the Adventure Lifestyle magazine

BECAUSE IT CAN KILL YOU WHAT YOU CAN'T LEARN IN SIX DAYS TEXT: ALBERT PODELL The Earth has 107 mountains higher than 20,000 feet, almost any of which can kill you if you don't know what you're dOing. A mountaineering course is essential for learning the core skills that will get you up and down a mountain safely, but you must put them into practice for many months at lower altitudes and safer environments before you challenge a killer peak. You need time and preparation to learn these five essentiai aspects of mountaineering: 1. HOW YOU REACT PHYSIOLOGICALLY AT ALTITUDE: There is no way you can know how your body will function at altitude until you take it there, and keep it there for a while. It doesn't matter how fit you are: Cardiovascular conditioning does not equate with effective blood·gas equalization. And it doesn't matter how young you are-in fact, people under 35 are often more susceptible to altitude sickness than those older. Physiologists have yet to create a foolproof, sea· level technique for determining who pic ket . Then he yelle d, "Climbing l " The pr oce ss short e ned the amoun t o f sl ac k r ope and thus t he distance o f a fall. The only thing was: You reached the p i c ket in the steepest s po ts- that 's why we use d them. It was a l l pre tty s c ary f or a few sec onds, until you got used t o it . And no one fe ll int o a c r ev as s e . Hail was pound ing down when we made it t o the summit, where we f ound mushrooms gr owing . Fee l i ng bold , Turne d out it resulte d f r om Al ask a Mountai n Guide s' o the r break i n t o a personal hike s o e xt ende d i t made the r e s t o f his gr oup feel abandoned. What I ab andoned thi s day was most o f my fear o f mountaineer i ng . I was elated at the t op- nearly weak- kneed with climber ' s high . But i t was n 't the al t itude o f maybe 6 , 000 f eet. I t was s eeing li f e f r om a differen t angle-in this c ase from above. I t' s what I imagine time trave l would b e l ike . My sense o f how life moves was altered. But Ab andonment Pe ak was j ust t he morning warm up . Now we h ad t o b r e ak down our s o ak i ng glac i er c amp and c arry e ve rything b ac k t o b ase c amp: r op e , stove , tent s , personal ge ar , pic ke ts, i ce axes. We h ad allowe d two trips f or this a wee k e arlie r. And things are s o much heav ier when we t. No thing t o do but suck it in, go wi th it . Some o f our jokes at thi s p o i n t we r e p r ob ab l y b anned unde r t h e SALT tre aty. Whe n we finall y s cr amb led over the last mo r aine s and pit ch e d camp, I f o r c e s trai ning ," he said. I l ooke d at him c l o s e l y . He was seri ous . DAy SEVEN: Base Camp t o Haines I noticed s omething strange and un familiar t o me , above the e ag l e s and c l ouds , as I stre t che d outside t he t e nt on this f i n al mor n i n g . I t was a yellow b all i n the s ky . It was warm . I liked it . Three hours o f almost mocking sunshine ensue d , allowing a partial dr ying o f our gear. Eli and Cedar g ave us a lecture on h i gh-altitude he alth d ange rs and a demonstration o f t r ansce i ver us e (for r e coveri ng peop l e buried in av al anches ) . This g ave me one last r emi nde r that summit ing jok ing ly asked a near- comat o s e Tal i f he' d had a nic e day . "It r eminde d me o f spec ial I asked about the pe ak ' s n ame . co- owner, Darsie , mak i n g a pee will succumb to acute mountain sickness (AMS) or high·altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE). If you are susceptible to AMS you're going to need prolonged acclimatization before you can climb above 10,000 feet. If you're susceptible to HAPE, you will have to descend, and probable abort your climb (and perhaps your climbing career), and you'll need to take another member of your party down with you until you can breathe normally. The easiest way to test your body's reaction to altitude before you've got your butt out on a crumbling cornice is to take a ski lift to the top of a high mountain-Snowmass at Aspen, Snowbird in Utah, Taos in New Mexico, and Heavenly at Tahoe all top 10,000 feet. Hang out up there for three to four hours while doing a couple dozen push ups and jogging along the crest for a half a mile to see if you feel as fit as you do at sea level. Or in summer, take at least a 4o-lb. backpack and hike up a high but non·technical mountain. For example, 14,494·foot Mt Whitney is totally non·technical, and on Mt Hood you can walk up a paved road to about 10,000 feet then get a little crampon practice on the snowfield on top. Above 12,000 feet you'll also get an idea of how badly your skin bums when half of the earth's protective layer is removed and you're subjected to glacial reftection. Above 14,000 feet you'll find out how quickly the thin air dehydrates you- gauge your reaction so you know how much liquid you need to consume to function. You can't take the risk of learning this on a serious climb. Once dehydration, snow blindness or even a severe sunburn hits you, it's hard to cure at altitude, and you'll become a danger to your group 2. HOW YOU BEHAVE PSYCHOLOGICALLY AT ALTITUDE: Even if you don't get hit with AMS at 18,000 feet on Denali, the thin air will still reduce your mental capacity by half. In the high Himalayas, your brain will be only 25 percent operational. To get an idea, imagine drinking four tequila shots in an hour or two and then trying to tie a sheet bend or a bowline· on·a·blght. If you do get hit with AMS, you need to know (a) whether you become dangerously disoriented and irrational, or even incapacitated, and (b) will you freak out if you're on a knife edge like the ones on Denali's West Buttress Route, or the Matterhorn's Hornli Ridge, with a 5,ooo-foot drop on either side. You can test your degree of disorientation when you take your body over 10,000 feet. As for the fear factor, take a day hike up to and across the Knife Edge on Maine's Mt Katahdin. 3. HOW YOU HANDLE INTENSE COLD: The piercing intensity of high·peak cold can amaze and humble you. Upper Denali regularly drops to 50 degrees below zero (F), and when the air whips around Windy Comer at up to 150 mph, you're facing a windchill of well below • 120 F. It's a brutal cold like nothing you've ever encountered and you have no idea if your hands, eyes, and heart can handle it. To find out if you can cope, you need to first try out smaller peaks in winter. New Hampshire's Mt Washington is a good place for a test run: Drive up as far as you can go on the toll road (it gets plowed once a week for the observatory meteorologists, so you can usually get within a thousand vertical feet of the top). Hike the rest of the way and then hunker down at the peak for a few hours to experience what is generally regarded as the nastiest weather in the U.S., with winds sometimes exceeding 200 mph). Just don't stray from the road, stick with your friends, and watch for Signs of frostbite. 4. HOW ACCURATELY YOU CAN READ A SNOW PEAK: Although you won't be the leader when you first push higher, you are still responsible for knowing where danger lurks and how to avoid it. You've got to learn to read snow conditions, avalanche possibilities, the hardness of the lee under your crampons, the safety of snow bridges, the location, depth, and width of crevasses, and the danger of bergschrunds (and if you don't know what they are, you have no business being near them). You can get some experience from books and courses, but the rest comes only the hard way-through years of experience on the mountain. 5. HOW YOU INTEGRATE THE ClASS/COURSE SKILLS IN A REAL EMERGENCY: To survive on killer peaks, you have to learn your craft until it's almost second nature. You have to pay your dues first, and incrementally, on lower, easier, warmer, safer mountains (see THE PATH TO DENALI). 53

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