Climbing Mt. Shasta

Last weekend, along with 9 friends and acquaintances, I climbed Mt. Shasta. It was Jim Offel's birthday gift to himself (originally conceived for his 50th birthday, but deferred by 4 years) and I was happy to be included.

Four of us, including me, climbed 3700 feet in 8 1/2 hours, but failed to go the last 300 feet to the actual summit, bailing out at the top of the aptly named "Misery Hill". The other 6 made it all the way to the top. On the descent, I skied back to our base camp, thighs burning like mad with every turn in the slushy snow. The return took about 5 minutes.

We took three days for the climb, though many people do it in two and some even in one. The trailhead is at about 7000 feet, while the summit is over 14,000. We took extra time in order to reduce the chance of getting altitude sickness. It seemed to work: no one really succumbed, though one of the 4 of us who missed the summit had some nausea. For everyone else, the worst symptom was being out of breath.

With my friends Tom and Eric, I arrived a day early to take a class on basic mountaineering skills, which was mainly about using an ice axe to climb, arrest a slide and control the descent, and a little bit about climbing technique on the steep slopes. Our teacher was a young guy who once did the entire climb in under 2 hours.We didn't really understand how impressive that was until our own climb was over.

Our route started at Bunny Flat on Saturday morning. From there we walked up a marked trail to Sierra Club cabin, also known as Horse Camp, around 7,900 feet. We camped that night on the snow, and from there up we were on snow the entire time. On day two, while the rest of the group hiked up "Climber's Gully" to Helen Lake at 10,000 feet, I put my skis and skins on and went up a different route. Unfortunately, my rental skins were crap, and on the steeper slopes they came unglued from the skis, making them worse than useless. Eventually I had to take them off, put the skis back on my pack and hike the rest of the way. I had walkie-talkie communication with the rest of the group, so they knew roughly where I was which was reassuring. But it was a damned hard climb with a 50 pound load (my full pack plus the skis).

On the summit day we got up at 1:30 am, had a quick cup of coffee, and were climbing at 3:00. The final day's climb has four stages. The first is up the Avalanche Gulch bowl, visible in the first photo below, up past the triangular rock feature (the Heart) and through the line of sandstone at the top called Red Bank. This was by far the hardest and longest part of the climb. The ascent through Red Bank was especially hard, with the icy slope reaching 50 degrees and going through a narrow chute eroded through the stone. After the Red Banks came Short Hill, then Misery Hill, after which we could finally see the summit. After a rest, I tried to continue, but it was hard to tell how big the last stage really was. It looked intimidating and I was completely spent, so turned back to wait with 3 others who were similarly done in. As it happened, looks were deceiving and the other 6 took only 1/2 hour or so to get to the summit. Oh well.

Slightly refreshed by a noontime snooze lying on the rocks at 13,800 feet, I picked up my skis at the bottom of Misery Hill, hiked a short way upslope to get around the end of the Red Banks, dropped across the cornice, then skied down the bowl, past the other side of the Heart and into camp. After about an hour and a half, the rest of the group began to mosey back, after sliding down on their butts (glissading). We packed up, retraced our steps (or in my case, skied) to Horse Camp and finally trudged back down the trail to the cars. That last 2 miles to the car was particularly hard - we were all pretty much done in and ready to be off the mountain. Vertical tally for the summit day: 4000 feet (+/-) up, 7000 feet down.

While I think I was in good enough physical shape for the climb, I wasn't really prepared mentally. In spite of reading a book on the route and hearing about it from others, I had thought it was going to be more or less a hike on snow. It wasn't. Climbing is much more gruelling. You trudge along, each step needing a conscious effort, thinking about each breath. You look up every 15 minutes or so, and seem to have made almost no progress, hour after hour. You get to the top of a difficult stretch, but there's no relief: just a view of the next, equally difficult one. It's really a test of mental endurance, especially for an aging geezer.

It's a really beautiful mountain. Our group was great. If I do it again, at least next time I'll know what I'm getting in to.

Some of the photos below are by Tom Hoynes.

Mt. Shasta seen from the town at dusk. Avalanche Gulch is the broad bowl to the right of the ridge near the center of the photo. The Heart is the triangular feature near the top, and the Red Banks is the rocky ridge above the Heart. Helen Lake is just above the lowest horizontal moraine visible below the Heart.

Right to left: Jordan, Jim S. ("little" Jimbo), Laurie, David, Jim O. ("big" Jimbo), Eric, Tom, Jennie, Elio, me.

Horse Camp, with Avalanche Gulch looming behind.

Avalanche Gulch; the Heart and the Red Banks are near the top.

Resting at Helen Lake after a long slog.

Our encampment at Helen Lake, the afternoon before summit day.

From Helen Lake, our view of the first stage of the summit ascent. The top of the Red Banks is about 2500 feet above the camp.

Getting ready at 2:30 am. Jennie and Tom in the foreground.

Climbing up past the Heart at sunrise, with the shadow of the mountain visible to the west.

Near the top of the Red Banks, still carrying those damned skis.

Resting at the top of the Red Banks.

Looking down towards Shastina (the active cone) and glaciers, from the top of Misery hill.

Attending BrunoFest

I was seized once again by an impulse to do something foolish - in this case, to attend a conference organized to honor the life work of Bruno Zumino, a 90-year-old retired Berkeley physics prof. and co-inventor of the so-far purely theoretical idea of supersymmetry. Attending was foolish because I was out of place among all these academics, most of whom knew each other more or less well, and because I couldn't even begin to understand half of the talks. However, I did get to hear some really good presentations by two lead experimentalists from CERN on the Higgs discovery and (so far unsuccessful) supersymmetry searches. One was by Fabiola Gianotti, formerly the spokesperson for ATLAS, the other by Gigi Rolandi from CMS.

The photo above is of the bad combover of the audience's obligatory local crackpot, a fellow who sported, along with his nametag, a pin bearing the handwritten text "HOPE 96-D" and something below in smaller writing that might have been "ask me about my theory". He piped up several times to ask truly obscure questions, which all of the presenters swatted away quite deftly - basically replying something like "I'm not familiar with that idea," and he didn't push the matter, so it wasn't too bad.

The presenter above is Peter van Nieuwenheizen who lost me before the second line of his first slide. But he lost all of the experimentalists and many of the theorists as well, so I don't actually feel quite as bad as I made it sound.

Mainly what I felt about the meeting is that it's not easy to wander into an academic circle as an outsider and feel comfortable. I knew a number of the Berkeley people in attendance and it was fun to catch up a bit with them, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Regrettably, Bruno couldn't be there for most of the event because he is recovering from some fairly serious illnesses. His companion and my thesis advisor, Mary K. Gaillard was there, looking weary. It was fun to see her, though as always our attempts at small talk didn't last very long.

The New York Times uses R for some of its fancy graphics

 http://chartsnthings.tumblr.com/post/36978271916/r-tutorial-simple-charts

Using R at work myself, I think it's pretty cool that the Paper of Record (tm) uses it too.

Colonial Exploitation

We just got back from a week in St. Croix, USVI. We spent the week diving, eating and relaxing.The picture to the left is from a beach cafe in the town of Fredriksted at the west end where we ended up after an afternoon drive & hike in the "rain forest" on the wetter side of the island. We stayed on the north shore, towards the east end near the other main  town, Christiansted. The names reflect the Danish colonial heritage of the island, which came after the British colonial period, which followed the French and Spanish colonial periods and preceded the US colonial period. Thanks to the Brits, cars drive on the left.

For some reason, although Denmark sold the USVI to the US about 100 years ago, it's still a destination for Danes on holiday. There are charter flights non-stop from Copenhagen to St. Croix. On one of our dive trips we met a young woman from there who came, among other things, to visit her ancestral estate. According to a waitress in one of the restaurants, Danish tourism keeps the local economy afloat (barely). Some of the restaurants have Danish menus.

We were surprised at how low key and quiet the tourist areas were, even though it was the peak spring vacation time. Restaurants were at most half full and often less. We actually appreciated the quiet and absence of spring break rowdiness, but it also gave the tourist areas a depressed vibe. Some of this might have to do with the legacy of hurricane Hugo which apparently damaged or destroyed something like 80% of the island's structures in 1989. The hotel on the cay in the main harbor has still not been fully restored, and there were abandoned buildings scattered all over.

Slavery was abolished on the island by the British in the 1830s, but the slaves' descendants still live here along with hispanics from neighboring islands, wealthy American retirees and a handful of younger wanderers. Front line service jobs like wait-staff were mostly filled by white US expats, with the occasional Cruzan local.

The diving was so-so. Visibility was never more than about 50', and sometimes as little as 20-30. I think both Grand Cayman and Bonaire are better. A lot of the reef structures are overgrown with algae. We did see reef sharks, a few turtles, a couple of rays and a moray out of his crevice. Also lots of fish carrying what I think were parasitic isopods under their gills, which was kind of creepy. We also did a night dive in the shallows under the Frederiksted pier, where we saw sleeping turtles, an octopus and a sea horse, among other things.

We also visited the Cruzan Rum factory, which was kind of fun. Their process is somewhat old fashioned, especially compared to the nearby Captain Morgan's factory which looked like an oil refinery. We saw (and smelled) the open fermentation tanks and the aging casks, which were first used for scotch or bourbon. If I understand it right, then, the barrels are first used for sherry, then for whisky, and finally for rum. Cruzan makes a "single barrel" rum that's a blend of 5 to 12 year old casks and has a slight trace of a scotch taste. I thought it was great, but they were all out of it at the gift shop. I'm happy to give the standard stuff a miss.

Here's Catherine in front of the windmill remnant at the center of the property. (These cones are all over the island, mostly unused, but one in the harbor is now a functional part of a restaurant.)

Consolations of Philosophy

for Valentines Day singletons:


http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Sinhababu-Possible-Girls.pdf

"Given that every possible world is real, I shouldn’t feel lonely. There are many possible girls out there in worlds where modal realism is widely accepted. Some of the girls are single, and are pining for a boy in a world that isn’t their own. Some of them are pining for a boy who fits exactly my description, down to the smallest detail. Some worlds hold legions of girls who desire a boy from a world other than theirs, and who fits exactly my description."

Separated at birth

Jeffrey Gundlach

Le Chiffre

Nerd amusement

Emacs M-X calendar g m l shows today's date in the Mayan long count.

 

Via Kieran Healy.