Bolivia's Cordillera Real: Acclimatizing in style
The Solar-Powered Mortgage
Here, I continue the solar-powered life hack series with "The Solar-Powered Mortgage." It's a bit of an awkward one for me because money is a taboo subject. But on the other hand, this story is just too cool to pass up.As a recent home buyer in the Bay Area, I can attest to the unbelievably high cost of housing here. Paying the mortgage is by far my biggest monthly expense. Meanwhile, I'm a diehard "Boglehead" investor who believes in investing in passive index funds to partially support my lifestyle. While this strategy most certainly works over the long haul, in the short term it can make for a very bumpy ride. So I found myself in search of a strategy to smooth the ride (and one that would return more than bonds these days).
Enter commercial solar. Solar has undergone a boom over the last several years, with residential and utility-scale solar each increasing by over 500% between 2012-2016:Why has commercial solar lagged behind? I'm not entirely sure, but one reason could be the awkward size of the loans commercial entities seek. Here we're talking about small businesses, non-profits, school districts and the like. The Apples, Googles and Wal-Mart's of the world have plenty of capital to buy solar outright just like those in the residential sector. Imagine being the CFO of a small business and deciding if you're going to purchase a solar system for $350,000 with a payback time of 5-7 years. It's just not going to happen. And for whatever reason, conventional lenders have been sluggish in this space, leaving room for disruption.Wunder Capital found a way to package solar loans in an attractive way for both lenders and borrowers. Here's how it works:Borrowers get the money they need for their system with no money down. Well technically, they put 30% down as they get to claim the 30% federal tax credit. Free money! Then they pay down their loan at a 7.5% rate over a 20 year amortization term. Investors (like me) get a 7.5% return on their investment in the form of monthly direct deposits for five years, when they're due a balloon payment. At this point, borrowers would likely refinance and continue to pay down their solar loans. Also, importantly, investors get diversification from the entire portfolio of loans (currently hundreds of projects located in 37 states).Before we go on: what is the risk of this investment? Well, these are real solar installations, producing energy tied to the US grid. So as long as the panels themselves are producing and there is a power consumer under that rooftop, the investments will pay. Where things get dicey is if a borrower goes out of business and then no one occupies their building for an extended period. Fortunately, I think diversification helps greatly with this, though as with all investments there are risks.Being the type of guy who optimizes things in Excel for fun, I set out to calculate the exact amount needed to offset my mortgage payment. So how much do you need to have a solar-powered mortgage? Well, the numbers depend on your interest rates, size of your down payment and many other details. But in my case, I made approximately a 35% down payment and a 35% investment in Wunder to be completely free of my mortgage burden. I actually oversized my investment to 50% to cover property taxes, insurance and a little extra. Essentially for a double down payment, and significantly less than paying cash for a house, I get to live in my house for free while building equity on autopilot. And of course, it's possible to do this with smaller numbers and still get the benefits of a high yield bond-like investment in commercial solar.But it's not all about the money. There are significant environmental offsets from such a large investment in renewable energy. Here's my progress report after a few months:
These are some pretty big numbers. The size of my investment is roughly 80 times bigger than the solar I had installed on my own roof. And many of the projects are in even better locations than my house with respect to the solar resource. This investment absolutely dwarfs my carbon footprint. Assuming a carbon footprint of 20 metric tons of CO2 / year for the average American, this investment offsets the carbon footprint of around 10 Americans! And it creates about 4 jobs in the US solar industry!While there are countless ways to help the environment or earn a decent return on investment, this way makes it ridiculously easy to do both. I want to help fix climate change as much as the next climate scientist / alpine climber, but investment in commercial solar incentivized me to do so at a much bigger scale than I otherwise would have done.If it sounds too good to be true, ask yourself: what about free unlimited power from the sun is too good to be true? We need all the help we can get accelerating the transition to renewable energy. Now, don't you want a solar-powered mortgage?
The Ultimate Solar-Powered Life Hack
I've recently been taking a number of steps to convert my fossil fuel intensive lifestyle into one characterized by abundant clean energy. In a series of posts, I'll attempt to lay out the case for renewables and how I'm incorporating them into my housing, transportation and investment portfolio.Ever since I started learning about energy and climate change, it's been a mostly depressing story. In short, we're consuming too much carbon-intensive energy and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. Indeed, renewable energy such as solar, wind and geothermal in the US is dwarfed by our reliance on fossil fuels:
And the reason was quite simple: fossil fuels were the cheapest sources of energy available. If only the price of carbon (or human health) were incorporated into capitalism, we lamented, the system would help us choose the right energy sources. Well, things are starting to change in a way that makes the case for renewable energy a whole lot easier:
Solar and other renewables are starting to compete on price alone with fossil fuels in many markets! Since 2009, wind power has decreased by 67% and solar has decreased by 85% (ACORE). So Michelle and I obviously wanted to see how things shook out for our new house. In short, our house was ideal, sporting a large shade-free west facing roof as well as a row of clerestory windows to let in natural light but not the heat: classic passive solar design.
Breaking down the economics, we're able to produce energy at ~ 7 cents/kWh as opposed to more like 33 cents/kWh retail. Using very conservative assumptions for things like inflation gives us a true, tax-free return on investment over 25 years of 15.8% and a payback period of 6.2 years. So how did things turn out? The results of our PV array were immediately visible:
We produce more energy than we consume, making this a "positive energy home." There are two places we send our excess energy...to the grid (for 2.75 cents/kWh) and...to free clean transportation.
Adding an electric vehicle to the mix makes the payback time of 6.2 years above likely more like 3-4 years considering I spent over $1500 on gas last year.
The rest of Everest
Now that the dust has settled, here are a few more images that capture the story:Ferocious wind on the summit push
The Thrill Is Gone
I really thought a summit photo would accompany this post. After about a dozen expeditions, I’d been looking toward a mastery-level capstone to my personal exploration at high altitude. Instead, with the odds stacked in my favor, I ended up turning back from Everest as I just didn’t feel up to the task mentally. And instead of grave disappointment at turning down yet another chance to summit an 8000m peak with oxygen, I guess I just feel tired and indifferent.
The summit bid started off well enough. I’d managed to stay healthy all expedition unlike most of my teammates and I’d been eating really well and not losing much weight. I was noticeably stronger and healthier than the previous rotation. I should mention that the climbing conditions were incredibly windy…the kind of windy that reminds you you’re on an 8000er and that there’s no room for error.
Things only started to get hard for me at camp 3, where it was hard to keep my toes warm even in my sleeping bag. In the early morning before climbing to camp 4, we were rushed to get packed but then had to wait. The hurry up and wait game was the last straw for my toes, and even after rubbing them warm I knew I’d be battling with them all day. Something eerily similar happened in the exact same spot in 2013, where I ended up waiting several hours shivering alone in the dark without a sleeping bag. Another wrinkle was the huge group of climbers who’d apparently gotten the same forecast as us…at least a hundred climbers strung out on the Lhotse face above me.
I started climbing but quite soon out of my tent I just didn’t have it mentally. Didn’t have the will to push through the long day ahead, let alone climb all through the night and into the summit day. Furte insisted the apathy was due to lack of oxygen so I begrudgingly took him up on the offer to go on the bottle. He pushed me to try and I’ll at least say that the effect of oxygen is quite noticeable. The aches in your legs disappear into blissful nothingness. But the drudgery is still there in force, not to mention the awkwardness and dissociated feeling of climbing behind the mask. The oxygen also cleared the fog and made the commercial zoo aspects of the mountain come into focus. After 20-30 minutes of climbing and lots more deliberation, I decided that we turn down.
I should have known. Whenever I’ve needed them, the mountains have always delivered. But going to Everest really is much more of a Disneyland experience than the alpine exploration I crave.
A few more thoughts:
- Climbing Everest is really hard. Oxygen makes it possible for nearly all of today’s summiters (8000 ascents with oxygen but only 200 without), but they all have to push through the countless challenges of an expedition.
- Am I done with 8000ers? I can’t say I am, but if I do it will still be without oxygen. But I really am ready for some more unique adventures. I’m thinking bikepacking, range crossings, range circumnavigations, first ascents, quality alpine climbs, and of course aesthetic lines on Sierran granite.
Here’s to more adventures in 2018 and beyond…good luck!Hari
Rotation
I haven't been posting much to focus on my health and the mountain. In the meantime, we've been busy, completing our acclimatization rotations and fully readying ourselves for the summit bid. Now we're all waiting in base camp, going on daily hikes to maintain fitness, and trying to come up with creative ways to deal with the boredom. I've managed to stay quite healthy though I do have a horrible case of "batman neck" as I must have slept funny last night.
I'd give myself a "B" on the acclimatization rotation. Given that I'm attempting without oxygen, my goal was to sleep at camp 3 and climb potentially as high as the Yellow Band at 25,000 ft. The camp 3 trip with Furtemba went fine, though I just felt flat between camp 2 and 3. The next morning, the effort of just putting on my boots was an ordeal and I had a couple dizzy spells that really convinced me we should be going down. Fortunately, just a drop of a couple hundred meters and my body and mind started coming back.
Now we're playing the waiting game. The main issue here is the weather, with high winds blasting the upper mountain until the 9th or even 11th. There are still about two full workdays of rope fixing left on the mountain which require good weather, so looks like we're on track for a mid-May summit push. Take care,Hari
Submission
"Mountains are cathedrals: grand and pure, the houses of my religion. I go to them as humans go to worship. From their lofty summits I view my past, dream of the future, and with unusual acuity I am allowed to experience the present moment. My strength renewed, my vision cleared, in the mountains I celebrate creation. On each journey I am reborn" -Anatoli Boukreev
Once again I find myself searching for breath in the Himalaya. As I move in slow motion up the yak trail, a giant steppe eagle soars effortlessly above. I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered a bird so majestic.For nearly a year and a half, I’ve been crippled by persistent, racing negative thoughts. I’ve felt overwhelmed; pulled in too many directions by the demands and responsibilities of my life. One label I now have for this paradigm is bipolar disorder. So instead of trying to push through it (which most recently landed me in the hospital), or distracting myself while treading water, today, I submit to the highest power I can easily find: Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the Earth, better known as Everest.And so the practice begins. I am here. I am at peace. I am alive.
“When you get in the ocean, you can’t make anything happen...When you enter the ocean you submit to what IT’s doing.” -Rob Bell
Full Value in the High Sierra
I returned from some much-appreciated play time on the Eastside. I'm slowly working my way through the Sierra Peak Section's Emblem Peaks: 15 of the Sierra's most prominent peaks as a way of exploring new parts of the range. First up was Matterhorn Peak which was in pretty good shape despite a bit of awkward postholing on the approach.
Then, escaping a violent cold and wind storm, I went to the southernmost Sierra to Olancha Peak, where I had my first ever bighorn sheep encounter despite countless trips to the Williamson region and other remote parts of the Southern Sierra.
After a trip to Tucson for the holidays and adequate time for my blisters to heal, I returned to Bishop for a day of full-value alpine climbing on Mount Darwin, including a mountain bike to the base, a trip over Lamarck Col and a fantastic climb up perfect styrofoam on the North Face.
The casual thirteen hours car-to-car from Aspendell showed me that my fitness is right where I want it to be and my approach to the mountains is as solid as ever. Here's to 2018!
K2 Unmasked
What's it like on the holy grail of big mountains? Here's my climber's eye view into the expedition, created as it happened using my solar-powered setup in base camp. Thanks again to everyone for following along and supporting the trip. Enjoy!
K2 Unmasked from Hari Mix on Vimeo.
Down and Out
I'm back home eating like crazy and getting over my jetlag. The cuts, scrapes and bruises are all healing in the abundant oxygenated atmosphere. More reflection will be coming from my attempt on K2, but in the meantime, here's a photo essay from the journey back home. In short, I think I set a speed record back home from Camp 2 as I barely even had time to stop and shower in Islamabad before catching my international flight:July 26: Descend from Camp 2 to Base CampJuly 27: Base Camp to Ali CampJuly 28: (Well, technically we started climbing at 10:45PM on the 27th and crested the 18,400 ft Gondogoro La at 1:30AM) Ali Camp to Hushe (this is about 25 excruciatingly hard, trailless miles) covered in about 14 hours. Then 6 hour drive to SkarduJuly 29: Flight from Skardu to Islamabad followed by Islamabad - Abu Dhabi - San FranciscoA huge congratulations to all of my teammates who were successful on K2. These were the first summits of K2 since 2014 and under 400 people have ever stood on top! Many thanks to Mountain Equipment, Dreamers Destination and Nazir Sabir Expeditions for making the trip possible!
Locked In
"The need to climb comes from that tough, lonely place of searching for your dignity. You know, that place--where we actually choose to confront our weaknesses and fears, where we rebel against the terror of death--is actually about dignity. That's why alpinism is not just the act of ascending a mountain, but also inwardly of ascending above yourself." -Voytek Kurtyka
Tomorrow it starts. I am attempting K2 without supplemental oxygen. We have an intricate and excruciatingly hard plan...not out of choice, but necessity. The hope for perfect conditions and a beautiful, long weather window has predictably come and gone. K2 isn't so much inviting us up as it is allowing us a glimpse of what we need...48 or so hours of 30 km/hr or less wind on the summit before it goes back to nuking. We are betting on the 26th (historically K2's most popular summit day...44 ascents all time) but the window could move backward to July 27-28. I suppose it could also move forward in which case we have no chance to even be in position anyway. We only have the resources (not to mention the physical strength and sheer will) for one attempt, so this is it. So my plan as it stands follows:July 23: Direct to Camp 2July 24: Camp 2 to Camp 3July 25: Camp 3 to Camp 4. Leaving early so we can be in camp by noon to hydrate and rest. Departure for summit around 10-11PM.July 26 (Technically starting late at night on the 25th): Summit day and descend as far as possible. I expect at least 12 hours up and I will descend as long as I need to get safe. I am climbing with Nima who will be on oxygen and have extra for me in case I have a problem.July 27: If this is summit day, I will likely take an extra day on the 24th or 25th in Camp 2 or Camp 3. I can not afford to spend extra time in Camp 4 without oxygen. Otherwise, descend to BC.July 28: Reserve/descentI will bring my DeLorme messenger up so "Where's Hari" will be active. However, I may not take this on summit day (I am counting grams), so don't expect communication/updates for periods as long as 48 hours or more. I hope I'm not being too greedy by asking K2 for a chance. After looking up at winds ripping its icy flanks for the past month, I'd say I've already been humbled. But luck is nothing more than preparation and opportunity. I am hyperfocused garnished with a bit of aggression. I am ready for things to be far from perfect. I am prepared to suffer. If this mountain gives me a sliver of a chance, I am going to explode.Hari
The Pivot, Part Three: Peru!
K2 Update: I'm happy and healthy in base camp, but there's still no good weather window on the horizon. In the meantime, I've done some strength work and fast hikes, not to mention laundry and tent maintenance. Waiting and staying calm is a big part of the game. Instead of distracting myself with movies and the like, I'm using the time to visualize an objective that will require my complete focus. Weather here in base camp isn't so bad, but up high the mountains are getting absolutely blasted by high winds. The stars at night are beyond belief...I feel like we're aboard the Hubble!It started with a simple email entitled
"Cordillera Blanca." In terms of lifelong dream trips, I'd say the top two ranges I wanted to visit were the Blanca and of course the Karakoram. Could I pull off both back to back? I agreed to meet with Justin anyway, despite my reservations about my current mental fitness...at the time, I'd been getting so confused with basic activities I wasn't even close to being able to go for a weekend in the Sierra. But Justin had the right enthusiasm and attitude and we both agreed that we'd be able to make the trip work even if we weren't feeling up to the bigger objectives.
Rotation
I'm back down after a three-night all-inclusive vacation to about 7200m (~23,600 ft) on K2. It's pretty hard! But I handled it quite well and am busy eating fried eggs and paratha, guzzling Coke and Mountain Dew, and slathering aloe vera on my face here in base camp. Maybe tomorrow will be my laundry day. Now we wait for the next stretch of good weather to go back up into the ethereal world of complete detatchment that comes with extreme altitude. Here are some photos from the acclimatization trip:
K2: Upward Progress
"Mystery is essential to mountaineering. What is unveiled to the individual when involved with creative mountaineering forms part of a new bond with the mountain experience…it is in forging true bonds rather than the collection of numbers or establishment of records that unveils a bit of mystery...If there is such a thing as spiritual materialism, it is displayed in the urge to possess the mountains rather than to unravel and accept their mysteries" -Voytek Kurtyka, The Art of Suffering
After a few weeks of travel, a few years of planning, and a few decades of dreaming, I set foot on the world’s second highest mountain. Our first rotation was a relative success…some marginal snow conditions and weather made upward progress more challenging than it would otherwise be, but I spent a headache-free night at camp one and climbed halfway to camp two before descending back to base camp to outrun an approaching storm. Now, armed with an excellent weather forecast, I’m heading back up the mountain tomorrow for what I hope will be my final acclimatization rotation. My primary objective is to sleep in camp three and touch as high as K2’s “Shoulder.” Located at approximately 8000m and above most of the technical climbing on the route, this task is in certain respects one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried. I’m just ready to embrace the mysteries of K2’s higher slopes and to interact with such historic features as House’s Chimney and the Black Pyramid.I’m feeling great after a few rest days in base camp: my sinus and throat issues have mostly cleared up, my acclimatization is excellent, and I’ve been walking 1-2 hours each day to keep the blood flowing. Follow along on the Where’s Hari tab to track progress….I’m anticipating 3-4 nights on the mountain before returning to this deliciously thick air!
The Pivot, Part Two: Physiology of a Comeback
"Every alpinist who climbs 8000-meter peaks searches for ways to prepare the body so that it will adjust to the variables. The environment at extreme altitude is as alien as outer space; the dynamics play out in ways we cannot fully understand. A mountaineer can only hope that a commitment to constant training will prop up his or her ambitions to explore the Earth's highest reaches." -Anatoli Boukreev
I have a confession to make: most of the climbing I’ve done in the past has been off the couch. It’s not that I don’t believe in training…far from it. But I think due to a combination of being lazy and rarely encountering my fitness to be a limiting factor, I simply chose to go climbing. But after last year, I knew I’d lost a lot of my overall athleticism, not to mention the mental fitness required to tackle big objectives in the alpine. Here, I’ll outline my approach to getting ready for the mountains, heavily influenced by my background in distance running and by works such as Mark Twight’s Extreme Alpinism and Steve House and Scott Johnston’s Training for the New Alpinism. These are outstanding resources.
First, I follow a progressive, periodized approach to training. This means that my preparation and climbing cycle consists of distinct phases, starting with a transition into training. When running was my full time gig, our coaches often referred to this period euphemistically as “active rest.” In college, I usually pounced on the week or two of freedom to go climbing. So starting this past late December, I started to very slowly build back. I could feel connective tissue straining, but I adhered to the main rule of this period: don’t get injured.
Most important, certainly for alpine climbing, is the base phase. This is where the vast majority of work gets done, and for something as aerobically demanding as my objectives this summer (I’m targeting summit days to be 18-24 hours of brutal aerobic effort, but I’d like to be able to climb for 40+ hours without food, water or rest in a survival situation). In short, I need to be resilient. The base period is where this capacity to endure comes from, and it's all about relatively easy aerobic exercise. Since ankylosing spondylitis ended my running career in 2009, I opted to use biking and hiking as my primary modes of aerobic work. Of all the aspects of training, this is the one you can’t cut short. As Coach Weisend would say in high school, “You can’t pay someone to run your miles for you.”
Additional components of my base phase were mostly designed for me to gain some functional strength. I focused on core strength as well as coordinated body weight exercises like pull ups, push ups, dips, lunges, squats as well as some truly goofy looking balancey sequences. Once I’d gained a solid foundation there, I started focused on developing max strength in a few key areas that I find useful on really big mountains like quads, triceps and a few other areas. I added in maximum-intensity, 8-second hill sprints to develop maximum power in my quads. I quickly felt the gains on climbs on the bike and when carrying a pack.
Next up, things start to get fun…converting these general gains into more specific fitness required for the mountains. One of these was improving the efficiency of my fat burning metabolism. In the high mountains, it simply isn’t possible to eat enough to fuel your climbing. So training in a way that makes you highly dependent on carbohydrates really can backfire, leading to the classic “bonk.” To address this, I started taking morning bike rides of 3-5 hours with 3-5000 ft of climbing without breakfast or any food along the way. The other improvements I wanted to make were in muscular endurance and improved efficiency in high altitude climbing movements (kicking steps in steep snow and ice, plunging through deep snow with a heavy pack, etc). I did this in the best way possible, a quick alpine climbing trip in Peru!
Throne Room of the Mountain Gods
“The cliffs and ridges of K2 rose out of the glacier in one stupendous sweep to the summit of the mountain, 12,000 feet above. The sight was beyond my comprehension…I saw ice avalanches, weighing perhaps hundreds of tons, break off from a hanging glacier nearly two miles above my head; the ice was ground to a fine powder and drifted away in the breeze long before it reached the foot of the precipice, nor did any sound reach my ears.” –Eric Shipton, upon his first view of K2 (from the north side) in 1937
After a week of trekking, along the raging braided channels of the Braldu River to the endless gravel, boulders and ankle-breaking cobbles of the Baltoro and Godwin Austen Glaciers, I have arrived at the foot of the world’s second highest mountain. It’s not an exaggeration to claim that this is the single most mountainous valley in the world, dubbed by Galen Rowell as the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods.
Overall, the trek was objectively challenging but I did a good job keeping it relatively comfortable. Not easy, considering it's about 65 rugged and dirty miles. I nursed a few things along the way (sinus and cold symptoms, very minor GI issues back in Skardu), but I've been able to bounce back quickly each time. So I'm hoping a couple days here in base camp will help my sore throat from all of the huffing and puffing in the cold dry air. My acclimatization is outstanding...I can't even tell I'm at altitude here at base camp at 16,000 ft, so I'll be eager to start getting higher ASAP for some added stimulus.
From here, we'll rest, sort gear and prepare for our first rotation up the mountain. We're the first large team to arrive attempting the Abruzzi Spur, so this likely means we'll have our choice of good camping spots at the expense of additional work preparing the route.
The Pivot, Part One: Crash and Burn
“Allahu akbar! Ash-hadu an-la ilaha illa llah”The morning call to prayer jostles me awake at the unholy hour of 3AM. As I roll over, the light body aches and night sweats of the fever I’m running add to the unpleasantness of the moment. It’s Ramadan, and the chanting over the loudspeaker serves a practical purpose for the Skardu locals: it’s their last chance to eat until sundown. At our northerly latitudes, people here will be fasting for 18 hours each day until we arrive in base camp next week. In any objective sense this is a strange time and place for me, but for some reason, I feel at home. More than ever, now I must go to the mountains as a process, a practice, a return to fundamentals.Just a few months ago, I wasn’t even sure I’d be functional enough to make it here. To say last year crushed me would be an understatement. The short story is that my mom died. The long story is a circuitous inward journey to depths of myself that I didn’t even know existed. I moved home last March following my mom’s terminal breast cancer diagnosis. Showing the hallmark signs of Pierce family stubbornness, she furiously resisted my return home saying I should focus on work, but I could tell things were descending into chaos and everyone else urged me to apply for Santa Clara’s generous family medical leave. The first month and a half or so were filled with endless appointments, phone calls and meetings to get her things in order and streamline my grandfather’s affairs. We took time to fit in some of mom’s favorite activities: putting together puzzles, going to meditation groups and bossing me around in the garden ;-) During one last trip to the beach with friends in April, however, her condition worsened to where she went on oxygen 24/7 and even went so far as to take a quarter of an anti-nausea tablet. Despite constant and excruciating trouble breathing, she managed to resist medications even in her last hours. For her, my hunch is, the integrity of the process was more important to her than even the worst life had to offer.
Over the next few months, her condition progressed and layers of her independence, personality and dignity faded. New and unforeseen problems abounded. For a while, patchwork solutions such as my teaching her the “rest step,” a high altitude technique to save energy, served as a temporary way for her to ascend the stairs to her bedroom. Negotiations over her move downstairs into a hospital bed produced some of the greatest anger and irritability one could experience. Then, one weekend in the beginning of August, fluid enveloped her heart and lungs drove her into constant and unmitigated torture.
The disease walked a tightrope between life and death, creating the sensation of drowning, vivid violent and paranoid hallucinations and profound nausea. The eerie parallels between her cancer and the symptoms of mountain sickness and the struggles to survive I’ve faced in the high mountains were not lost on me. Health crises manifested at all hours of the day and night, and multiple times we saw all the resources hospice had to offer. Finally, after six weeks of the worst suffering one can experience, she took her last breath, the trials of taking on cancer on her own terms over at last.
For a couple months I held my shit together. During September and October, I routinely logged 16 hour days settling her affairs, working on the house and getting ready for a move back west to return to Santa Clara full time for the winter quarter. Oh, and I quickly prepped for an expedition to Nepal’s Rolwaling Valley and Ama Dablam. In case you missed it, check out the trip reports linked in the previous sentence and the new expedition video.
Then, during AGU, the largest earth science conference of the year (of course!), things changed. Instead of hopping on the train to San Francisco, I found myself shaking in the fetal position at home, my head racing. For the next few months, I was unable to focus on anything. Among other things, I became lost on the way to the grocery store, routinely sat in parking lots for hours on end trying to figure out if I needed to eat, drink or pee. Communication of all sorts was an enormous challenge. When people asked how things were going, I rarely knew how to respond. I tried to focus on the positives and use my time to work on things that made me happy like going for a walk, but often that was too daunting of an undertaking. Brewing with frustration, I routinely lost control and broke my things, often for reasons unknown to me even in the moment. I lost confidence in myself all of my abilities to work, be happy or contribute to my relationships. I wrote Mingma Gyalje and told him I might not be able to climb this summer. He told me he’d lost his father to intestine cancer and found himself slowly getting more hopeless and weaker. He told me he changed his routine, returned to trekking and climbing, shared moments with friends and gradually came back.
Slowly things began to change. Michelle got me a watch to track my activities. Old interests like biking and gear-fondling re-emerged. I bought a Pivot, a gorgeous mountain bike just begging to climb the steep fire roads and rip singletrack descents in the Santa Cruz Mountains where Michelle and I had recently moved. At first I was self conscious about the purchase, but soon the freedom opened me up. But the epic rains of this past winter quickly put the trails out of commission, so I did the only logical thing I could think of: splurging on a ridiculously capable BMC road disc bike ready to hit the rough pavement and gravel climbs. Soon, I felt my complete self returning to form. My legs rounded into shape and my aerobic fitness skyrocketed. I could finally focus long enough to send an email. I could do the dishes, make the bed and fold laundry. The house in Virginia sold, and I finally wasn’t getting caught by daily legal and financial surprises in the mail for my mom and grandpa. I started to feel new emotions: gratitude for my privileged and rich life, the support of those around me, the freedom from Santa Clara to focus on my health, and a desire to get on with things. I was on my way.
Ohhh snap, I'm in northern Pakistan!
The time is finally here...it's been a hell of a year for me and this trip has been in the works for a few year. Way more on all of that later. For the time being, I'm just happy to soak it in and once again go along for the wild ride of a big expedition. Tomorrow, hopefully we'll pack up into jeeps and head up to Askole, the last outpost of civilization before we march into the heart of the Karakoram.
The time is finally here...it's been a hell of a year for me and this trip has been in the works for a few year. More on all of that later. For the time being, I'm just happy to soak it in and once again go along for the wild ride of a big expedition.
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Ama
Climbers and trekkers have long considered Ama Dablam to be among the world's most beautiful mountains. You could disagree, but alas, you'd be wrong. It says a lot about a mountain that in a range filled with giants, a shorter, slender fin of rock and ice has captured the imagination of those who walk beneath it for centuries. Ama is the mother. The dablam, represented by the hanging serac below the summit, is her amulet. Ironically, for climbers, it has been a source of fear. A collapse in 2006 that killed six is a harsh reminder of the realities of climbing big mountains. It's also why Furtemba and I made the decision to leverage our acclimatization and summit in a long push from camp 2. And needless to say, on a mountain this steep and technical, I wore the amulet Lama Geshe had blessed for me from start to finish.
We'd delayed our summit bid due to high winds one day. Then the weather was looking like it could take a cold snap. At camp 1, Furtemba and I agreed to continue upwards even though our potential summit day was forecasted to be significantly colder.
