A little bit on why this peak is so hard. First off highly recommend watching Meru(mentioned on the NYtimes article) as the conditions look very similar on both mountains(Meru - being 21k feet), with Jammu being 4k feet higher in elevation.
Judging from the pictures of the climb you have very steep walls which are not entirely ice/snow or all rock, but a mixture of both which means you need strong skills in both rock climbing routes 5.9+(grading for rock climbing, this being very difficult) and dealing with snowy alpine conditions and using ice climbing axes as well as crampons. My guess is they switched footwear from boots with crampons to rock climbing shoes based on the conditions of the wall.
So you have all the skills above and now you have to deal with extreme cold and weather conditions that are positively artic(-30 to -40f at nights). In addition you are at a zone where if someone makes a mistake and gets seriously hurt that person most likely is dead and it could lead to the others in the party also dying, its why picking your partner is really really important.
Lastly the biggest elephant in the room - elevation. Despite how fit you are and well trained this can be a complete blocker, some people just get altitude sickness above a certain height and have to turn around to lower elevations.
So you are doing a route like climbing el capitan but at 20,000+ feet, and unlike el capitan you have ice and snow as well as weather which is never seen in yosemite, so hope this illustrates how difficult this summit was. Hats off to all three climbers and hope that frostbitten finger makes a recovery.
> My guess is they switched footwear from boots with crampons to rock climbing shoes based on the conditions of the wall.
Just a nit, the grade is M7 AI5+ A0 and doesn't include a free climbing grade. I would assume they stayed in their boots the whole time and did a lot of mixed climbing.
M7 is a mixed ice and rock grade and AI5+ is an alpine (permanent) ice grade. A0 is easy aid climbing, most likely hanging on hammered pitons or nuts.
The mixed and ice grade implies the rock climbing is around 5.11 (harder than most recreational climbers will climb in traditional style), likely with ice tools, and the ice climbing is technical yet with decent protection.
Thanks for the reply.. the main picture in the article looks significantly harder than 5.9+ to my amateur climber eyes, I'm not sure if there person above realizes 5.9+ is a specific rating in some places and 5.9+ doesn't mean 5.10, 5.11, 5.12, etc..
Ice climbing is straight nuts no matter what, even if you don't do it at high altitudes with no O2.
Climbing sheer faces with no Oxygen at that height is just literally bonkers.. hard to believe anyone who doesn't climb can even fathom that.
This climb is so outrageously impressive compared to the silly "race to climb all the 8000M mountains but the Sherpas haul everything up and set up ropes for you and maybe pull you up the mountain" stuff that has been in the news lately.
Bit of a tangent: Around here, and likely in many other places that were developed before double-digit YDS grades were a thing, 5.9+ is a specific and notorious grade, that is usually closer to 5.11 than 5.9.
Does that explain why many outdoors top-rope and lead climbing routes in the US feel about two grades harder than equivalently graded indoor routes? Specifically east-coast but I've heard the same applies nationally.
Gyms are just a different thing. There a few places where gym grades translate well onto real rock, but they are few and far between, and nowhere with mostly trad routes will translate. Smith Rock for instance probably translates fine. Yosemite does not.
gyms are typically softer to give their clientele a feeling of progress. this makes people feel better and want to come back. if you're stuck at v3 for several months you'd be more likely to give up telling yourself you're not cut out for climbing... at least that's my(and many others') theory behind soft gyms
outdoor climbing is also usually a completely different style. I've found that often outdoor routes have way more focus on leg work. and that find a good hand hold is way more determined by how well you can read the route rather than how good the holds are in practise. Also people making the routes outside are often way better climbers so they often don't have a good pulse on grading the lower grades. Plus adjusting a routes grade based on feedback isn't really a thing because lowering the grade of a route after it has been set is quite the insult to the credibility of the person who made the route.
It's worth mentioning the altitude. I climb several grades less at ~3000 meters (Colombia) than near sea level (Chattanooga, New England, etc). I cannot imagine what climbing at 6k meters+ feels like. And these guys are hauling gear with no margin for error.
The Mixed Climbing, Alpine Ice, and Aid Climbing grade scales, respectively. I wish I could provide more detail into each than the Wikipedia article, but the reality is each grading scale could probably warrant a small book of history and local/regional ethics.
To build on this a little - M7 involves climbing a mix of ice and rock, but instead of using conventional fingers and rubber-soled climbing shoes, you'd do the rock-only parts by "dry-tooling" - using your ice axe and crampons on the bare rock. It's kind of a weird experience.
Reinhold Messner (first guy to solo the Everest without oxygen and generally a insane alpinist) would say that the climbing part isn't what makes these high elevation mountains hard. It is the lack of oxygen which means your brain operates in a fog and the simplest of actions like tying your shoes will take forever. And that in an environment where a single wrong movement can kill you.
Messner and others keep harping on how the hardest part is mentally going forward in auch an environment. I would add: move yourself forward in such an environment and know when to cancel the thing so you won't die.
If the rating was determined in 2017, you can expect the difficulty to resemble what you find in the gym. It's the 5.9's whose ratings were applied in 1975--back when there was no such thing as a 5.13--they will kick your ass because that 9 is a 9/10, not a 9/15c. We've been making the denominator bigger as we continue to invent harder grades, and it creates a skew problem.
While this is mostly true, I just want to point out that it's mostly the less traveled routes that have this problem. Someone with a modicum of crack technique and an unremarkable gym ability will be able to get up Nutcracker (famous old school Yosemite 5.9 climb) without it feeling like they're doing anything above gym 5.10.
A member of my crew likes to seek out off-the-beaten-path climbs. The rest of us are just happy that somebody has a plan. Maybe this has set me up with a bit of a bias.
There's a great short video of this kind of high-altitude mixed rock & ice climbing from a somewhat similar route on Shivling, whose summit is 1000 meters lower. Fairly bonkers:
> 5.9+(grading for rock climbing, this being very difficult)
can you provide more context on this? this just seems a bit odd to me as a casual indoor climber. a 5.9 route isn't the easiest, but most of the holds are jugs and you can do the whole thing statically. a generally athletic person could probably climb a 5.9 in their first few visits to the gym.
I can definitely imagine that climbing a very long 5.9 route in full weather gear would be exhausting, but I wouldn't expect a world class mountaineer to find it technically challenging.
Sure. Most of my experience is in California, but I've found the grading differences from region to region to be just large as from out of state or international.
I climb 5.11c+ comfortably in the gym. I can barely lead a short Yosemite 5.8 outdoors; it's terrifyingly more difficult. That's a bit on the high side of a delta, but still typical.
I would say the difference is 75%+ in the scales simply not being the same. For the same grade, the holds would be far smaller, positions much more technical, often far more sustained, etc. The other ~25% is the environment is much more challenging, even with perfect weather at sea level: route finding is harder, you have to manage gear, leading is scary, etc.
I've done a few high Sierra climbs. Grades there are little softer, and my limit is probably ~5.7
For what it’s worth, there is also a wide variance in grading between different indoor gyms and different outdoor climbing areas.
Yosemite grades are notoriously hard; the most popular gym chain in California (which I love!) grades are notoriously soft. YMMV at other gyms and at other outdoor crags.
At the end of the day it’s a subjective guide, I wouldn’t get too hung up on the numbers.
"Grips"? I guess you mean "holds" (indoors). "Placements"? That's where you place gear, not your fingers, and you don't place gear in climbing gyms. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but pretending to have knowledge of something you know nothing about is a real problem on HN (and the internet in general). Best to say nothing than make a fool of yourself – something I'm still learning.
Alternatively, they speak a different language with different terminology and are translating. I know a few climbing terms in French and they're quite different.
What would be helpful is commenting on whether their assertion is correct or not w.r.t efficiency.
It’s definitely true. The high visibility of holds in the gym makes it easy to move quickly, even your first time up it, which saves a lot of energy.
Outside, the good and bad holds are probably the same color, and may be oriented in weird ways that require some feeling around to find the best way to grip them or stand on them.
Over time, climbers outside can learn to read the rock and make very good guesses about how to reach or step for the next usable hold. But it takes time to learn, and is somewhat location-specific because of the widely varying geology of climbable rock.
This difference is mostly about the rock and the technique. Granite is very different from limestone and Yosemite cracks are very very different from a gym. (And Tuolumne domes are yet another thing.) If you spent a summer climbing in Yosemite you'd get comfortable with the style and the grades and they'd make more sense to you.
Conversely if you took a trip to Smith Rock or Owens River Gorge you'd get a much closer correspondence between gym ratings and rock ratings.
5.9 in the gym and 5.9 outdoors are wildly different levels of difficulty. Depending on location an outdoor 5.9 could be the equivalent of anything from a 5.11a to a 5.12 and in addition you’re on lead which adds another significant level of difficulty.
5.9+ doesn't mean "harder than 5.9," it's a specific grade of indeterminate difficulty. YDS used to top out at 5.9 before 10a and the gang were added. Any climb that's graded 5.9+ pre-dates the extension of YDS beyond 5.9.
I've climbed v6 in the gym and 11c sport routes outside. There are 5.6 granite pitches that absolutely kick my ass. The sandbagged grades are very real in the mountains, and the style of climbing is totally different from whatever you see in the gym (flaring offwidth cracks are my weakness, the only ''gym'' I saw that had anything like it was a shed owned by a guy who made first ascents in Li Ming).
What's a 5.6 route you've felt challenged on? And was it the runout that did it, or the actual physical difficulty of the moves? I ask because I've done a lot of climbing outside and I never ran across something that was graded 5.6 but that was as physically demanding as a V6. I have climbed long, highly runout 5.6 that required good mental fortitude.
> “but they’ll need to accept the likelihood that they’re buying themselves a one-way ticket.”
The sensation of this achievement seems to be mainly grounded in the fact, that there was a high probability of death. I understand that this thrill is a very good hook for media coverage. But as far as I understood from reading, the main difficulty was the technical climbing part. Combined with the low oxygen atmosphere and low temperature of high altitude.
I really hope that they knew what they were doing and mitigated the risk of getting hurt. Maybe sometimes the risk of death is exaggerated in this articles to build suspense for the readers.
I think it is bad if the "Risk your life to get famous" part of this adventure is stressed too much.
> The first two days involved about 6,000 vertical feet of climbing, 60 meters of rope at a time.
As a European used to the metric system reading a sentence like this is a real challenge. I don't know why you measure hight of a mountain in feet and length of a rope in meters.
The pure difficulty of the technical climbing was not remarkable.
The grade they gave was M7, AI5, A0. M7 is moderate, AI5 is moderate but strenuous, and A0 is the very easiest A grade. The details of what these grades mean are discussed in other comments. If there was a climb with that grade close to the road in the U.S. Rocky Mountains, it would be considered a fun but not-too-challenging day of climbing by these guys.
But combine this moderate climbing grade with: the weight of a week's worth of camping supplies; the very high altitude; the very cold temperatures; the constant threat of terrible weather; the constant threat of avalanche or ice fall; and the very far distance from any kind of help... and you begin to see how it is a remarkable achievement.
The risk of death was high, yes. But it's not like playing Russian Roulette or running across a busy highway or something. The hazards are inherently part of the climbing goal, and a huge part of the achievement is in how the risks were mitigated: peak physical fitness; long climbing experience; the lightest gear; the best weather forecasting; the best planning and logistics, etc.
Metaphorically: you can't build a plane with the same safety margins you use to a build a bridge. And you can't get a rocket to orbit with the same safety margins you use for a passenger plane. The harder the objective (physically), the smaller the safety margin is available, and the more skill and expertise it takes to make it work.
>But as far as I understood from reading, the main difficulty was the technical climbing part. Combined with the low oxygen atmosphere and low temperature of high altitude.
The danger of avalanches, weather changes, and the non-availability of rescue if anything goes wrong also plays a part. Alpine climbing is a package deal of difficulty and deadliness, and these aspects are hard to disentangle. Every competent alpine climbers does what they can to mitigate risks, but there is a very significant amount of risk that cannot be mitigated except by not doing difficult alpine climbing.
I can share my perspective (downhill longboarding rather than climbing, surprisingly lots of parallels, while on average most likely less fatal it definitely can get you killed or wheelchaired).
There are exactly zero people who do these kinds of sports and have a deathwish, because every deathwish almost immediately comes true. On top of that, while the sport could technically be practiced alone, you really really really need buddies to rely on - they're gonna hold your life in their hands, you're gonna hold theirs. The "stay safe" mantra is fundamentally embedded into the groupthink.
The entire sport *is* risk management. Picking your gear, picking the route, picking your friends, knowing (and consciously pushing) your limits, knowing when to back off, dealing with trauma of injury, of seeing others injured or dead.
Media of course can and will toot the "these insane men" horn, thrill sells and an impartial report would be boring. We're guilty of this too! The boys in the crew often shoot cool videos to attract clicks and sponsorships, it's how the best of us turn the hobby into a trade.
We're not motivated by danger, we're wary of it as a constraint under which we can express ourselves.
climbing ropes are typically measured in meters and come in increments of 10(ie. 50, 60, 70, 80). that's likely the reason they used metric for the rope length... however I will agree with you that it's a weird choice given this is meant for a mainstream audience
> For alpinists, the public’s fascination with the highest mountains is a bit like judging an ocean swimmer by how deep the water is. Marvell has had similar queries from well-meaning acquaintances: How high is Jannu? “That’s not really the point,” he said.
So you got stuff like Mt. Whitney in California, where you can walk to the top, and it's the highest point in the lower 48. Then you've got the same mountain but this route: https://gripped.com/news/new-13-pitch-5-13-on-mount-whitney/ which is dramatically more difficult. For climbers it's all about the route and max elevation is less important.
I wonder if the question a lot of the public are trying to ask is "How much vertical ascent is there in the climb?", but they're not familiar enough with climbing or its terminology to come up with the right wording in the moment, and it just comes out as "How high is it?"
It's not like a lot of people would get much out of asking "How challenging is the climb?", because they'd have no real frame of reference for interpreting the answer. "How much up?" feels like a question that should be relevant, and to which the answer can be easily grasped.
holy fucking shit that hero photo of the climber on the verglas is totally nuts! i've done a fair bit of ice climbing myself, but easy, fat waterfall stuff. leading a pitch like that at altitude with that kind of exposure makes my stomach absolutely drop. alpinists are totally crazy! <3
Yeah, I have no idea how really high-altitude climbers do it. I've climbed pitches of otherwise fairly easy alpine ice at about 6000m in Peru, and that was the hardest climbing I've ever done. I've never had my calves burn like that. I can't imagine leading on verglas like that at >7000m.
I have staggered up a 30% slope at 6000m, and remember taking a few steps and then having to have a breather (albeit with equipment and food weighing me down). Although I do ice climb at lower altitudes, I couldn't imagine effort to do the same at 6000m.
What was it like? Make 2-3 moves, then stand for 30 seconds to catch your breath?!?
Every time I whack a dinner-place sized piece of ice off, or absolutely bury my picks in the ice because any thing less feels dangerously insecure, I think about stuff like what's in that photo. I have no idea how I could ever climb something like the Smear of Fear, which looks like a fat easy waterfall compared to that photo.
Not any more, but when I was learning to climb, ca 2000, I was living in the Boulder area, and the Smear loomed pretty large in the legendarium I came up in.
I live in the Boulder area. I've gotten back into ice climbing recently after a ~10 year hiatus. Smear of Fear is definitely legendary. I don't think it has had many repeats. I'm not sure how much it freezes up anymore, though.
These people prepared to die for their sport. It is another level of adventure. Source: I have climbed about 10 metres of
not ice in an air conditioned gym :-)
As a civilian, I'm surprised to learn, with all the technical improvements in mountaineering gear, that frostbite on gloved hands is still an unsolved problem.
My understanding is it has definitely been solved by the use of much thicker gloves or gloves with heating elements. But doing difficult technical climbing at very high altitudes also requires good dexterity and you are often up there for many days. Also lithium batteries don’t work much at all in temperatures that cold.
I could imagine some kind of warm water tube system that takes heat from a heat exchanger on your chest and transports it to your hands and feet, and is pumped by the action of walking. Not sure if that’s been tried before.
There’s a lot of great engineers who’ve done a lot of climbing so my guess is pretty anything that works sufficiently well to keep hands and feet warm, is also too complex, expensive or bulky to be useful in really extreme mountaineering environments.
Yeah, powered by a pump near your chest, with heat pushed out from the center using liquid, and then distributed everywhere it is needed using smaller and smaller tubes that get close to the surface of the skin before returning. And why not use this same liquid to provide extra oxygen. Love it!
The last time I was on the periphery of mountaineering, performance enhancing drugs were commonplace. A breakthrough in performance enhancing drugs should yield new results in mountaineering.
Not to pick on you because that sounds like a legit idea for the environment those guys were in, but that's part of the "plot" of "The Complicator's Gloves"
The critical factor is weight. Electric heated gloves only work if they have power. Batteries are heavy.
Water and fuel are also heavy, which means climbers on big routes like this are usually riding the edge of starvation and dehydration for days, which further raises the risk of frostbite in extremities.
There is a lot of stop and go. In the kind of conditions they were in. It's hard not to break a sweat when climbing, and hard to avoid early stage hypothermia when belaying. When the core cools down, blood flow to the extremities is restricted to conserve heat, putting them at risk of frostbite.
> I could imagine some kind of warm water tube system that takes heat from a heat exchanger on your chest and transports it to your hands and feet, and is pumped by the action of walking. Not sure if that’s been tried before.
I feel like you just re-invented the circulatory system. I don’t mean that to be snarky at all, just that I think part of the problem with your hands is that your body starts sending them less blood to keep your core warm. I’d think that pumping more heat away from your core would be bad for survival.
But my climbing is also not on vertical rock at 25k+ feet!
Lithiums don't work in cold temperatures? That's a new one on me. Many lithium battery formulations work in colder conditions than other common formulations. I don't read the NYT so didn't read the article, but were they climbing in temperatures well below -40° with exposed batteries? I know that lithiums are commonly used in balloon payloads that can get mighty cold!
You try making a few calls in -15C 5 m/s wind (typical 55 latitude continental climate weather in winter), then see the charge bar plummeting to zero when you attempt to call up a taxi so that you don't freeze to death.
About only thing you can do at that point is shove the phone into your panties to heat it back up and then hope what's left of the charge is enough and it doesn't refreeze while you're at it.
No, lithiums don't work much below 0C. Balloon payloads use insulation and heaters, but that obviously eats into energy available.
I'm Canadian. My phone doesn't instantly die in -30c, I probably lose a bit of battery life but I can still spend the whole day taking snowboarding videos or pop google maps open after a day of ice climbing.
I mean, other than this lovely anecdote, lithium batteries do, in fact, work absolutely fine I'm very cold temperatures, albeit at reduced capacity. The reason your phone shuts down is because the allowed discharge rate of the battery also goes down and it can't run its components at requested power levels, not because the battery stopped working.
Since we're sharing anecdotes - EVs are extremely popular in Norway and YouTube is full of videos of people testing the cars in negative 40 or even 50 centigrade. They work fine even without battery preheat.
Man, I've been designing solar+battery offgrid installs for a few years up to my ears into battery datasheets. And I tell you, thermal is critical for the performance.
The phone can't get the current it needs exactly because the temperature is out of spec. This is the definition of "battery stopped working".
Now if you've got a tesla-sized one, and it has a good load, then you have another problem - you have to cool it, or it shoots above 50C and you get a dead battery eventually. I can imagine a 80% charge battery of this size heating itself in a few minutes of load even from -50C. Won't get the usual 2K cycles to half capacity in those conditions, but the car will still move. A bit.
In other news, Norway is overrated wrt colds courtesy of Gulfstream. Compared to say northern Kazakhstan it has a nice mild climate.
They do work fine, but let's be real, they work with reduced range and increased charge times. I have an "older" Tesla with nearly 100k mi and operate in the north quite a bit. There is a tradeoff, which I personally think is worth it, but many do not or cannot make it.
It's fine to acknowledge the reality of current technology while also being optimistic about the future. Operating EVs in cold remote areas requires diligence and preparation. It's a fact.
I had a phone go completely off on multiple occasions doing winter runs in tahoe and it wasn't even that cold (like mid-20s but with wind) so it's not so simple. And yes nearly 8000m peak it's common to have -40° temps
These guys aren't using their cell phones to keep warm, I'm quite sure. It's true that Lithium Ion Polymer batteries, so very popular in portable rechargeable devices (and prone to the occasional thermal runaway) usually don't do well below 0°C. But that's not likely to be what they'd choose for such a mission. Simple Energizer brand AA/AAA disposable lithium batteries work fine down to about -40°, and can generally power heated socks and gloves etc. without any modification, and aren't particularly expensive given their considerably greater energy capacity and much wider temperature tolerance over alkaline formulations. The disposable lithiums weigh a good bit less than alkalines, too...for, you know, when every gram counts?
Edit: Also, these batteries aren't necessarily exposed to outside temperatures. Strategically placed near the body, they can be kept at higher temperatures for greater power efficiency - but if they are exposed to outside temps, they will not die as easily as your (pathetically useless in this situation) cell phone batteries would.
Did space suits solve it? Astronauts are in a vacuum, so heat transfer can't take place except through radiation. Meanwhile the cold air at the top of the Himalayas is very good at pulling the heat out of you.
The "space is cold" thing is actually a pretty good shibboleth for people who don't know that much about engineering things in space. Most space systems have to put in effort to reject excess heat than to hold onto basic amounts, hence those giant radiators and the high emissivity paint that gets used on most things.
But mechanical parts of the space station can be as hot as 120C (250F) and as cold as -150C (-250F), so I'm pretty sure you do want thermal insulation :-)
Worth noting that 65% of all the injuries reported during spacewalks occur to the hand.[1] They “solved” it as in astronauts are not dying because of glove malfunctions. But there is plenty of improvement to be wished for with the solution.
finger dexterity is important for technical climbing so thick gloves are a trade off. additionally, when hanging on to technical ice tools, your finger tip is doing a lot of work, so not a lot of circulation to keep the tissue healthy.
"The first two days involved about 6,000 vertical feet of climbing, 60 meters of rope at a time."
Can someone explain to me, who is nytimes writing this article for, exactly? Only Brits mix units like this, but this is an American publication - so what gives? Why not just stick to meters or feet throughout and be consistent?
This is common in the American climbing community, rope lengths are always in meters but people often use feet for wall/mountain heights.
60m is a standard category of rope, so it would be confusing (for climbers at least) to call it 196ft or 200ft rope.
It's also common to talk about 4000-footers in New Hampshire and 13ers in Colorado, so I guess that's why (some) people stick to feet for mountain heights.
I agree it doesn't make sense because sometimes you have to convert in your head to see if your rope is long enough, but it's just the custom here for whatever reason.
More accurately: probably referring to the length of their rope (and thus max pitch lengths). With alpine climbing, the actual pitch length can be all over the place due to a variety of reasons.
The whole “feet” thing made it impossible to get any sort of scale/height thing right in my head, but it is hilarious that they mix the metric system into their crazy mess. I’m not sure the Brits would’ve done it though, I like climbing articles and I can’t recall ever being this height confused before.
I’m probably some sort of challenged but I really can’t internalise if 5000 feet is impressive or not. Like it could be 20 meters or it could be a 1000. Of course it’s fair that an American article uses their various “freedom” scales and I tend to just “give up” and ignore the numbers I don’t understand. The article itself does enough to impress the magnitude of these climbers achievement without the numbers.
Not necessarily proud, but the only thing that plays on my mind when I have to deal with feet (and inches since those are called “thumbs” in my country) is that guy in Braveheart going “some men are longer than others”.
Nice! I was lucky to witness Jackson on Moose's Tooth in Alaska a few years back. He climbed solo (unroped) and caught up with us right before the ridge starting like 5 hours later from the camp than we did lol! I think i still have some photos around of us shooting bb guns in the camp next day
It always irks me when 'Mount' is added as a prefix to a proper mountain name like 'Mount Annapurna', 'Mount Ama Dablam'. Should it then be 'Mount Mt. Everest'?
This occurs with all geographical features whenever a name crosses into another language whose speakers can't interpret the part of the name that means "river" / "mountain" / "fort" / "bridge" / "hills" / "vale" / etc.
I never cease to be amazed by some of these world class climbers. The number of elite level attributes that a person has to possess to pull off these feats is mind-boggling. Skill, focus, drive, cajones…to name a few.
This is an amazing achievement, almost unfathomable the level of fitness, trust in your teammates, and expertise that they need to even have a shot at this thing.
The "death zone" starts at 26,000 feet. The peak of the mountain is about 1,000 feet under the death zone so supplemental oxygen isn't a requirement.
That being said the effect of lower oxygen is you go slower. It took them a week to ascend 10k feet, and if you'll allow me to assume a spherical cow then a hypothetically similar climb at sea level could probably be done in a couple of days going by how fast top climbers climb El Capitan.
It does, that’s one reason frostbite is such a risk in these high climbs. It’s harder for the body to generate heat because it’s got less oxygen to work with.
The brand name 'The North Face' is inspired by mountaineering where the north face of a mountain often is the most interesting but also difficult side as it's always in the shade (in the northern hemisphere). E.g., the Alps have the famous classical north faces of Eiger, Matterhorn and Grandes Jorasses which are climbed by only the most accomplished mountaineers.
Always wondered how granola types like this fund these expeditions. Are they privately funded by wealthy individuals or funded personally by working jobs in the off-season? Or family money?
> Rousseau ... guides climbers in Utah and beyond.
> Cornell ... summers around the rock-climbing hub of Yosemite National Park, working at a restaurant (owned by Anker, a mentor) to help fund his pursuits. He lives in a 2003 Freightliner van, with 320,000 miles, [down by the river].
> Marvell ... has a few sponsorship deals and also his own welding business ... climbing up and rappelling down oil platforms, timing repair work with the tides.
Per gram, ultralight climbing gear is pretty expensive. But you can only carry so many grams with you. And yes, plane tickets to Tibet are $1600. Food isn't that expensive. And yes, they had some porters and pack animals to help them walk rations to base camp at 15,000 feet. A lot of people probably spend more on golfing than these guys spent on this epic.
There's a huge difference between the cost of an 'expedition' like this and the cost of adventure tourism. If you're not paying for dozens of people to carry oxygen bottles and dry clothes and tents and warm meals it doesn't cost anything to go outside. And if you structure your life around spending more time climbing/surfing/hiking, it doesn't seem like such an impossibility to not clock in for a few months.
"If you're not paying for dozens of people to carry oxygen bottles and dry clothes and tents and warm meals it doesn't cost anything to go outside."
In some cases unfortunately it does. The local governments of the Himalayas sell quite expensive permits to climb the high summits. This one was probably free, but give it some time and popularity and you will need a expensive permit for doing this as well.
On top of what everyone else said about how they make money, lots of climbers at this level live outrageously frugally and so can easily save up. Marc-Andre Leclerc lived in a stairwell[0], and their dinners are rice and beans or "what was on sale at walmart". Think stereotypical startup incubator of bunk beds and ramen, there's only one goal and it's not day-to-day comfort.
IT is expensive, but not in $$$ terms. You have to dedicate your life to physical training which takes a lot of time. You have to have jobs that let you take a lot of time off. Nothing that is difficult per se, but still not normal.
It is also expensive in life terms - local guides often do dangerous work making this possible.
Ed Viesturs' biography, "No Shortcuts to the Top", covers this well - you can see how he saves money, works various jobs, and pursues sponsorships to fund his Everest, K2, and other big-mountain expeditions.
He'd get a trip all organized, then it will be aborted mid-climb due to weather or other issues, and he'd have to start all over again and take a few years until he can try again.
It's also just a good read if you're interested in the topic.
Combination of everything, including requests for donations. I gave a bit to help a friend climb Everest. He also got free gear and food from suppliers.
Not related to this endeavor but I generally watch people pool enough money from jobs here and there to 'take a shot' at something like this(and obviously everyone's risk tolerance and personal achievement will vary). I do think it is difficult to have a steady career given the amount of dedication that is needed for fitness, planning, etc... for big trips.
Any, none, or all of the above plus sponsorships, ads, competition winnings etc. If an athlete is sponsored they might get a lot of gear and travel paid for along with maybe a cash stipend.
There is a whole spectrum of what it means to be a "professional"
Upper middle class and wealthier parents. Even if they are living a budget "dirtbag" lifestyle they always have parents for a cash infusion if they need it. People who can afford not to work.
I’m not going to say that it is the common method, but I’ve seen what parent describes for multiple people. I’ll be the first to admit that I probably live in an upper middle class bubble these days, but it certainly happens.
OTOH, I’ve known people that live in a trailer and had a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that was worth more than the trailer. So one doesn’t have to reach terribly far to find someone that is living their priorities. Just because you aren’t willing to work odd jobs and live in a van to finance your badminton career doesn’t mean others aren’t.
I am not saying it is crazy to think that some people get by with the help of their parents, but to blatantly just generalize "these granola types" who just accomplished one of the absolute craziest climbs in history...comes off a little uneducated.
Been around a lot of climbers and skiers, many of whom at the elite level. The kind of lifestyle necessary to get to that level requires you to practice your sport instead of earning money, so you need outside support to live aka wealthy family. I dont think I've met a single person at high level in these activities who didnt come from a wealthy family. I am not trying to take away from their skill and accomplishment but that's the financial reality. It wasnt always this way but as the skill ceiling went up and cost of living went up it became more necessary.
Within the Central and Eastern European mountaineering scene that occasionally does expeditions to the Eight Thousanders, there are plenty of climbers who do not come from wealthy families. After all, such intergenerational transmission of wealth got interrupted during the socialist era, but the state provided infrastructure for people to enter the sport regardless of their background. Instead, the money comes from sponsorships.
I know this firsthand, as a friend of mine is such a climber, and my language-services business has provided native-English revision of his and his peers’ sponsorship applications for some years now. In between expeditions, it is a constant hustle for money.
well the American alpine club has an average income that's in the six figures iirc. however when there's an annual fee of $100 or so, it's a bit of selection bias.
however one of their perks is the "Live your dream" grant where they fund amateur climbers to go on their dream trip once a year. it's application based but I've known people who've gone to the Karakorum on it.
"well the American alpine club has an average income that's in the six figures iirc" how do you even come by information like this? The lowest membership fee is 45$ and as you mentioned it filters out a significant portion of the climbing population. If you are using a charity that likely has multi millionaires as part of its membership as part of your generalization for incomes across the whole climbing population...I would consider the possibility that you are way off.
The climbs are basically pure dice rolls. Alot of regular human beings could climb these mountains, they would just die 80% of the time. These climbers might only die 10-20% of the time. But they always do in the end. Still, a riviting exhibit of human exploration.
A "regular human" would die just sleeping at 20,000 feet like these people did. You're really underestimating the amount of preparation and skill that goes into a feat like this.
Likewise for this part: "The first two days involved about 6,000 vertical feet of climbing, 60 meters of rope at a time." No "regular human" is even making it 50 feet free climbing up a vertical wall, let alone the technical skill required to clip the rope, place protection, and manage equipment while climbing and working with your partner.
It's really easy to underestimate this stuff, especially if you've never actually tried rock climbing or done high altitude stuff before. It may look easy, but at around 15,000 feet it gets to the point where even the most physically in-shape person cannot walk more than a few steps without having to stop and take a breath, let alone climb a vertical wall.
Likewise, rock climbing might look easy, but go to a local climbing gym and pick a 5.9 or 5.10 (which are about medium difficulty) and unless you have past experience climbing, I guarantee you won't even make it halfway up. And that's at a gym, where everything is easier, and you don't need to worry about placing your own protection or carrying ropes.
Indeed. People who don't do these kinds of activity wildly overestimate their physical capabilities.
Part of the reason for this, I think, is that Hollywood and TV depicts ludicrous levels of acrobatic and athletic capability as the norm; apparently normal people in movies are depicted catching falling people one-handed, outrunning explosions, and so on.
Climbing, even at an enthusiastic amateur level, is much harder than non-climbers believe, and I think your suggestion that readers try top-roping a 5.9/5.10 to get some idea of even beginning climbing difficulty is an excellent idea.
I cannot even imagine the level of dedication and expertise it takes to do this sort of feat.
I don't quite believe the dice roll metaphor tells the whole story. It is not all or nothing, it is not how it is done. On that subject, I recommend reading the book by Ed Viesturs [1], first American to ascend all 14 highest mountains (summits > 8000m) without oxygen. His take is: to do all 14, you need to come back alive every time. So knowing when to give up on an attempt and turn back is key. Above 8000m (reasoning impaired by lack of oxygen), when the weather is still good, when you are so close to the top, and knowing you will have to wait years perhaps for the next opportunity it can be really hard to make that decision correctly. And picking a partner with not just all the skills bit also the same risk tolerance is vital.
[1]: No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks (October 2006)
It's 100%, for everyone. This is being written about because until now, despite a community of hyper competitive individuals vying for first ascents in extreme environments, no one has done this route until now; it was unimaginable, basically, as something you could possibly survive. But these mad lads had the imagination to see it was possible, and the skill sets to achieve it.
As for 'dice rolls', it depends. In climbing there is "objective danger" - danger you cannot really control, like your route passes under a serac that collapses frequently, and "subjective danger" that you can control - you step on a loose hold and fall. They spend months planning, trying to reduce the objective dangers as much as possible, and of course years of training to reduce the subjective dangers. Summarizing all of that as a 'dice roll', while it might capture the percentages of particular high risk climbs, seems to miss the mark a bit. Spend a night in a climbing hut, or hanging in a tent/portaledge off a mountain side and it's endless talk about this sort of thing. How to master your body, the terrain, and often most importantly and hardest, your mind.
I'd put this at Nobel prize level of achievement for the climbing world. Lifetime of effort plus unique talent, drive, focus. Whereas climbing Everest via the standard tourist route might be like passing an undergrad calc exam (few months of effort with someone teaching you, 80% of people could do it).
Not sure if you'd say "a lot of regular humans" have a Nobel. There are a lot of laureates out there, but I mean are they regular guys?
Having read a few accounts of what it takes to summit Everest, I would guess that the number of people who could achieve it is less than half of 80%. The excellent book Into Thin Air[0] has a lot more on this (and some thoughts on the increased tourism/commercialization of the mountain).
You clearly underestimate the amount of skill and tenacity involved here. I can tell you these percentages are waaay off and more like 100% death sentence for "regular" humans (if they can even do the approach). These are like olympic-level athletes (gold medalist kind).
The original comment also felt like a swipe or at least slightly disrespectful so hence my reply. But you're right - rules are rules so I edited my comment =)
I replied separately, but this is being written about because up to now, every last elite climber said 'nope, I'll 100% die on this one'. Well, perhaps there were aborted attempts (I'm not aware of any), but you abort when it becomes impossible, ie death is looming.
People can quote stats for Himalayan climbs and the such, but a climb like this lacks meaningful statistics. It is so far from a trudge up Everest, and unequalled, that I don't see how to assign a stat. Right now it stands at 0%, which is probably not the right number.
I dont have hard data but definitely nowhere close to 10-20% that’s just ridiculous. Somewhere like 1 to 10000 on routes with very high objective danger would be my guess
