The rope yawned alongside the knife-edge ridge like a giant smiley face. Tied to its end, one hundred feet away to my right, the world’s premier alpinist, Alex Lowe, was spreadeagled between slender pinnacles of granite. The opposing outward force of Alex’s hands and feet pressing against the grainy rock created just enough friction to hold him in place. He had been moving fast, but he now appeared stuck, stymied by a crux move harder than anything yet encountered on the nearly 6,000-foot wall we had climbed to get to this point.

A few minutes earlier, Alex had passed up a spot where I thought he could have placed a piece of protection, an anchor in the rock that would have made the fall he was now staring down a lot less dangerous. Why didn’t he place that piece? I wondered. Did he not see it? If it had been my other climbing partner, Jared Ogden, I would have yelled, “Hey, get something in,” but I hadn’t said anything because Alex and I weren’t getting along, and I was afraid he’d think, once again, that I was bossing him around. There was also a distinct possibility that he was deliberately making the pitch more dangerous because it was faster not to stop and dink around with gear. I had figured that he’d find a way to anchor his rope when the climbing got hard, but that didn’t happen; the drooping strand of orange cord between him and our belay was attached to nothing.

Jared, roosting beside me with a leg on each side of the narrow ridge, held Alex’s rope in his belay plate. He looked at me, wide-eyed, and his expression said it all: Alex is pushing it a touch too far. The ridge was like the back of a Stegosaurus, with rocky pinnacles protruding like horns from its spine. On both sides, sheer rock walls dropped almost vertically. The virgin west summit of Great Trango Tower, 20,260 feet above sea level, loomed only 75 feet above Alex’s head. I was a stone’s throw away from a place I had been dreaming about for half of my life, since that fateful day I first learned of this magnificent monolith in the Wellesley Free Library.

I willed myself not to calculate how far Alex would fall if he slipped, whether his rope would cut on the sharp spine of the ridge if he fell off the other side, or how we could possibly get him down if he was critically injured this high up on the mountain. It’s Alex Lowe out there, Mark, I said silently to myself. He won’t blow this. But the cramp in the left side of my chest clamped even tighter. I knew that Alex had already taken three big falls on the route so far, that he had been knocked unconscious by rockfall on pitch 13, that only one day earlier he had been so ill we weren’t sure if he would be joining us on this bid for the summit. Alex, despite the hype that surrounded him, was human, just like Jared and me. And if he inched too far out on that limb, and it broke off, there was a decent chance he was taking all of us with him.

custom-built for such superhuman feats. His upper body was triangular, bulging arms hanging from broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist. His outsize, scar-covered hands often sported “gobies” and “flappers,” climber‐speak for the cuts and flaps of skin you get from stuffing your paws into rough-sided cracks. His barrel chest housed a set of lungs that could have sped him through the Tour de France had he chosen to ride bikes instead of climb mountains. In 1993, he was invited by the Russian Mountaineering Federation to take part in a kamikaze-style climbing competition on a 23,000‐foot peak in Central Asia called Khan Tengri. The field included many of the best mountaineers in Russia. Alex didn’t just win; he crushed the previous best time by more than four hours—a record that still stands today.

In March of 1999, a few months before we left for Trango, the cover of șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű magazine featured Alex, with his craggy jaw and blue steel eyes twinkling beneath bushy brown eyebrows, standing astride a virgin spike of rock in Antarctica. The caption read: “The World’s Best Climber.” It was a moniker he scoffed at, famously saying around the same time, “The best climber in the world is the one having the most fun.” His enthusiasm and love for climbing could be contagious—if you could keep up with him. He more or less held his climbing partners to the same standards he set for himself, so if you weren’t getting up at 4 a.m., downing a pot of jet-black coffee, and then cranking off pyramids of 400 pull-ups before breakfast, you might find climbing with him a bit intimidating.

Alex wasn’t going to back down, so he pushed off with his right arm and leg, unhitching himself from the crucifix-like stem and falling toward the pinnacle on his left. His body swung through the thin air, and just as gravity began to exert its inexorable pull, his right hand slapped onto a crystalline knob. At the same moment, he threw his right leg around the backside of the pinnacle. His body sagged, but Alex dug in with his right heel, straightened up, and stayed stuck on.

With no actual holds on which to stand or pull himself up this arête, he began a complex dance of intricate oppositional movement: one hand gripped the edge while the other slapped around the corner, fingertips groping blindly for the tiniest crease or edge. He smeared his toes against any slight depressions or nubs, countering the pulling forces of his arms. A well-placed heel hooked around the arête gained him enough purchase to reposition his hands a few feet higher. He scummed whatever square inch of his body he could—calf, hip, forearm—against the rock. Alex had simian intuition and this “body English,” as climbers call it, allowed him to grip a smidge less forcefully, thus saving precious kilojoules of energy. In any setting this would have ranked among one of the more impressive pieces of climbing I had ever seen. Here, at 20,000 feet, in cold, wintry conditions, after weeks of strenuous climbing, I was witnessing a masterpiece. He was now less than a body length away from easy ground, and I allowed myself to exhale. But then, on what would have been his last flurry of sublimely played notes, a string broke.

A tiny trickle of water, dripping from a dollop of snow sitting atop the pinnacle, had soaked the last few feet of the arête. Alex kept reaching over his head, but his fingers couldn’t find a grip on the wet rock. He shot a quick glance between his legs, and all he could see was a bulging rock 20 feet below. It stuck out enough that he’d hit it, but it wasn’t big enough to stop him. He’d bounce and then fly off the back side of the ridge. “I’m downclimbing,” he yelled, his body quivering as he slid down the arête. In place of the precision he normally employed while dancing up his pitches was a desperate, uncontrolled, all-out grovel to keep himself from falling. The world’s best climber was coming unglued.

Jared braced a leg against the block in front of him to catch the fall that now appeared imminent, as Alex, clutching a golf ball-size crystal of quartz with his left hand, looked backward over his right shoulder, gauging the distance to the other pinnacle. “Watch me,” he yelled, swinging his right leg backward like a martial artist winding up for a roundhouse kick. Gravity took over as his body hinged outward like a barn door. His leg found nothing but air. For a split second he was facing outward, away from the rock, looking right at us. Then he peeled off and went airborne.

Six months earlier, I had been reminiscing with a buddy from college about our few triumphs and far more numerous mishaps as fledgling alpinists, in the front lobby of a warehouse turned corporate headquarters in San Francisco’s Mission District. John Climaco and I had met at Middlebury College in Vermont after my brightly colored climbing rope—conspicuously displayed in the doorway of my dorm room—caught his eye. Climaco, a far more experienced climber, took me under his wing and introduced me to ice climbing and mountaineering.

Climaco had called me a few weeks earlier with the news that he had just scored his dream job producing websites for an Internet startup called Quokka that was hoping to be a Bloomberg-type terminal for sports. Quokka, he said, had deep pockets and was seeking other trips to feature on its website. “Perhaps you have an expedition you’d like to pitch?” he had said.

Climaco brought me to a glass-walled conference room with exposed pipes crisscrossing the ceiling and introduced me to his boss, Brian Terkelsen. In 1993 Terkelsen had co-founded the with Survivor mastermind Mark Burnett. The two had spent years developing reality-TV formulas that centered on relationship dynamics. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Terkelsen was sizing me up as a potential character in what he deemed essentially another type of reality TV show. But that’s not what he told me at the time. Quokka, as Terkelsen explained, was aiming to use the Internet to cover sports in a whole new way. Instead of turning on the TV and digesting whatever the producers had decided to show you, Quokka would put viewers in the driver’s seat, allowing them to feel as though they were inside that NASCAR or aboard the sailboat voyaging nonstop around the world. Gail Bronson, an analyst with IPO Monitor in nearby Palo Alto, called Quokka “sports on steroids.”

Terkelsen said they would send us to San Francisco State to get our VO2 max and body fat index measured. Up on Great Trango, we’d wear heart rate and oxygen-saturation monitors. This data, along with anything else they could think of, would be a click away on the site. I nodded as he tossed out terms I’d never heard before, like “biometrics,” “digital-media assets,” and “real-time data.” As we worked our way up the wall, he said, we’d document the action with pictures and videos and “dispatches” we’d write on tiny laptops in the portaledge at night. All this “content” would be beamed down to technicians in base camp who would collate it and upload it via satellite to the World Wide Web. We would show, in the most visceral way, in “near real time” what it feels like to climb one of the biggest cliffs on earth. Most important, Quokka would foot most of the bill for the expedition and pay the climbing team a talent fee.

San Francisco in the late nineties was a heady place, the center of the dot-com bubble. Climaco, who had passed up law school to get in on the action, was offered a stake in the company in the form of shares he could cash in at Quokka’s IPO. He was hoping to follow in the footsteps of a classmate from Middlebury who had gotten in on the ground floor at Yahoo. When Yahoo went public in April of 1996, James became a twenty-something-year-old instant multimillionaire. Many young bucks wanted to get the IPO done and cash out. There were plenty of dot-coms in that sense like Quokka, but Quokka was a signal of something else, too. This dot-com whirlwind would play a part in transforming the way climbers engaged, not only with one another but also with the pursuit itself.

It wasn’t only the tech sector booming in the midnineties. By 1996 the North Face had grown into the world’s largest outdoor clothing and equipment company.

Within two years of founding the North Face, the Tompkinses sold their interest in the company for $50,000. It was then bought and sold a dozen times before it was acquired by an investment group in 1994 for $62 million. It fell to the new CEO, Bill Simon, to prep the North Face to go public, and he had a radical idea. Typically, when a clothing company needed photos for an ad campaign, it hired models, went somewhere scenic, and did a photo shoot. Instead Simon used a substantial portion of the company’s marketing budget to fund a team of professional climbers and skiers. He recruited a dozen of the world’s leading rock climbers, alpinists, and extreme skiers, including Alex Lowe. Greg Child, an Australian expat who climbed the North Ridge of K2 in 1990, was offered a contract worth $75,000 a year, plus benefits and stock options. “For the first time in my life, I had a real salary, and my job description was to climb my ass off and travel the world putting up first ascents,” says Greg.

The North Face had just made professional climbing a plausible career—one that allowed this handful of “athletes” (a then novel term for people living on the fringes of respectability) to earn a decent living. Almost immediately after its inception, Simon sent the Dream Team—Lowe, Child, Californians Conrad Anker and Lynn Hill, plus a handful of others—accompanied by outdoor photographer Chris Noble, on expedition to an alpine version of Yosemite Valley in Kyrgyzstan called the Aksu.

While the Dream Team made headlines, I was living the more traditional climber’s existence—squatting illegally in a cave in Yosemite National Park. I loosely associated with the ragtag community of Chongo Nation climbers who bridged the Stonemasters and Stone Monkeys eras. When we weren’t out climbing, we’d congregate to drink malt liquor and swap spray at a worn-out fiberglass picnic table outside the deli in Yosemite Village. In the late fall of 1995, a few of us huddled around a dog-eared copy of Climbing magazine. We took out our frustration of being nobodies on the “sellouts” who graced the magazine’s pages.

“How the heck do you get in on this gravy train?” one friend asked, after turning the page to a story about the North Face Dream Team and their recent expedition to the Aksu.

“No idea,” I replied. I had no job, and the 24-ounce container of Old English in my hand had been purchased with the proceeds from collecting nickel refund soda cans that morning. My day had started with a half-eaten “lodge breakfast”—some scrambled eggs and crusts of toast—that some tourists had forgotten to bus from their table in the cafeteria.

The North Face climbing team would probably have remained nothing more than a pipe dream for me were it not for the one guy sitting at the table that day who actually had the balls to step up and shout that he was worthy of being sponsored. Warren Hollinger was a disciple of the self-help guru Tony Robbins, and he was the most charismatic and unapologetic self-promoter I’d ever met. While I was sitting in my cave plotting where I could find my next 24 cans—a case was the maximum they’d take at the recycling center—Warren was on the phone selling Conrad Anker, one of the founders of the Dream Team, on the idea of the North Face supporting our upcoming expedition to Polar Sun Spire on Baffin Island.

Conrad threw us a bone. They couldn’t give us any cash, but the North Face would supply us with state-of-the-art Gore-Tex jackets and bibs for our climb. Thanks to Warren, I now had my foot in the door with one of the biggest sponsors in the outdoor industry.

I applied for a permit to climb the northwest face of Great Trango in the fall of 1998. Jared and I had talked about inviting Greg and Alex but decided we’d have more fun if it was just the two of us. I took point on the application, and in the blank where it asked for the expedition leader, I put my name.

In the past four years, Jared and I had both been successful on every big climb we had attempted. The North Face had promoted us to the A Team. We were now pulling down a modest salary from “the firm,” and between other small sponsorships, writing gigs for Climbing magazine, and slideshow tours, I was making a modest living as a “pro” climber. I had “sold out,” but after years of dirtbagging and banging nails in Colorado, I was deeply in love with my new job. I had no boss, I made my own hours, and I climbed all the time.

So I was crushed when the North Face rejected my first official expedition proposal as a member of the A Team—to give Jared and me $12,000 so we could attempt the unclimbed northwest face of Great Trango Tower. We had thought it was a sure thing.

“What do you think about inviting Alex?” I asked Jared one day. It went without saying that our sponsorship prospects would be significantly improved if we added the Mutant to our team. Jared agreed we might as well, since the trip evidently wasn’t happening otherwise.

I called Alex, and he signed on without hesitation. “I’ve always wanted to go to ,” he said. What he didn’t say, but I knew he was thinking, was What took you guys so long to invite me? With Alex Lowe on the roster, we refloated our sponsorship proposal to the North Face. This time the answer was a resounding yes. Then Climaco called to tell me about Quokka.

We arrived in base camp on June 22, 1999, following a train of 148 Balti porters who carried close to five tons of food and equipment. Our team included two climber-cinematographers, Mike Graber and his assistant, Jim Surette. These guys had been hired by NBC Sports to make an hour-long documentary about our climb for a new expedition television series sponsored by the North Face and hosted by Sting.

Our camp was situated on the back side of a lateral moraine bordering the eastern edge of the Trango Glacier. In every direction, our camp was surrounded with towering granite walls, which had the effect of making us feel like tiny specks of dust in a grand, unforgiving universe. Of all the walls that surrounded us, the northwest face of Great Trango, the one we had come to climb, was by far the most intimidating.

The entire bottom half of the wall, roughly the same height as El Capitan, was a crackless, homogenous, water-polished slab. We stared at it for hours with a pair of high-powered binoculars but saw no obvious line of weakness. The slab, we soon realized, was a bowling alley for loose rock, a kind of gutter that collected every errant stone that came loose from the acres of storm-lashed wall that hung above it.

Shortly after arriving in base camp, I awoke in the middle of the night to a roar that sounded like a 747 taking off nearby. Seconds later, a hurricane-strength blast of wind flattened my tent, pressing me facedown into my sleeping pad. I knew it was an avalanche, and that if I stayed where I was, I’d be buried alive. So I desperately fought my way out of the flapping nylon. The rushing air was laden with slush, which shellacked me from head to toe. I couldn’t see anything and there was nowhere to run, so I crawled back into my tent and huddled in the fetal position. A minute later, an eerie silence fell over camp. The debris—television, refrigerator, and car-size chunks of ice that had peeled off a hanging glacier—had stopped five hundred yards short of camp. Trango was saying hello.

With our ropes finally fixed to the top of the slab, it was time to launch our bid for the summit. We packed 20 days’ worth of provisions into six urethane-coated haul bags. After a soul-destroying, hernia-inducing day of hauling the six “pigs” up the El Cap-size slab, we collapsed on the ledge at the base of the headwall.

We had been working on the upper headwall for a few days when Alex opened up the minicomputer one evening and it was dead. “Thank god,” I said. “Now we don’t have to type dispatches anymore.” That little computer had come to embody everything I hated about Quokka, and I had dreamed about smashing it to smithereens with my wall hammer.

I hated Quokka and everything it represented—the voyeurism, the posing, the hype. Most of all, I hated them for driving a wedge between us. It had all sounded great back in San Francisco, but I had been naive about how it would feel to climb with this many strings attached. It was time to pull the plug on this puppet show.

“Hey, guys,” I finally said. “I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.”

“Me too,” said Alex, without hesitation.

We were about to call down to base camp to tell them we were bailing, when the rainfly stopped flapping for a few seconds. “Did you hear that?” I asked. Auditory hallucinations are common when you’re stuck in a tent for days on end, so I figured it was just my imagination. Then a voice became distinct. Alex unzipped the door, and about a hundred feet away stood a man wearing a blue warm-up suit and an old-fashioned orange helmet. A Russian team had arrived to attempt the same face, but we had a two-week head start, so we never thought we’d see them up on the wall.

That night, we all sat in a circle on a flat spot outside our portaledge, passing around a small tin cup, which the Russians kept filling with grain alcohol. The mood was warm and jovial, like a bunch of old friends telling stories at their local pub. I looked across the circle at Alex and Jared, both of whom were beaming—it didn’t take much grain alcohol to get a buzz at this altitude.

The plan to bail was never mentioned again.

On July 24, we set off up the ropes we had fixed on the upper headwall. It felt good to be committing to the final leg of the climb after festering on the ledge for the past 11 days. If all went according to plan, we’d be on the summit in a week.

Later that evening, we set up our first hanging portaledge camp at 18,450 feet. As the sun set, we stared out the door of the rainfly at the towers lining the west side of the Trango Glacier—Uli Biaho, the Cat’s Ears, Shipton Spire, and the Mystery Phallus—while they slowly darkened into jagged silhouettes haloed by a rising moon. We sat quietly—Alex and I sharing the top bunk, Jared down below— letting the magic of life in the vertical realm wash over us.

“You know, I want to spend more time at home with the family,” said Alex. His sons, Max, Sam, and Isaac, were ten, seven, and three. I knew how he was feeling because I now had a six‐month‐old son of my own. Alex loved his family, and he felt guilty about spending so much time away from them. And so did I. We wanted it all—to climb big first ascents and be stand-up family men in the gaps between expeditions.

“I’ve been thinking about a new career, one that doesn’t require so much travel,” he continued. “It’s one of the reasons I’m so psyched about this project. I think this could really be a good opportunity for all of us. I love writing, and I see this website as a way to showcase what I’m capable of outside of climbing.” The Trango website had given Alex a powerful new conduit through which to connect with his legions of fans. He knew the Internet offered a whole new platform from which to inspire his followers to pursue their own dreams, and he was working hard to make sure he was leveraging this opportunity for all it was worth.

When I poked my head out the door of the ledge one morning, I saw long wispy mares’ tails blowing in from the south. We all knew, from hard experience, that these clouds were the leading edge of a storm front that was blowing in from the Indian Ocean. So while Alex made coffee, Jared and I loaded our packs with the essentials for a fast and light push for the summit—stove, sleeping bags, bivy sacks, pads, and a light rack of climbing gear. It was time to leave the portaledge, the pigs, and all the other detritus behind, and go full out for the summit.

Nine hours later, on a knife-edge ridge 75 feet below the summit, Alex missed the karate kick and barn-doored off the side of the mountain. He bounced once and then disappeared over the far side of the ridge.

The force of the fall jerked Jared violently, but he held on, and a few seconds later all was still and we couldn’t hear anything but wind and our own ragged breathing. Terrified, fearing the worst, Jared and I yelled Alex’s name into the void. There was no response. “What are we gonna do?” asked Jared, reaching down and plucking the rope, which was jammed between two rocks and as taut as a bowstring. As I contemplated how I could traverse across the tensioned rope, I felt it come slack in my hand. “He’s alive!” yelled Jared, as he quickly reeled in rope. A few minutes later, Alex popped back up onto the ridge, threw both arms over his head, gave us a double thumbs‐up, and yelled, “Yeah, boyzz!!” at the top of his lungs.

To our amazement, Alex then proceeded to put himself back into the same exact position from which he had just fallen. Jared shot me a worried look but didn’t say anything. Seconds later, Alex was back on the arête. He slapped his way up to the wet hold, snagged it with his right hand, and pulled down on it with everything he had. This time, shakily, he pulled through.

“That was fucking insane,” I said to Jared, who just shook his head in disbelief. It was the boldest bit of climbing I’d ever seen.

These thoughts were quickly forgotten 30 minutes later, when the three of us were hugging and high-fiving on the summit in the twilight. “Uh, guys,” I said, interrupting the reverie, “isn’t that the actual summit up there?” The 15-foot-tall block was coated in a thin layer of ice, which meant it wasn’t possible for us to scale those last couple of body lengths.

“I think we’re close enough,” said Alex. “Let’s get out of here.”

I vowed to myself that this would be my last big climb. By the time we finally stumbled into base camp 24 hours later, I was already reconsidering the vow.

I’d been home from Pakistan for about a week when I called Chris Eng at the North Face. We exchanged a few pleasantries, but I couldn’t get him to open up and bro down like we always did. “So what trips are you working on?” I asked. Another long, awkward silence. “Well,” he said, “looks like our next big one is an expedition to the north face of Jannu.”

“Uh . . . yeah,” I replied. “I know all about it, obviously, because it’s my trip. Jared and I have been planning it for years.”

“Well, actually, it’s going to be Jared and Alex,” he said.

I called Jared, who sheepishly admitted that he and Alex had been talking. They had decided to team up, and I was out. “No hard feelings, right?” he said. I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe this was more serious than just being uninvited on a trip. I couldn’t call Alex because he had already left for his next expedition to the South Face of Shishapangma, an 8,000-meter peak in Tibet. When we had parted ways at the airport, he had given me a hug. “We’re good, right?” I had said. “Totally,” he replied.

The news broke about a month later on a website called MountainZone, a competitor of Quokka’s that was covering the Shishapangma expedition. Alex and a cameraman named Dave Bridges were missing.

It was October 5, 1999—a month and a half since we had returned from Great Trango. They had been acclimatizing on the lower apron of the South Face with Conrad Anker when they spotted a small avalanche break loose about 6,000 feet above them. It appeared benign at first, but the face was loaded with snow from a recent storm, and the avalanche quickly propagated. As it barreled toward them, Conrad ran sideways. Alex ran down. Bridges followed Alex. Right before the avalanche struck, Conrad dove onto his chest, burying the pick of his ice ax as deeply as he could into the snow. When the blast hit, the lights went out. Conrad doesn’t know what happened next, but when he came to, he was only lightly buried about a hundred feet from where he had self-arrested. Blood dripped from a wound on his head. The snow, warmed from the kinetic energy of its particles colliding on its slide down the mountain, instantly set up like quick-set cement. Conrad walked across its surface looking for his friends—but there was no trace of them.

I was with my wife and nine-month-old son when we got the call. I said to Lauren, “Okay, he’s missing. But it’s Alex Lowe. He’s probably stuck in a crevasse or wandering around dazed and confused on some glacier. He’ll be back.” But as the days stretched into weeks and then into months, and the call that he’d been found never came, it slowly sank in that Alex was gone.

Looking back almost two decades, it’s hard for me to separate the drama with Alex from the experience as a whole of working for Quokka. The intent was to let people experience, in a whole new way, what it’s like to pioneer a first ascent in the Karakoram. It was a worthy goal, I suppose, one we all believed in at the beginning. But in the end, the expedition turned into something more like an episode of Survivor. We banded together when necessary, but we weren’t a team. And for this reason, among many others, the Quokka experiment was a failure—and a mistake.

I can’t speak for the others, but I know that my own awareness of being on a stage—a stage on which I was competing for the limelight with “the world’s best climber” (whether I wanted to or not)—precluded the Zen I had always found in climbing. The act of trying to share what makes climbing such a singular experience had robbed it of its essence and sucked all the joy out of a climb I had dreamed about.

From Ìęby Mark Synnott, to be published on March 5th by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Synnott

The post An Expedition at the Dawn of the Climbing ‘Gravy Train’ appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

I'M CLINGING TO A ROTTEN AND UNCLIMBED SPIRE OF SANDSTONE 200 FEET ABOVE AFRICA'S ENNEDI PLATEAU, IN CHAD, NEAR THE EASTERN BORDER WITH SUDAN. Below and in every direction sweeps the emptiness of more than 20,000 square miles of land—Vermont and my native New Hampshire combined—previously unexplored by climbers. There's 50 feet of vertical between me and the spindly summit, where 24-year-old James Pearson, one of Britain's boldest young rock climbers, sits belaying. Virgin sandstone like this is brittle, so I gingerly pull with my left hand on a flake the size of a dinner plate. It flexes and—pop!—snaps off, filling my eyes and mouth with rock dust. At nearly the same moment, both of my footholds crumble and I'm left dangling by my right hand.

James Pearson

James Pearson atop the trip's first climb

Climbing Ennedi desert, Chad

Another first ascent

That's when I hear a familiar chuckle and look over my shoulder to see photographer Jimmy Chin, 37, spinning lazily on a rope about five feet behind me. “That looks sick,” Chin deadpans as he alternates between snapping still photos and shooting video with his digital SLR. Looking down between my legs, I spot photographer and 5.14 sport climber Tim Kemple, 30, who just captured my Cliffhanger maneuver from the ground. And half a mile away, there's Boulder, Colorado, alpinist Renan Ozturk, 30, barely visible on the roof of a jeep, rolling tape on the wide-angle view filmmakers call the establishing shot.

No, we're not making a commercial—well, not exactly. The three men behind the cameras, led by Jimmy, with whom I've climbed for more than a decade, make up Camp 4 Collective, an independent production company that's ushering in a new style of expedition coverage and marketing. Thanks to their unique combination of athletic talent and artistic sensibility, plus breakthroughs in digital technology, the trio can rapidly craft films as slick as anything coming from Madison Ave­nue—but with serious adventure cred.

Just as significant as their creative process is their roster of clients, which is made up almost exclusively of major gear brands. Expedition chronicles have classically been published by media outlets like șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű and National Geo­graphic, whether in print, on television, online, or all of the above. But in the Facebook and YouTube era, outdoor companies have begun building their own internal media machines to reach consumers—and readers and viewers—directly. Here in Chad, Camp 4 is on assignment for The North Face (TNF), which, as it happens, also sponsors me, James, and the expedition's third official climber, Alex Honnold, best known for his 2008 ascent of Yosemite's Half Dome without a rope. Every day, the Camp 4 guys transfer their footage to laptops and, via satellite modem, upload still images and blog posts to TNF's website. When they get back, they'll select photos and piece together clips that North Face marketers will blast at wide-ranging targets, from the company's 800,000 social-media fol­lowers to its 200 retail outlets to Korean movie theaters to billboards in New York City.

Fine by me—I can still get paid to take epic climbing trips. But as I realize more every day in Chad, the new formula means that sponsored athletes are no longer on top of the adventure heap. That spot has been claimed by the chuckling guy on the rope behind me who keeps politely offering stage directions.

Spitting out sandstone, I paste my feet back onto the rock and resume climbing. Just below the summit I hesitate, allowing Jimmy to get into position. When he gives the signal, I throw a leg over the lip, stand up, and slap hands with James in a triumphant G.I. Joe grip. I stare out into the infinity beyond Jimmy's lens, pretending it's not there.

“That was perfect,” he says. “But can I get you guys standing over on that edge, so Renan can get this on the long shot?”

EXPEDITION REPORTING HAS COME a long way since Mallory was dispatching letters with carriers in the 1920s. In 1953, news of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's Everest ascent took four days to make it into London's Guardian newspaper. Thirty years later, in 1983, high-altitude filmmaker David Breashears broadcast the first live TV images from Everest's summit.

Everything changed again in the mid-nineties with the development of mobile satellite phones and the rise of the Internet. Suddenly, expeditions were being covered in close to real time by startups like Quokka Sports and MountainZone—which sounded awesome until you actually went on one of their trips. Quokka spent close to $100,000 in 1999 to send me, Durango, Colorado–based Jared Ogden, and the late Alex Lowe, considered the world's best alpinist at the time, to scale the 20,624-foot Great Trango Tower, in Pakistan's Karakoram Range. The three of us—all sponsored by TNF, which ponied up about $30,000—were accompanied by two highly skilled climbing filmmakers.

Trango was billed as the next frontier in expedition coverage. Each day after crawling into our portaledge, we'd pull out our mini laptops and create dispatches that included journal entries, photos, and choppy video—then beam everything down to base camp with a radio modem. Things went badly almost from the start. Alex got sick and had to descend to a lower elevation to speed his recovery. Before he left, he filed a quick post: “There's a bad vibe in camp.”

He was mostly pissed at me. Later, I confessed in my online journal to feeling like we were frauds: “Alex and I have been arguing about some really dumb shit. Sadly, we realized that we've never climbed together just for fun. Everything we've done together has been in front of the camera, and this has made it hard for us to be ourselves.”

As the trip progressed, so did the bickering. “We were reduced to communicating with each other through a website,” says Jared. It ended up playing out like a crude version of Survivor—which was actually the point. Brian Terkelsen, Quokka's Trango producer, had co-founded the Eco-Challenge in 1993 with Survivor mastermind Mark Burnett. The two had spent years developing reality-TV formulas that centered on relationship dynamics. “On Survivor, people say one thing to your face, then do their 'confessional' to the camera,” says Terkelsen, now the president of a New York ad agency. “Trango was the exact same, but more raw and real.”

The low point for me came as I dangled thousands of feet off the ground while a Quokka desk jockey back in San Francisco berated me over my handheld radio. I had a bad attitude, he told me, and could I work a little harder?

Some climbers watching from the outside were even more disappointed. American alpinist Steve House criticized our approach in the 2000 American Alpine Journal, writing that “sponsor­ships involving heavy use of cameras, web sites and films are incompatible with modern, lightweight tactics.”

That kind of Luddite sentiment has since dissipated as digital-video equipment got simultaneously very good and very light. Meanwhile, the whole world has taken to watching short film clips online—dirtbag climbers included. Grunts like me still have to perform for the camera, but we've been griping about what we call the dog-and-pony show since the earliest days of expedition sponsorship. The truth is that we're happier than we've ever been with the imagery because other climbers are now driving the creative process. The fact that Camp 4 takes its orders from our sponsors only makes us more relaxed: their job is to make us look good.

“Everybody who's involved with the producing, writing, and directing—we're all athletes,” says Jimmy. “We understand when it's OK to set up shots and have people redo stuff and when it's time to hammer and climb. We understand the athletes because we are the athletes.”

I FIRST HEARD ABOUT the Ennedi from an Italian climber who'd visited the Tibesti Mountains, in the north, in the late nineties. I scouted out the region on Google Earth and found online photos that confirmed the area was loaded with sandstone towers. Then I called Jimmy, who saw the potential of the place and signed on. I pitched the trip to TNF's expedition committee, they bit, and last November, off we went.

In the capital city of N'Djamena (population one million), our fixer, a 66-year-old Italian expat named Piero Rava, helped us load our gear into the backs of two Toyota Land Cruisers and a Range Rover. We set off on one of the country's only paved roads, rolling by little shops and mud houses that dotted the flat clay world. We had been on the road for less than an hour when Piero punched a few buttons on his GPS, jerked the wheel to the east, and careered off into the desert. “This is my way to the Ennedi,” he explained.

Over the next four days, we ripped across 400 miles of desert ending in a labyrinth of sandstone towers, arches, and canyons. We spent a night at the base of a 200-foot tower, and in the morning, James racked up the aluminum camming devices and stoppers that he'd place into cracks in the rock to protect our falls. Alex, always the soloist, set off to climb some surrounding towers without any protection at all.

Meanwhile, Jimmy and Tim scaled nearby formations to get different camera angles, and Renan set up a 20-foot-tall aluminum jib crane at the base of the route that would pan around us as we climbed. In 30 minutes, Camp 4 had established a mobile studio. As Jimmy sees it, a fast and light team makes a project like this authentic.

“If you're shooting with a big production company, you're making a movie—you're not on an expedition,” he says.

Later, we settled in around a plywood table. James tapped out a blog post while the Camp 4 guys transferred footage onto hard drives. I sat behind Renan and sipped vodka as he watched the day's footage and pulled out still frames to upload.

At around 10 P.M., I crawled woozily into my sleeping bag just as Jimmy and Renan were heading out to set up an overnight time lapse. Next thing I knew, it was 4 A.M. and Jimmy was shaking me awake. It was time to reenact our first ascent, in the perfect light. Jimmy hadn't slept.

BEFORE HE COFOUNDED CAMP 4, Jimmy had established himself as his generation's preeminent adventure photographer, capable of capturing beautifully composed images while climbing and skiing Everest—and cracking jokes the entire time.

Born in 1973 in Mankato, Minnesota, the second child of Chinese immigrants, he'd been a precocious kid: classical violin at age four, fluent in Chinese and English, straight A's. After graduating from Carleton College in 1996, though, he took a year off rather than go on to grad school as his parents wanted.

A year turned into two, then three, as Jimmy fell in with the climbers of Yosemite National Park's famed Camp 4, the longtime dirtbag nexus and now the namesake of his company. One morning in April 1999, after completing a route on El Capitan, Jimmy and his climbing partner Brady Robinson were camped at the summit. In an act that's become something of a legend among climbers, Jimmy woke up, noticed the nice light, and grabbed Robinson's camera to snap a photo of him while he slept. Robinson sold the shot to the gear maker Mountain Hardwear for $500, which he handed over to Jimmy.

“It was like, I only have to take one photo a month and I can be a climbing bum for the rest of my life,” says Jimmy.

He used the cash to buy a camera, which he took on climbing trips to Pakistan. Back in the States, he sold more photos to Mountain Hardwear, and his work caught the eye of Conrad Anker, a longtime TNF climber. After a trip together in Pakistan, Anker invited Jimmy, then 30, on a 2002 trek across Tibet's Chang Tang Plateau. The team included the late climber-photographer Galen Rowell, who was Jimmy's hero and mentor; alpinist Rick Ridgeway, a member of the team that made the first American ascent of K2; and David Breashears, famous for his Everest Imax movie. When Breashears dropped out, Jimmy became the cinematographer. “Commit and you'll figure it out,” Ridgeway told him.

After seeing Jimmy's footage, Breashears hired him on a 2004 Everest trip to film and shoot stills that ended up in the PBS documentary Storm Over Everest. Jimmy had his own Quokka moment that year with the Rush HD cable channel on a climbing trip to Mali. “The cameramen were awesome guys, but the directors and producers didn't get it,” recalls Jimmy. They kept trying to dictate where and how the team would climb. “It became the tail wagging the dog.”

By 2005, he was the go-to photographer for major climbing media projects. That year, he photographed five expeditions, including Ed Viesturs's final 8,000-meter-peak ascent, on Annapurna. Jimmy was soon able to split his downtime between his new home outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and a surf cabana in Sayulita, Mexico.

Jimmy's evolution to climber-filmmaker-producer was enabled by monumental leaps in camera technology. In 2008, Canon and Nikon started packing the power of HD video into the compact digital SLRs carried by adventure photographers. “It used to be that you needed a $100,000 camera that weighs 40 pounds to make nice video,” says Jimmy. “All of a sudden we could shoot films with the same equipment.”

Jimmy and Tim, who'd been photographing ads for TNF for several years, were already running in the same circles. Renan had made a name for himself as an artistic rock rat, hitchhiking the West, completing alpine-style ascents of big walls and drawing expansive scenes of it in his sketchbooks. He became a TNF athlete in 2005 and that spring joined Jimmy and Conrad Anker for a climb of India's Meru Central, during which Jimmy taught Renan how to shoot movies.

The decision to create a joint production house came at a TNF staff meeting. “Every company from TNF to a real estate firm needs short-form video work,” explains Jimmy. “It allowed us to take on bigger projects.”

They pooled their equipment, filed articles of incorporation, and became Camp 4 Collective. They had the luxury of a built-in client with TNF but quickly racked up commercial shooting gigs for one of Jimmy's other sponsors, Revo sunglasses, and the outdoor retailer Eastern Mountain Sports. They got so busy so fast that it wasn't until Chad that all three of them were able to work on a project together.

EVERY COUPLE of days in Chad, Piero would drive us to a new zone, and slowly we worked our way deeper into the Ennedi. On day 13, we crested a rise and, for the first time, could see the edge of the Sahara, where the canyonlands ended and undulating sand dunes stretched out toward Sudan.

A few days later, Piero led us up a slot canyon and parked below Aloba Arch, one of the world's tallest natural bridges. The walls of the canyon soared 700 feet above us, and across the top a 50-foot-thick slab of streaked sandstone spanned the 300-foot gap. Honnold, who had climbed the under­side of a smaller arch the day before, was sali­vating, but there were hardly any cracks that would allow for protection.

We were absorbed in a discussion of possible routes when five young men wearing long white robes and head scarves materialized out of the canyon. They immediately started yelling at us in Arabic. None of us had any clue what they were saying, but it became obvious what they wanted when one of them grabbed Renan's pack containing $10,000 worth of camera gear. When Renan snatched it back, the kid unsheathed a knife and began lunging while pounding his fist into his chest. They had us corralled inside the slot canyon, and there was no escape.

The same kid then approached Jimmy and snatched his sunglasses. Renan had pulled out his camera and was filming everything—which was definitely not helping to diffuse the situation. Jimmy picked up a softball-size rock and held it up menacingly. I grabbed a gnarled tree branch and moved to his side. We stared at the youths, and you could see it dawn on them that we weren't going down without a fight. Suddenly the kid put the sunglasses down. Seconds later the youths vanished the way they had come.

Back at the vehicles, Renan showed us the footage he'd captured. Somehow he had managed to hold the camera steady while Knife Guy lunged and put on a display. The focus and framing were perfect, and the sun glinted off the point on the dagger.

“That's definitely going in the film,” Jimmy said as he slipped his shades back on and settled into the Land Cruiser.

The post The Rainmaker appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

When top British alpinists Kevin Thaw, 35, and Leo Houlding, 23, launch their climb on the 5,000-foot north face of Patagonia’s Cerro Torre, in late February, they’ll be understandably skittish. Hurricane-force winds can descend on the exposed route with little warning, and on their last attempt, in 2001, Houlding fell 70 feet on the ninth pitch, shattering his right foot. After they rappelled down, Houlding crawled across a section of ice and rock, then Thaw carried him six miles to base camp.

Dispatch: Climbing Patagonia's Cerro Torre

Like a rock: Houlding in Yosemite with climing partner Jessica Corrie

“It’s a massive face with very temperamental ice and snow,” says Houlding. “Add violent weather and it’s an incredibly dangerous route.”


So why try again? Because if they summit, they’ll grab one of big-wall climbing’s greatest prizes—and possibly end a legendary controversy. The two plan to retrace an unrepeated first ascent claimed 45 years ago, by renowned Italian mountaineer Cesare Maestri and his Austrian partner, Toni Egger—and debated for nearly as long.


According to Maestri’s account, on the evening of February 1, 1959, a day after completing what was considered an impossible line up the north face, he and Egger descended to 1,000 feet above the Torre Glacier. As Maestri lowered Egger down the wall in search of a ledge on which they could spend their sixth and final night out, an avalanche struck, sweeping Egger to his death.


Though the team’s only camera disappeared with Egger, the mountaineering community accepted Maestri’s word that they had summited, and he became a hero. He went on to write six books on his adventures. But in 1970, a rival Italian mountaineer sparked doubts about the Cerro Torre ascent when he suggested in a magazine article that the peak was still unclimbed. Others joined the attack, fueled in part by Maestri’s foggy recollections of the north face’s final pitches. In response, Maestri in 1971 climbed Cerro Torre by the easier southeast ridge—now the peak’s standard route. But that did nothing to stop questions about the 1959 expedition.


These days Maestri, now 74, says he’s grown tired of defending himself. “Not in my entire life have I doubted the ascent of a mountaineer,” he says. “It hurts.”


The controversy, however, remains alive. “Whether Maestri and Egger made it or not is one of the great mysteries in alpinism,” says Mark Richey, 45, president of the American Alpine Club.


The key to solving it may lie on the north face’s upper headwall, where Maestri says he placed a series of bolts. If Thaw and Houlding find them—no sure bet, given that they’d have to pass precisely over the ’59 route—then Maestri’s story will gain new credence.


Whatever happens, the climb will be one of the year’s most ambitious. The men plan to blitz the face in a two-day sprint—all the while keeping a wary eye on the weather. “Given the right conditions, we’ve got a great chance,” says Thaw, “but if a storm hits, we could be doing some serious kite impressions.”

The post Cliffhanger appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

OTHER COUNTRIES MAY HAVE S.A.D. (seasonal affective disorder), which plunges people into dark depression, but Iceland has the opposite affliction: summer activity delirium, a Nordic outdoor madness that runs from June through August and sends locals, who have hibernated during the long cold winter, heading for the glacialrivers and volcanic hills to enjoy all-night kayaking, salmon fishing, off-trail hiking, and river rafting under the midnight sun.

Viking showers: one of Iceland’s many waterfalls.

Map by Jane Shasky

Summer madness also encourages indigenous activities that are so kooky they could be espoused only by Iceland, the sparsely populated, snowed-over landmass in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean whose inhabitants lived in virtual isolation for 800 years. There’s spranga, for example, which involves performing aerial flips and gymnastic turns while swinging from a thin knotted rope attached to a vertiginous sea cliff, a sport that evolved from the methods the Vikings once used to hunt birds in their coastal nests. Andwatercross, a contest that happens every year around the northern oasis of Lake MĂœyvatn, east of Akureyri, in which the winner is the snowmobile driver who executes the most aquatic laps without drowning his Polaris in the drink. Or Arctic rafting, in which teams lug rubber whitewater rafts up sharp snowy peaks and careen down the flanks.
But my favorite all-night rite of summer is the puffin rescue, an event that takes place every August in the south of Iceland on the tiny island of Heimaey, where millions of birds live and breed. I kept asking about it in ReykjavĂ­k, but nobody seemed to know what I was talking about. Then one summer I met shoe magnate Oskar Alex Oskarsson, who’s from Heimaey, and he sent me to the island to run ragged at twilight with his mother and her grandchildren. During the day, they toured me around and pointed out the places where thousands of nocturnal baby pufflings emerge from their nests in the cliffs and fly out to sea in search of food. The problem is that, every night, several thousand of the confused little critters, attracted to the blinking lights of town, fly away from the ocean and alight under streetlamps. Enter the town’s 5,000 citizens, who don’t sleep the entire month of August because they’re out all night running after birds.


This is harder than it sounds. We were out from midnight until 4 a.m. chasing after fluffballs the size of runt kittens, cornering them in teams of three or more in parking lots and soccer fields, and storing them in shoe boxes.


We then went home and napped until 6 a.m., when we drove to the beach cliffs and extracted the chicks, whose chirps were emanating from the shoe boxes, and flung them out to sea.


IcelandersĂ­ symptoms of summer activity delirium are endless. You too can get in on the madness, but when planning your own expedition to the country’s spectacular volcanoes and glaciers, know this:


(1) The weather can go Arctic on you even in summer: Last year on a relatively easy 25-mile trek from Pórsmörk to Landmannalaugar, an American man died of hypothermia because he lacked raingear. So get advice from locals if you plan to venture out on your own.


(2) Whatever you dream of, someone will help you: When I fessed up to Einar Finnsson, one of the crack mountain rescuers who started Ice-landic Mountain Guides adventure tours, that I was harboring fantasies of spending two months walking the country’s 900-mile Ring road, he didn’t think I was crazy. Instead, he suggested something more ambitious: taking six months and hiking along the off-trail south shore and north fjords as well. He even said he’d map it for me.


(3) All the possibilities for unconventional adventure can make Iceland addictive: On my latest trip here, an immigration official at the KeflavĂ­k Airport flipped through my passport and said, “I can see you’ve been here six times. By the time you come back, you’d better be able to speak Icelandic.” His comments amused me not because he thought I should take up a new language, but because he was so absolutely sure I’d be back—and soon.

Access and Resources: Reenact Your Own Viking Saga

The Western Fjords.

Trekking the Laki Lava Field // Southern Iceland
When IcelandĂ­s Laki volcano last let loose (in 1783), it spewed 30 billion tons of lava and ripped a 15-and-a-half-mile-long fissure across the landscape, making it one of the largest eruptions in human history. It’s not likely to blow again any time soon, but a trek across and into the 135 craters it left behind gives a glimpse of its awesome power. If you explore the terrain with Icelandic Mountain Guides, you’ll be hiking six to eight hours a day, starting at the old farming community of KirkjubĂŠjarklaustur (don’t even try to pronounce it)—where the lava miraculously halted at the town church—past abandoned farms where you’ll camp for the night, through wetlands chiming with birdsong, and into the 226-square-mile lava field with craters so imposing some of them merit their own names, such as Red Hill. It’s no wonder this striking Arctic desert geormorphology was where Neil Armstrong trained before he set off on the first Apollo mission to the moon. ReykjavĂ­k-based Icelandic Mountain Guides (011-354-587-9999; ) offers five-day guided trips here for $340.

Paddling Breidafjördur Archipelago // West Coast of Iceland
The subarctic archipelago of Breidafjördur, a wild maze of almost 2,700 tiny, mostly uninhabited islands, is Iceland’s only marine conservation area, which makes it perfect for sea kayakers who want to avoid the country’s otherwise ubiquitous coastal commercial fishing boats. The spectacular western coast is also home to thousands of cormorants and shags that breed on the offshore islands. Starting from the isolated coast at Dagverdarnes, you can paddle past Helgafell (a holy hill—not the volcano south of ReykjavĂ­k—mentioned in the Icelandic sagas as a territory that sparked a blood feud) and other mountains of the Sn3/4fellsnes Peninsula, through skerries that jut out of the water like an offshore Stonehenge, and among island colonies of friendly seals. Most paddlers who go on the four-day trip offered by Ultima Thule are intermediate kayakers ($390; 011-354-567-8978; ).
Backpacking the West Fjords // Northwestern Iceland
Visitors may think Iceland is sparsely populated, with just 281,000 people living on 39,709 square miles (a landmass roughly the size of England, which is home to 48 million people), but when the locals need space, they head north to the 232-square-mile Hornstrandir nature reserve, stunningly wild terrain near the Arctic Circle. The handful of farmers who once lived here fled in the 1950s, unable to bear the isolation. Con-sequently, there are no roads, so you can either walk in (which takes four or five days from the nearest village, Nordurfjördur), or take the ferry from Ísafjördur, the central hub of the West Fjords. Most backpackers opt for the ferry ride to the abandoned hamlet of HornvĂ­k. From here you can climb K‡lfatindar, at 1,760 feet the highest cliff around, which has an incredible view of the Greenland Sea and the Hornbjarg nesting grounds crowded with razorbills, puffins, and fulmars. Then hike along the uninhabited coast across rock fields, shallow rivers, hidden coves, and meadows bursting with flowers. The 20-mile trek ends at AdalvĂ­k, another abandoned homestead, where you catch the boat back to civilization. Be forewarned: It’s so remote that even the powerful Icelandic cell phones that work in the glacial interior don’t get signals here. Ísafjördur-based West Tours (011-354-456-5111; ) offers five-day walking excursions for $480, including food, guides, and luggage transport. Hornstrandir Tours (011-354-895-1190; ) can assist hikers in planning their own expeditions and has two boats that drop off and pick up backpackers.

Access and Resources: Reenact Your Own Viking Saga

The diminutive yet durable Icelandic horse.

Whitewater Rafting // North Iceland
Whitewater rafting may be a relatively new activity in Iceland, but if you want to tackle the country’s toughest waterways, act now. Within the next few years, Iceland’s government plans to dam up the rivers of the northern Skagafjördur coast, considered the country’s top rafting area, to power a hydroelectric plant. Icelanders prefer the wild of the East River (Jökuls‡ Austari), a ten-mile run through deep basalt gorges, under red cliffs, past black sand beaches, and through dramatic Class IV rapids. Based at VarmahlĂ­d in northern Iceland, Activity Tours (011-354-453-8383; ) offers three-day trips on the East River ($430, not including travel from ReykjavĂ­k).

The Viking Horse // Near ReykjavĂ­k
Only 13 hands high with long shaggy manes, Iceland’s friendly horses appear to be dainty little ponies, but the diminutive beasts are actually tougher than the volcanic rocks they clamber over. They’re also accustomed to carrying much heavier loads than pampered American stallions, which may ex-plain why former heavyweight-boxing-champion-turned-horse-lover George Foreman, who owns nine, has such an affinity for them. But the most popular feature of these purebreeds is that even someone who’s never been on a horse before can learn to handle one in five minutes, and then spend the next few hours in a “tolt,” the horse’s signature fast but smooth gait. First-timers might want to start off with a three-hour Lava Tour ($44) or a four-hour Viking Express adventure ($60) through lava fields around 1,122-foot Mount Helgafell volcano near ReykjavĂ­k, offered by the Ishestar Riding Center (011-354-555-7000; ). Ishestar also organizes a seven-day, 145-mile trek ($1,536) across Iceland on the Kjölur Trail for hard-core equestrians. This ancient Viking route will take you past national parks, monumental waterfalls, glacial rivers, geothermal hot springs, and lush valleys. —N.S.

Getting There // Iceland
Because Iceland’s long sunny nights allow for nonstop adventure, summer is the best time to visit, but it’s also the busiest and most expensive season, so plan ahead. Icelandair flies daily to ReyjkavĂ­k from New York, Boston, Minneapolis, and Baltimore (summer round-trips from $982; 800-223-5500; ). But last-minute deals are available via Icelandair’s affiliated Web site (), which offers good rates on flight-plus-hotel packages. The Icelandic Tourist Board () gives advice on hotels and tour operators, and pointers on everything from horseback riding to saltwater angling, plus information on special summer events, like the Arctic Open golf tournament and the ReykjavĂ­k Marathon. —N.S.

Mars on Ice

Exploring Europe’s Largest Glacier

I WAS ON EDGE of the Vatnajökull Glacier in a modified monster truck staring out at fog as thick as our driver Addi’s Icelandic accent. I was here with a volcanologist, Haraldur Sigurdsson, to hut-hop and explore the geothermal vents and volcanic craters of the 3,247-square-mile Vatnajökull—the largest glacier in Europe. But instead of tackling our planned 100-mile route on skis, we hired a “super jeep.” This tricked-out Toyota Land Cruiser came equipped with two steel ladders for bridging crevasses, and giant knobby tires deflated to a flabby three psi to plow through snow up to three feet deep.

WE BUMPED ALONG THE ICE, surfed through deep drifts, and used the ladders to crawl over crevasses. But we were oblivious to the dangers outside the vehicle, thanks to Dire Straits blaring from the CD player and the built-in GPS device charting our course. Four hours and 40 miles later, we reached the rim of GrĂ­msvötn caldera, where an elaborate cave system carved by geo-thermal vents stretches for miles below the glacier. We rappelled into the caldera, then hacked our way back up the soft ice of a 70-degree couloir bordered by columns of black volcanic ash. The next day, we used crampons and ice axes to down-climb through a deep crevasse at the lip of the caldera into the slippery ice passages of Vatnajökull’s underworld. At night, we sipped cold beers and relaxed in the geothermally heated sauna next to the GrĂ­msvötn Hut, one of the Iceland Glaciological Society’s half-dozen widely spaced cabins scattered at points across the glacier.
THREE DAYS LATER, we set out for the far northern end of the Vatnajökull, 25 miles away, to explore Kverkfjöll volcano. When we arrived, we dropped our packs at the nearby Kverkfjöll Hut, a ten-by-ten-foot wooden box, and walked to the edge of the half-mile-long crater. Mud pits littered the floor of the chasm, while sulphur bubbled and dozens of smaller vents hissed scalding-hot steam. After pounding several pitons into the soft lava rock, we made an easy rappel into this 200-foot-deep Martian landscape. The ground beneath me trembled with volcanic force, and suddenly Kverkfjöll sent forth a geyser of boiling mud 50 feet from where I stood. Simultaneously, a block of blue ice calved from the overhanging glacier—a frightening reminder that life is never static in the land of fire and ice. —Mark Synnott
The Icelandic Glaciological Society has six huts spaced 30 to 50 miles apart on the glacier. (If you are skiing, plan on tent bivvies to bridge the distance.) The huts cost $20 per person per night. For information on the huts or super-jeep tours ($400 per day, accommodations extra), call Icelandic șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs (011-354-569-1000; ).

Hot-Pot Luck

Tubing Your Way Around the World

Blowing off steam in one of Iceland’s hot springs.

THERE IS NOTING LIKE dunking your body in 102-degree water while your head periscopes up through the steam into 48-degree mountain air. In fact, this Icelandic tradition of lolling in mineral-rich geothermal runoff, which gets its blistering temperature from subterranean volcanic activity, dates back at least a thousand years. Today’s Icelanders use the “hot pots” as places to gossip, detox, and, pun intended, let off steam. Politicians and executives conduct business in the pools, and the country’s daily paper Morgunbladid runs a gossip column titled “Overheard in the Hot Pots.”

THE APEX OF THE HOT-POT SCENE is Iceland’s famous Blue Lagoon, 53,820 square feet of opalescent turquoise waters surrounded by craggy black lava hillocks. The water’s surreal hue comes from a combination of blue-green algae and soft white silica mud that forms on the rocky bottom. Forty minutes from ReykjavĂ­k, the Blue Lagoon is open year-round (entrance fee $8; 011-354-420-8800; ).

BUT FOR A TRUE ICELAND EXPERIENCE, try one of the downtown pools run by Spa City (entrance fee $2; ). The Laugardalslaug (011-354-553-4039) is an old favorite, with its steam baths, three hot pots, and a stone-walled whirlpool. The cityĂ­s newest, Arbaerjarlaug (011-354-510-7600), has pools with jet-massage seats, mini-geysers, and water slides. But don’t forget to shower nude before you put your suit on and jump in, or you’ll get chastised by vigilant locals for whom the baths are a sacred ritual. “Geothermal bathing is good for your heart,” says Grimur S3/4mundsen, the Blue Lagoon’s managing director. “It’s good for your social life too—you never know who you might meet there.”

The post My Iceland Obsession appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Hiking around Alaska in the spring of 1920, Lloyd Nelson wore a typical native pack: sealskin stretched over willow sticks. Filled with 30 pounds, the bundle rubbed Nelson so raw that he built his own rucksack, a rigid wooden packboard with a removable canvas bag. He started selling the famous Trapper Nelson from Seattle in 1929; prospectors, rangers, and Boy Scouts happily endured it until the fifties.
In 1955, Dick Kelty had the bright idea of swapping wood for lightweight tubular aluminum, and canvas for thin nylon packcloth. The Kelty A4 weighed about half as much as the Trapper Nelson (three pounds), took decades to wear out, and comfortably carried twice the weight. Loyal Kelty fans argue that the A4 virtually ignited the outdoor-recreation boom of the 1960s.


By the seventies, climbers were begging for an alternative to their external-frame packs, which snagged on trees and bounced off rocks. Enter Greg Lowe and his 1972 Lowe Alpine Systems Expedition: a fabric box with interior aluminum stays (inspired by earlier internal-frame packs from Europe), a chest strap, an adjustable harness, compression straps, and, most important, a high-and-tight fit.


The Gregory Cassin, the first backpack to come off like a fancy, tailored shirt, hit the market in 1977. It had so many added features—like a side zipper and sleeping-bag compartment—that it weighed nearly seven pounds. Taped seams prevented packs from unraveling around the stitching—a common problem at the time—and later, four frame sizes offered a better fit.


“Light and fast” mountaineering was the rage by 1982, when John Bouchard and Marie Meunier, husband-and-wife founders of Wild Things, introduced the Andinista, a backpack stripped naked. The removable waist belt and shoulder straps allowed climbers to smoothly haul the bag up cliffs. And the foam “frame” served as a make-do bivouac pad.


Taking up where Wild Things left off, Cold Cold World, Randy Rackliff’s one-man show, introduced the Chernobyl in 1992. The frameless pack had no bells and whistles, and represented another conscious step away from the feature-laden backpacks that big gear companies were pumping out. Rackliff still designs, sews, and ships every Chernobyl himself.


The beauty of Arc’Teryx‘s Bora, created by Larry Reid in 1995: It was many things to many people. It offered waist belts and shoulder straps in dozens of sizes, ensuring the best fit possible for men and women, and employed cutting-edge technology to mold all foam straps. Its high-quality craftsmanship meant the pack was light, but not weak.


Pack design had split into two branches by the midnineties: spartan frameless packs, and deluxe internal-framers. In 1997, designer John Cutter grafted the two sprouts with The North Face Thin Air. Thanks to an internal X-frame of light-but-strong carbon fiber, the Thin Air was able to heft a 60-pound load while weighing a miniscule three pounds. Inspired by the “light is right” approach of climber-inventor-backpacker Ray Jardine, GoLite espouses the controversial belief that most outdoorspeople should rarely carry more than 30 pounds. Hence, GoLite designed the 2001 Gust pack—with haul loops and two ice-ax holders—to weigh just 19 ounces. Not surprisingly, it carries like a minimalist’s dream.

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HALFWAY UP the South Howser Tower, a 2,000-foot spire of white granite in the far reaches of Bugaboo Provincial Park, my partner, Rob Frost, a 30-year-old professional climber from New Hampshire, and I stop to contemplate our options. It’s July, about four in the afternoon, and massive thunderheads swirl around the peak. “I think we should bivy here,” says Rob, gesturing toward a sandy ledge encircled by a wall of stones. Plopping down with our backs to the rock, we gaze west past a glacier-cut valley and beyond into a no-man’s-land of 10,000-foot peaks draped in jackets of blue ice. A few minutes pass, visibility drops to nil, and lightning cracks the air around us. When sleet begins to fall, we crawl into our bivy sacks.

Rock Steady: Rob Frost takes the lead on South Howser Tower.

The Conrad Kain Hut

Sunshine seekers: the author and Frost hike to Snowpatch Spire.

On crack: The author jams up the Sunshine route on Snowpatch Spire.

The author plans his next move on South Howser Tower.

Summit views.

The plan had been to spread the single sleeping bag over us, but since Rob isn’t paying attention, I keep the bag dry in my sack. I repeatedly tell him that it’s only a passing squall, but after two hours, the storm increases in intensity and rivulets of slush flow down the wall and across our ledge. Static electricity sticks our hair straight up. Our fingernails tingle. Then a bolt of lightning slams into the peak a couple of hundred feet above us. The boom-crack makes my ears ring and the stone trembles beneath me. Making it through the night is no sure thing, but rappelling off right now would be suicidal.


Like many climbers from around the world, we chose to risk a thunder-lashed night for the opportunity to climb in the Bugs, an oasis of clean crystalline granite in the middle of the Purcell Mountains, a Canadian range notorious for crumbly sedimentary shale. Climbs here vary from easy 20-foot top ropes on glacier erratics just outside a backcountry hut to remote 3,000-foot faces that could easily be mistaken for something in Patagonia, Alaska, or Greenland—perfect for wall rats burned out on the carnival atmosphere of Yosemite Valley. The Bugs have become a required stop on the world climbing circuit, and they just happen to be in our own backyard, in the southeastern corner of British Columbia, a four-hour drive west of Calgary. July and August are ideal months to climb here, but as we’re experiencing firsthand, the weather is unpredictable; wicked afternoon storms pop up frequently, with very little warning.


Three days earlier, after parking our car and wrapping it in chicken wire to protect the brake lines from hungry porcupines, Rob and I staggered under 80-pound packs onto a flat dirt path meandering along the banks of a silty creek. A massive glacier spilling chaotically between twin granite spires dominated the view from the trailhead. After 20 minutes, we emerged from a dense forest of cedar, Douglas fir, and hemlock below a steep rock wall. That’s when we realized why the sign at the trailhead read NO DOGS ALLOWED: In front of us was a broken cliff with bolted-on ladders and cables, similar to the via ferrate in the Italian Dolomites. Gaining 2,100 feet in three hours, we arrived at the Conrad Kain Hut by early afternoon.

The modified A-frame shelter, named after Bugaboos pioneer Conrad Kain, who scaled many of the area’s peaks in the early 1900s, sits on an exposed granite slab just above tree line. A handful of people lounged in the yard, an alpine meadow spotted with buttercups and fire-red Indian paintbrush. As we stepped in the door, we were greeted by Joe Boucher, the hut’s bearded thirtysomething custodian, who’s a dead ringer for Tyrolean mountaineer Reinhold Messner, and a large portrait of Kain in tweed pants and hobnailed boots. Dropping our bags at a sitting area with sturdy pine tables and a magnificent view of the crevasse-riddled Bugaboo Glacier, we followed Joe to some empty floor space in the third-floor loft. It was easy to see why so many climbers travel across the world only to become benchwarmers who’d rather luxuriate amid the electricity, running water, stoves, and sleeping mats than face a falling barometer. “The outhouse,” Joe explained, “is about 35 yards back down the trail. You may want to go easy on the hot chocolate before bedding down.”


When the new morning sun pulsed in a clear blue sky, the hut’s inhabitants quickly scattered among the surrounding peaks. (In order to avoid crowding, we had all discussed our plans the previous night.) Some headed for the McTech area, on the south face of Crescent Spire above Crescent Glacier. Less than an hour’s hike from the hut, it offers more than a dozen single- and multipitch crack climbs, from 5.5 to 5.11+. Others chose the West Ridge of Pigeon Spire (5.4), hands down the most popular route in the Bugs, and for good reason: Everyone agrees that crawling along the knife-edge of Pigeon Spire is the quintessential Bugaboos experience. In places, climbers have literally worn a path into the granite. Others decided to work their way up the laser-cut Northeast Ridge of Bugaboo Spire. This rock climb is one of the most sought-after routes in the Bugs because of its sustained but moderate difficulty (ten pitches, 5.7), its commanding views of the surrounding Purcell Mountains, and its inclusion in the seminal guidebook Fifty Classic Climbs of North America.
We planned to warm up on a nine-pitch 5.10 called Sunshine, on Snowpatch Spire, also less than an hour from our overnight digs. At its base, I torqued my hands into the cold granite spotted with electric red, orange, and green lichens, and immediately realized that the friends who’d recommended Sunshine had downplayed the difficulty of the first pitch. Rob and I swapped leads up the wall, following one continuous crack up and over small roofs, clean headwalls, and open-book dihedrals. Unlike Yosemite granite, which is largely blank and holdless between the cracks, the coarse stone here was rippled with edges and tiny flakes. We were tempted to push for the summit, but drizzling rain made the rock slick, foreshadowing our epic to come. Nine raps and a 30-minute jog later, we were back at the hut.


The stink of ripe human bodies mingled with the aroma of several different meals in progress. Steam fogged the windows, and drying backpacks, clothing, and equipment hung across the walls. When Joe emerged from his office at 6 p.m. with the latest weather report in hand, we descended upon him like vultures. “High pressure is blowing in from up north,” he said, fighting his way to the chalkboard to post the report. “Should be good for the next four days.” Everyone cheered.


Rob and I realized without discussion that we should start packing up for our main objective: the Beckey-Chouinard route, a 2,000-foot 5.10 on the west buttress of South Howser Tower, where a granite monolith rises from the glacier and shoots skyward for 1,000 feet before connecting to a shining headwall splintered with cracks. The tiny, ethereal summit sits 1,000 feet above. It’s been on my tick list for years.

Leaving the hut at 3 a.m. we carried a light rack of protection (camming devices, chocks, slings), two ropes, a stove and fuel canister, two days of food, bivy sacks, and one sleeping bag. We picked our way over the Styrofoam surface of Vowell Glacier as a ribbon of orange illuminated a jawline of crooked black teeth along the eastern horizon. A steep ice gully led us down to the remote west side of the Howser Massif. Three hours after leaving the hut, we stood face-to-face with our objective.


Rob and I scrambled unroped up the first section. Tying in to the rope, we began running belays between fixed anchors when the ridge steepened past fourth class and hundreds of airy feet loomed below us. Cracks crisscrossed the rock like a spider’s web, providing endless opportunities for protection and convenient hand and foot jams. We put most of our weight on our legs since the face was less than vertical. It was late afternoon and we’d climbed 1,500 feet when it suddenly became apparent that Joe’s weather forecast was incorrect.
At the night-from-hell ledge, Rob and I crawled into our bivy sacks just before the clouds went electric. But now I’m too cold and scared to sleep. My only consolation is that Rob is taking it much harder than I am. Every minute or so I feel him shiver uncontrollably.


A raw wind rakes across the ledge at dawn and wakes us from our half-sleep. A thin veneer of ice coats everything and Rob is spooning me hard. Worst of all, it’s my lead, my “breakfast of fear.” With frozen fingers I pick my way up a long chimney plastered with ice. This granite elevator shaft ends at a notch in the summit ridge several pitches higher. Suddenly we’ve got drop-offs on both sides, and a stunning view over the south side of the peak, toward Bugaboo Spire. We simultaneously climb along the spine of a knife-edge ridge. By noon, we’re straddling a perch so narrow we can’t comfortably stand: the summit of South Howser Tower. The sun burns away the clouds from yesterday’s storm and treats us to a breathtaking 360-degree panorama. Rows of jagged, snow-covered peaks stretch around us like miniature Himalayas. In the immediate vicinity, Bugaboo, Pigeon, and Snowpatch Spires stand sentinel above the white skin of the Vowell Glacier. Crunching on a tangle of uncooked ramen, Rob turns to me. “What storm?” he says.

Bugaboo Provincial Park is a playground for rock climbers from late June to mid-September and an adventure-skier’s dream from December through May. The 33,720-acre park is open year-round, although 40 feet of annual snowfall blocks ground access in winter; admission is free. For more information, contact British Columbia’s Kootenay District Parks Office (250-422-4200; www.elp.gov.bc.ca/bcparks).


Getting There: From Golden, British Columbia, follow Highway 95 about 40 miles south to Brisco; from there, a gravel logging road leads you 38 miles west to the park’s entrance (and only official trailhead). Round-trip flights between New York and Calgary (185 miles east of the park) start at $482 (all prices in U.S. dollars) on Air Canada (888-247-2262; www.aircanada.ca).
Where to Stay: The Conrad Kain Hut, the only sheltered lodging within the park, is a three-hour hike (3.5 miles with a 2,100-foot vertical gain) from the parking lot, on the park’s only maintained trail. The hut sleeps 40 and is outfitted with sleeping pads, cooking utensils, and propane stoves. Make reservations up to six months in advance with the Alpine Club of Canada ($14 per person per night; 403-678-3200; www.alpine clubofcanada.ca). You’ll find primitive campsites at Boulder Camp, just below the hut, and at Applebea Camp, a half-mile hike north ($3.50 per person per night; no reservation necessary). The only other trails in the park are the well-worn paths between major climbing routes in the southeastern section. Backcountry camping in the fragile alpine tundra is not permitted.


Climbing:
Bugaboo Rock: A Climber’s Guide, by Randall Green and Joe Bensen ($17, The Mountaineers Books) provides detailed route information and is a must for self-supported climbers. Five- and six-day climbing trips with Yamnuska Inc. (403-678-4164; www.yam nuska .com) and M&W Guides (403-678-2642; www.mwguides .com), both based in Canmore, Alberta, cost $750 to $1,230 per person, including guides, meals, and accommodations at the Kain Hut.


Heli-Hiking: Heli-hiking trips with Banff-based Canadian Mountain Holidays (800-661-0252; www.cmh hike.com) include three days of exploring the alpine ridges on the park perimeter and three nights at CMH’s private, 24-room Bugaboo Lodge, near the park entrance. Trips, offered June to September, start at about $1,100 per person.


Ski Touring: Experienced backcountry skiers can explore the Bugs starting in December; you’ll need ten to 15 days for the 95-mile Bugaboos­Rogers Pass Traverse, which starts at the Conrad Kain Hut and winds north through the park. Hire a guide for $110 per person per day (three-person minimum) through Yamnuska Inc. (See above.)


Heli-Skiing: Canadian Mountain Holidays (see above) offers seven-day heli-skiing trips in the Bugaboos from December to early May, starting at about $2,700 per person.

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EVEN IF YOU HAVEN’T VENTURED below 60 degrees south lately, chances are you’ve at least browsed one of the 18-odd books devoted to polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, or caught wind of an Antarctic climbing trip, or met someone setting out for the Weddell Sea to gawk at penguins and icebergs. Long considered too cold, too boring, and just plain too far away, the Big White is now stepping into the adventure travel limelight. Which is to say, as fashionably extreme destinations go, Antarctica is hot.

Inspired in part by Shackleton—the most celebrated of Antarctic explorers—tourist, exploratory, and athletic activity at the bottom of the world surged last year and promises to keep increasing into the next. This November, the start of the Antarctic summer and therefore exploration season, at least 16 groups and individuals are scheduled to ski, trek, and sail across great expanses of virgin ice (see “The Cold Rush”). Antarctica’s highest peak, 16,860-foot Vinson Massif in the Ellsworth Mountains along the Ronne Ice Shelf, has emerged as a major destination on the mountaineering circuit, and other peaks are close behind. “You pick what [climb] you want to do, and about nine of ten will be a first ascent or descent,” says Dave German, a Canadian expeditioner who has made 25 trips to the southernmost continent. “That gets people hungry…and it’s as close as you can get to the explorers of old.” At the end of last year a team of six Americans made the first snowboard and ski descents of Vinson, spurring a rush to claim similar firsts. It’s not all happening on solid ground, though: Bay Area surf guru Mark Renneker led a safari to the South Shetland Islands in February, a sojourn that was cybercast to anyone in Webland who ever wondered what it would be like to catch waves spawned from fracturing icebergs.

The South Pole, naturally, is the ultimate prize, and the number of expeditions attempting to reach it on skis from the coast is growing—from 45 last year to 50 in the coming season, according to leading South Pole outfitter șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Network International. “To get into the interior is probably as much of a challenge as trying to get onto the mountain at Everest, and probably just as expensive,” says Richard Bangs, founder of the adventure-travel outfitter Mountain Travel–Sobek. “You can get to the edge of it more easily, and thousands and thousands have.”

Amazingly, about 14,400 tourists visited Antarctica in the 1999–2000 season, a rise of almost 50 percent over the previous year. (And soon they’ll come toting the latest edition of the Lonely Planet Guide to Antarctica. Choice quote: “Newspapers make good gifts for members of Antarctic stations, but don’t overdo it; a little news of the world goes a long way.”) The majority of these visitors stayed comfortably ensconced aboard Russian icebreakers and the like, snapping photos of tuxedoed birds for the folks at home, but a hardy 130 signed up with șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Network International, flying in from southern Chile to the firm’s base at Patriot Hills to ski, climb, trek, and generally commune with the otherworldly landscape. (The firm’s upcoming adventure offerings do not include skydiving—an ANI-organized attempt to parachute to the South Pole ended tragically in December 1997 with three deaths.)

Ìę

TRADITIONALLY, Americans have looked north for unearthly suspense. The Arctic is nearer, and the race to the North Pole at the beginning of the 20th century gripped the public imagination in a way that the south never did. While far-north explorers such as Robert Peary became international heroes, the U.S. Antarctic expeditions of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s languish in the basement of national memory. How many people know, for example, that on the morning of October 31, 1956, Admiral George Dufek stepped out of an R-4D plane called Que SerĂĄ SerĂĄ to leave the first American footprints at 90 degrees south?

Only in recent years, after the rest of the planet was mapped, claimed, and polluted, has the shadowy form of Antarctica begun to coalesce out of the freezing mist. “It’s really the last frontier,” says 36-year-old California resident and full-time explorer Doug Stoup, who made a string of first ski and snowboard descents in the South Shetland Islands and Graham Land in February and who has two similar jaunts scheduled for the coming season. “There’s still so much to explore, so much untouched and unseen.” șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Travel Society president Jerry Mallett is more blunt about Antarctica’s unique allure: “We’re filling up every corner of the world.”

But then, adventurers have been feeling that way since about the time of Alexander the Great. Antarctica is the highest continent, as well as the driest, the coldest, and the windiest. But it isn’t just superlatives that have appealed to the current generation of Shackleton’s spiritual kin. It’s the fact that nobody owns it. Unscarred by wars and largely unfettered by governmental red tape, something about this supra-national character seems to click with 21st-century Western consciousness; like it or not, we’re all in this together.And there’s only one enemy: the cold.

There is also one common hero: Shackleton. Now that Shackletonmania has passed through the publishing world, leaving a slew of biographies and coffee-table tomes in its wake, film and television productions are getting in on the act. In February 2001, IMAX filmgoers will watch Reinhold Messner, Conrad Anker, and Stephen Venables make a three-and-a-half-day traverse of the Triton range in South Georgia, retracing Shackleton’s 1916 trek in which he and two companions bored screws through their shoes for makeshift crampons. Later next year, the PBS series NOVA will feature a documentary on the same trip. And, of course, there’s a Hollywood film in development, slated to be directed by Wolfgang Peterson, who just did The Perfect Storm.

In many respects, Shackleton is the perfect icon for our times. “The Boss,” as Shackleton’s men called him, was bad-tempered in the morning, smoked and drank too much, and wasn’t altogether faithful to his long-suffering wife, Emily. But for all this, and more, his leadership skills make him a very modern hero. He watched over his subordinates like a broody hen—when he noticed someone weakening, he would order extra hot milk all around, without revealing who needed it the most. He led by intuition, a practice recently rehabilitated by business-management programs that until quite recently dismissed any methodology that harbored a tinge of emotion. “The kinds of things that Shackleton was able to do are extremely appropriate lessons for the new economy, as businesses move into unexplored territory and have to deal with a level of ambiguity,” says Dennis Perkins, the author of the just-published Leading at the Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition.

Despite the sudden rush of polar conquistadors, Antarctica isn’t just another testosterone zone for big guys to figure out how dead they can get. In an increasingly grubby world, it fulfills a human need for sanctuary. It is the only continent we haven’t yet wrecked, a pristine land left untouched by the frigid armies of disillusion, and a fit setting for playing out high—if harsh—ideals and aspirations. Shackleton understood this mysterious appeal to the human psyche, and for him the continent was as much a metaphor as an explorer’s dream. Some believe that before the ice came, Antarctica was the site of Atlantis. But we are beginning to see that Antarctica is within us. As the Boss himself once wrote, “We all have our own White South.”ÌęÌę

Sara Wheeler is the author of Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica (Random House, 1998).

The Cold Rush

Putting adventure in the Far South

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A leafy herb may fight the ills of altitude

John Borton

Rising Star

Waste Not, Want Not

Where humans wander, excreta stays behind. And in high-alpine regions, it adds up to a heap of trouble.

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