[HN Gopher] Three American climbers solve the 'last great proble... ___________________________________________________________________ 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 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-12-01 23:00 UTC)