The Los Angeles Times has an article on efforts to rename North Palisade as “Brower Palisade.”

With an elevation of 14,242′, North Pal is California’s fourth-highest mountain and the Sierra’s signature mountaineering objective—Whitney nothwithstanding.

The name change, intended to honor David Brower, environmentalist and first Director of the Sierra Club, has some powerful backers, including (according to the Times article) California U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, and climbing-guide author Steve Roper.

As you might suspect, many others are not so pleased with the proposal.

In the U.S., renaming mountains is generally made prohibitively difficult by the USGS, though there are exceptions. Arizona’s Squaw Peak was renamed Piestewa Peak after Army Spc. Lori Ann Piestewa, the first Native American woman to die in combat in the US military.

While that effort was not without controversy, it was eased first by the fact that Piestewa was a war veteran, and second that it was less a renaming than a name adjustment. For many people, “Squaw” was a slur both gender and race-specific. Changing the name to Piestewa was a nice way to remedy that issue.

In contrast, renaming North Palisade after Brower addresses no such inequity.

My first thought, hearing of this, was: don’t they have something better to do?

Given the myraid environmental challenges, issues, crises current facing not just the Sierra but the US and world beyond, can’t those who carry on the legacy of David Brower find a more important—more relevant—way to spend their precious time, money, and energy?

It just seems so…inappropriate.

There are plenty of unnamed peaks in the Sierra which could have been chosen to honor Brower instead.

How does it honor the memory of one of our nation’s pioneering preservationists to ram a name change down the throat of unwilling climbers and mountaineers all across the globe?

In attempting to strip North Palisade’s name, supporters of the effort imply that nothing less than a peak of seminal importance will do for their honoree—and it doesn’t matter if that peak already has a name with a rich history. The ‘Brower Palisade’ proposal thus calls exactly the wrong kind of attention to the man. It is self-serving, self-important, arrogant. It ignores the bigger picture. It is wrong.

That’s my opinion, at least.

I was reading Andrew McLean’s latest article in Backcountry Magazine, in which he hawks the advantages of using Black Diamond Whippets instead of an ice axe for ski mountaineering.

Noting an axe and crampons can allow you to climb nearly anything, McLean makes the interesting observation that Whippets can serve as a Voice-of-Reason for overly ambitious ski mountaineers:

If it’s too hard to climb with Whippets, says Andrew, maybe you should come back with a rope. Or ski something else that day.

Reading that made me immediately recall my first-ever experience climbing with an axe and crampons, which happened to be solo on Core Ridge’s north face in the San Francisco Peaks’ Inner Basin. Did I get in over my head that day? You betcha! Amusingly enough, I wrote about the experience for SierraDescents, but that feature got lost when I migrated to the new Word Press system, so I’ve reincarnated it here: (more…)

On August 1, 2008, Hermosa Beach climber Nicholas Rice awoke after a freezing night at Camp IV and made his way to just below the “Bottleneck”.

Rice, 23, was attempting to climb K2, the world’s second-highest mountain, widely considered one of the world’s most difficult summit (and one of the most deadly).

The Bottleneck, as the name implies, was an exposed section of the climbing route where climbers were dependent on fixed ropes set by other climbers and Sherpas for passage up and down. In this way, the Bottleneck is similar to Mount Everest’s Hillary Step. Unlike the Hilary Step, however, the Bottleneck lay beneath a system of ice seracs—towering and unstable blocks of ice.

That morning at camp, Nick had spilled water on his socks, getting them wet. Consequently he got a late start that day. After about an hour of climbing, Nick (who was climbing without oxygen) still wasn’t warming up. He decided the prudent course of action was to turn back, and he did so, returning to Camp IV. After resting at camp for several hours, Nick decided to continue descending. Other climbers continued upward.

Soon after that, Nick learned that the ice blocks overhanging the Bottleneck had broken loose in an avalanche, killing three climbers and stranding others above by destroying the fixed ropes.

Like the events described in John Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air, the K2 avalanche has a ghoulish quality that lingers in the imagination. Discovering that the ropes—their lifeline—had been cut, the trapped climbers’ options were extremely limited. I expect we’ll see a great deal of coverage on this tragedy as more details emerge.

Nick has posted regular dispatches of his climb, including the avalanche and rescue efforts, on his website.

One of the blogs I enjoy reading on a regular basis is SierraJournal.com, run by Matthew DiPietro, a Bay Area tech and communications specialist.

Matt seems to have a knack for finding interesting and news-worthy backcountry tidbits to write about, and does a far better job staying on topic than I ever could.

He also runs occasional climbing and backcountry skiing trip reports, like skiing Matterhorn Peak’s East Couloir.

Matt’s site used to be called sierra-alpinist.com, but he wanted to branch out to cover environmental and alpine news as well as offering climbing TR’s, so he nabbed the SierraJournal domain and hit the ground running.

From the mission statement:

Sierra Journal was born of a passion for mountain climbing, backcountry skiing and wilderness travel in the Sierra Nevada. Sierra Journal’s mission is to provide great outdoor-related content in the form of trip reports, mountain adventure narratives, environmental news, local and national mountain-related news, gear reviews, and other outdoor tidbits.

SierraJournal is one of a very few active Sierra-themed blogs I know about. If you haven’t already visited, browse on over and check it out.

The SierraJournal (formerly Sierra-Alpinist.com) has a short write-up on the death of Exum Mountain Guides employee George Gardner, 58, who died Saturday, July 19, while free soloing the Grand Teton’s Lower Exum Ridge.

One quote in particular about the story caught my attention (from the Star Valley Independent):

According to investigators, it is not unusual for professional guides—either in pairs or solo—to go out for additional climbing on their own, once their clients have settled in for the night.

Really?

Are the investigators referring specifically to EMG policy, or is this considered common practice throughout the guiding community?

The article gives the impression that it was typical for guides to leave their clients alone in order to go climb technical routes (sometimes solo) at night. This may just be a case of sloppy reporting (perhaps guides in groups occasionally split up, some staying behind with clients, some going off on their own), but if there is any grain of truth to the claim, it sure seems like a terribly ill-advised practice.

I think I’ll try a little follow-up of my own on this one.

What do you think? Is it ever acceptable for guides to leave clients behind to go off on their own and climb?

What an absolutely amazing adventure this was!

North Palisade offers the gamut of high alpine mountaineering challenges, from glacier travel to ice climbing to technical rock, making it not only one of the most challenging Sierra fourteeners, but also one of the most rewarding.

I had wanted to climb this route for some time, but simply didn’t have the skills or the mindset to try to solo it.

Of course I’ve also wanted to ski in the Palisades, but again I was intimidated by the terrain’s obvious technical character.

North Pal was simmering on my back burner this year when a Bishop guiding company, Sierra Mountain Guides, contacted me. That lead to my first guided trip, with North Pal being the obvious objective. The experience proved to be overwhelming positive. I learned a great deal, had a lot of fun, and got a chance to scout a number of ski descent possibilities for next year. I also got the pants scared off me (by some of the technical rock).

Let me just say a big Thanks to my guide, Neil Satterfield (who also provided additional photography for the TR), and the entire SMG crew. You can bet I’ll be back to try something like this again!

Full Trip Report here: North Pal via the U-Notch.

Bishop-area guide and climber Kurt Wedberg is guiding a client up Everest via the south approach this year. You can follow their progress at the IMG Website, and also the personal blog of Kurt’s client, Michael Andrews.

This looks like a really unlucky year to be paying the usual fortune for an Everest bid. Civil war in Nepal has threatened to close off south-side access, and the Chinese government has apparently closed the entire north side of the mountain as part of an Olympics promotion stunt (they want to carry the torch to the summit). Just to add to the mix, China is reportedly pressuring Nepal to close the south side of the mountain as well. I guess they need the whole mountain to themselves for the torch ceremony?

Sounds like it will be an interested time on the world’s highest peak—but then again, it always is.

The American Alpine Club has posted more information on its website about the organization’s shift from offering rescue insurance as a member benefit to a rescue ’service’ managed by Global Rescue Worldwide.

While AAC’s original rescue insurance was hardly a perfect solution, it was one of a very few affordable insurance options—especially for climbers who live in the U.S. The original benefit was automatic for AAC members, and provided (I believe) up to $5000 in rescue insurance to pay for S&R costs associated with climbing accidents. For some climbers, myself included, AAC’s insurance benefit made the otherwise pricey $75.00 per year member dues look attractive.

Among the shortcomings of the AAC insurance was its lack of options. You couldn’t upgrade to more expansive plans, for example. Additionally, the total payout each year was capped at a specific limit member-wide, meaning if AAC paid out its limit to other members prior to your mishap in any given year, you were out of luck.

This year, AAC has dropped its rescue insurance plan. The replacement is a Global Rescue Service much like the American Auto Club. At least at first, AAC seemed a little overly enthusiastic about Global Rescue, given that it really isn’t a true replacement for insurance (more…)

The Alpinist’s web site is running an excerpt from High Crimes: the Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed by Michael Kodas.

High Crimes documents the shocking but very real emergence of theft as yet another deadly threat climbers must face on 8000 meter peaks. You’ve probably heard about the ‘borrowing’ of oxygen bottles on Everest and similar tales, but the depth of the crime on Everest and other big peaks (including K2!) is truly astonishing.

Kodas notes numerous incidents in which climbers left high camps (ie, the last camp before summit) for marathon summit pushes only to return and find their tents ransacked, with critical supplies, such as fuel, clothing, and even sleeping bags gone. Obviously, such theft is life-threatening for exhausted, exposed climbers at extreme altitude with the sun going down.

The author makes the point that in many of these cases, it would be patently evident to the thieves that their actions could directly lead to the deaths of other climbers. If you watch someone take off for the summit, and then raid his tent, what you are doing is tantamount to murder.

If that sounds like an overstatement, consider the situation Don Bowie found himself in while trying for a solo summit of the Karakorum’s Broad Peak (more…)

“Instead of Dying, I’m Flying.” — Dean Potter, Moab, Utah climber and Baseliner, in the New York Times.

Oddly enough, this does not seem that appealing to me…