Learning From Failure

We are often told that we learn the most from our failures. While it may be true, that doesn't make failure easy to deal with. This past weekend my wife and I attempted to summit Mt. Rainier in Washington. We have been training for a year and both felt prepared to make the 9,000 vertical-foot trek up the mountain reaching a height of 14,410 feet. As you can guess from the title of today's entry, we didn't quite make it.

We signed on with the RMI guide service at the end of last summer and then trained relentlessly to make our goal. I would say that I bordered on over training every week. During the process of our lengthy hikes, I developed a nasty case of Plantar Fasciitis. In the course of the year, I have tried a number of remedies and the one that seems to work the best is good old fashion stretching. I guess I need to add that to my daily exercise list. Who knew? Probably about every exercise instructor on the planet. Now I have first-hand experience in why stretching is important.

My wife and I felt very prepared for the climb and had a workout schedule that had us increasing our long hikes progressively higher each week. Often times we would have to cut our distance short because of snow. In hindsight, we should have embraced the snow and continued upwards with crampons and ice axes. Instead we turned around, hiked down, and then back up to reach our vertical goal. As part of the training from RMI before starting our climb, they taught us how to walk up and downhill safely in the snow. As an avid skier, I thought I had those skills already. I didn't but now I do.

On one of our last hikes preparing for Mt. Rainier, we hiked to the top of Mt. Olympus in Utah. It is a hike of about 4200 vertical feet over the course of 3.5 miles. The last quarter mile is more of a rock scramble than a hike and rock climbing skills come in handy. You go up about 700 vertical feet in that short distance and that turned out to be incredibly useful as there is a similar section on Mt. Rainier, only much longer and sketchier.

So what went wrong? We started hiking Mt. Rainier at around 10am on Friday morning and hiked about 5,000 vertical feet up to Camp Muir over the course of 4 miles. We knew about that as that is what we trained for. The whole team took a nice pace that we all felt we could keep and made it to our stopping point at about 3pm. Then we got some food and rested. Some of us even fell asleep. Then at 10pm our guides came into our bunkhouse and told us to get ready for the push to the summit. Unfortunately, I never trained for that. I probably should have as there is a mental element I didn't quite anticipate.

We started hiking up the Cowlitz Glacier and about 100 yards later, I had a wind gust blow me off the trail and onto the ground, spraining my ankle in the process. I jumped right back up and didn't tell anyone about my ankle as I didn't want to end my climb that early. We continued up to the Ingraham Glacier where we took our first break of the night. The guides asked how we felt and I wanted to continue.

Next came Disappointment Cleaver, an aptly named feature on the mountain. For those that don't know, a cleaver is an outcropping of rock that cuts a glacier in two. Imagine a shark fin slicing massive blocks of ice as they slowly work their way down the mountain. A cleaver has the advantage that you are walking on solid ground instead of ice and snow. Unfortunately that rock is crumbly and very unstable. It made the rock scramble on Olympus look super easy. We fought our way to the top of the cleaver and had our second break of the night. I felt spent. I tried to eat a Snickers bar as I needed calories and food. My stomach politely informed me not to put anything else in it or I would experience a Technicolor burp. Who can't finish a Snickers bar? Well this is one instance I couldn't. When the guides asked me if I could continue, my stomach said no, my ankle said no, and before I could stop my mouth, it said no loud enough for the guides to hear. I had reached my high point of the trip. I had thought everyone else had too as the winds gusted into the 50 mile per hour range. The guides almost made that the high point for the entire group. Fortunately for the others, they persevered to the top.

In hindsight I know I could have made it to the top. Getting all the way to the bottom safely is a different story. If I had gone to the top, my other team members would have gotten to see a helicopter rescue and that isn't good for anyone. Instead I safely made my way back to Camp Muir with several other climbers and a guide. I waited for the rest of the team to descend and then headed all the way back to the parking lot. Fortunately I could glissade below Camp Muir which is a fancy way of saying I slid down on my butt. It is a highly effective means of travel on snow and I highly recommend it. I don't think my ankle could have made it down without it.

The final lesson I learned from this adventure is that I need to be in better fitness condition. While I exercise a lot and am in better shape than 98% of the general population, I really need to be better than 99%. Upon hearing about our adventures, my daughter now wants to give it a shot. Perhaps I will try to improve my fitness and accompany her. If not, I may give up mountain climbing and enter a few pie eating contests instead.

Smartphone Photos

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving when people will sit down at the dinner table and eat an incredible amount of food all in the name of giving thanks for our many blessings. In order to prepare for the festivities, my youngest son and I went for a rather lengthy hike today. We covered about 10.2 miles and wore my son's dog out. The dog is sleeping soundly on the couch and snoring loudly.

I had hoped to pick up a trail map from the visitor's center of the state park where we hiked today but found it closed because of the coming holiday. Instead I opted to take a photo of the map with my smartphone so I always had it with us even if we lost phone service on the hike, which we did. While I prefer to have a piece of paper for a map, the photo served us well.

This is not the first time I have used a picture on my phone to replace a map. It won't be the last either. As I think about it, a phone picture is a lot better for the environment as paper maps often turn into litter require a lot more resources to create.

A few years ago I took my kids and their spouses to Moab for a family vacation. One of the activities for the trip included rock climbing. We had a guidebook for the area we planned to climb. As we scoped out the area, a couple of other climbers not familiar with the area came and took a smartphone picture from the guidebook of another climbing area next to ours. It worked out well for all. They went to an area away from us so we didn't have to compete for climbing routes and the photo provided important information needed for the climbs.

Taking a picture of a map at the beginning of your hike or of pages out of a guidebook allow you to carry important information in the palm of your hand. All it takes is a little practice on using the photo and a phone with a charged battery. After all, the phone won't do you any good if it won't turn on.

Dawn Patrol

Last night before heading to bed, my two sons and youngest daughter hatched a plan to wake up early and go skiing. My youngest son, daughter, and I all have unlimited seasons passes to Alta but my oldest son does not. We also all had to go to work and couldn't justify having one person pay for a pass only to ski for an hour or so. Instead we headed to the mountains before the resorts even opened and planned to hike to the top under our own power and then ski down at about the same time the lifts started depositing paying customers to the top. Some resorts don't allow hikers and those that do have specific instructions that must be followed. You are also required to have specific safety equipment that include avalanche beacons, avalanche probes, and a good shovel.

Hiking before the lifts even start running is commonly known as "Dawn Patrol" and is a great way to start any day. We followed the usual safety protocol and made sure to check all the appropriate websites before leaving the house. Then we drove to the "Summer Road" area of Alta and headed up to an area known as "Patsy Marley."

It has been about a week since the last snow and so the skiing didn't include glorious powder that most people associate with Utah skiing. Instead the high-point of the morning included spectacular scenery on our hike through the forest and up the mountain. We hiked for about 90 minutes and then skied down in about 5.

Interestingly I found it much easier to sit in front of a computer and get work done. I had the ability to concentrate for a lot longer and got a lot done. If you find yourself staring at the prospect of a long day in front of a computer, I highly recommend "Dawn Patrol."

Adventure Vacation

I spent the first part of the week down in Zion National Park with my youngest daughter. She is out of school for a fall break and wanted to do something adventurous while I needed a short break from work. I had her set up the itinerary so I took care of the hotel. One of the hikes she wanted to do is called, "The Subway," and requires a permit in order to hike it.

The Subway at Zion National Park

As I left all of the itinerary planning to my daughter, I didn't worry about the technical things like the equipment we would need or if we would need help shuttling between the start and the end of the hike. We entered the lottery to get a permit the Monday before our arrival. If we didn't receive one, we had a backup plan. On Saturday at 1pm, my daughter received an e-mail from the National Park Service congratulating us on being awarded the chance to hike "The Subway." The next day we stopped by the park's visitor center to collect the permit.

In talking with the Park employee, we discovered that we needed to get dry suits as we would be swimming in very cold water to get through the hike. We would also need to do some repels during the hike but had all of the necessary equipment. We also needed to set up a shuttle as we would drop our car at the exit and take the shuttle 7 miles up the road to the beginning of the hike.

So what does all of this have to do with computers and technology? While we could look all of this up on the Internet, once we left the hotel at 6am on Monday morning to begin the hike, we couldn't rely on technology to help us get through the hike. We had no mobile phone service nor Internet. Furthermore the conditions for the hike can change from day-to-day and so none of the sources we looked at told us we would need wet suits or dry suits. We only got recommendations for them. However when we collected our permit, the National Park Service told us it was a requirement to have one or the other because of the nighttime freezing temperatures. I'm glad they required it as the rented dry suits came in handy during the hike.

We had a wonderful adventure on Monday and really enjoyed the hike. It took us about 2 hours to get through the beginning of the hike where we carefully navigated our way through an alpine forest and across Southern Utah's famous slick rock. It then took us 3 hours to exit the subway. When we look at how much time we spent actually in "The Subway," it was 4 hours of fun. Amazingly that time felt like only 15 minutes. We had a lot of fun and I recommend the hike.

Two Weeks Backpacking

My sons and I just completed a 2-week backpacking trip at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. It was one of those character-building experiences that I think every young man should have the opportunity to experience. Every day you hike to a new campsite where they have various programs in which you can participate. Some of our activities included shotgun shooting, touring a mine tunnel 500 feet into the side of a mountain, rock climbing, repelling, and various campfire programs.

The only technology we took on the trip was our mobile phones in case of an emergency. While most of the time, they would not work, we could climb to the top of a mountain and get a signal and call home. One of the other boys on the trip brought a Goal Zero solar panel to charge his camera and it worked very well. All he did was hang it off his backpack while hiking and at the end of the trail, he had a fully charged camera. My oldest son was also able to use it to charge his mobile phone after discovering he had an Internet signal at one of our camps. After a couple of hours of Internet surfing and reading e-mail, his phone was almost dead.

I have to admit that it was good to get away from technology for a while. The only downside was that I had over 600 personal e-mail messages and 350 work-related ones when I returned. It took me a long time to get through all of my mail. Now I need another 2 weeks off. I just don't want to have to deal with that much e-mail again.