Three American climbers solve the 'last great problem in the Himalayas'
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Judging from the pictures of the climb you have very steep walls which are not entirely ice/snow or all rock, but a mixture of both which means you need strong skills in both rock climbing routes 5.9+(grading for rock climbing, this being very difficult) and dealing with snowy alpine conditions and using ice climbing axes as well as crampons. My guess is they switched footwear from boots with crampons to rock climbing shoes based on the conditions of the wall.
So you have all the skills above and now you have to deal with extreme cold and weather conditions that are positively artic(-30 to -40f at nights). In addition you are at a zone where if someone makes a mistake and gets seriously hurt that person most likely is dead and it could lead to the others in the party also dying, its why picking your partner is really really important.
Lastly the biggest elephant in the room - elevation. Despite how fit you are and well trained this can be a complete blocker, some people just get altitude sickness above a certain height and have to turn around to lower elevations.
So you are doing a route like climbing el capitan but at 20,000+ feet, and unlike el capitan you have ice and snow as well as weather which is never seen in yosemite, so hope this illustrates how difficult this summit was. Hats off to all three climbers and hope that frostbitten finger makes a recovery.
Just a nit, the grade is M7 AI5+ A0 and doesn't include a free climbing grade. I would assume they stayed in their boots the whole time and did a lot of mixed climbing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_(climbing)
The Mixed Climbing, Alpine Ice, and Aid Climbing grade scales, respectively. I wish I could provide more detail into each than the Wikipedia article, but the reality is each grading scale could probably warrant a small book of history and local/regional ethics.
The mixed and ice grade implies the rock climbing is around 5.11 (harder than most recreational climbers will climb in traditional style), likely with ice tools, and the ice climbing is technical yet with decent protection.
Ice climbing is straight nuts no matter what, even if you don't do it at high altitudes with no O2.
Climbing sheer faces with no Oxygen at that height is just literally bonkers.. hard to believe anyone who doesn't climb can even fathom that.
This climb is so outrageously impressive compared to the silly "race to climb all the 8000M mountains but the Sherpas haul everything up and set up ropes for you and maybe pull you up the mountain" stuff that has been in the news lately.
Additional context: you will be surprised at the easiness 5.9 is in the gym. Don't make this mistake outside; a 5.9 will kick your ass.
A member of my crew likes to seek out off-the-beaten-path climbs. The rest of us are just happy that somebody has a plan. Maybe this has set me up with a bit of a bias.
can you provide more context on this? this just seems a bit odd to me as a casual indoor climber. a 5.9 route isn't the easiest, but most of the holds are jugs and you can do the whole thing statically. a generally athletic person could probably climb a 5.9 in their first few visits to the gym.
I can definitely imagine that climbing a very long 5.9 route in full weather gear would be exhausting, but I wouldn't expect a world class mountaineer to find it technically challenging.
I climb 5.11c+ comfortably in the gym. I can barely lead a short Yosemite 5.8 outdoors; it's terrifyingly more difficult. That's a bit on the high side of a delta, but still typical.
I would say the difference is 75%+ in the scales simply not being the same. For the same grade, the holds would be far smaller, positions much more technical, often far more sustained, etc. The other ~25% is the environment is much more challenging, even with perfect weather at sea level: route finding is harder, you have to manage gear, leading is scary, etc.
I've done a few high Sierra climbs. Grades there are little softer, and my limit is probably ~5.7
Yosemite grades are notoriously hard; the most popular gym chain in California (which I love!) grades are notoriously soft. YMMV at other gyms and at other outdoor crags.
At the end of the day it’s a subjective guide, I wouldn’t get too hung up on the numbers.
Because the grips aren't as obvious, a lot of effort is wasted looking for placements that would be immediate indoors.
What would be helpful is commenting on whether their assertion is correct or not w.r.t efficiency.
Outside, the good and bad holds are probably the same color, and may be oriented in weird ways that require some feeling around to find the best way to grip them or stand on them.
Over time, climbers outside can learn to read the rock and make very good guesses about how to reach or step for the next usable hold. But it takes time to learn, and is somewhat location-specific because of the widely varying geology of climbable rock.
I love seeing people plumb the depths of irony this way.
Conversely if you took a trip to Smith Rock or Owens River Gorge you'd get a much closer correspondence between gym ratings and rock ratings.
Messner and others keep harping on how the hardest part is mentally going forward in auch an environment. I would add: move yourself forward in such an environment and know when to cancel the thing so you won't die.
The sensation of this achievement seems to be mainly grounded in the fact, that there was a high probability of death. I understand that this thrill is a very good hook for media coverage. But as far as I understood from reading, the main difficulty was the technical climbing part. Combined with the low oxygen atmosphere and low temperature of high altitude.
I really hope that they knew what they were doing and mitigated the risk of getting hurt. Maybe sometimes the risk of death is exaggerated in this articles to build suspense for the readers.
I think it is bad if the "Risk your life to get famous" part of this adventure is stressed too much.
> The first two days involved about 6,000 vertical feet of climbing, 60 meters of rope at a time.
As a European used to the metric system reading a sentence like this is a real challenge. I don't know why you measure hight of a mountain in feet and length of a rope in meters.
The danger of avalanches, weather changes, and the non-availability of rescue if anything goes wrong also plays a part. Alpine climbing is a package deal of difficulty and deadliness, and these aspects are hard to disentangle. Every competent alpine climbers does what they can to mitigate risks, but there is a very significant amount of risk that cannot be mitigated except by not doing difficult alpine climbing.
There are exactly zero people who do these kinds of sports and have a deathwish, because every deathwish almost immediately comes true. On top of that, while the sport could technically be practiced alone, you really really really need buddies to rely on - they're gonna hold your life in their hands, you're gonna hold theirs. The "stay safe" mantra is fundamentally embedded into the groupthink.
The entire sport *is* risk management. Picking your gear, picking the route, picking your friends, knowing (and consciously pushing) your limits, knowing when to back off, dealing with trauma of injury, of seeing others injured or dead.
Media of course can and will toot the "these insane men" horn, thrill sells and an impartial report would be boring. We're guilty of this too! The boys in the crew often shoot cool videos to attract clicks and sponsorships, it's how the best of us turn the hobby into a trade.
We're not motivated by danger, we're wary of it as a constraint under which we can express ourselves.
The grade they gave was M7, AI5, A0. M7 is moderate, AI5 is moderate but strenuous, and A0 is the very easiest A grade. The details of what these grades mean are discussed in other comments. If there was a climb with that grade close to the road in the U.S. Rocky Mountains, it would be considered a fun but not-too-challenging day of climbing by these guys.
But combine this moderate climbing grade with: the weight of a week's worth of camping supplies; the very high altitude; the very cold temperatures; the constant threat of terrible weather; the constant threat of avalanche or ice fall; and the very far distance from any kind of help... and you begin to see how it is a remarkable achievement.
The risk of death was high, yes. But it's not like playing Russian Roulette or running across a busy highway or something. The hazards are inherently part of the climbing goal, and a huge part of the achievement is in how the risks were mitigated: peak physical fitness; long climbing experience; the lightest gear; the best weather forecasting; the best planning and logistics, etc.
Metaphorically: you can't build a plane with the same safety margins you use to a build a bridge. And you can't get a rocket to orbit with the same safety margins you use for a passenger plane. The harder the objective (physically), the smaller the safety margin is available, and the more skill and expertise it takes to make it work.
This is a wild accomplishment in the mountaineering world.
> For alpinists, the public’s fascination with the highest mountains is a bit like judging an ocean swimmer by how deep the water is. Marvell has had similar queries from well-meaning acquaintances: How high is Jannu? “That’s not really the point,” he said.
So you got stuff like Mt. Whitney in California, where you can walk to the top, and it's the highest point in the lower 48. Then you've got the same mountain but this route: https://gripped.com/news/new-13-pitch-5-13-on-mount-whitney/ which is dramatically more difficult. For climbers it's all about the route and max elevation is less important.
It's not like a lot of people would get much out of asking "How challenging is the climb?", because they'd have no real frame of reference for interpreting the answer. "How much up?" feels like a question that should be relevant, and to which the answer can be easily grasped.
What was it like? Make 2-3 moves, then stand for 30 seconds to catch your breath?!?
I could imagine some kind of warm water tube system that takes heat from a heat exchanger on your chest and transports it to your hands and feet, and is pumped by the action of walking. Not sure if that’s been tried before.
There’s a lot of great engineers who’ve done a lot of climbing so my guess is pretty anything that works sufficiently well to keep hands and feet warm, is also too complex, expensive or bulky to be useful in really extreme mountaineering environments.
You try making a few calls in -15C 5 m/s wind (typical 55 latitude continental climate weather in winter), then see the charge bar plummeting to zero when you attempt to call up a taxi so that you don't freeze to death.
About only thing you can do at that point is shove the phone into your panties to heat it back up and then hope what's left of the charge is enough and it doesn't refreeze while you're at it.
No, lithiums don't work much below 0C. Balloon payloads use insulation and heaters, but that obviously eats into energy available.
Since we're sharing anecdotes - EVs are extremely popular in Norway and YouTube is full of videos of people testing the cars in negative 40 or even 50 centigrade. They work fine even without battery preheat.
It's fine to acknowledge the reality of current technology while also being optimistic about the future. Operating EVs in cold remote areas requires diligence and preparation. It's a fact.
The phone can't get the current it needs exactly because the temperature is out of spec. This is the definition of "battery stopped working".
Now if you've got a tesla-sized one, and it has a good load, then you have another problem - you have to cool it, or it shoots above 50C and you get a dead battery eventually. I can imagine a 80% charge battery of this size heating itself in a few minutes of load even from -50C. Won't get the usual 2K cycles to half capacity in those conditions, but the car will still move. A bit.
In other news, Norway is overrated wrt colds courtesy of Gulfstream. Compared to say northern Kazakhstan it has a nice mild climate.
It's possible, in fact probable that your phone doesn't have one of the aforementioned formulations.
Edit: Also, these batteries aren't necessarily exposed to outside temperatures. Strategically placed near the body, they can be kept at higher temperatures for greater power efficiency - but if they are exposed to outside temps, they will not die as easily as your (pathetically useless in this situation) cell phone batteries would.
Not to pick on you because that sounds like a legit idea for the environment those guys were in, but that's part of the "plot" of "The Complicator's Gloves"
https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_complicator_0x27_s_glov...
The last time I was on the periphery of mountaineering, performance enhancing drugs were commonplace. A breakthrough in performance enhancing drugs should yield new results in mountaineering.
Water and fuel are also heavy, which means climbers on big routes like this are usually riding the edge of starvation and dehydration for days, which further raises the risk of frostbite in extremities.
I feel like you just re-invented the circulatory system. I don’t mean that to be snarky at all, just that I think part of the problem with your hands is that your body starts sending them less blood to keep your core warm. I’d think that pumping more heat away from your core would be bad for survival.
But my climbing is also not on vertical rock at 25k+ feet!
Vacuum flasks are such an amazing invention. They really seem to work exactly like you would want.
Thermal insulation requires thickness, almost by definition. Dexterity requires thinness, also almost by definition. It's hard
But mechanical parts of the space station can be as hot as 120C (250F) and as cold as -150C (-250F), so I'm pretty sure you do want thermal insulation :-)
Worth noting that 65% of all the injuries reported during spacewalks occur to the hand.[1] They “solved” it as in astronauts are not dying because of glove malfunctions. But there is plenty of improvement to be wished for with the solution.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/us/climbing-jannu-north-f...
Can someone explain to me, who is nytimes writing this article for, exactly? Only Brits mix units like this, but this is an American publication - so what gives? Why not just stick to meters or feet throughout and be consistent?
60m is a standard category of rope, so it would be confusing (for climbers at least) to call it 196ft or 200ft rope.
It's also common to talk about 4000-footers in New Hampshire and 13ers in Colorado, so I guess that's why (some) people stick to feet for mountain heights.
I agree it doesn't make sense because sometimes you have to convert in your head to see if your rope is long enough, but it's just the custom here for whatever reason.
It's generally worth watching since units are an important part of our lives.
I’m probably some sort of challenged but I really can’t internalise if 5000 feet is impressive or not. Like it could be 20 meters or it could be a 1000. Of course it’s fair that an American article uses their various “freedom” scales and I tend to just “give up” and ignore the numbers I don’t understand. The article itself does enough to impress the magnitude of these climbers achievement without the numbers.
Are you proud of being unable to solve this? It would have taken you less keypresses to find out than to write your message.
Hint: if you want a rough estimate just divide the number of feets by 3.
It is what it is.
That being said the effect of lower oxygen is you go slower. It took them a week to ascend 10k feet, and if you'll allow me to assume a spherical cow then a hypothetically similar climb at sea level could probably be done in a couple of days going by how fast top climbers climb El Capitan.
It's not _that_ expensive of a hobby. Maybe $5k of gear a piece plus travel expenses for a minimal expedition like this.
It is also expensive in life terms - local guides often do dangerous work making this possible.
> Rousseau ... guides climbers in Utah and beyond.
> Cornell ... summers around the rock-climbing hub of Yosemite National Park, working at a restaurant (owned by Anker, a mentor) to help fund his pursuits. He lives in a 2003 Freightliner van, with 320,000 miles, [down by the river].
> Marvell ... has a few sponsorship deals and also his own welding business ... climbing up and rappelling down oil platforms, timing repair work with the tides.
Per gram, ultralight climbing gear is pretty expensive. But you can only carry so many grams with you. And yes, plane tickets to Tibet are $1600. Food isn't that expensive. And yes, they had some porters and pack animals to help them walk rations to base camp at 15,000 feet. A lot of people probably spend more on golfing than these guys spent on this epic.
There's a huge difference between the cost of an 'expedition' like this and the cost of adventure tourism. If you're not paying for dozens of people to carry oxygen bottles and dry clothes and tents and warm meals it doesn't cost anything to go outside. And if you structure your life around spending more time climbing/surfing/hiking, it doesn't seem like such an impossibility to not clock in for a few months.
In some cases unfortunately it does. The local governments of the Himalayas sell quite expensive permits to climb the high summits. This one was probably free, but give it some time and popularity and you will need a expensive permit for doing this as well.
There is a whole spectrum of what it means to be a "professional"
OTOH, I’ve known people that live in a trailer and had a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that was worth more than the trailer. So one doesn’t have to reach terribly far to find someone that is living their priorities. Just because you aren’t willing to work odd jobs and live in a van to finance your badminton career doesn’t mean others aren’t.
however one of their perks is the "Live your dream" grant where they fund amateur climbers to go on their dream trip once a year. it's application based but I've known people who've gone to the Karakorum on it.
I know this firsthand, as a friend of mine is such a climber, and my language-services business has provided native-English revision of his and his peers’ sponsorship applications for some years now. In between expeditions, it is a constant hustle for money.
He'd get a trip all organized, then it will be aborted mid-climb due to weather or other issues, and he'd have to start all over again and take a few years until he can try again.
It's also just a good read if you're interested in the topic.
[0] http://marcleclerc.blogspot.com/2012/07/dreaded-first-blog-p...
I am inspired by people who sacrifice to achieve big goals - although if the goal is important enough, perhaps you don't feel the "sacrifice."
If you know more than someone else, that's great, but in that case please share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
People can quote stats for Himalayan climbs and the such, but a climb like this lacks meaningful statistics. It is so far from a trudge up Everest, and unequalled, that I don't see how to assign a stat. Right now it stands at 0%, which is probably not the right number.
Not sure if you'd say "a lot of regular humans" have a Nobel. There are a lot of laureates out there, but I mean are they regular guys?
[1]: No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks (October 2006)
Regular human beings would die 100% of the time. Not 80.
Likewise for this part: "The first two days involved about 6,000 vertical feet of climbing, 60 meters of rope at a time." No "regular human" is even making it 50 feet free climbing up a vertical wall, let alone the technical skill required to clip the rope, place protection, and manage equipment while climbing and working with your partner.
It's really easy to underestimate this stuff, especially if you've never actually tried rock climbing or done high altitude stuff before. It may look easy, but at around 15,000 feet it gets to the point where even the most physically in-shape person cannot walk more than a few steps without having to stop and take a breath, let alone climb a vertical wall.
Likewise, rock climbing might look easy, but go to a local climbing gym and pick a 5.9 or 5.10 (which are about medium difficulty) and unless you have past experience climbing, I guarantee you won't even make it halfway up. And that's at a gym, where everything is easier, and you don't need to worry about placing your own protection or carrying ropes.
Part of the reason for this, I think, is that Hollywood and TV depicts ludicrous levels of acrobatic and athletic capability as the norm; apparently normal people in movies are depicted catching falling people one-handed, outrunning explosions, and so on.
Climbing, even at an enthusiastic amateur level, is much harder than non-climbers believe, and I think your suggestion that readers try top-roping a 5.9/5.10 to get some idea of even beginning climbing difficulty is an excellent idea.
I cannot even imagine the level of dedication and expertise it takes to do this sort of feat.
As for 'dice rolls', it depends. In climbing there is "objective danger" - danger you cannot really control, like your route passes under a serac that collapses frequently, and "subjective danger" that you can control - you step on a loose hold and fall. They spend months planning, trying to reduce the objective dangers as much as possible, and of course years of training to reduce the subjective dangers. Summarizing all of that as a 'dice roll', while it might capture the percentages of particular high risk climbs, seems to miss the mark a bit. Spend a night in a climbing hut, or hanging in a tent/portaledge off a mountain side and it's endless talk about this sort of thing. How to master your body, the terrain, and often most importantly and hardest, your mind.