It is still very much a work in progress; in actuality up to now, I wasn’t sure it was going to take off in any reasonable amount of time. What with work, school, life, not to mention computers dying, buying new computers, pulling hair out trying to even view the video let along edit it, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah. Nonetheless, it looks like things are moving forward with the rest of the team stirring up the creative pot. Still much to do in the way of interviews and cobbling together the right clips, but I think it will be good. Also waiting on video to come in from our friends we made on the mountain. As you all know, we didn’t reach the summit; they however, did. So I figure we can get some summit footage from them to include. Hopefully that comes soon. Also still cobbling together pieces of information of the tragic events while we were up there, and hope to include a decent synopsis of things.

Lastly, as I know I’ll get the question, the title stems from my journal prior to the trip. Once I knew I was going on this trip and began writing about it, it was 240 days before we left. That would be 1 May 2008. I thought it made a fitting title. Let me know what you think. I’ll try and allow comments on here, but you’ll have to create an account which I’ll approve. So if you want to leave comments directly here, make sure you sign up with your real name so I recognize who to allow access.

Oh yeah, what you need to view is right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kmhvej6L8s

N-Joy!

Otherwise, not much in the way of climbing over the last month and a half. Spent a while recovering from Aconcagua and getting back into the ebb and flow of our society. Working on projects, school and new developments at work. Have been out with the Brutes to the gym and up in RMNP scouting out some ice lines. Of course with all the recent snow over the last month (not counting this weeks dumping), our prospective lines were completely buried in powder. This could be good or bad; if the snow melts properly in a good freeze/thaw cycle, Jeff and I should have some great ice in a few weeks. Otherwise if it just sublimates like a lot of it has been, it will serve to be the fitting capstone on a crappy ice season in the park. So it goes.

That’s all for now.

It has been two weeks since our return and more since an update here. Although most of everyone who knows the team has talked or been around us, I thought I owed anyone still reading this blog some apologies and clarifications. This comes after fully decompressing back into this society (it was very weird the first five days or so) and a good talk with one of the team members.

For those who do not know me well, I have a flair for telling stories with enthusiasm and drama. Our life stories are pure drama (even the ones perceived as mundane) and as such should be richly expounded upon. I don’t make up facts to better a story, but certainly aspects may be described as being more than what they really are. I am used to telling these stories to those knowing of my knack for storytelling and as such, did not think much when I posted my last post from Mendoza. I had forgotten of the greater audience as well as the scope of that audience (friends of friends, others families, etc) and the impact that my prose might have on them. I don’t regret phrasing it as such, for what has been said is done, and I can’t apologize for speaking as I feel at the time. I can apologize for not clarifying issues sooner than I am and causing extra, undue stress in people I have never met. But for continued readers, you sort of know the score now and what to possibly expect in the future. Hell, I’ve had wilder trips that I felt more out of control that only lasted half a day a few hours from my home. So when dealing with an alpinst you have to expect the unexpected as a normal occurance.

As most everyone knows, the entire team made it back safe and sound, and none of us actually died. The death of friends mentioned in the post would have been better worded as “death of partners of friends/acquaintances”. I had been looking to meet up with an online acquaintance of mine whom I knew would be descending the mountain as we were ascending. On our carry day to camp 2 I passed an individual who I quickly ascertained was geared for climbing the polish glacier route and I asked him how his climb was. “The climb was horrible. My partner died on the glacier. They are preparing to haul the body down.” I was floored and consoled the man who barely looked like he knew where he was (he didn’t really, later he told me his state of shock he was still in), but I didn’t recognize him as being the guy I was looking to meet at this time. It was sobering to later see the wrapped body up near our future camp, and feel the true potential of the fragility of life on this desolate warren of rock. This was the closest in relation that we had to the deaths. The next day we were witness to search and rescue airlifting Stephan’s body out of camp 1 where he had been painstakingly carried via the incredible rangers of the park. We also bared witness to the start of the search for the Italian guide’s group where the next two deaths this year occurred, although we did not it at the time. Again, after two weeks most of this has been understood by our friends and family, but in retrospect my wording at the time could have been better.

This was the first time for any of us experiencing the weather at those heights, let alone the weather patterns in that region in general. While the weather was “bad”, it personally wasn’t the worse storm I had been in, and even with my limited experience there, I feel I can intuitively say it was far from the worse that mountain could dish out. We were in a Viento Blanco (twice, at camp 1 and 2) that lasted some eight hours at camp 2, but it wasn’t a 4+ day storm we heard could descend upon the peak without notice. It was an annoyance that, combined with our inexperience in understanding it along with personal health issues, made things a bit more interesting than we had hoped for. I think what was tough was the (well, duh!) unpredictability of the weather during our ascent, at least after we made it to camp 1. Prior to that, clouds would descend on the mountain around 1600hrs and abate around 2000hrs, and there hadn’t been any lenticular cloud formations (indicating high winds) on our valley approach. Things seemed like they were in a “nice weather” pattern (heck, there was *no* weather at all on New Year’s Eve). I could see the lenticular forming on our move to camp 2 and had a vague sense what was brewing but not its full extent. While the weather was rougher at this time, it still had lots of potential to be worse. Despite that we all still felt it was a good idea to descend. We were trying to plan ourselves on a mid-morning departure from high camp on summit day; this is to allow the area to warm a bit from the sun. Upon reflection however we needed to radically change that plan to a very early morning (in the dark) departure for a reasonable chance at the summit due our speed up the mountain and the fact that the storms (as mild or wild as they were) begun blowing in earlier during the days of our ascent window. Combine that realization with the knowledge that the Italian guide team that lost two people tried to descend in on of those afternoon storms again made us feel better about our decision. I know we all had the physical strength to do the ascent as such, but there are so many other circumstances running through ones mind at the time (that none of us could ever fully explain to a non-andinista), that again, we felt we made the right call. It is excellent insight into how to plan one’s ascent next we find ourselves down there.

I am not a Doctor of medicine and will never profess to be. I do maintain a Wilderness First Responder certification which means I have some elevated knowledge of dealing with medical emergencies in the backcountry (anywhere more than an hour from civilization). Mostly it means I try to have an extra observant eye and mind to things around me, as well as maintaining a moderate flexibility in dealing with ambiguity. My phrase indicating the Matt had mild HAPE should have been phrased as “he appeared to show signs similar to mild HAPE”. Truth is there was no definitive diagnosis by a trained professional. The reasoning behind my original phrasing was my intuitive eye saw his cough become more productive (began to spit up more) that seemed to be affecting him more as we ascended, which then eased up fairly quickly after descending. But no, I could not say with absolute certainty that HAPE was what was happening. I apologize for any consternation I might have caused for leading family and friends to believe I had given an official diagnosis. In the future I’ll wait for further decompression and discussion after the fact before presenting too many details.

Thank you all who have bared with me through this long post, I hope I have made more sense here than I originally did during the semi-euphoric days in Mendoza. If anyone still reading this cares to comment on this, I’ll open up comments in the blog. They’ll have to be admin approved first, but I’ll be notified when they come in. Again I hope friends and family of my team members aren’t forever put off from my updates and I apologize for any misleading worries I created. Good learning experience for me - plan on comprehending the full scope of the audience before posting certain posts. I’ll begin backfilling posts on the blog here with excepts from my journal so everyone can start to get a (one-sided) view of what it was like on the mountain. I am also working at converting the video footage slowly into a usable format; thanks for your patience on this one. It’s been crazy enough dealing with work and normal life again as it is.

Cheers and Namste!

Bad weather, developing sickness, and death of friends above us led us to pull the plug. Lots of snow and viento blanco forced us down from our high point at camp 2 (5800m). I have a respirtory issue and Matt was getting mild HAPE (all of us are sick now). Crazy week on the mountain.

Back safe and sound in Mendoza now and we will be enjoying wine, steak and showers until we return next week. We love and miss you all, but thanks to smart decisions we will all be coming home to see you. More updates later.

Cheers and Namaste!

Cheers!

Still so hard to believe it is here; a lifetime dream built from the foundation of anticipation over the last 240 days.  Too many friends and family to list here in gratitude for their support, knowledge and time as we bounced along over these eight months.  So a blanket Gracias goes out to all of you; you know who you are.

Keep checking back as we’ll keep the updates going as long as we have Internet access, which should be for a while.  Once on the mountain all bets are off.  I hope you have an enjoyable time reading and following along and that the tracking gps works as advertised.  If not, we’ll have plenty of stories and goodies to share with you upon our return.

I leave you with a slogan from my group of climbing brutes which I think is fitting here; I won’t translate for now, but merely allow you to enjoy it in all its latin glory:

“Audentis resonant per me loca muta triumpho”

See you all on the other side and next year!

Cheers and Namaste!

David Olson is a 23 year old mountaineer and CSU student from Virginia. He has been climbing since he was 16 and has traveled and climbed around the world. He has spent extensive time in South America including a 72 day NOLS expedition in Patagonia. He has spent most of his life in Alaska where he works for Denali National Park doing maintenance and helping with search and rescue.

Douglas Lesch is a 21 year old Natural Resource Recreation and Tourism student from Chicago who has hiked and climbed in the Colorado and Wyoming region. Having arrived in Colorado three years ago, he has since established himself as a Nature Center Coordinator for an outdoor Christian camp in the Sierra Nevada as well as teaching Environmental Education at Bobcat Ridge. The youngest member on the team, Doug has also played hockey for CSU for the last three years.

Matthew Olsen was born in 1986 and grew up in the small town of Eaton, Colorado, just east of Fort Collins.  He is currently studying International Engineering with an emphasis on electrical engineering and a minor in German, at Colorado State University.  He thoroughly enjoys doing triathlons and plans on doing a half Ironman in the fall of 2009.  In the summer of 2008 he completed his National Outdoor Leadership School Mountaineering course; which took place in the Chugach range in Alaska.  He has many aspirations and wants to do expeditions to places such as the North Pole and Antarctica some day.

The old man of the team, Brian Kraus is an alpinist and mountain skier from Colorado born on the first Earth Day. This self taught mountaineer has traveled and climbed around the world and spends most of his time in his backyard mountains and their sister companions’ north in Canada. He is a Geospatial Scientist for the USDA who has studied both Geospatial Science and Engineering at CSU. An avid bicyclist around town, he enjoys all aspects of the alpine world both rock and frozen, and looks forward to climbing Denali in 2010.

]]> http://theregularclimber.com/2008/12/meet-the-team/feed/ http://theregularclimber.com/2008/12/aconcagua-page-update/ http://theregularclimber.com/2008/12/aconcagua-page-update/#comments Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:03:43 +0000 the regular climber http://theregularclimber.com/2008/12/aconcagua-page-update/ I updated the Aconcagua page. It now contains a link to be able to track the expedition as well as expanded information. Check it out by following the menu link above.

We made good time up to Chasm junction where we hunkered down behind a great boulder blocking the torrent from the north.  I was also using this day to further test out the new SPOT GPS tracking device I picked up for the trip to Aconcagua.  I had activated it back at the car in order to send an “ok” message, it still had not sent the message 3 hours later while we lunched.  I was a bit annoyed as I had heard this seems to happen often with these things.  We finally packed up as we planned on a short day and I had Matt re-clip the SPOT to my pack, after which we headed back down.  When we got back into the trees we stopped to shed layers.  Off comes the back and…hey, where’s the SPOT?  We search all around and it isn’t where we are at, so not getting enough exercise for the day we left our packs by the trail and started back up to Chasm Junction looking for the lost device.  It was getting later in the day now and I was mostly out of water and food not planning for this extra ascent.  About halfway back up I knew exactly where I would find the device, and once I arrived at our sheltered lunch boulder I bent down and picked up the little orange bugger.  It was still trying to send the ‘ok’ message.

Back down again in the howling wind we picked up the packs and shuffled in the cooling day back to the car.  Back at the house I found out that the tracking option was working through the day (even though the “I’m ok” function didn’t send), and that was good as that is what I want to work for everyone to follow us on our journey.    All in all a good day; stayed decently warm and dry throughout.  Just a few more days of training before I’m done until we start climbing a week from now.

EDIT   A little more judious reading revealed the following:  in order for the OK check in to work you can not have activating tracking and visa versa.  So since I went right into tracking mode at the car yesterday, it never had a chance to send the ok message.  I think I will need to first send an ok message, and then turn on tracking for the day.