ANTS. SLING FAILURE. THESE TWO SHOULD NOT GO TOGETHER.
Oh yeah? Really? As if I didn’t have enough to be concerned about, now I learn that a chemical secreted by ants can cause rappel slings to fail. Great.
Oh yeah? Really? As if I didn’t have enough to be concerned about, now I learn that a chemical secreted by ants can cause rappel slings to fail. Great.
In 2005, a two-man Spanish team took seven days to climb the route in alpine style. Our aim was to repeat the route in alpine style and confirm that Pakistan is a great destination for these kinds of ascents.
On summit day we thought we could simply climb to the ridge and follow it to the glacier, which would lead to some easy rock towards the summit. How wrong we were.
We’d both wanted to do it. We lay there on the ground, shivering in the night air as much from fear as from the cold.
Mark Twight apparently was also experiencing hallucinations (or just a bad memory) as he appears to have confused two passages from Snow in the Kingdom.
A recent perusal of Mark Twight’s self aggrandizing (not to mention downright brilliant) “Kiss or Kill” brought me to the following passage, in which Twight references partner Barry Blanchard’s out of body experience on the mountain: “I assumed it was a benign hypoxic hallucination, remembering a story in which Ed Webster saw a taco truck pull up next to him on the South Summit.”
“They should have signs and stuff and trash cans outside,” said Pham, who climbs regularly in the safety of a San Francisco gym. “I don’t think they even clean your rocks off for you out there.”
This is the first time I’ve see Alpinist late to post news. An outstanding climb was done by Tomaz over a week ago.
The climb starts upon the saddle of “The Worlds Sva” which is a obvious feature easily seen from Highway E6, about 2km north from the ferry. The dihedral system is the most spectacular part of the wall. Approach from the road took us about half an hour.
Friday 13 July It takes an entire day for Hal and Virgil to traverse 8m in an attempt to find a line of weakness the overhanging section on the big wall. Virgil Places a bolt by hand in order to retreat from this position and leave a solid anchor to ascend to the next day. Bernard, Ben and Markus climb a short icefall to the East of base camp.