Jannu North Face–So Close, Yet…: The Russian Big Ballers, err, I mean Big Wallers, on Jannu have managed to haul their portable dormitory (i.e. portaledge) up to 7400 meters, just 310 meters below the summit. With the summit just above them, a team of three climbers could not resist making a bid for the top. They got to the summit cornice before suffering undisclosed “traumas” (injury? altitude sickness?) that forced them down for medical treatment. The entire team, though, is now confident that they are going to climb this bastard, and the next three man climbing team is setting up to make another summit bid, with a decent weather window for the next few days. Stay tuned…



Jannu’s North Face: Doesn’t really seem possible, does it….?

Top 10 Gross Sports Habits: Baseball player Moises Alou pees on his hands to deal with callouses. So does Jorge Posada, but he wants you to know that he does it only in Spring training. “You don’t want to shake my hand in spring training before the game,” he says. “After the game, it’s OK.” Thanks for the tip, Jorge, but why is it okay after the game?

Anyhow, this urinary revelation has prompted ESPN writer Jim Caple to ruminate on 10 things grosser than Jorge Posada and Moises Alou whizzing on themselves, and thanks (I think) to a tip from TWC reader Geoff, here they are for you. Read about the “Vomit Comet,” mascot stench, and, err, sumo “stewards”…



Odd Job: “Man, Yoshi really has me good. I’m gonna need some serious help with this wedgie after the match…”

Everest, The Bus Station: It was unclimbed just over 50 years ago. But guess how many climbers hit the summit this weekend. 10? Nope. 30? Nope. 50!? Nope. Try 71 climbers, heading up and down from Camp IV like lemmings, jostling and bumping each other all the way (TWC note: one of the 71 was Bond…Annabelle Bond; no report yet, though). Wonder if that’s how each climber pictured the moment when they wrote that check for $70,000? Climbers are still summitting, pumping the numbers even higher, and Explorer’s Web has a cool video that somehow manages to make topping Everest seem like a unique and private experience.

Over on the other side of the mountain, the Wetass climbers (i.e. the Russians) have reached 8270 meters on the central North Face. Expedition leader Victor Kozlov reports that if they manage to fix ropes up to 8400 meters, and stick a tent there, they’ll make the push for the summit from that elevation. So what are they worried about? Weather? A little. The last pitch? Not really. Their major concern right now–get this–is the oxygen cylinders raining down on them from above, as the tourists who are currently summitting toss their empty air bottles off the top of the mountain. Two near misses, so far. Nice. Imagine returning from Everest and bragging in your office: “I was the 131st climber this year to get to the summit this year. Oh yeah, and I killed a Russian climber…”



“There goes another motherf*cking oxygen cylinder. If we get to the top I swear I’m going to punch someone’s lights out…”

J22 World Championships: 130 boats, 4 days of sailing on the Chesapeake Bay off Annapolis, check your ego at the door. I’m sailing my boat with two friends (Team Wetass) in this massive sailing skills check, so postings may a bit sporadic this week (depending on how good the parties are). After two days of round robin sailing the fleet will be split into a Gold (Championship) fleet and a Silver (Loser, I mean consolation) fleet. Our goal is to try and sneak into the Gold fleet somehow. You can follow the regatta here. And if you want to send Team Wetass, or any other competitors, a suitably obnoxious, possibly even humorous, message, click here…



2003 Worlds, Italy: “Damn it, Ray. I told you we shouldn’t be carrying 12 cases of beer…”

(Photo: Stefano Grasso)

Have A Wetass Weekend…

The Dilemma Of Video–Can You/Should You Watch Someone Die?: I ask this question because after watching (with trepidation) the horrific beheading of Nicholas Berg in Iraq this week, I came across a video which records the last–and fatal–dive of freediver Audrey Mestre. TWC wrote about Audrey’s tragic death last year, after she drowned trying to set a new freediving record of 561 feet (she was posthumously awarded the record for a practice dive of 558 feet, and Salma Hayek is now set to play her in a movie directed by Titanic director James Cameron). The dive was supposed to take 3 minutes but equipment malfunctions slowed her descent and then prevented a fast return to the surface. Click here for a story about the accident. Anyhow, a six minute video of the dive has finally hit the internet (sooner or later everything hits the internet, right Paris?), and I struggled over the question of whether to watch it, and whether to post the link. I didn’t want to be gratuitously and morbidly curious, simply clicking on the video in the casual way I click on other internet videos I come across or post. After all, someone is dying. In the end I did watch, and it is both tragic and difficult. It also conveys very dramatically just how courageous Audrey was, and how extreme the sport of freediving really is. So that’s at least one redeeming factor. Also, it’s not up to me to decide what you should or shouldn’t watch, so here’s the link if you choose to click on it.



Audrey In Life, Doing What She Loved Doing

Big Wall Update-Jannu: Russian climber Alexander Ruchkin came in with a dispatch after descending from 7200 meters following almost 5 days of work on the Wall. The descent was almost as hard as the effort to keep going up, with the most of the fixed ropes frozen into the rock under centimeters of ice. Note the word “almost.” Here’s Ruchkin’s account of what it is like to work day after day at 7200 meters (edited for clarity):

“We were unsteady on our legs for weariness, and were like drunk cows on ice because of the erased points of our crampons. The portaledge hanging at 7200m allowed us to begin work earlier, not wasting time on climbing on the fixed ropes. The wall from 7000 m and above is steep granite alternating with cornices. The cornices would represent a problem at sea level, but at 7000 m all the more. There are cracks in which even the most thin pitons do not go into not to mention fingers…You rest against a cornice, and you have to try belayer’s patience climbing on the smallest chocks. If you get in wide cracks you find inevitably in them frozen or jammed stones in which you use camalots or friends that hold you only on the verge of falling. Constant hanging strains all muscles so that after you fall entirely exhausted into the portaledge and you can not even move. The expectation that the wall will become less abrupt soon is deceptive. Pershin and Totmyanin, who came to replace us, have been working on the wall three days and still the cornices and overhanging don’t come to an end. It is The Impossible Wall and probably unique. There are no analogues to it in terms of complexity and steepness at such altitude. And nevertheless she is [being] climbed. We have got very little left to climb. May God give us the good weather.”

C’mon God, give them a break. These guys deserve to get to the top. Unfortunately, though, in the high mountains prayer is rarely enough…



Creature Comforts: “This would be a lot easier if I didn’t have to drag this f*cking box spring up the mountain…”

Arctic Update–Taxi!: Trans-Arctic trekker Ben Saunders has called for a plane to pick him up and get him the hell back to civilization. Can’t really blame him. Ice conditions have been terrible, his quest to become the first human to cross the Arctic Ocean solo and unsupported ended weeks ago when he received resupply, and nothing but pain and suffering lie ahead. Ben reckons trans-Arctic solo and unsupported is impossible–which is exactly why someone (probably a Frenchman) will soon be back to give it a try. Anyhow, it was no mean feat to get to the Pole this year, given the conditions, and Ben (almost) always kept his sense of humor. Sorry to see him sign off. Here’s his latest, as he tries to prepare a landing strip for his ride:

“Oh the guilt! The shame! I often say that part of my motivation is to encourage other young people away from the tv and computer games and into the great outdoors. And how am I whiling away my last few hours (hopefully) in this incredible wilderness? Why, playing solitaire on my iPAQ, of course…

Actually, that’s not all I’m doing – the pilots have asked that I keep a detailed weather log for them, with all sorts of important sounding headings – ‘horizon distinction’ and ‘contrast resolution’ are my favourites. It’s a glorious day at the moment, which bodes well for a pick up.

I’ve found the best bit of flat(ish) ‘multi-year’ ice I’ve seen in ages, I’ve marked out the four corners of a runway and I’ve flattened the lumpy bits with my snow shovel. It’s just long enough, although if the pilots aren’t happy with it, they’ll land nearby and I’ll have to leg it over.

If all goes well, they should land at 1700-1800 UTC (Greenwich Mean Time in old money). So, as I write this, I have another 6-7 hours to wait.

Hopefully my next update will be from terra firma – I haven’t set foot on land for 71 days now!

iPAQs, sat phones to call for a ride home, e-mail. Arctic exploring just ain’t what it used to be. But it’s still damn difficult and dangerous (which only makes Peary, Nansen and the early northern adventurers all the more unbelievable)…



Digital Doodling: “Let’s see. I’ve got to melt some snow at 9, and at 3 some polar bears are coming for tea…”

Wetass Of The Week–Nawang Sherpa: There’s nothing unusual about a Sherpa on the way to the summit of Everest, but a Sherpa with just one leg deserves a big tip of the hat (Explorer’s Web has the full story). Meet Nawang Sherpa, who ironically lost his leg not on a mountain but in a motorcycle accident in 2000. Thanks to a non-profit called “High Exposure,” Nawang got a prosthetic climbing leg in 2002, and now he is on the mountain and pushing for the summit. The founder of the nonprofit, Ed Hommer, lost BOTH his legs on Denali and was supposed to be climbing alongside Nawang. Sadly, Hommer died on Mount Rainier last September, when he was struck by a falling rock. American climber Tom McMillan stepped in to take Hommer’s place (as far as TWC knows, he has all his limbs), and recently reported that he, Nawang and the rest of the team are at Camp 2 and pacing themselves to summit over the weekend. You can follow their bid here. If the human spirit is this stubborn, this durable, how long will it be before a paraplegic gets to the top of the world’s highest mountain?



BioSherpa Nawang: “Man, this thing is great. No chance of frostbite, and I can open beer bottles with the shin “bones”…”

(Image via Explorer’s Web)

TWC Quick Hits…:

69-Year Old Japanese Man Plans to Brave 24,000 Miles Of Ocean In 20-Foot Handmade Boat: Will cross both Atlantic and Pacific on voyage home from France. Why? “[B]ecause I will turn 70 shortly.” Well, alrighty then…

Bumpy Humpback Whale Flippers Could Be Used As Model To Improve Airplane Wings: More lift, less drag. Better for ditching in ocean, too…

Vermont Hunters Cling To Tradition of Fish Shooting: Sit in trees and blast away with shotguns, rifles and AK-47s. Obvious question: Is Vermont that boring….?



“Woo-hoo. I got me one, Thelma. Err, better bring a sieve…”

(Photo: New York Times)