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Aconcagua 2012 – for a cause

December 23rd, 2011 | Posted by Charles Miske in Charity | South America - (6 Comments)
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After the great success of my wife Angie in her group program at Skate for Hope in Columbus Ohio in June 2011 (she was among the top fundraisers), and my little brush with prostate cancer in the past 18 months, I finally decided to take the plunge and help do my part to help her fight.

Angie Skate for Hope 2011 Fundraiser Award

Angie in Fundraiser Award Line at Skate for Hope 2011 Columbus OH

I decided to learn to skate with her, which is awesome leg cross training for the various stabilizers and other muscles I didn’t know I had until I started. Apolo Anton Ohno has awesome legs, right? So I will participate in the group program in 2012. For my fundraising, I will donate proceeds from donations to my climb of Aconcagua this February 2012. Click the yellow “Donate” button to the right if you’d like to help support my efforts to help this great cause. If you leave your name, or name of the loved one you want to donate for, I will make sure to mention it here, and take their names with me to the summit of Aconcagua, one of the Seven Summits of the world.

Angie and I learning to pairs skate

Angie and I learning to pairs skate

I also have a fundraising site within Skate for Hope that you can donate to directly if you’d like to assist there instead CLICK HERE

Angie with the Hughes sisters, Emily and Sarah

Angie with the Hughes sisters, Emily and Sarah

Either way, it’s a great cause, with great support from pro and Olympic skaters from around the world. I will post video of my training on another blog that I’ll mention later, since this isn’t really a skating blog ;)

Thanks.

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Aconcagua 2012 Teaser – 1

December 21st, 2011 | Posted by Charles Miske in Destinations | Logistics - (10 Comments)
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I previously attempted Aconcagua the last week of February 2010. I had timed it to the low permit season, February 21 to March 15. I had a series of misfortunes one right after the other that I was not prepared to deal with at the time.

In Hut at Confluencia Camp

Hut in Confluencia Camp - night of Chile Earthquake

One amazing event was the Chile Earthquake of February 27th, 2010, which happened while I was in the hut at Confluencia Camp along the Horcones Trail. The large rockslide from the cliffs above camp had everyone running around screaming in the dark in their undies. After my near-death experience on Liberty Ridge of Mount Rainier the previous June, all I could think was “not again…”

Rock Slide behind Confluencia

Rock Slide path to left, near outhouses at Confluencia

The rock slide from that night came down right to the edge of camp, near the outhouses (picture above). The debris from the numerous other slides blocked the trail in places, making for odd route finding along the way to Plaza de Mulas, and I got lost several times and arrived without water, having shared my last drops with another lost hiker.

Snowy Aconcagua Summit

Snow Squall over Aconcagua

After waiting a couple days for the Ranger Physical Exam to verify my fitness level, and waiting out the almost daily snow squalls I ended up being zapped by static from a lightning bolt at 16,300′ on the normal route, and in my panic, ran over a pile of rocks and badly twisted my ankle. I hobbled around for a few days trying to decide if I could continue or not, and found that I could go up without too much difficulty, but down was horrible. I might summit, but coming down was probably too much of a risk for a solo mountaineer.

My outfitter, Lanko was most helpful in getting me back to Mendoza and helping me arrange lodging and transportation. I was able to get to a local office for LAN Airlines in the Plaza Independencia district of Mendoza. BTW: if you go off the beaten path at night, expect some interesting adventures there ;)

I flew home by a very circuitous route, since Santiago Airport in Chile was at about 20% capacity while recovering from the 8.8 earthquake just the week before. Since then I’ve been training a lot (in addition to other adventures I’ll post about later), and now I’m feeling much better up to the challenge.

I’ve been doing some research and thought I’d share a few links:

Haven’t settled on the exact dates yet, but for sure earlier than last time to hope for better weather. I also have some friends who are planning on the first three weeks of February that I’d like to hook up with.

More later …

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Discussion with my daughter

December 6th, 2011 | Posted by Charles Miske in asides - (1 Comments)
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My daughter just turned 5 not that long ago, and I was driving her home from our day at the office, and suddenly she turned to me:

“Dad, has anyone climbed to the top of Everest?”

“Yes, lots of people.”

“I want to do that when I’m like 6 or 8.”

“I think  you should wait till you’re older and stronger. Like 18.”

“I’m pretty tough now.”

Daughter on Squaw Peak in Utah

4 yr-old Daughter nearing summit of Squaw Peak in Utah

I must have raised her right. Or wrong?

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Review: Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow : The Dark Side of Extreme Adventure

December 2nd, 2011 | Posted by Charles Miske in Review - (Comments Off)
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Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow : The Dark Side of Extreme Adventure

by Maria Coffey

As you get deeper and deeper into the Seven Summits Quest, eventually it will hit you. People die doing this. People with spouses, children, parents, siblings. They leave behind families and friends, some of whom never ever recover from the loss. Death in the mountains just is.

And we know it. In the group adventures I’ve been on so far it’s typical for us to sit around the first dinner on the mountain, eating by headlamp, when the discussion turns to “if I die out here, just push me into a crevasse and kick my stuff in after me.” Really. Quite common.

Practically though, it would cost a huge fortune to haul a body and gear out of any of these remote corners of the world, and speaking as a mountaineer who’s been there, I know I’d much rather have any insurance money spent on helping my family get set up in a new life, not on hauling a corpse back – even if it does equal closure for the left-behind.

And I do speak from experience, having nearly died in a storm on Rainier. All but one of my team were pinned down by the wind, unable to move. As I laid there in the hollow the wind carved out around my supine body, my eventual coffin, staring into the white abyss, the thought flickered through my mind “this is it then”.

This book is a series of stories glued loosely together based on the author’s long association with the mountaineering world (she was the girlfriend of Joe Tasker, who died on Everest, and for whom her torch obviously flickers however strongly throughout the book). She has stories of death and disaster, and the permanent scars on the climbers and their loved ones.

It’s painful to read at times, and if there isn’t a single second in which you question your own desire to climb, your own motivation, your own goals, you’re in total denial. She does explore a few stories as examples of that too ;)

Her own obviously unresolved issues with all climbing in general litter nearly every page, so I’m not sure if I recommend this book to the spouses of climbers – I’d hate to be responsible for any possible marital discord.

Because of my experience, I read this book with a special, perhaps warped insight. I do highly recommend it for anyone who embarks on this quest. Please, read this, ponder, and decide for yourself, before you get so far into it that it’s impossible to back out. “This is my final summit” are literally famous last words.

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