I'm contemplating going to this year's Banff Film Fest. Only because I can't wait until the legendary homage to the year's best films about mountain culture comes to D.C.'s National Geographic in the late winter/early Spring of NEXT year. But I realize I've been extremely negligent about reviewing films I saw at this year's DC International filmfest. You'll have to pardon me as most of the time I was living out of the trunk of my car and found blogging through a blackberry is a real pain.
Ashes of American Flags: Wilco Live
What a great band and what a great documentary on them! The premise is the D.C.-based director felt bad about the last documentary he produced on Wilco, where Jeff Tweedy appeared to be ... well an asshole. When a Q&A was held after the screening, the audience couldn't satiate their thirst for answers on working with the band. Turns out Wilco really is that good live, and very little sound mixing had to be done for the scenes. Additionally the directors provided some great footage of some historic American music venues, sandwiched between panoramas from the bus as they drove into towns, cities, and through the country-side.
The Blind Sunflowers
Really amazing film. I still feel guilt for leaving the film before the Q&A was finished with the Spanish-speaking director, but alas, it was a school night. Not at all a peppy film like the title might make you think, (focus on the Blind). It centers around a family, internally resistant to the Franco regime, but must contend with the outside world while keeping appearances, knowing some of their loved ones are in a struggle to leave.
The Chaser
The most disturbing film I've seen this year. It's not that you don't know who the killer is, but it's just wondering if the so-called 'good' guys will ever catch up. Graphic displays of gory death, I shudder to even think about it. I'm curious to see how the Korean film industry will go global after this one.
Ciao Bella
Cute, really cute and funny. Flick about horny teenagers but with an international twist. Son of a dentist Persian teen and a Swedish gal heart-broken after a summer fling.
Hasan and Marcos
My Arabic school friends and I got so used to screenings every Friday night at Middlebury, we couldn't resist watching this one. I think the audience took it more seriously than it needed to be taken. Yes it's funny, yes it's over the top. And someone correct me, but I thought the politics were a bit over the top too (as in the religious divide it tries to portray).
Ramchand Pakistani
I really enjoyed this film. Incredibly nuanced with balanced portrayals of the affected family members. It is a bit long as many films from the subcontinent tend to be.
Skin
What an incredible film and one of the more powerful I've seen on the subject of race. And how absurd it is, the notion that humans are different because of the color of their skin. Because it's based on a true story, it resonates more to how brutal members of families can be to one another, and much more humankind.
Friday, September 25, 2009
mood on write
I write based on my mood. I also write based on what my fellow bloggers are writing. Travel, adventure, climbing etc. A few posts ago I alluded to being in Jordan like being in prison. But a few weeks ago I found the keys to the garden. Literally. I put the keys on a chain that opened the living room security bar doors, to the very not-desert like lushness of a backyard I rarely use yet the gardener every day dutifully waters and trims once a week. It has a sprucy evergreen in the center, with a few miniature pines that look like they came from Tuscany, and a few small red blossoms trimmed along a serpentine edge of more ever green low bushes. It is filled with rare and uncharacteristic green grass. I found the small key that unlocks the suggestion of a gate between the garden and the street. As I write now, I hear the call to evening prayer, it echoes through the city, haunting, sometimes rude when it occurs at 4 AM.
In the past week, I discovered the Amman climbing scene. A friend from language school last summer introduced me over e-mail to another American,
My climbing partner and I were really excited about Hakim and Jordan's possibilities. One thing stood out about Hakim. He wanted to have Jordanians open routes in their own country. Even though he and other rockclimbing guides further south in Wadi Rum were mentored by European climbers like Tony Howard, and Wilfred, a French climber, it was important for him to name the routes in Arabic, and the first ascensionist to be of Arab origin. Similiarly, Mohammad Hammad in Wadi Rum, known as probably the most skillful climbing guide (and Hakim grudgingly admits too) in the preserve completed many first ascents in the scary soft red sandstone towers. He spoke to me of how the Bedouin mistrust the ropes and how there is resentment towards a French climber who was writing a guidebook and renamed many of the routes in French or English and claimed his own F.A., even though Mohammad and others had done those routes before.
A few weeks ago through the heat and thirst of Ramadan (the Muslim holy month of fasting) in the desert, Mohammad invited us to his house in the village, insisted on us drinking hot tea for strength and fortitude before our day of climbing began, and despite needing rest, drove us himself to the our climbing destination and several hours later sent his younger brother to pick us up. While he readied to bring food to a group of campers and fix a leaky water tank without having any food or water himself, Mohammad also took the time to drop us at a granite sport crag. In thanks, I gave him four Black Diamond Camalots, sizes 2-0.5. He told me that nothing he did prior were worth the Camalots. I disagree, last year in the winter he bailed my friend and I off a climb when we were one rope short of a rappel and then took me climbing for a full day and treated me to camp, Bedouin-style.
Jordan finally feels like it's giving me a way back to myself. And here I am leaving it in a matter of moments ...
In the past week, I discovered the Amman climbing scene. A friend from language school last summer introduced me over e-mail to another American,
"you two are nice intelligent women who both told me you brought two suitcases to the Middle East, one filled with climbing equipment."We've already spent three weekends together. It was this past week that we found one Jordanian, Hakim, going against the grain of his family and culture to cultivate climbing, seen by some Jordanians as an intrusive Western past-time. We praised the routes he opened in the hills up north, he showed us an amazing limestone blue streaked gorge in a small Christian village he started developing two years ago after interviewing locals. They first took him to a cement quarry. His biggest crux to developing routes is getting a battery-powered percussion drill and getting equipment for his burgeoning adventure tourism business.
My climbing partner and I were really excited about Hakim and Jordan's possibilities. One thing stood out about Hakim. He wanted to have Jordanians open routes in their own country. Even though he and other rockclimbing guides further south in Wadi Rum were mentored by European climbers like Tony Howard, and Wilfred, a French climber, it was important for him to name the routes in Arabic, and the first ascensionist to be of Arab origin. Similiarly, Mohammad Hammad in Wadi Rum, known as probably the most skillful climbing guide (and Hakim grudgingly admits too) in the preserve completed many first ascents in the scary soft red sandstone towers. He spoke to me of how the Bedouin mistrust the ropes and how there is resentment towards a French climber who was writing a guidebook and renamed many of the routes in French or English and claimed his own F.A., even though Mohammad and others had done those routes before.
A few weeks ago through the heat and thirst of Ramadan (the Muslim holy month of fasting) in the desert, Mohammad invited us to his house in the village, insisted on us drinking hot tea for strength and fortitude before our day of climbing began, and despite needing rest, drove us himself to the our climbing destination and several hours later sent his younger brother to pick us up. While he readied to bring food to a group of campers and fix a leaky water tank without having any food or water himself, Mohammad also took the time to drop us at a granite sport crag. In thanks, I gave him four Black Diamond Camalots, sizes 2-0.5. He told me that nothing he did prior were worth the Camalots. I disagree, last year in the winter he bailed my friend and I off a climb when we were one rope short of a rappel and then took me climbing for a full day and treated me to camp, Bedouin-style.
Jordan finally feels like it's giving me a way back to myself. And here I am leaving it in a matter of moments ...
almost out
An addendum to the previous post. First, I did experience a climber death in my own close knit community in Washington D.C. I had only climbed with him one day. As I know many climber's by his first name, it was not until I heard the details of his accident, that it was his New Zealand fiancee who was belaying him and witnessed his accident that I remembered. I read from afar the grief of my friends in our community and I too was saddened. And I understood what a terrible summer had passed. The morning I realized, I was also driving a group of friends later to Wadi Mujib, a slot canyon that fed into the Dead Sea. I was trying to remain jovial with the mood of the morning, but I had to blurt out how I felt and the car quieted. They weren't climbers, I don't think they understood it, and such a death to an outsider could only have a negative explanation. I thank them for their silence.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
catching up from the other side
I've finally had a chance to sit down and surf the net. From social networking sites I learn how negligent I've been ... dog deaths and lots and lots of climber deaths. I'm heart stricken for one of my climbing heroes, Majka, who once driving back from an ice climbing clinic informally interviewed me on being a lady single climber as I unwittingly answered and she smiled and nodded her head knowingly ... as my responses proved her hypotheses.
She wrote on how deaths of climbers are getting closer to her and I thought yes. I also think about the social commentary one of the proprietors of Rock and Snow in New Paltz said as he introduced one of the oldest climbing documentary films on climbing The Nose (how wild, drinking water out of bleacher jugs, and using pitons and eating utensil ... those were some hard men). He claimed corporate America was taking away the sense of community, that it sought to replace the sense of community with happy hours and family picnics, and long hours at the office fueled by a guilty nagging sense one could not survive if one did not bill 80 hours a week. I partly believe him. Climbing has given me a sense of community back. I think about the friends I've made from Alaska to Texas to South Africa to Jordan. How far that community spans. But having a community also means more people closer to your heart. When we indulge in the ultimate litmus of life's tests on the rock or in the mountains, exuberant in the feeling of having everything move in synch... muscle sinew mind soul ..., it's just as memorable and fleeting as the deepest meditation or daydream. So when we've lost our friends ... its perhaps a reminder of how much richer we've made our lives by being close to them. And the loss of any partner in the passions of same soul of a community ... is probably in equal and measurable parts painful. Although I will caveat, I have not lost a friend who was a climbing partner but I have lost many classmates and former social acquaintances from boating to car accidents, to disease ... but by the time they passed away, we were no longer held by the same bonds of community, and I can't say I felt stricken with grief for them.
She wrote on how deaths of climbers are getting closer to her and I thought yes. I also think about the social commentary one of the proprietors of Rock and Snow in New Paltz said as he introduced one of the oldest climbing documentary films on climbing The Nose (how wild, drinking water out of bleacher jugs, and using pitons and eating utensil ... those were some hard men). He claimed corporate America was taking away the sense of community, that it sought to replace the sense of community with happy hours and family picnics, and long hours at the office fueled by a guilty nagging sense one could not survive if one did not bill 80 hours a week. I partly believe him. Climbing has given me a sense of community back. I think about the friends I've made from Alaska to Texas to South Africa to Jordan. How far that community spans. But having a community also means more people closer to your heart. When we indulge in the ultimate litmus of life's tests on the rock or in the mountains, exuberant in the feeling of having everything move in synch... muscle sinew mind soul ..., it's just as memorable and fleeting as the deepest meditation or daydream. So when we've lost our friends ... its perhaps a reminder of how much richer we've made our lives by being close to them. And the loss of any partner in the passions of same soul of a community ... is probably in equal and measurable parts painful. Although I will caveat, I have not lost a friend who was a climbing partner but I have lost many classmates and former social acquaintances from boating to car accidents, to disease ... but by the time they passed away, we were no longer held by the same bonds of community, and I can't say I felt stricken with grief for them.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
the other world
I've told everyone that I'm living in Jordan this year, because really when you are somewhere for eight months out of twelve, your condo is rented, and all your mail is being forwarded to your mom's, where else can you say you lived? I lived out of the trunk of my car, on a friend's couch, a work-paid for hotel room, a tent for two weeks, random assortment of vacation rentals, and random campsites. It's the most stable thing I've done this year, being in a foreign country. And I'm still forced to change my mindset. The only two places I can look-up the weather forecast on the internet is for Amman and Aqaba, or I have to wait for the newspapers to describe the 'hilly areas.' Instead conferring a Time Out website, I have to confer the Jordan Times. When people give directions, they don't list street names, they list traffic circles (1st through 8th, and a few named ones), and describe second rights, third lefts. Although in the last eighteen months smaller residential streets have names and in the last year, buildings have acquired numbers (no more fourth building on the right after the third intersection). A new observable sign that Jordan is joining the rest of the world is a push for recycling, glass and plastic. Internet connection here is not the most reliable and the government can monitor anything. Still on any road trip, you will be pulled over at a random checkpoint to have documents checked, easy enough to do as an American. Movie times are still published in the paper, sales in stores are anybody's guess, and the main way of shopping for any service is through 'word of mouth.'
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
glacier hygiene
So there I am, on a glacier for the next twelve days. There are a lot of little things that one has questions about but are afraid to ask. Things like, how often do you change your underwear? How do you change out of contact lenses? How do you keep everything from freezing? Well there are little things that made it comfortable for me. The sacred socks were essential. That is a dry pair of socks to wear at night after I had soaked through the pair I was wearing all day. I was even more decadent and had a pair of sacred pants, that's right sacred pants. Pants that I would not wear for climbing or snowshoeing, but only for sleeping. Every night we went to sleep with EVERYTHING that needed to be dry and shouldn't freeze ... yes in the sleeping bag: sunblock, hand creme, toothpaste, contact lens solution, baby wipes, linings of the plastic boots, the wet socks I had already worn, the camera and batteries, the iPod (which should've been fully charged before I left town because the battery was empty the first night). For the next of skin of items, well I changed every three to four days, and the baby wipes were absolutely essential. Since water is precious and you can't actually wash your face or really want to get your hands wet, our instructors let us in on the teabag bath secret. Yeah, take the teabag you used for brewing the morning cup and wipe your face with it. Six straight days of slathering on SPF 70 sunblock six times a day gave me the complexion of a leprous zombie. It was suggested to me I take a 'teabag bath.' After doing a quick self portrait of myself with my digital and looking at the effect, I was aghast at my appearance. But otherwise, living on a glacier for 12 days was no sweat (except when we were shoveling and the ambient radiation of the sun reflecting off the glacier made it feel like we were in the Saharan desert while moving camp). What did I wish for? A way to call my mom (apparently old school cell phones can work once reaching certain peaks) and prescription glacier glasses for the days my eyes scream at me for putting in hard lenses.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
enduring part II
Today is better. Mentally I'm accepting fate, physically my body is revolting. I got warm hugs and hellos and handshakes. I smiled at folks who barely changed or put on a few more pounds, or were paler than I last saw them, the healthier looking folks were beaming, and now I recall some of them were counting down days until they depart. Sometimes I wonder if I'm so mentally committed or even resigned to something that I distance from my true self. Like, when I started to heave the mostly liquid contents of my stomach, not even one kilometer from the airport terminal, and then once again when I left the shuttle on the circle to the apartment building that would be my home for the next four months. It was like my body was reacting to the indefiniteness of not being able to board a plane back home for another few months, and reacting again at the doorstep of my keep until then.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
how to endure
One moment I was looking at the skyline of Manhattan, under the cover of evening clouds with sunbeams filtering here and there, thirteen hours later, I was pointing out to my seat mate the Dead Sea lapping at the West Bank. I already began putting count down numbers in my planner, this time I wasn't going to cross calendar years like before. My sister's birthday marks exactly the half way point. I miss my sister. Another four months, of me not being me. Of letting go of things I started towards in the last four, that felt like in their intensity zapped my time to a matter of four week, my first lead on ice, first leads on Gunks classics, my first time on a glacier, my first time camping for more than a week, my first time in Washington and Alaska, climbing in an ice park, my new car's first oil change, the first opera that I can clearly remember. I had things to look forward to here, longer dryer days, friends from before, possibly more outings. Possibly more interesting work. I knew my heart was divested before, but in the short time I had home, I managed to reinvest in those other ways to pass time, that have nothing to do with living in foreign country among expats, or sitting at a desk for over ten hours on most days. I sobbed in the apartment that I felt like I barely left. This time there were iron bars over all the windows. That sounds too dramatic, at least they had keys for opening their built in doors.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
throwing it out
I'm looking at the left hand column of this blog and seeing how in 2005 I wrote a whopping 320+ posts that year. The blog was a nice way for me to indulge literary narcissism, trying to draw anyone on the net into the what I wanted them to think I was thinking about at 11:35 AM on October 21, 2005. Maybe someone read between the lines and guess at what I was thinking about. Maybe. Now I'm looking back at why I started this blog, it was fad-ish perhaps? All my friends were doing it? I hadn't discovered Facebook yet? I was trying to track my own thoughts?
Since I was maybe 11 I was predisposed to writing in diaries but I would divulge everything in them. I had 11 or so rainbow-colored (by my own hand) composition books filled with doodles and pre-adolescent narratives. Eventually to make room for high school yearbooks, I destroyed them ... maybe or they're somewhere in my closet. Now I look at where I am to where I was five months ago when I was living the D.C. dream: luxury loft downtown, a luxury German sports coupe in an underground garage below, six-figure earnings, and a career with seeming limitless potential. I was on the verge. Of what? I was also a weekend warrior, I spent an uncalculated amount on motel rooms, plane tickets, and gas during the winter season traveling to New England to ice climb. I even booked a trip to the north to climb frozen waterfalls the night after a man I was dating flew from the other side of the country to see me. Now, the luxury loft is rented to a very nice fellow bureaucrat, the bimmer is parked in a neighborhood where it's sale price is easily more than half the value of the homes around it, my Italian wool suits are crammed into a closet and the only things neatly organized in labeled boxes and bags are my climbing gear and DVD's. Some of my clothes are in heaps in the unfurnished room I occupied from when I was 13 to 24.
As the last month rolled in my overseas assignment, I was booking trips. A week in Ouray, Colorado, a weekend in Looking Glass, NC at the end of March, two weeks in the Alaska range, five days in the high peaks of the Adirondacks. Possibly a weekend in the Cascades. When I actually came home, I planned another week in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and I stayed in Washington state for two weeks. I told people I was living out of the trunk of my car. Any given moment I had ropes, a harness, and climbing shoes in my trunk with shower stuff in my Adidas duffel and a garment bag hanging from the back seat with a few dry-cleanables. I was never ever really unpacked. My various pieces of luggage were 'rolling,' the duffel went from ice trips to work trips to a mountaineering trip. My little black executive carry-on was stuffed with silk blouses, gold sandals, icebreaker t-shirts. Meanwhile my large expandable over-sized orange four-wheel roller sat stoically pushed against the closet and the ironing board, empty, waiting to be filled for another four month tour.
Since I was maybe 11 I was predisposed to writing in diaries but I would divulge everything in them. I had 11 or so rainbow-colored (by my own hand) composition books filled with doodles and pre-adolescent narratives. Eventually to make room for high school yearbooks, I destroyed them ... maybe or they're somewhere in my closet. Now I look at where I am to where I was five months ago when I was living the D.C. dream: luxury loft downtown, a luxury German sports coupe in an underground garage below, six-figure earnings, and a career with seeming limitless potential. I was on the verge. Of what? I was also a weekend warrior, I spent an uncalculated amount on motel rooms, plane tickets, and gas during the winter season traveling to New England to ice climb. I even booked a trip to the north to climb frozen waterfalls the night after a man I was dating flew from the other side of the country to see me. Now, the luxury loft is rented to a very nice fellow bureaucrat, the bimmer is parked in a neighborhood where it's sale price is easily more than half the value of the homes around it, my Italian wool suits are crammed into a closet and the only things neatly organized in labeled boxes and bags are my climbing gear and DVD's. Some of my clothes are in heaps in the unfurnished room I occupied from when I was 13 to 24.
As the last month rolled in my overseas assignment, I was booking trips. A week in Ouray, Colorado, a weekend in Looking Glass, NC at the end of March, two weeks in the Alaska range, five days in the high peaks of the Adirondacks. Possibly a weekend in the Cascades. When I actually came home, I planned another week in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and I stayed in Washington state for two weeks. I told people I was living out of the trunk of my car. Any given moment I had ropes, a harness, and climbing shoes in my trunk with shower stuff in my Adidas duffel and a garment bag hanging from the back seat with a few dry-cleanables. I was never ever really unpacked. My various pieces of luggage were 'rolling,' the duffel went from ice trips to work trips to a mountaineering trip. My little black executive carry-on was stuffed with silk blouses, gold sandals, icebreaker t-shirts. Meanwhile my large expandable over-sized orange four-wheel roller sat stoically pushed against the closet and the ironing board, empty, waiting to be filled for another four month tour.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
my gear reveiw guide
I'm getting psyched to back in the States and pursue my non-career non-international affairs passion. Climbing. Whether you care or not, and I'm no one famous, but if you are a slendar 5'9 woman trying to figure out what gear you like, I'm putting down my personal faves and things I can't live without:
Women's Patagonia R2 vest - without a doubt, my favorite essential layering piece. Wear it around town or for just a little extra warmth over an expedition layer on a warm (27 F) sunny ice climbing day. Has pockets to vent, furry, great shape.
Women's Icebreaker Expedition Hoody - awesome, it's 100% Merino wool, has thumb holes for extra warmth, an adjustable hood that fits over and under helmets. I use it for everything from running errands around town, a light jacket on cool spring evenings, to an essential layering piece on a cold day of mountaineering. Also has a great shape. For 2009 they've changed it a bit, you can check out the link.
Women's Outdoor Research Aria Down Hoody - great mid/outer layer down sweater for cooler days and belaying/ice climbing on the sunny side. Fits nice over all of the above, and stylish.
Women's Arcteryx Beta AR Gore-tex Pro-shell - built for climbing, tough fabric is shred resistent, I use it on all my ice climbing ascents. I have long monkey arms so I wish when I raised my arms it would not go down as far, but thankfully I have really awesome longish Black Diamond Samurai ice climbing gloves (in small for my woman hands).
Women's Mountain Hardware Subzero Parka - I have it in pink, although often mistaken for a 'bar jacket' because of its great looks, I've proved its awesome performance in keeping me warm on descents in the winter off of Mt. Katahdin in Maine and ice climbing in super cold conditions in the Adirondacks. Hood designed to fit over a climbing helmet. Even my male climbing partners have warmed themselves in this jacket when they left their's back in the car. Fits over all the above mentioned layers.
Men's (they don't have my size in women's) La Sportiva Nepal EVO's GTX - I'm just another fan ... great boot for ice climbing and mountain approaches. Keeps my feet warm without warmers down to 20 degrees. Below that, I stick in warmers. I have a narrow heel, and even though it is a men's boot, it still accomodates my flatish- low- volume feet.
Cold Cold World Chernobyl Pack - the must have piece of gear. I gotta say, I have a huge internal frame Gregory that I've only used on two expeditions (the Palisades), but after getting the Chernobyl, I left the bulkier Palisades at home. This pack is great for the summer to haul a 60m rope, double rack, and all your personal gear, snacks and water. During the winter, it carries my crampons, ice tools, warm clothes, thermos with hot drinks, snacks and more without a hitch. I used it on a January overnight ascent of Mt. Marcy, and the frameless pack served as a perfect lower-body bivy sack over my sleeping bag in a lean-to shelter (one where we woke up the next morning with a dusting of snow between each of us).
Mammut Schoeller Softshell Castor Trouser - um, these pants are hot, meaning they make my butt look pretty good in 'em. I basically threw my gore-tex shell pants into the bottom of my pack as a back-up after I bought these. A little pricey, but well worth it, extremely durable, warm, vented pockets, internal gaiters, breathes awesomely so I never feel like I'm too warm or too cold, water resistant, and importantly, shred resistant from clumsy footed-ness in crampons. Even my guy climbing partners have wondered if they have something similar for men.
Women's Patagonia R2 vest - without a doubt, my favorite essential layering piece. Wear it around town or for just a little extra warmth over an expedition layer on a warm (27 F) sunny ice climbing day. Has pockets to vent, furry, great shape.
Women's Icebreaker Expedition Hoody - awesome, it's 100% Merino wool, has thumb holes for extra warmth, an adjustable hood that fits over and under helmets. I use it for everything from running errands around town, a light jacket on cool spring evenings, to an essential layering piece on a cold day of mountaineering. Also has a great shape. For 2009 they've changed it a bit, you can check out the link.
Women's Outdoor Research Aria Down Hoody - great mid/outer layer down sweater for cooler days and belaying/ice climbing on the sunny side. Fits nice over all of the above, and stylish.
Women's Arcteryx Beta AR Gore-tex Pro-shell - built for climbing, tough fabric is shred resistent, I use it on all my ice climbing ascents. I have long monkey arms so I wish when I raised my arms it would not go down as far, but thankfully I have really awesome longish Black Diamond Samurai ice climbing gloves (in small for my woman hands).
Women's Mountain Hardware Subzero Parka - I have it in pink, although often mistaken for a 'bar jacket' because of its great looks, I've proved its awesome performance in keeping me warm on descents in the winter off of Mt. Katahdin in Maine and ice climbing in super cold conditions in the Adirondacks. Hood designed to fit over a climbing helmet. Even my male climbing partners have warmed themselves in this jacket when they left their's back in the car. Fits over all the above mentioned layers.
Men's (they don't have my size in women's) La Sportiva Nepal EVO's GTX - I'm just another fan ... great boot for ice climbing and mountain approaches. Keeps my feet warm without warmers down to 20 degrees. Below that, I stick in warmers. I have a narrow heel, and even though it is a men's boot, it still accomodates my flatish- low- volume feet.
Cold Cold World Chernobyl Pack - the must have piece of gear. I gotta say, I have a huge internal frame Gregory that I've only used on two expeditions (the Palisades), but after getting the Chernobyl, I left the bulkier Palisades at home. This pack is great for the summer to haul a 60m rope, double rack, and all your personal gear, snacks and water. During the winter, it carries my crampons, ice tools, warm clothes, thermos with hot drinks, snacks and more without a hitch. I used it on a January overnight ascent of Mt. Marcy, and the frameless pack served as a perfect lower-body bivy sack over my sleeping bag in a lean-to shelter (one where we woke up the next morning with a dusting of snow between each of us).
Mammut Schoeller Softshell Castor Trouser - um, these pants are hot, meaning they make my butt look pretty good in 'em. I basically threw my gore-tex shell pants into the bottom of my pack as a back-up after I bought these. A little pricey, but well worth it, extremely durable, warm, vented pockets, internal gaiters, breathes awesomely so I never feel like I'm too warm or too cold, water resistant, and importantly, shred resistant from clumsy footed-ness in crampons. Even my guy climbing partners have wondered if they have something similar for men.
Friday, January 02, 2009
looking back at '09
We make resolutions, and some of us the same ones ... save money, lose weight, exercise more. I feel like I just roll my resolutions over. Last year it was go on a mountaineering adventure and finish graduate school. And the latter was a resolution I had from 2007. Well what did I do that was new in 2008? Here they go:
1. Did my first gully climb, in New Hampshire
2. Did my first winter alpine ascent, on Mt. Katahdin, Maine (unfortunately this did not meet my threshold for a mountaineering adventure as my other requirement for it was to be at altitude)
3. Bought a sports car, a very expensive sports car
4. Lived in another Middle Eastern country, but not one in a war
5. Took my first trad leader fall on Laurel at the Gunks (red C3 caught me but also took up my precious handhold for the crux move)
6. Finished my graduate degree
7. Passed the bloody GWU Arabic assessment after 9 weeks of language study hell at Middlebury
8. Climbed the longest single technical route in a day ... 800+ feet, swapping leads on the Standard Route, White Horse Ledges, New Hampshire
9. Hiked up the tallest peak in NY and didn't even see it (spectacles iced over on Mt. Marcy)
10. Shot a long gun, repeatedly for days
11. Learned to give someone intravenous fluid, and actually prepped and poked someone to achieve said I.V.
12. Lived with my cat for over six months since college, until my sister cat-napped him
13. Bought a blackberry, giving up living with a laptop or internet service
14. Went to Jerusalem, somehow remembered the opening chapter of the Quran, thus proving I was Muslim and able to enter the Dome of the Rock and the interiors of the two mosques
1. Did my first gully climb, in New Hampshire
2. Did my first winter alpine ascent, on Mt. Katahdin, Maine (unfortunately this did not meet my threshold for a mountaineering adventure as my other requirement for it was to be at altitude)
3. Bought a sports car, a very expensive sports car
4. Lived in another Middle Eastern country, but not one in a war
5. Took my first trad leader fall on Laurel at the Gunks (red C3 caught me but also took up my precious handhold for the crux move)
6. Finished my graduate degree
7. Passed the bloody GWU Arabic assessment after 9 weeks of language study hell at Middlebury
8. Climbed the longest single technical route in a day ... 800+ feet, swapping leads on the Standard Route, White Horse Ledges, New Hampshire
9. Hiked up the tallest peak in NY and didn't even see it (spectacles iced over on Mt. Marcy)
10. Shot a long gun, repeatedly for days
11. Learned to give someone intravenous fluid, and actually prepped and poked someone to achieve said I.V.
12. Lived with my cat for over six months since college, until my sister cat-napped him
13. Bought a blackberry, giving up living with a laptop or internet service
14. Went to Jerusalem, somehow remembered the opening chapter of the Quran, thus proving I was Muslim and able to enter the Dome of the Rock and the interiors of the two mosques
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)