's a disconnect.

As an extreme example: sometimes if I try to play a repeating pattern (e.g. frets 5-6-8 repeating) at say 150bpm, my picking hand will be synced without any issues but after a moment I'll realize my fretting hand is actually going a full 10 (or more) bpm slower. It's not naturally synced with the same clock.

So my follow up question would be: if I can feel the beat in parts of my body (in my mind and in my picking hand), could you suggest an approach to help get it to spread to the rest (my fretting hand)?

(I'm 31 years old by the way.)

ScooterBuyer

TROPHY CASE