[HN Gopher] Three American climbers solve the 'last great proble...
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Three American climbers solve the 'last great problem in the
Himalayas'
Author : carabiner
Score : 50 points
Date : 2023-12-01 19:49 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| 303uru wrote:
| Good read here: https://trekebc.com/alan-rousseaus-north-face-
| climb-of-the-j...
|
| This is a wild accomplishment in the mountaineering world.
| lbeckman314 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing carabiner, phenomenal achievement! Here's a
| non-paywall/gifted link:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/us/climbing-jannu-north-f...
| ghaff wrote:
| I thought it was a crazy looking peak when I was in the area.
| There are apparently (vaguely! relatively!) easier routes but it
| looks insane.
| WoodEye wrote:
| 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?
| ghaff wrote:
| Outdoor equipment manufacturers in a lot of cases.
| jonah wrote:
| Mostly working jobs in the off-season and sponsorships like
| 'ghaff mentions.
|
| It's not _that_ expensive of a hobby. Maybe $5k of gear a piece
| plus travel expenses for a minimal expedition like this.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| 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.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| FTA:
|
| > 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.
| dieselgate wrote:
| 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"
| lispisok wrote:
| 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.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Source or are you just spewing out your rear end?
| mikestew wrote:
| 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.
| mym1990 wrote:
| 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.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| I think a lot of window washers do it to fund climbing trips
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| 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.
| glaucon wrote:
| "Mount Jannu" and "The Jannu" ... neither heard of these phrases
| used to describe Jannu before -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbhakarna_Mountain.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| 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
| mjhay wrote:
| 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.
| petsfed wrote:
| 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.
| elzbardico wrote:
| I think the NYT should be a beacon of progress and start using
| the metric system. Reading things like 15500 feet in 2023 hurts.
| carabiner wrote:
| Maybe the best point for a popular 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.
| Karellen wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| How does the thin air/lack of oxygen not mess with them over that
| many days?
| buzzdenver wrote:
| They're at really high altitudes only a low percentage of time
| jjulius wrote:
| Acclimatization.
| te wrote:
| 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.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| 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.
| zakary wrote:
| 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.
| Crunchified wrote:
| 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 -40deg with exposed batteries? I know
| that lithiums are commonly used in balloon payloads that can
| get mighty cold!
| crubier wrote:
| Space suits solved it. But climbers need dexterity.
|
| Thermal insulation requires thickness, almost by definition.
| Dexterity requires thinness, also almost by definition. It's
| hard
| lukasb wrote:
| North face of Jannu wearing North Face, no less
| subsubzero wrote:
| 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.
| wetmore wrote:
| > 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.
| neonate wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20231201210754/https://www.nytim...
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| 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.
| yeahwhatever10 wrote:
| That is how I felt when watching the documentary on Marc-Andre
| Leclerc, eventually the dice were going to roll against him and
| they did.
| mym1990 wrote:
| 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.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| 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
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(page generated 2023-12-01 23:00 UTC)