Mountaineering 101: A Good Nickname

SO I was reading a fellow bloggers blog... naturally, and he posted the top 10 best names for climbers. Check em out here. Since not all of us were born with bad ass rock climbing names like Dave Dangle, I've decided to make up the top 10 nicknames for the outdoorsy folk. Here they are in no particular order.

1. The Ascender
2. Col
3. Sticht
4. Summi
5. Pru (for Prusik)
6. Zip
7. Lupsy
8. The Descender
9. The Edge
10. Sirdar

Now that I've found all these great nick names, is it proper to give my self one? I was in a heated argument with a man who wanted to call himself Cobra. I'm not sure what happened to that guy, or if he ever followed through iwth his intention, bu one things for sure. Nobody's going sto take his name from him. With that in mind, I now deem myself Sticht Patla. So call me that from now on.

What it takes to climb a moutain.... Part 2

Base camp: 8,000 ft - Bunny foot trail.
S0 what is there to do at base camp when you're stuck on a mountain? You have 4 days on this mountain, and you're not planning on making your summit attempt for 2 days. I'll tell you what we did. We hit on all the crazy hot chicks that were there getting wasted and dancing with there friends all while making out with each other while getting sprayed with water cannons and briefly exposing themselves for all of us unworthy "gentlemen" there. Oh wait... that's what happened to my friends who went somewhere warm, like Cancun for Spring break. All the girls on the mountain I met hadn't showered in three days, and smelled as ripe as a bunch of old banana locked in Cory work desk for a week. But who am I to judge? I spent all 4 days in the same pair of long Johns occasionally wiping myself down with a frozen baby nap. The good news is, during the 2 days before our summit bid, we learned how to NOT kill ourselves and/or our friends. After a long day of being awesome on a mountain, learning how to self arrest, put on crampons and get out of the way of falling boulders, I'd text all my friends and tell them how hard core I was, checked my work email and chuckled knowing exactly what I was missing... Suckers!!

Once the sun went down the temperatures dropped close to zero. Jay spent the entire first day making an ice table for the entire crew so we'd sit down and eat as a family. Surprisingly enough, we ate very well. The guide service we had brought all of our food for us and we had burritos, and Chili an eggs... They even brought us desert! How awesome is that? And let me tell you, our guides were babes. I'm not sure if it was their self arresting technique, or the fact they had set foot on the peaks of mountains I can only dream of. Ones things for sure, I was definitely more charming, Cory was way more funny and Jay I think told them we were all doctors or something... bottom line, it made the trip that much more fun.

The night before we forged for the pinnacle of the volcano, we went to bed at like 5pm. Here's a nice little pic of Jay, Cory and I sandwiched in a two person tent. This was intentional... I mean sometimes dudes have to cuddle to stay warm. Also, the fact we didn't know how to make a good flat area for our tent means we'd wake up all on top of one another. The good news is we did have my iPhone and I loaded on the movie 'Juno.' But movie night abruptly ended when my batteries ran out at my favorite part (when Jason Baitman tries to rationalize dumping his wife to be cool in the eyes of a pregnant teenager...). 11pm came very quickly and was followed a sea of climbers making a last dash to the compost toilet to "lighten load" one last time to avoid being the guy that crapped infront of an entire mountain of climbers on a paper target which to rub it in, you had to cary with you the rest of the time. Awesome.

So it's pitch black, we get our helmets and headlamps on, it's like -20 degree's and the stars are out and posed in the sky is a full moon. It was gorgeous. 14 of us lined up and waited for what seemed like 45 more minutes waiting for a straggler to put his snow suit and boots on (side note: This is the start of a series of events I will bitch about later). We finally start breaking trail a little after midnight. It's a little over 2000 vertical feet of slow winding valleys from Bunny to Helen lake which proved to be a pretty easy stroll. Not all of us in the group agreed with that... our hourly 10 min breaks turned in to 20-30 min little freezing parties while the "less trained" caught up (Bitch #2). Finally we rounded the last crest and made it to Helen Lake at dawn.

Helen Lake is the base of a huge, steep glacier called Avalanche Gulge (comforting name). At this point we break off into rope teams. The guides, Kirah and Meg decide to break us off into strong and weak climbers which personally should have been done hours sooner, but whatever. The strong crew, Cory, Jason, Myself and Janet (made up name cause I forgot) shot up wiht Kirah while the rest hung with Meg. I was disappointed to see her go but Finally we can start making up the ground we lost waiting for the slower people... Unfortunately the last 4 days on Shasta were winter like conditions which meant lost of snowfall. It wasn't effortless drudging up that portion of the mountain and it sure as hell felt good to get to the entrance of the Red Banks.

Red Banks is at about 12,000ft and it's large chutes of red lava rocks that was created by flowing magma back as the creating of the Volcano. It was pretty cool to look at. Surprisingly enough, at this point nobody got had any altitude sickness. That's not entirely true, Janet got a little belly ache half way up Avalanche Gulge and was forced to drop one on a target in front of the entire rope team. It's not like it's something we haven't seem before though, I mean we are from Pittsburgh. Standing at the bottom of Lava chutes wasn't a typical experience, at least not for me. There's still 2,400ft to climb and your looking up what I've come to believe to be the hardest part of the entire trip. The chutes were solid ice, with a thin layer of powder snow sprinkled on top. Our guide Kirah had us barreling up without crampons which later turned out to be a huge mistake (Bitch #3). 1000 vertical feet of ice climbing without spikes on your feet proved to be a very frustrating learning experience for us all especially me... this is where the infamous "breakdown" occurred. Which I think blown out of proportion by Cory when we got back to Pittsburgh a little, but whatever. Two hours later, we busted through the other side of the Red Banks to the bottom Misery Hill. The last stretch of real estate before reaching the sought after summit.

We were all pretty tired at this point. But what's mountain climbing without being weak and tired. All four of us were still fully invested in reaching the top and would have done whatever to get there. Unfortunately Kirah didn't feel the same, and she with her 30+ summits of Shasta wasn't in the mood to make this day a "double headlamp day." (Bitch #4). So we turned around less than 1300ft from reaching the top of my first mountain. It did tear me up a little bit... Having worked so hard for something to not reach my goal. A character trait (flaw to a certain degree) all three of us share is we're goal seekers. It's what got us to 13,000ft and it's what will get us there again. It wasn't an happy or easy decision but we were another 2 hours from the summit, weather had started moving in and it was getting late, so we agreed and followed our guide back down the hill.

We made it through the Red Banks, then down Avalanche Gulge. It started snowing something fierce, and before we knew it all you could see was white. The growing inches of fluffiness prevented us from glacading down the mountain our our asses, which really stunk for me having tender knee's. It took another 4 hours to climb down the mountain. We reached Bunny Trail camp around 6pm cold, wet, tired and hungry. To make matters worse, we had to pack up camp and hike the remainder of the way to the car. So the next 2+ hours weren't to exciting. But we did see climbers on their way up to make their own attempt, and they got a bit discouraged after looking at Misery they had to look forward to as we passed them on the trail back.

Cory, Jason and I finally made it to the hotel around 8pm. Something I learned and will never make that mistake again, is putting on a very high SPF sunscreen on our faces. We all looked like hell. Places we didn't even think could get burnt did... like under our ears, and up our noses. It was painful. Nothing beat the shower though! Once we were all showered up, we went back to Billy Goats (Ha... I remember the name) for a celebratory beer, and another "Greatest Berger in the world."

I think all three of us learned a lot and we're all looking forward to climbing together in the future. As a matter of fact we started training this weekend for a climb we're making in April to the top of Mount Whitney. It should be Un.... Real. As far as the bitching is concerned.. I think we could have made the summit, had we not wasted all that time in one group, or waiting at base camp for the straggler... or even if conditions were better. Hindsight is always 20/20 and I'm sure if things played out differently we may have makde it. But they didn't, we all still had a great time and I don't regret one second of it.

Microsoft 0, James 1

Eff you Microsoft. That's right after hours of trying last night... rounds 1 through 6 went to Bill and his legion of Vista bugs. Just prior to calling it a night and hanging my head in defeat I had one last ditch effort that saved me from quitting my profession as a computer engineer. Here's the story of what I did to relinquish myself of that Mind numbing experience we call Vista.

I recently got a new computer, and rather than PAYING Dell for the "Downgrade," I chose to get Vista and remove it manually. I mean gosh... I'm an engineer I'm sure I can figure this one out. First let me get this off my chest...

'HEY DELL... the fact that you charge more for a DOWNGRADE is gay. You'd be better off putting a cheap spin on Apples. You'd spend half as much on outsourced telephone support... that's for sure.'

Moving on. First I figured I'd partition my HD and just run two Opearting systems, then delete Vista once I had a stable version of XP on it. The catch... Vista won't let you run an XP install disk. You can boot to it, but you lose your entire allocation table when you try and "fix" your MBR. And by god you better be willing to deal with a shit storm. I tried everything to restore it... and not because I really wanted to have vista, I'd honestly rather type assembly code to execute my commands that run that piece of shit operating system, but all my dear MP3's I spent years pirating right down the tubes (FU Lars). I gave up with that at about... 830pm. 10 rolled around and I had just about lost it... But Then I remembered something.... I have an old version of a Man's Operating system I can use to fix everything.

My brilliant idea was to boot into Red Hat from my CD ROM drive and and format the entire HD. And that's exactly what I did. Red Hat vs. Windows is like David and Goliath, if David was the winning kill-bot on robot wars and Goliath was the Copy Machine from Office Space that Michael Bolton beats the shit out of. Shit, Red Hat is so proficient I had to stop it from formatting my carpet once it ran out of Microsoft bytes. It was awesome...

To sum things up... In the future, just spend the extra 400$, and get a MAC. It'll never screw you over. They break half as often. They're pretty, sleek... you carry one around while wearing a cardigan and horned rim glasses and chicks think you're intellectual (or like dudes). Hell this chick like them...

As they eagerly wait...

I know everyone's eagerly waiting part 2 of "what it takes to climb a mountain" but I'm just not in the mood to put forth the effort to do it right this second. I'm not sure I even want to talk about anything... so I'll just name 5 things I really want to do.

1. Climb Denali
2. Scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef
3. Hang Glide
4. Fly in a fighter jet
5. Get the band back together... ha

well I hope that pulls some weight for y'all. Maybe this is the start of List Tuesdays or something. Stay tuned for next weeks episode when I discuss the 5 greatest Christmas presents you can buy for someone exactly like me... ;)

What it takes to climb a moutain.... Part 1

I was at work surgerizing yesterday and someone asked me 'what made me get into mountain climbing?' and 'How I figured out what to do to climb a mountain?' I'm assuming they meant what does it take to get to the base camp at any mountain. But I'll tell you what it takes to get to the summit as well.

Last May, Cory, Jason and I decided we wanted to stand on top of something big... I mean freaking huge. Since it was my idea I suppose I'd be the A-hole to do all the running around and looking for information. So first things first, how to pick a mountain. When I went looking for our peak, I went simply typed into google "Climbing Mount McKinley." Which I learned fast, was not our mountain. But it lead me to this great website with 10 mountains to climb, their difficulty and all the information we'd need to know to "Git'er Done."

So after reading about all the mountains, figuring out just how much time we all could get off, and reading about what each mountain offered as far as experience we chose Mount Shasta (14,162ft). By no means was this a beginner mountain, but we wanted an expedition style climb, winter like conditions and something freaking HUGE! Also Shasta is a Volcano, the good thing about that is volcanoes pop up practically anywhere making it easily accessible by road and not sandwiched between 100 other peaks in the center of a mountain range. So we went ahead and booked the trip in December for the following May. We'd fly into Medford, Oregon and make the two hour drive south through the rolling hills of Northern California to the city of Shasta at the base of the Mountain.

Now what? We have 5 months and nothing to do till then... Not exactly the case. We had to buy our gear and train. Let me tell you gear is not cheap! We boiled it down to the basics separating things we could rent, things we didn't really want to rent but would if we had to and lastly things we couldn't rent (which ironically was the bulk of the stuff). Researching and shopping for that stuff is one of the most fun things I've ever done. First off I love buying stuff (esp. for myself), and the thrill of going home and playing with your new toys is even more thrilling. I bought, a climbing jacket, mountaineering boots, sub 20 degree sleeping bag, Patagonia thermal undies, a GPS, some socks, gloves, glacier glasses, a hat, some gators, a first aid kit.... well you get the point. A lot of stuff for a grand total of nearly 3,000 $. Let me tell you REI outlet and Sierra Trading post are the place to buy stuff.

So now we have all our gear... time to get training. All we did to train was hike locally. We did a trail called Hells Hollow in McConnells Mills national park about 11,000 times. Well not that many times, but enough that I know it better than I know my own my own house. It's about a 14 mile hike from HH to the covered bridge but we'd do about 10. Hells Hollow is a pretty technical trail with a lot of elevation changed and places with tricky terrain, oh and gorgeous. Perfect for beginners...

Finally our weekend was approaching!! We had all our gear, and we trained like Olympic athletes for months!! I may have seen an ab or two before we left, which I haven't seen since my wrestling days, and probably won't see again till my next climb. So I picked my two friends up at 430am for a 545 flight to Chicago where we'd have our first of our three layovers... and the first of a few bloody Mary's. Cory actually sat at the bar and waited 25 minutes till 9am so the bartender could legally serve us. It wasn't the first alcoholic moment I've had, so I did the same.
No shame....

The flight continued to Portland, Oregon where our next layover took place. As we were approaching the city, Cory looked at the window and saw Mount Hood, then leaned over to Jay and said... "Oh geeze, I'm glad we're not climbing that mountain. It's huge!!" What Cory didn't know was our mountain trumped that one by nearly 3,000 ft. ouch... Another 2 hour layover with some more Bloody Mary's (actually we moved on to beer and Jack at this point) and we got on a prop plane to take us to the quaint town of Medford, Oregon. We landed stepped off the plane and it immediately jumped in to our rental car for the 2 hour journey south out of Oregon, and into northern California.

After seeing what Hood looked like in Portland, I was a little nervous to see Shasta. And let me tell you... I had every right to. Once we broke out of the cascades that separated Oregon from California we entered into a long stretch of flat highway that lead us straight to Shasta. We were 120 miles away and we could still see it. We were flabbergasted by its beauty and terrified of it's size. It's almost impossible to describe, and the pictures we took don't do it a lick of justice. But I'll post it anyway.

A little over 2 hours later we pulled into our motel just outside of the small town of Shasta California. It was 5pm, and we were starving. First things first, Beer and food. We dropped off our bags and headed down town to satisfy our more primal instincts. We stopped at the local coffee shop which turned out to be the place we'd spend most of our time when we're in town. Cory met a guy there, he had long dark hair and stunning blue eyes and happened to head up our guide service. They had so much in common it was almost cute with the exception it was two dudes and I have to spend 3 days in a tent with one... Anyway it was getting late, so Cory had to cut his man-date short with Christian from Shasta Mountain Guys I mean Guides, we went to this restaurant-bar. The name had something to do with a goat, I'd tell you but I totally forgot. We got a table for three, invited the only two girls in the bar to join us (because of what just happened in the coffee shop) sat down and proceeded to put on an eating clinic for the remaining patrons. 9pm rolled around pretty quickly and the bar has since run out of food so we stopped off at the local food shop to stock up on organic mixes and carrot juice, then crashed the Eff out.

So there you have it. What does it take to get to the Base camp at mount Shasta?
Airplane - 800$
Guide Services - 550$
Gear - 1,800$
Rental Car - 200$ (I know a dude)
Hotel - 250$ (Cory met a dude)
Food and Bloody Mary's - 100$ (Jay just loves dudes)

Grand total: Close to 3,000$

Lyrics part 1

I know this is kind of a rip off, but I'm going to do it anyway. I've been listening to these 2 albums for the last two years and can't get a grip on what it takes to write like this. Thrice created a two album series called the Alchemy Index. The first album Alchemy Index 1&2 represent the elements Fire and Water. And 3&4 are Air and Earth. Anyway, here's a clip of 'Silver Wings' from Air. Things you should know make this such so interesting is that every 6th song in the series represents the element itself talking to humanity, the last two lines of each songs are written in sonnet structure, and they all end with the same chord progression but in different keys and different intonation. It's ingenious.

If you think this song rocks check out the rest of the sonnets, or just go buy the damn albums!!
The Flame Deluge (Fire)
The Kings Upon the Main (Water)
Silver Wings (Air)
Child of Dust (Earth)


Anyway here are the lyrics so you can listen, watch and read....



From tender years you took me for granted
But still I deign to wander through your lungs
While you were sleeping soundly in your bed,
(Your drapes were silver wings, your shutters flung)

I drew the poison from the summer's sting,
And eased the fire out of your fevered skin.
I moved in you and stirred your soul to sing;
And if you'd let me I would move again.

I've danced 'tween sunlit strands of lover's hair;
Helped form the final words before your death.
I've pitied you and plied your sails with air;
Gave blessing when you rose upon my breath.

And after all of this I am amazed,
That I am cursed far more than I am praised.

My First Blog

Well Hi. I guess a little introduction would be nice. I'm James. I've never really blogged before. One might say I've never really had a reason to. My life really is not that interesting (depending on who you ask), I'm not a good writer and I'm horrible at grammar and spelling. Oh well right?... I will warn you now though. Some posts may include gore, perversion, colorful language, sexual content and the occasional post dehumanizing women. Probably because some girl, possibly my girlfriend pissed me off. But I'll try and keep it to a minimum.

So where do I begin. I guess I'll start with what my morning consisted of. I sat at a computer watching some dudes neck (who we'll call Surgery Steve for the purpose of this blog) get filleted open on an operating room table, while some other guy (who we'll call Dr. Douche) tries to relieve their chronic radicular pain by removing bones from their spine. It'll probably work, and Steve wake painless, flailing his arms about like a raggedy Anne doll, but what happens while he was sleeping is a world nobody will ever really fully comprehend. One person is put in their most vulnerable time in their lives while to everyone else it's become so routine they've lost their sense of compassion. Who am I kidding, I facilitate this... Sorry Stevo.

Here I am telling the Dr. Douche about some hot chick I met over the weekend who was wearing a tank-top and every time she reached for her drink I was sitting in the best spot in the bar to see some sweet side boob. Awesome right? Who doesn't enjoy side boob? Great fucking story to guys who refers to "ass" as a noun and not a verb. The nurses in the room are disgusted but pretend not to be, the salesmen adds some colorful comments about how his wife forgot what sex was, you know the usual "I'm old and have kids so my life has become a joke to those of you who are still awesome" type comment. The PA's depending on wheather they're male or female pick a side and defend it (i.e. "You guys are pigs and you should respect Mrs. Side-tit regardless weather or not she was using her body as a tool to attract the biggest, alpha-male, meat-head in the bar"). Before you know it, the lesbian OR charge nurse hears the conversation on her rounds and throws in some great story about a string of sexual conflict she was apart of in Key West last Mardi Gras. Who does't want to hear about that? I mean I know there's only 4 hot lesbians in the world, but for some reason when guys here story's about lesbo's it's always Terri Hatcher banging Eva Longoria and not two trolls eating a dead carcass. I'm sorry for that description but we all know the truth...

Anyway, A mixture of blood and warm saline rapidly fill containers surrounding Steve's OR table. Dr. Douche is listening to Johny Cash's version of Hurt by NIN and making screw holes in the back of Steve's spine so he can fuse the top 5 levels with metal rods. I'll asure Douche that electrically Steve's spinal chord and nerves suffered no loss of function. He won't hear me because the music is so loud and he's getting paged by the ICU with concerns about his next patient Sally. As Douche slowly closes the wound we walk away with a victory... everyone in the room "got their's" from Highmark, and Steve can continue down his path of self destruction which led him here in the first place and more than likely will bring him back here again. So as Steve spends the next 5 days recovering from his opperation, Dr. Douche and I perform 10 more just like it creating forever flow of medical revenue.

What's the point of this post? Well to stress the fact REAL LIFE IS NOTHING LIKE GREYS ANATOMY. Quit being an idiot.