The Old Breed and the AAC Annual Dinner

Super proud to share this movie trailer for The Old Breed. Freddie and Rufus/CBN have been working their tails off to have the full film ready to premier at the American Alpine Club Annual Dinner on March 3 in Boston. That is one reason you should buy a ticket and be there.

Other reasons to spend the first weekend in March in Boston with the AAC:

• Help raise money that makes the American Alpine Journal, rescue and insurance programs, grant programs, huts and camping areas, climber gatherings and more possible. $100 of each ticket helps these programs directly!
• Find out if your fellow climbers are more recognizable in goggles and helmets out in the mountains or in suits and dresses out on the town. 
• Celebrate climbing, the climbing life and the spirit of adventure - in style! 

Read more about the event and reserve your ticket here. See you there!

Pendulums and Permaculture

It’s the darkest week of the year. Here in Madison, that means it’s just getting light at 7 am and pitch black again by 5. I have been swinging back and forth on a pendulum of motivation because of it.

We admittedly don’t usually make our bed (a mattress in the loft of our little cabin) in the morning, but I am a huge stickler about going to bed at night with the sheets in proper order, which often means re-stretching the fitted one over at least one of the four mattress corners. But I’ve noticed that some nights recently I just go to bed without even bothering. And some mornings I turn over and sleep in for a while too, even knowing I am missing some of those precious few daylight minutes.  

Luckily, the pendulum usually swings back and I heed the alarm, wake up before dawn, stoke up a fire and cup of coffee and read my magazines (current choices are Rolling Stone and the New Yorker), the stories from which inspire me to go - either to my office to ravenously work on the dozen different projects, or to wander our property wrapping up the long list of fall/winter chores (that the weather gods are letting us get away with doing now since winter is just getting here in late December). Of course, the holidays most cultures around the world recognize this time of year force the pendulum to stay on that motivated, sometimes-stress-inducing end of things, so that we all get out of our bed, and, if you are not Freddie and me, maybe even make it.

Anyway. I was sheet mulching the other day around our apple and pear trees, thinking about permaculture. Ever since I first heard of it, I cringed at the name. It makes me think of the ‘perms’ my mom put in my hair in the 80’s, those chemical treatments that cause a curly frizzy mess for months to a head of hair even as straight and fine as mine. Of course the word permanent also comes to mind: And nothing is permanent.

The idea behind permaculture is to create stable food systems modeled from nature. Think fruit and nut trees providing shelter for edible greens and perennial vegetables like asparagus, which in turn provide nutrients and attract beneficial critters. All this while diminishing or eliminating the need to water, weed and fertilize.

Like doing yoga, I think permaculture gardening is a perfect complement for my climbing/traveling life. After a month on the road giving slideshows and visiting friends and family and rock climbing, it was simply heavenly to collect a car full of cardboard from the transfer station, lay it out around all the young trees as a weed barrier, and dump dozens of buckets full of compost and topsoil on them, creating rich new raised beds.

In the new beds, I planted garlic and Egyptian walking onions (one of few ‘perennial’ onions, though not truly perennial, they just grow new bulb sets at the top of their stalk, and when the stalk dries and falls over at the end of the season, they reseed themselves), which I’ve read will naturally help repel apple loving pests, plus little bits of comfrey root, the magical green compost, the taproots of which will dig deep down for nutrients and encourage the fruit tree roots to spread. That’s what I love about the permaculture ideology; everything is planned for multiple purposes, and to create self-perpetuating systems. 

 

Just like the climbing world, there is a thriving subculture in the ‘permie’ world. While our climbing community banters about retro-bolting and charging for rescues, the ‘permies’ of our region busy themselves debating carbon farming, requirements for permaculture design classes and how our gardening can encourage or fight climate change.

I am a quiet observer at this stage in the game, reading the books, surfing the Internet, scrolling dozens of emails from the regional Listserv and most importantly experimenting with methods on our property. I may jump in deeper at some point, say, to work on changing that stupid name, but am thoroughly enjoying being a beginner and an outsider in a field I am so newly passionate about for now. And of course I am also happy to have one more hobby to keep me swinging through the long winter pendulum season. Thank goodness nothing is permanent.

Some permaculture resources for other newbies:

Permaculture Wikipedia Page

Northeast Permaculture Network

Edible Forest Gardens - a great books series for DIY permaculture, focused on New England

Fedco - Northeast resource for local, organic trees, seeds, bulbs and more

(All photos shot and edited on my new fancy schmancy iphone)

Shoshin

Shoshin (初心) is a concept in Zen Buddhism meaning "beginner's mind". It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would. –Wikipedia

Emilie Drinkwater on a failed attempt of Peak 6135, Ladakh, India

My initial thesis for this blog entry was that attempting first ascents is the ultimate way to seek the unknown, and so failure is one of the most beautiful tragedies. Luckily it was my driving shift, somewhere between DC and Fayetteville, WV, so I had a few hours to think it through and conclude that I was completely wrong.

Our trip to India was framed by failure. Kirsten, Emilie and I were given a photo of a beautiful mountain halfway around the world and spent more than a year planning an expedition to try to climb it. We day-dreamed and night-dreamed about it. We emailed, conference called, wrote lists, bought gear, trained, raised money, gave up work, strained relationships at home and went into debt to get there. We trekked for days, built trails and kairns, stashed gear, slept poorly and endured headaches while acclimatizing, established a high camp and sat and watched the mountain for days.

Finally, we attempted it. Several times. The reasons why don’t matter for this story, but we failed. We turned and walked away, leaving a mystery behind for another party, another year. 

But by going to plan B for the remainder of our trip, I had one of most memorable and successful weeks of mountain climbing in terms of summits attained, lessons learned and fun had. Success because we failed.  

We went to the mountains thinking our goals were to do all-women first ascents and to go rock climbing. Plan B involved letting both of those things go. There was a literal period of mourning. But the outcome we were really after – pushing our physical and mental selves through remote exploration – was what mattered, as it turns out (duh!).

Each and every decision we make, every day, is an opportunity to assume a beginner’s mind and tread into the unknown...and I am pretty convinced that failure is the best path towards it. 

I’ve talked to middle-aged people who say they understand less now about life than they did ten or twenty years ago, and to divorcees who regret assuming they understood the nature of their partnerships or the recipes for a successful marriage. Beginners at poker tables around the world make the pros livid when they win the entire pot.

The intentional return to a beginner’s mind feels almost religious in practice. As the expedition drew to a close, I journaled obsessively about modeling my life after basecamp living. I thought creating days in my normal life that are like rest days in basecamp - defined by simplicity, rest and thoughtfulness - would encourage boldness and open-mindedness (I've been trying to not start my car or answer my phone or turn on my computer one day every week to get started on this). But it is not just the physical, structural space that makes the beginner’s mindset possible. 

In a beginner's mind, failure is not tragedy at all. Failure probably cannot even exist in such a mind. But I'll be damned if I don't find myself still daydreaming about what might have been if we'd kept going up instead of down that mountain that day...

Bivied at our high point on 6135

6135 - A mountain for another day, or day-dream 

Favorite gear from a summer in the Karakoram:
Mountain Hardwear W's Phantom 15 sleeping bag
Polartec test jacket
Sterling Fusion Nano Ropes - especially the PINK one!
Petzl Myo XP Headlamp
La Sportiva Ganda Guide shoes

Indian Summer Reading

I read a lot on my summer vacation. 

I know, that is not the most exciting way to start my first blog post since ten weeks of climbing adventures in India and France.

Expeditions include lots of travel time, days of required rest while acclimatizing and of course some bad weather, so good books are key. I always find it interesting to learn what others read...so here is what I read, in the order I read them, each one reviewed in 20 words or less. I'd love to know what you've been reading, too! 

(To learn about our India trip, you can read stories from Emilie Drinkwater’s perspective or check out our trip reports for the Polartec Challenge Grant committee and one of our generous sponsors, Mountain Hardwear. I also was lucky enough to spend a few weeks in France on the way to India, which I wrote about here and here.)

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

By Laura Hillenbrand

Plane crash; lost at sea; shark attacks; torture; PTSD. Thoughts of my grandpa Fred. Brilliant blend of history and biography.

One Mountain Thousand Summits: A Story of Tragedy and True Heroism on K2

By Freddie Wilkinson

This book is written by my husband and dedicated to me. To me! You should buy 20 copies.

A Journey in Ladakh

By Andrew Harvey

The only book I could find about the region of India that we traveled to. Kind of a generic travelog.

“It is good the river will not stop roaring and lunging through its dark gorges, whatever happens to the village, or the monastery. The things that ignore us save us in the end. Their presence awakens silences in us; they refresh our courage with the purity of their detachment.”

The Help
Kathryn Stockett

If you are one of the few who have not read this yet, you must. It is a runaway bestseller for good reason.

Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark

Jane Fletcher Geniesse

A lady’s high adventures in the early 20^th century Middle East, full of politics, chauvinists, bed bugs and camels. Why had I never heard of her?

Three quotes from letters she wrote:

“The word ecstasy is always related to some discovery, a novelty to sense or spirit, and it is in search of this word that in love, religion, in art or in travel, the adventurous are ready to face the unknown.”

“There is a certain madness comes over one at the sight of good map.”

“Perseverance is often praised, but it is not so often realized that another quality must accompany it to make it of any value – and that is elasticity; perseverance in only one direction very often fails: but if one is ready to take whatever road is offered, and to change the chosen way, if circumstances, and yet to keep the end in view – then success is infinitely more probable.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot

A fascinating book blending modern science, American history and southern culture (all for better or worse) through one family’s unlikely story.

Geek Love

Katherine Dunn

The most out there, wacked out, weirdest book I read all summer. I loved it like a geek loves their chickens.

A World Made By Hand

James Howard Kunstler

A post-apocolyptic story told with a hopeful spin. Readable, thought provoking - and a downright fascinating topic. 

Call of the Wild

Jack London

Anthropomorphism at its very finest! Freddie gave me White Fang a while ago, so this was the natural next step.

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.”

“There is a patience of the wild - dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself – that holds motionless the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade.”

Light at the Edge of the World

Wade Davis

Saw him speak at Telluride - he speaks as well as he writes. Unique anthropology/ethnobotany stories from around the world.

Anthropology of an American Girl

Hilary Thayer Hamann

Probably my least favorite of the trip. Still, it’s readable fiction and helped in passing time on the long journey home.

“There are those who risk to ascertain that they have nothing; that they need nothing. They are open to prospect and blind to hazard because they’ve been hurt, which is just another way of saying informed. They are bodies moving through space, inviolate and impermeable. They are full on the inside; nothing beyond can speak on their behalf. They require no validation; they are owners of themselves.”

And finally, some shameless self promotion:

Chamonix and Clint Eastwood

Mother Mary and me on the summit of the Dent du Geant, Alps

Hemlock and his coach Bowman on top of a training climb in the Eiger Sanction:
Ben Bowman: Wanna Beer?
Jonathan Hemlock: You gonna call room service?
Ben Bowman: We got beer.
Jonathan Hemlock: If you hauled beer up this rock you're insane!
Ben Bowman: I may be insane, but I'm not stupid. I didn't carry it, You did! It's in your pack.
Jonathan Hemlock: Christ, I outta throw you off this pillar! Besides, It's warm.
Ben Bowman: Sorry, just knew you'd draw the line at haulin' ice.

I have been thinking of the Eiger Sanction a lot these past few weeks. Partly because I finally saw it, after hearing the same quotes hundreds of times from my husband Freddie (I suddenly understand him much better!). But mainly it is because of the scenes where Hemlock (Clint Eastwood) goes to the desert to train for his climb of the Eiger. Those scenes made me realize I have never seriously trained for an expedition.

I seem to instead have a cycle where I have a balanced life of work and play, then once I commit to a trip, I work way too much leading up to it and leave feeling not at the top of my physical game, disorganized and tired, and then come home to start it all over again.

With a meeting and a wedding within a week of eachother in Chamonix, France, just before our expedition was to get underway in India in early July, I decided to be like Hemlock and spend a few weeks 'training' in the Alps. I was lucky enough to have my work load so light by the time I left that I didn't bring a computer, and didn't even post an autoreply away message for my email account. So it was with an uncluttered, open mind and 140 lbs of luggage (!!!) that I left the states a few weeks ago.

There really can't be a more perfect place to be a climber than Chamonix. The culture is so steeped in climbing that there are more climbing museums, guide services and climbing shops than there are banks, grocery stores or convenience stores. Everyone who lives here seems to be a climber or at least understands climbing beyond a superficial level. There are telepheriques, trains, lifts and huts crisscrossing through the deepest parts of the mountains, lending unprecendented access. I told my mom in a postcard that it feels glamorous and intimidating yet home-like here, like when we would go to the Kentucky Horse Park, the hub of the elite equestrian world, for horse shows when I was growing up.

My version of the beautiful silent woman who is assigned to Hemlock to whip him into shape in the movie is a mulletted, laughing Coloradan, Kelly Cordes. He was here for the Polartec meeting as well, and is also getting back in the saddle with climbing after injuries.


Mix master Kelly Cordes, back in action in the ALPine

I've had ample time on rock, snow, snowy rock, ice and glacier while getting to know my gear, learning how to use my new camera and refreshing my climbing systems. There has been enough good weather to match the bad weather ("Good weather, bad weather, anytime's good for climbing!") and since I am away from home and work, the rest days have been truly restful, reading books, cooking, eating and enjoying great views and conversations with friends.

Climbing around Chamonix, photos by Kelly Cordes

So as I wind down my time here in France I am feeling excited and, for once, prepared for the expedition to come. The only problem is that now that I took the time to get fit and feel relaxed, I seem to have no excuses for not stepping up to the plate when the time comes in India!

Thanks to friends and hosts in France including Ruthann and the Polartec crew, Zoe, Max, Caroline, Adam, Kelly, Henry, Eliza, Patrick, Brittany and JT. Fun times all around!

More favorite Eiger Sanction quotes:

Woman Journalist: Tell me, Mr. Bowman, in your opinion do these men climb to prove their manhood, or is it more a matter of compensating for inferiority feelings?
Ben Bowman: Lady, why don't you go get yourself screwed. It would do you a lot of good.

Anderl Meier: You're very good. I have really enjoyed climbing with you.
Dr. Jonathan Hemlock: We'll make it.
Anderl Meier: I don't think so. But we shall continue with style.

Jemima Brown: Is this hotel always so crowded?
Dr. Jonathan Hemlock: Only when there's a climb. Then the Eiger birds start flocking in.
Jemima Brown: Eiger birds?
Dr. Jonathan Hemlock: Yeah, jet setters, assorted zombies, come here to watch a climb. If they're lucky, they get to see a man die on the mountain.
Jemima Brown: That's grim.
Dr. Jonathan Hemlock: So's the Eiger.

Newlyweds Zoe and Max have a first dance on the train to the reception

Caroline George on the Contamine Route, S. Face of the Ag. Du Midi

More photos from France are here

Horizontal Alpinism

French poppies

"The idea of a circuit was devised by Fred Bernick as a sort of horizontal alpinism, a substitute for a mountaineering route..." -Fontainebleau Climbs by Jo and Francoise Montchausse and Jacky Godoffe

Bouldering was my climbing childhood. My friends and I must have done the nine-hour round trip drive from the University of New Hampshire to the Shawangunks to go bouldering at least a half dozen times before I ever even thought of roping up there. I even traveled to Nepal's Khumbu Valley in 2004 to go bouldering, just bouldering, in the shadows of the Himalaya's greatest peaks. It was the most accessible (read: cheapest) way into climbing for me as a college student, plus, a childhood of gymnastics and horseback riding/stall cleaning developed my shoulders for the powerful movement it requires.

So I went to the bouldering mecca of Fontainebleau to fulfill a dream that seeded itself more than a decade ago. But the times have certainly changed since then. This trip, I stopped in Font on my way to Chamonix to climb mountains.

All I'd heard about the magical forest of Fontainbleau is true: it really does have more climbable boulders strewn in a 1,000 kilometer area than I have ever seen anywhere. There really are four generations of French families out climbing together on any given day of the week, and the oldest of them are wearing the shortest shorts and climbing the hardest, scariest problems.

'Cul De Chien' (Head of the Dog - can you see it?)

I was a good alpinista and spent the first two of the three days I had there climbing Fontainebleau's classic moderate bouldering circuits, training for a mountain climbing summer just as the area was originally developed for, and just as French alpinists have been doing for more than seventy years. (Another curious thing about Font is those circuits. The boulders are painted with colored numbers and arrows to create hundreds of circuits for climbing. There are circuits for children, circuits for beginners to experts, circuits for crimping or for crack climbing, and everything in between. It is such the norm that routes that are not in a circuit are literally called 'off circuit'!)

But my boulderer instincts got the best of me by day three. I could not take my eyes off of the incredible lines of the harder routes that were 'off of our circuit'. We were having fun on our easy climbs, but the real boulderers, who were pushing themselves at their absolute physical and technical limits, were having a different kind of fun that I remembered very well. So with a few hours left in the day I finally gave in, stacked my crash pad with many others under the classic 'La Joker', and sat down to change my climbing shoes from the oversized pair that I needed to break in for mountain climbing this summer into more appropriate 'racing slippers'. I threw myself at it until I'd lost any reserves of fingertip skin and arm and core strength I had left.

Changing those shoes was like changing personalities and it felt great to get a glimpse of that self that I came to climbing from. Indeed, I aim to reacquaint myself more fully with that side soon. But first, I have some mountains to climb.

The scene in Fontainebleau

Stay tuned for more from France! Huge thanks to Jack and Catherine and all of our new friends from The Forest.

The Eight-Mile Loop

Drizzle splashed on my cheeks and eyelashes as I jogged along the far side of an eight-mile loop behind our cabin in Madison, New Hampshire. A quickly thickening canopy of deciduous forest grew over the Class VI dirt road. I smiled, realizing that I felt no pain. That, and because I’d caught a glimpse of a shiny wet leather couch off to the side. It belonged there, an erratic, as if a glacier had played a practical joke.

My run-ins with chronic pain began in 2004, with an ankle injury from bouldering that I avoided proper treatment for. Nearly two years after the accident I finally had surgery, followed by a long recovery, and then promptly re-injured the same ankle when a hold broke while sport climbing in 2008. As I finally regained health in 2010, I came down with severe elbow tendonitis for 13 months (read my post from the throes of it here and if you are suffering from it go here for the guaranteed cure).

Now, in May 2011, encouraged by the security (and thus freedom) of marriage and the luxury of intentional underemployment, I am feeling especially lucky to have, and be able to take advantage of, full body health.

I know my ankle will not always be this way. My orthopedic surgeon, as he customized a pair of orthotics to help preserve the newly grown bone and what little cartilage is left in my right ankle, warned that I should carefully choose my running miles and long walks with heavy backpacks. He said his fix could last 1 year or 10 years, depending on how I treated it, and that I should keep my fingers crossed for better full ankle replacement technology in the meantime. So every mile I get to run without pain is a blessing, and every approach or descent with a 50+ pound pack is intentionally chosen.

I was on the 8-mile loop to prepare my body for the coming ‘Indian Summer’. I’ll meet my friends Emilie Drinkwater and Kirsten Kremer in Delhi, India, on July 3 and we’ll head north to the Eastern Indian Karakoram. Our main objective is an unnamed unclimbed 6,000 meter rock peak in the Saser Muztagh. Our secondary objective is to be nuisances to our trip leader Mark Richey (who will attempt a nearby peak with Steve Swenson and my husband Freddie), who says he hasn’t shared an expedition with women in more than 20 years because they ‘are trouble’.

My windshirt, now soaked with rain, stuck to my arms as I turned up Glines Hill Road, our local version of Heartbreak Hill, with a mile straight of steep climbing. Don’t Stop Believing by Journey came up in the workout mix, as if on cue. I’d never wandered beyond a 5-mile loop in our neighborhood, and even on this cruelly steep homestretch, I felt light, energized and thankful for health’s simple gift of an allowance to push one’s limits.

We are thrilled and honored to have received a Polartec Challenge Grant for the upcoming summer of fun and adventure. Thanks also to Mountain Hardwear, Petzl, Sterling Rope Company and La Sportiva for helping to make this dream a reality.