Too good, too bad...

The weather has been preposterously nice for the past three weeks, but that doesn't mean all is well.  No storms, no sideways snow and buried tents, but my first summit climb was stopped cold by a serious (though injury-free) crevasse fall, and the second by the shifting snow and no-visibility of high winds on the upper mountain.

But the sun does bring out the silliest in us after a hard, cold winter.  We're thinking about publishing a calendar of Alpine guides...

The chopper finally flew, poop from the outhouses down the mountain in big barrels, supplies for the season up.  Nice to have good weather and a heli crew up where we couldn't see the next building last week.

So up to high camp, and up the mountain, and then 10 of us walked across a snowbridge that collapsed under our 11th team member, jerking one guide back several feet and eventually leaving our climber dangling unhurt but shaken about 15 feet into a wide crack!  A large section of the bridge had fallen in, but once he realized he was fine and we'd get him out soon, he was singing and taking pictures down there!  Back on the surface, the weather was too warm to continue up after such a delay, so we headed back down.

Second trip, another two beautiful days getting up to high camp.  Lounging in the sun, enjoying the unexpected warmth in May, a typically tempestuous month.  Summit morning, some high clouds started to block the starlight, then strong winds collecting snow over cracks and obscuring a safe route turned us back.  On our way down we walked out of the lenticular cloud that now sat atop the mountain and headed down in sun but continued strong winds.

Ah, well.  I won't mind leaving the mountain for a month and waiting for things to settle out, the summer route to be established.  The weather is almost too good, very unusual for this time of year, and is making us wonder when the hammer will come down.  Better run off to Alaska for a while...

Start of the season

Headed up to teach an 8-day course on Mt Rainier, one designed to cover skills required for going on a guided Denali climb.  As usual, the mountain decided to do a pretty good impression of Denali weather.  Fortunately, we were able to utilize the stone-hut public shelter to get dry and warm and do lectures.

On one of the first sunny weekends of the summer, tons of people were out at Mt Rainier, hiking around on the snow in various dress shoes, jeans, sunhats, and other inappropriate mountain gear.  So close to the trailhead you get all kinds, many of whom had never seen people like us hauling extra gear on sleds.  People-watching goes both ways, apparently.

Our first night was nice - great view from low camp, perfectly still winds, everyone excited to be on the mountain.  The next day, we decided to move to Camp Muir to avoid the incoming weather in the form of rain - getting high would make it snow, much less uncomfortable.

Ah, the incoming weather.  Four days of sideways snow (is this sounding familiar?), winds of 50 miles an hour or more, trying to make life pleasant in our limited sheltered space.  At the height of the storm, the last night, our climbers were shoveling around the clock trying to save the tents and themselves.  Well, that's how it can get on Denali...

The weather finally broke into two beautiful days, and we put all the rope travel and crevasse theory into practice by running through crevasse rescue techniques on the Kaulitz glacier.  Most people find going into an actual crevasse to be one of the highlights of the trip.  I mean, really, how often do you get to safely do that??

Best of all, we used our sleds to speed our descent on the last day - funny to watch a whole rodeo of mountain sledders heading down the slope!  Beats walking down any day...

Now headed up for two summit climbs before getting ready for Denali, and the weather is actually supposed to be decent for much of the time.  Here's to good climbing!

Back in the whirlwind...

Came back to Seattle and had a week off, and I'm not really sure where it went.  Getting over jetlag (perfectly 12 1/2 hours off!), catching up with friends after four months away, a bit of exercise and trying to organize all of my gear... suddenly a week is gone and it's time to work again.

I headed down to Bend, OR, historically home of beautiful spring weather in the nearby climbing area of Smith Rock, for a three-day recertification.  Every two years our Wilderness First Responder first aid has to be renewed, involving discussions of frostbite, fractures, altitude, and anything else you could have trouble with in the backcountry.  I got to pretend to have asthma, a spontaneous pneumothorax, and a broken shoulder for practice over those three days.  And it wasn't nice weather - it snowed on us all three days!

Back to Seattle for guide training/orientation with Alpine Ascents.  We headed up to El Dorado, had two days of decent weather, then four straight days of full-on storm.  Sideways snow, drifts building up around the tents - it was fun.  On the last morning, two tents collapsed as we packed up and headed down, glad to be leaving the mountains for now.

Today was nice in Seattle, thankfully.  I'm not quite sure I'm excited to be heading back up into the snow tomorrow, but it's time to start working.  My rib muscles are feeling good, almost entirely healed, and I'm looking forward to the season.  Back in a week!

Mumbai

...felt different than the other cities I've been to in India.  Most of it is because it's a more business-focused city, the financial hub, much like New York would be.  The bustle of business people moving about felt more focused and less chaotic than Bangalore or Delhi.  It's also by the sea, the first time I'd experienced the ocean here.

The ocean means many things.  It means there are fishing communities, and the slums that accompany this industry.  It creates a shore, that defining edge of land that evokes perspective and a sense of openness.  It enables landmarks like Mumbai's Gateway of India, a monument to "the landing of their imperial majesties", the king and queen, in 1911.  And it means it's humid as all get out.

You can take a one-hour boat ride to Elephanta Island, site of many ancient caves, one of which still has amazing carvings hidden inside.  There are actually three villages on the island, a captive population to hawk the many trinkets and clothes ubiquitous at such tourist destinations.

Having just finished the book Shantaram, I knew many of the names and landmarks of the city, but with no reference to geographical location - it was interesting filling in my orientation with the legendary Leopold's, Colaba Causeway, Marine Drive, and others.  I stayed close enough to be able to walk to many of the sightseer's destinations, but far enough from the tourist area to disassociate 

myself from it.  I hate staying in tourist areas.

There are an incredible number of old British-raj-era buildings that may still be in use, to some extent, but are in the inexorable process of mouldering and falling down.  It's a bit like one of those movies where humanity has abandoned a city - plants and vines creeping up walls, watermarks staining the outside walls, dust and decay setting into the books and furniture inside.  My sister would love it.

Next to all this, of course, are skyscrapers and innumerable miles of congested residential maze - I took the train 45 minutes north of downtown to meet Harsh, injured cyclist from the Sikkim ride, and other friends of friends living in the more populated suburbs and witnessed, among other things, the Oberoi mall.  Walking in was weird - I could have been in any bright fancy mall anywhere else in the world.

Hilarious observation of the week: Apparently the trend of artistic decoratings of some theme animal has arrived in Mumbai.  But what animal for a city in India?  The water buffalo, of course.  A series of brightly-painted offerings were displayed in a tiny garden near Churchgate station.  Ha!!  Gotta love it.

I didn't get to a couple of things like the Haji Ali mosque and a museum or two - have to save something for the next time...

Back to the mountains

The Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM) is one of four government mountaineering institutes in India.  It is heavily subsidized, and teaches everyone from lowlanders who have never seen the mountains to those who grew up in the Himalayan foothills the skills of mountaineering.  Three- and four-week basic, advanced, and search-and-rescue courses begin with walking uphill and end with technical climbing and rescue techniques.

I had originally planned to hike up to meet two of the courses - a basic course and a search-and-rescue course that a friend was on - but my delay by injury meant the courses were on their way back.  But despite my imposed physical limitations, I was well 

received and made a great connection with the Vice Principal, one Major Thapa, who I look forward to working with in the future.  We had time to discuss many aspects of the climbing establishment in India and, more importantly in the short term, arrangements for me to return in the fall to work with one of the courses as a guest instructor.

Friend Sujay's search-and-rescue graduation formalities included the display of ceremonial NIM sweaters, a rite of passage he had experienced twice before on the basic and advanced courses.  Nice!

With some of my readily available time to myself, I walked down to the market in town.  Four women who had been walking around NIM earlier met up with me and invited me to their house the next day after a friendly, if quiet-ish walk downhill.  Why not?  

Her house turned out to be one of those two room affairs tucked next to the market road, one room for everyone to sleep and the other to cook.  Her family was either gone or kicked out, and the afternoon was spent looking at pictures of their family and friends and utilizing their limited-but-much-better-than-my-Hindi English to exchange basic life stats.  They are all about 24 and unmarried, and traditionally generous to their visiting guest.  The ceiling turned out to be a little low for me (probably wasn't planned with 6-foot foreigners in mind!), but the company was fun, and I look forward to seeing them on future trips to NIM and the town of Uttarkashi.

Intermission

I decided to postpone the mountains for a week so as not to tempt myself into further injury, so instead went to Bangalore for a week of rest and visiting friends I met on last year's mountain bike race. My last visit involved lots of running and cycling, but this time I'm fairly boring - "resting" isn't quite as glamorous and definitely not as conducive to good pictures. (See, you all want me to get better, too! ;-) I'm finally seeing some progress in healing, so will try to persevere in the resting effort. *wry grin*

So instead, more impressions of the crazy mishmash that is the cities of India:

One of my friends noted that if you wanted to bring the US to its knees you wouldn't need terrorists. Just abduct 10 Indian auto-rickshaw drivers (the ever-present three-wheeled open-air taxis) and set them loose on our roads. Then sit back and watch the crippling chaos. Just imagine trying to drive in a city full of them...

At the relatively healthy food market nearby, I can get a half-pound of red grapes, eight little Kerala bananas, four local oranges, and a miniature cantelope, all amazingly tasty, for 99 rupees, about two dollars. The same money gets you a tea at Coffee Day, trendy cafes modeled after the coffee shops I'm accustomed to at home. A muffin will be another family supply of fruit, please.

The autorickshaw driver stopped at a shop on my way back from central Bangalore this afternoon to buy oil for his vehicle's two-stroke engine. The oil-wallah filled his empty oil container from one of four juice pitchers on the counter holding different types of oil. I love that there's an everyday bypassing of the excess packaging we can't let go of in the US. On the other hand, the practicality of this arrangement is potentially offset by the likelihood that the oil is dirty, or sub-standard, contributing to the incredibly high levels of the pollution in the city.

What to do. I love many of the chaotic overtones of daily life here, their difference from the sometimes restrictive or excessive habits of the US. But I'm finally listening to my friends' observations of the negative aspects of their continuous practice. No place is perfect - I guess we just have to find the balance we're willing to put up with and keep trying to make it better...

Up and down

Up to Sikkim!  Whirlwind flights and buses landed me in Gangtok, launching point for another mountain biking event in this tiny Indian state tucked up against Nepal, Tibet/China, and Bhutan.  Late, of course, due to little information on schedules and transportation in any event literature.  But in time for dinner and meeting up with many people from last fall's MTB Himachal, putting my bike together, and preparing for the next day's start.

After the usual speeches and bagpipe band, we wound through curving mountain streets until spitting rain and the realization that we were ahead of the guide vehicles (and off route) drove us under whatever eaves were nearby.  An hour, much confusion, and two false starts later, we arrived at the starting point for the first timed stage.  This is the second year of the race, and things were still not worked out properly.  Start times were 4 minutes apart to ensure good timekeeping and rider spacing.  But with two at a time, 50 riders, and 10-minute gaps between categories, that meant the last people were waiting for 2 hours!  Cold and bored...  Things were better next tim, but some folks still got in after dark.

The second day was nicer, and a little smoother, but I managed to get not one but two flats on the downhill race stage, the only kind of terrain I have any chance of getting a decent time on!  Sheesh.  That's as many flats as I've had in all my cycling days!  Then a long uphill race stage, followed by another big uphill grind to camp.  Are we having fun yet?  I elected to ride in the Army truck once done with the racing.  Yup, wussed out.

By this time, however, my lower ribs, strained by so much coughing recovering from bronchitis, had worsened from the exertion of mountain biking (OK, and skiing, but it didn't bother them much at the time!). I didn't want to quit, but sneezes were excruciating and it was starting to affect day-to-day activities, like lying down to sleep.  No more riding for me.  Boo.  I lent my bike to someone with a really crappy cycle for the rest of the ride and gathered emails from some of the various Indian, Canadian, etc riders that are the real reason I come here...

But to distract from that: as I was riding in the support vehicle the next day, taking a rest/decision day, a friend that I had finally met on this ride had a bad crash.  Arriving on the scene before the ambulance, which never actually came, I and several other people ascertained that nothing was life-threatening, but definitely messy.  Knees, elbows, side, and particularly face were pretty well scraped, and half of one front tooth gone!  The army doctor eventually arrived to treat him there, and a visit to the local hospital finished cleaning him up.

With Harsh out of commission and headed back to Delhi, I decided to follow to discourage myself from foolishly opting back in.  After the drive back to Gangtok, we were able to take a chopper back to the Bagdogra airport for only Rs 2000, about $40!  Nice views, though the high Himalayan mountains so close to Everest were clouded in.

Back in Delhi, I've gone to a recommended doctor who frowned, ruled out cracked ribs with an x-ray, and basically said I'd pulled all my lower rib muscles.  Rest until they get better - nothing that uses them.  Huh.  That's pretty much everything I do, and definitely out of line with my scheduled activities!  But I have to be completely better by the time I'm scheduled to work again in early May, so hopefully that motivation will keep me in line.  Ah - travel, reading, and sitting around eating too much, my favorite.  I'm still going up north to Uttarkashi to meet with some mountaineering institute folks about future work/collaboration - I'll just be careful... *grin*