Non-peak-bagging activities

Since this site is about peak-bagging, and I spent some time mostly not doing that recently, I haven’t had much to write. This was due to a mixture of bad weather and time spent on “self-improvement” in one sense or another; the line from Fight Club comes to mind, though I think I have been making at least slightly better use of my time.

There has been sport climbing, most of it wet, some also featuring slug hazards. There has been fire lookout tourism, a fine thing to do when brush and rocks are too wet to deal with. There has been (mis)use of beater bikes, always a favorite past-time. There has even been some “social” hiking and climbing, which is probably a good psychological counterweight for the solo majority of my summer.

About the only peak-bagging-related thing from the period was a successful early-season speed-run of the Grand. I was nowhere near Andy Anderson’s FKT, of course: he is one of the best mountain runners in the world, and I am not. However, I was pleased with my time, which was very close to my estimate: 4h02 Ranch-to-Ranch, and 2h36 Ranch-to-summit. That puts me about 25% off the record both up and down, which is about what I should expect.

I had hypothesized that the glissades on an early-season attempt might make the descent relatively faster, but this seems not to be the case: though I took only about 11 minutes from the Lower Saddle to the Meadows, I lost time picking my way down the partly-iced-over summit knob and down the awkward snow between upper and lower saddles. Conditions were about as good as I could expect for this time of year, with an Exum-installed bootpack between Lower and Upper Saddles making crampons unnecessary. I spent about 6 minutes total on crampon transitions and 3 minutes enjoying the summit on a perfect day, and probably lost a few minutes in either direction coming from the Ranch instead of Lupine Meadows. Altogether, in dry conditions I could probably shave 10 minutes or a bit more off the ascent: 6 minutes of transitions, faster scrambling from the Lower Saddle up, and a light waist pack instead of a ~5-lb pack. I might not go too much slower on the way down, but even the thought of doing that to my knees makes me cringe.

So anyways, back to more familiar programming.