Mt. Baker, N. Ridge: Anatomy of an Attempt
“At one point or another we’ve all cited percentages or experience levels and shrugged away risk. Given reasons for why it can’t happen to us, why it won’t happen…” I lay awake, semi in and out of my sleeping bag. It’s hot. I’m trying to sleep as I know I need to be awake and alert again in a few short hours. I want so bad for the temperature to drop, so that I can sleep, so that the snow underneath my tent and for miles around me will firm up. But there’s no wind, no sound, just dry, dead air and the dying light of the day. I’m listening to a podcast called “The Dirtbag Diaries” on my mp3 player. This episode is called “Anatomy of an Accident”. In it the author details a near fatal accident he had high in the mountains in a steep icy gully, he examines the simple mistakes he made during that trip early on that had a domino effect eventually leading to his accident. “Geez, this is the last thing I need to be listening to right now!” I say to myself. I hear a serac calve off Colfax in the distance, the impact shatters the silence across the entire mountain. It’s not the first serac we’ve seen or heard fall this day. “Maybe this is exactly what I should be listening to right now…” I let this episode finish and then try to get some sleep. It’s fitful, it never seems to get dark outside, the temperature is always uncomfortably hot and before I know it, it’s 2am and time to get up and ready. I give Dean and Adrien a wake up call. Spring is already up. Everyone moves in silence, boiling water, eating whatever calories we can paw at in the dull light, getting our harnesses on, prusiks dressed and checked, clipping all our gak where ever it will fit. We split into two rope teams of two and head out into the eerie glow of the near full moon to cross the Coleman Glacier. Only minutes have passed and we’re already jumping the first of a plethora of unavoidable crevasses, ice axes at the ready to arrest any sudden snow bridge collapses. I think to myself “I didn’t even need that coffee this morning, this is enough of a wake up”. At times it feels like tiptoeing past sleeping giants. Huge pillars of broken ice the size of houses, yawning crevasses the depths of which my 100 lumen headlamp can’t even attempt to see to the bottom of. As I inch across one of a few 3 foot wide...
MSR Reactor Stove Review
I bought my first backpacking stove around June 2010. That may seem fairly recent but if you backpack frequently through all 4 seasons you learn what works and what doesn’t fast. Every trip is like an extensive field test with peer reviews from the other members in the group. Not only is your equipment being analysed but you are also analysing and reviewing everyone elses equipment. It was in this manner that I came to know about the MSR Reactor Stove. My first stove was the ubiquitous MSR Whisperlite I was recommended to purchase it by an MEC employee here in Vancouver, and I feel it was the best option for someone just starting out with camping and backpacking. It’s not light by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s rugged, durable and it gets the job done through all 4 seasons in any weather conditions. It impressed me enough that I ended up getting my first tent and snowshoes from MSR also. Anyway, getting back to the MSR Reactor Stove. I’d been using my Whisperlite for about a year and a half and was satisfied with it. When hiking with others I’d ask them primarily about the “boil time” on their stoves. It tends to hover between 3 and 5 minutes for the most part for all current stoves. The Whisperlite boils 1 Litre of water in 3.9 minutes so certainly not the best, but what difference does waiting an extra minute make right? That’s when I noticed a friend I backpacked with using the MSR Reactor. We’d get to camp, set up our tents, then start making dinner. I’d sit down and start setting up my white gas fueled Whisperlite. I’d just have it starting to boil the water and look over at my friend and not only was he finished boiling his water, he would also almost be finished eating the meal he’d just rehydrated with the boiled water. I never watched him, as I was too involved with my own setup, so how he managed to finish so fast was confusing. The Reactor only boils around 55 seconds faster than the Whisperlite and in independent test videos I’ve seen this to be true also. So how was he finishing at least 10 minutes or more faster than me? On our next outing, I made the point to watch him as I was also setting up my own stove and pot. Within seconds I understood the difference. He had his stove assembled, lit and boiling water before I’d even taken my stove components out. The Whisperlite requires a fair bit of setting up to get it going....
We are human beings, not human doings..so just be
The first time I heard this phrase was in one of the first Yoga classes that I’ve attended. At the time, when I heard it I giggled to myself thinking it sounded a little silly and maybe a little airy fairy. I’m sure at the time the Yoga teacher was just saying this to get everyone to relax, “be” in the moment and just breathe. But when I really think about what this combination of words is trying to say, it really hits home for me. I tend to be the type of person who takes things to heart, internalizes my feelings and then ends up feeling a lot of stress. But what am I doing? Why am I allowing myself to do this? I am the only one who can control what is happening in my mind and how I choose to accept external influence or opinions. Come on…… take a deep breath and just….. be. Just allow life to roll over you and through you, feel it, taste it; the good and the bad. Allow life to be the adventure it should be and allow it to shape you. Don’t fight so hard against its current, it’s going to ebb and flow and the more relaxed and more willing you are to face it straight on, the easier it will be to flow with it, rather than try to break through each wave as it comes at you. I guess that’s the funny thing about life. It’s so much bigger than ourselves that it feels like it should be something that needs to be in our control, like we should always have a tight grasp on what is about to happen next, to avoid feeling fear, disappointment, betrayal, all the truly uncomfortable human emotions. But if we didn’t feel the fear would we still feel exhilaration? If we didn’t know betrayal would we truly understand trust? We don’t need to seek out these uncomfortable emotions, but I don’t think we should run away at the first sight of them. Allow yourself to rise up to meet them. See how you transform in response to them; allow yourself to feel them so that they can refine you and let you know what is truly worth holding onto and what is worth discarding. Like any truly great adventure, life has transformative powers if we give ourselves over to it....
