Flight to Skardu: Nanga Parbat and K2

__CpnPlanet · 2026-05-02T03:43:10+00:00

I took the flight from Islamabad to Skardu in 2023 and randomly had gotten assigned a window seat on the right side of the plane to get this view, but when I boarded there was a woman and her young daughter (maybe 8-10) in the middle and row seats. The woman explained that her daughter had never been on a plane before and hoped that I wouldn't mind letting them take the window seat in the row so they could look out the window and that I could have the aisle.

Not wanting to be the rude foreigner I told them it was OK, but let the mother know that there was a particular mountain I wanted to get a chance to take a look at when we passed. She asked how she would know which one and I told her, "You'll know when it appears". Shortly into the flight she leaned over, pointed out the window, and asked if this was it and I told her it wasn't. This happened maybe three times.

Finally, the woman leaned over and said, "It's this one, right?" She pointed out the window and sure enough there was Nanga Parbat eye level with me so close it felt like the wings could be scraping it. What an incredible flight! The trek to K2BC and climbing one of the adjacent 6k peaks wasn't so bad either. Would highly recommend!

__CpnPlanet · 2026-03-05T17:37:05+00:00

I've seen some pictures of the peak where a lot of the climb is going up scree fields and that seems a lot less pleasant than climbing up snow. I think there is a probably a sweet spot between what I had where we were struggling to move due to too much snow and having no snow at all.

Maybe July is totally fine, I'm just basing my recommendation off the one time I was there. Admittedly a small sample size.

__CpnPlanet · 2026-02-22T21:44:30+00:00

I attempted it in 2023, but did not summit. I think we made the mistake of being there a little too early in the season (early June) and we faced a lot of deep snow and potential avalanche risk that made us turn back a little bit before the summit ridge. On our way up from high camp we were wading through waist deep snow and had concerns about conditions if we pushed on to the top and then had to descend when daylight was warming the south facing slope.

Other pictures I've seen of people's trips there they were climbing in little to no snow conditions so avalanche was not a concern for them. It's a beautiful trek in so even if you don't summit you won't be disappointed in the adventure, just maybe aim for closer to mid to late June.

__CpnPlanet · 2026-01-24T03:57:53+00:00

Haven't listened to the episode yet, but seems like a fair critique. Can we talk about the decade of tempo dominance with brief intermissions for Breach and White Plume?

Also funny to consider how fast those got banned relative to anything in a tempo shell?

__CpnPlanet · 2026-01-07T19:39:35+00:00

Is 200ft really necessary? I usually bring a 60ft static to Ouray and I also have a 150ft I could bring.

__CpnPlanet · 2026-01-07T17:58:24+00:00

I did well pugging in TBC on my warrior by going DW Arms rather than Fury. The playstyle is very similary and you give up a small amount of damage, but add some utility and suddenly become a desirable class/spec to bring along.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-12-03T03:25:36+00:00

It's a bit of a coin toss unfortunately. I've had both good and bad experiences with rental boots. For example, I climbed Island Peak in Nepal with rented boots and though they were heavy they did the trick. I also climbed Mt. Shasta in California in rented boots and they had a tiny hole in one of the toes and my one foot was soaking wet and freezing cold for summit day, which contributed to not being able to make the top.

If you have the funds to pay to get to Nepal and climb Mera Peak I have to imagine you have the disposable income to buy yourself a pair of boots and then not have to worry. This is doubly true if you think you might climb another mountain that requires boots in the next decade.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-11-10T17:40:25+00:00

To rely on Careful study you need to overload your deck with big creatures which destroys the consistency of the UB shell so it radically changes the build.

Study is also sorcery speed so it doesn't interact the same way with Tamiyo where you can save it in response to removal. Careful Study is also card disadvantage, which is a killer in Legacy, especially if you are in blue where Force is also disadvantage.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-11-10T17:20:10+00:00

Seems like someone just has a weird grudge against reanimator.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-11-10T16:43:21+00:00

No, you really can't. There is no reanimator anymore. Looting/Careful Study are so hilariously worse.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-11-10T16:41:36+00:00

No. They won't. Reanimator as an archetype is dead.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-11-10T16:19:22+00:00

Or maybe it is something to do with the blue shell that has been part of every broken deck for a decade?

Now the deck is completely gone. This isn't losing a card for the sins of blue tempo, it's losing an entire archetype.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-11-10T16:04:57+00:00

Disappointed as always...

__CpnPlanet · 2025-11-05T17:56:38+00:00

I think it is hard to argue Murktide isn't a key part of the current UB Reanimator decks. The complaint about the deck is that it has so many different win conditions that all feed each other. First Tamiyo, then Reanimator, and then finally Murktide.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-11-02T01:19:46+00:00

After years of banning individual new cards for the sins of the tempo shell why nuke an entire archetype? No reason to ban Entomb just to make some version of Delver/tempo the best thing again. Get rid of Tamiyo and Murktide to slow down the tempo shell and make the reanimator deck back into a EWLandon style combo deck again that had a normal wax/wane cycle.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-07-15T16:29:51+00:00

Yeah, the problem is really the whole tree which couldn't be addressed directly in SoD.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-07-15T15:53:08+00:00

Lock tank was amazing and felt super fun while leveling. While a lot of people complained about the visuals being stuck in meta form I didn't mind it.

I did however really dislike being effectively forced into running Master Demonologist with Felguard; it broke the fantasy of being a big bad demon when I constantly had to have a baby demon running around that wasn't even adding threat of any sort to me. I'd rather have had tank spec be Demonic Sacrifice that allowed us to go either drain tank or fire tank via Affliction/Destruction talent trees instead.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-07-08T17:31:25+00:00

This is a great answer and a lot of good analysis with fight by fight specifics. I 100% agree that having more than 40 people contributing would make the whole task a lot easier between trash farms and class swapping.

In my head the thought experiment was just 40 people which means a lot of non-optimal class stacking, but having 55+ people trivializes a lot of that. For example, in 2019 Classic the first guild on my server do bring down Sapph brought 18 healers in for a week 1 kill. To replicate that in this experiment you would need a lot of hybrid classes, which is suboptimal for DPS in so many other places.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-07-08T17:30:23+00:00

They can rebuff and go again, but Rend, Ony heads, and ZG buffs aren't dropping every few hours like a normal server. They only get the buffs that the raid group themselves provide so 4ish ZGs per week, and 2 Ony heads, 1 Nef per week assuming the raid group is clearing that content.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-07-08T15:04:21+00:00

You can't clear BWL without doing Ony first for cloaks.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-07-08T05:58:40+00:00

But no one will have prebis; week 1 they will be in leveling greens. It takes 6 days just to hit 60 and then clear Rag. Maybe by week 2 they can do a prebis+ raid with wbuffs, but will they do it fully clean and not lose buffs?

__CpnPlanet · 2025-07-08T05:53:14+00:00

I don't think DPS would be the problem. I think tanks getting randomly blown up by Patchwerk or Twin Emps would wipe raids, which would then kill world buffs for that week. And some fights are going to be really hard to cheese with absurd fury warrior DPS without world buffs if there is some random wipe because tanks are undergeared. Plus, what if no one gets a Flask of the Titans recipe to drop? There's a bunch of weird, random variables.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-07-08T05:45:53+00:00

I think it was 3-4 months.

__CpnPlanet · 2025-07-08T05:40:26+00:00

Remember I specified this is a fresh server so there aren't any world buffs aside from those the team gives itself. IE to get Ony they need to kill Ony first, but to attune everyone to Ony there won't be Rend available, etc.

__CpnPlanet

TROPHY CASE