“this day had no ties to the past or future, her thoughts were cut off from implications”
Being Present + the Past
Birds, naturalists, nature lookers, species knowers. M + J
It’s cold here in the morning, hard to get out of the warm bag, slow start, gales whistling, howling against the hut’s metal siding. Inhumane environment. The weather door keeps clapping against the wall, wind whipped. I wonder if someone has gotten up, maybe for a pee? Just don’t go outside.
Then the calm comes. Slow life here, one-thing-at-a-time life, read the things you never have time to read, unearthed thoughts finally have time to air, finally unencumbered by “efficiency this, efficiency that.”
The layers of what you share with the world, how many circles, the past, how many selves, levels of appropriateness.
Relaxed refinement.
Nothingness + Simplicity
Little spec of warmth, jazz, light, in the middle of the waste, inhumane, landscape of extremes, night, sea of ice, rock, wind.
How can I simplify life down to its essence, materials, routines, mental energies, space, body. Limited materials, use what you have to repair, to cook only with the ingredients on hand. You have to be more careful. You have to value each thing.
Jet boil lid pole basket.
Harsh Environment
What do you mean, you forgot it’s summer? Today, the curtain of anesthesia broke.
Booting up the ridge was intense: howling winds, extremely variable snow, shoddy sloppy rock footholds. It was mentally unenjoyable to be there — takes a lot of physical and mental exertion to get through, and serves as a reminder that this sport is hard! Shitty when you know turning around is really going to suck, getting back down the way you came, it would have been all footsteps. To keep going up was only slightly less shitty.
But there was also something moving about being up there in the elements, foraging our way through, coming across really bad conditions, low visibility, emerging avalanches. What took us an hour to ski two days ago took us 3 hours today. Quite an epic. Should we have gone backcountry skiing today knowing what we know now? Probably not. We miscalculated how bad the weather would get, how severe the storm, snow, wind, visibility, and snow stability. It’s been a while.
As howling wind battered the hut walls, I felt, above all, alive. In the midst of reality. Here was the harsh, awe-some world we too rarely seem to face for ourselves. Then, an eye turned upon myself, naked from superfluous-less-ness.
Feeling far away from home, far away from parents.
DOC Franz Joseph, Franz Joseph, over? This is Pioneer Hut, over. Freezing our butts off. Chocolate rationing, one square reward, one square punishment.
Weather + Planning
Forecast your own damn weather. Day three in the hut, the storm clouds cleared. Finally the beach came into view, ocean crests off in the distance, a sea of ice, sea of waves.
Ski trips to New Zealand in mid-winter, lots of planning, lots of changing plans, needs nimbleness, flexibility, the willingness to spend a lot of your time planning, sitting around, waiting, wondering, mapping, researching. Looking at weather reports that are always changing.
The art of route planning: hours pouring over maps, taking photos, reading guidebook descriptions, trip log reports discussing options, risk tolerances. It’s fun, the uncertainty causes apprehension, excitement. Going through logistics.
Clouds on the ocean look like icebergs, with jungled hills peaking out in between.
Lenticular forming on high peaks indicate a large weather system moving in.
Post Glacier Peak
south east slab layer
blank slate, open calendar
blue vibe from red hot city
fulfillment
Partner + Trust
The purpose of a partner: pushing but making a safe space where you feel supported, trusted, and you can always turn around.
Ideal to real, Val the perfectionist. Peter the pragmatist. Benefits to both. Messing up our glacier rescue tests was sobering. Bringing into view my actual versus perceived preparedness. Lucky for the low consequences. Unlucky to be stuck at the hut all day practicing? Hardly. Being up here feels like enough.
The need for strong partnership in the mountains is crucial. To not feel judged upon expressing oneself is essential to communicating vulnerability, especially in harsh environments. On a mountain trip, there will always be tensions and social challenges that arise. Partners must figure out a way to overcome these, put them aside, and find supportive, cohesive dynamics.
Observing the power of subtle, partial endorsement in route finding: yesterday, the route up the ramp of Porters West Ridge, I fully put my vote toward ascending there, even though I was unsure.
A partner must be someone who you can rely on, but in the sense that you trust they will tell you if they are uncomfortable, because you cannot stay focused in the mountains on any extreme task at hand and simultaneously read someone’s emotions, continuously appraise their comfort zone.
Turning Around
Val and I tried for Glacier peak today, 8/13, easy hour long approach, crampons, and about two-thirds of the way up, we started getting nervous about the snow, which, even as we approached the peak from afar, we could tell was going to present serious potential for avalanche danger.
Digging four hand pits, we found two six-inch wind slab layers on top of sugar snow (upside down snowpack). My tests failed on twelve and seven respectively, clean shear. That was enough to call it.
We walked down until we felt we were out of avalanche danger, which included Val falling knee deep into a crevasse (bergschrund) we had crossed on our way up. From there we put on our skis and glided back to the hut. Pretty good turns, breakable crust.
That was the first time I had ever gone up and down a moraine, which comprised the entire vertical snow face of Glacier Peak. It was a strange feeling skiing through exposed glacier innards — hard to know whether we were looking at crevasse sidings or bergschrund, maybe even a serac. Val’s strengths in risk tolerance have to do with exposed mixed climbing, technical ascents. I am more used to glacier hazards, and now they overlap with the mountain environment.
Activities + Mind
It’s amazing to observe the power of activities to put you in different mindsets.
Drinking: whimsical and derisive.
Running: efficient, linear, simple.
Reading: contemplative, intellectual.
Drawing: listening, quiet, absorbing.
Eating: where to begin.
Cool Things
On these trips we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do cool things, big things, real things. I don’t always realize it, but that’s often the basis for feeling let down or disappointed.
Sometimes the best feeling in the world is canceling everything and just laying low. It’s nice when you feel like you have the time and latitude to do so.
Van Living
Van Living. Each one lined up, foggy windows, 5 am, dark inside, their little blue “self contained” sticker on the back. This is a way of life here. Seems like a struggle winterwise.
Growing out facial hair, transitioning out of city indulgences, comforts.
The transition from summer to winter.
Val surfed, I was too cold. So is the van, cold.
Van humility, it’s common here. And the ethic it takes to live in a van with someone else, supreme sensitivity to others, staying super organized. Clean. Being really cognizant of your impact on a space. The main theme, coming to understand places, driving, looking, talking, mapping, experiencing, rolling.
Tour Guides
It was nice hardly having to make decisions for where to camp, where to eat, drive, what sights we needed to stop and see. We got to check out all the crazy cool nooks and crannies off side roads, hot springs, secret trails to the beach, waterfall caves.
Old Friends
Jesse and I; telling stories, maybe 100 by now. I haven’t thought of them in years. Transporting me back. Reminding me of parts of myself I haven’t contemplated in a while.
Interpersonal relations, movements, are magnified, the impact of others, times ten. Romance is highly palpable to all. Your own behavior.
Jesse, memories of closeness and distance come back to me. He is not the boy I once knew, he is a man, grown, still the same in many ways, now he has many wise words and ways. Just like his father, his mother. It’s the first time I'm really internalizing, understanding his transformation, from maybe 15. That was probably the last time I really knew him well. Maybe earlier. Like family, I can feel myself getting younger, falling into an old self around him. It's nice to be young again, playful; he is always giggling and teasing.
Squares
Hearing about all of Jesse and Maddie’s new friends in New Zealand made me feel square. They are so creative and hilarious and charismatic. Talking about pollen and wine grapes for hours. Makes me feel set in my linear brain ways, a call to challenge myself to grow the bounds of my mind.
How do you get down (up) the hill?
Style, how do you get down the hill? How do you move through the mountains? Not just about whether or not you do it, but how you do it. Steeze. Canvas sports, surfing, climbing, skiing.
Change is as much internal, mind, as it is external, circumstances. The feeling up there today was special. The first time you get that feeling again in a long time is singular.