Words from Wik

So my last post was just one big complaint. I realized that as I was writing it, and hesitated about 5 times before actually hitting ‘publish’. I hate complaining. I rarely complain. I always look for the silver lining on the cloud, for how I can make the best of any situation. And I think it takes a bit of that to be able to climb high altitudes, to be able to enjoy the fresh air and the beautiful views and the relaxed people, rather than focus on the shortness of breath and the monochromatic rock-snow landscape and the lack of luxuries. However, in the interest of sharing as much as I can about what I go through as I prepare for and attempt Everest, I feel it’s best to share those bad moments and bad thoughts as much as the good. It would be a little too easy just to publish the good.

To those ladies that I have explained what high altitude mountaineering is about, several have drawn similarities between it and childbirth: you go through a lot of pain and during that pain you swear you will never do it again, but once you’re done and you look back at the result of all that pain, you barely remember the pain, in fact you start planning the next one. So it’s easy for me to just wait a few days after I go through some tough moments and forget about them, but in my attempt to share what it’s like to prepare for and attempt Everest I will try and capture all those negatives as well as positives. So please, when I complain, now or in the future, take it all with a grain of salt, appreciate it for what it is, and know I’ll get over it.

Concerning my last post, I have already decided that I’m going to focus less on the weight lifting side, start doing more body weight exercises to keep the muscle I’ve built; also I’ll start walking with weight on my back to get the muscles I’ve built used to working the way I’ll need to use them on the mountain. So I already have a bit of a solution in mind.

Hopefully I’ll post some more updates soon on my other preparation activities. All the best!

The training I have been doing to get myself into shape for Everest is starting to weigh on me. Not sure exactly why but I am really starting to not like it. When I go to the gym I am tired of feeling pain and burn from the weights, and as I keep upping the weights that burn is not going away. I find I need to take longer breaks between sets, and mentally I’m just not into it as much. I’ll keep going for a while still, though I doubt I’ll reach my weight goal I specified in an earlier post; but no matter, that was just an arbitrary number anyways. Regardless I am glad I’m getting stronger and I can quite confidently say I am in the best shape of my life. And I definitely have an appreciation for those guys at the gym that are totally bulked up, not so much for what they achieve but for the dedication and discipline it takes to achieve it. Though I wonder if I could get as big with my current schedule if I was on steroids? Just a thought, not something I’ll ever find out.

Anyways, this mental challenge in my training I should take gladly, because it’s exactly these kinds of feelings that I will have on Everest. It will be a case of my body not wanting to do what I must convince my mind to do. However, two months of that on Everest will be more than enough and if I have to put up with it starting now I wonder how I’ll fare once on the mountain.

Hi all, I’ve been meaning to update on some of the goings on of my preparation for Everest, unfortunately those very preparations have kept me busy enough that I find little time to compose my many thoughts and feelings as I prepare and go forward. I will take this opportunity to share that my endeavor has got it’s first media exposure, the Calgary Sun has an article online about my climb, and you can look for it in tomorrow’s paper. Check the link here:

http://www.calgarysun.com/news/alberta/2010/01/26/12620871.html

“The toughest thing is preparing to do things your body doesn’t want to do — it’s more of a mental challenge than physical one, if you’re physically prepared,” he said.

I wanted to also give an extra special thanks to the many people that have already donated to World Vision in support of my endeavor, thank you very much!

UPDATE: Just checked the print version, the article is at the top of page 17 with a nice big headline. Thanks Bill Kaufmann!

Happy New Year everyone! Now that it’s 2010 and I’m deep into my preparations to climb Mt. Everest I thought I’d share some of them.

I am now training what I consider to be full time. I am lifting weights at least three times a week, swimming at least once a week (for an hour), and trying to get out into the mountains for ‘real-world’ exercise on the weekends. I’m learning about training techniques and strategies, and I am learning a lot about fitness nutrition. There is a lot to it, and there’s a lot of information out there to digest, but I am enjoying it! I enjoy learning new things and I am getting an appreciation for how professional athletes train, how diligently they have to eat, etc. There’s some really cool people who are helping me out which should make it a little easier.

I guess just to summarize what I am doing: when at high altitude I will lose weight, a lot of it being muscle, so with my build I need to build muscle to be better prepared for when I start losing it on the mountain. Maybe I could get away with what I have, but I am taking this trip a little seriously and I want every advantage I can get. My goal is to get to 200 pounds (91 kg), where the most I have ever really weighed is 185 pounds (83 kg). While gaining weight can be easy, gaining muscle is not!

I was looking into satellite phones to try and see if I can get one to stay in touch with people while on the mountain, when I remembered someone saying that Everest Base Camp has cell coverage. So I looked into it further and it seems that Nepal Telecom wants to expand that to give the entire south side of the mountain cell coverage! Click here to see the story. Anyways, I’m hoping that system is working and hopefully I’ll be able to keep in touch with a normal cell phone! How times have changes since Hillary, no?

Another little bit of preparation I did today: I sold some stock in AMD that I had bought previously, I’m starting to get the money together that I need to fund my trip. It was a stock that did not too bad between when I bought it back in November 08 and now.

That’s it for now, take care and make the most of 2010!

Today I am launching a campaign through which I hope to raise money for the charity World Vision by attempting to climb the world’s tallest mountain, Mt. Everest. It’s called World Peak for World Vision, and my goal is to raise money for two projects in the developing world. Have a look at the website at www.worldpeak.ca, and if you are able to donate please do. Or simply pass this message along to others who may be interested or may want to donate.

The plan is to train for the next few months, and in the spring head to Kathmandu and start my climb. I will be writing on this blog a bit more regularly to keep people informed and share what it’s like to be training for and then trying to climb the world’s tallest mountain. If you want to stay informed you can subscribe to the RSS or sign up for email updates (top right corner from main page).

Thanks very much for your support and feel free to drop me a line anytime with any questions or comments!

Now that I’m back in Calgary I have some time to write down things I wanted to pass along before. One of the things I found interesting was the type of people that were in our group, to maybe illustrate how diverse we were, let me list the professions of all the clients attempting the summit: Lawyer, Farmer, Engineer, Military man, Ex-Bouncer, Diving Instructor, School Teacher, Trainer/Public Speaker, Unemployed.

One of the best moments of the trip for me, other than the summit, was when we were leaving for the summit. Coming out of my tent to a sky full of stars that almost lit the way, walking in the absolutely still air to the path, then starting my journey up with my headlamp lighting the way, oxygen on my face and flowing, giving me the life and energy that I need. It was a very cool experience that made me smile, though it was full of many unknowns: first time on oxygen, first time on this path, and the unknown of what the night’s hard work will bring.

Summit day for me was very long. At about 1:34 am I started my stop watch, and stopped it seven hours and six minutes later on the summit. About 50 minutes I spent on the summit, and then it took me 3h10m to get back down to Camp 3 where the day started. Here some people rested, laid in the tents, made some water. I still had half a liter of water left of the two liters I started with, so I just spent 50 minutes packing all my stuff, and continued down to Camp 2. From Camp 3 to Camp 2 took me 30 minutes (compare that with 4h15m on the way up!) as it is a pretty short distance, plus I slid down half the way on my bum! Reason being was I still had my down suit on and I started getting hot, so rather than stop on the semi-steep slope and start undressing, I decided to slide the rest of the way down! Best idea I ever had!

Packing the rest of my stuff at Camp 2 took an hour, after which I was the first one to set off for Camp 1. This part of the trip took two and a half hours, at which point the walking part of my day was over.

Add all that up and it means in 16 hours of hard work, breathing some of the driest air possible, I drank less than two liters of water. (For comparison, when resting at ABC I would easily drink 5 or 6+ liters of water in a day.) What this means is that upon reaching Camp 1 was the point where I had lost the most weight. My estimate is about 10% of my body weight, so 20 lbs or 9 kilos (most others on the trip estimated similar percentages). I would say 5 pounds of that came back with simply hydrating over the next few days. Another 5 came back after eating big back in Kathmandu. The other 10 I am still missing and working at getting back, and since most of that is probably muscle it will take some time.

It was nice to get back to Kathmandu where there are enough places that serve western food that you can really get whatever you may want. After losing as much weight as we had, everyone eats quite big on every meal. For me, a lover of food, it is one of the fun parts of mountaineering! I remember one breakfast I had a big plate of eggs, beans, cheese and salsa, prepared as Huevos Rancheros. Then I had dessert of apple pie with ice cream. Dessert after breakfast! It was absolutely lovely.

Now I’m back in Calgary and I am slowly trying to get back into the groove here. But it’s tough. For some reason I feel a little bit weird here. People ask me about my trip and I have a hard time just talking about my trip, there’s so much to say. Then they ask what’s next, while honestly I’m just trying to let this trip sink in, which I don’t think has happened yet. But I’m sure after a couple of weeks it’ll all be back to normal, as is always the case with life, so I’m not too worried.

That’s about all I wanted to get off my mind. I posted some more pictures, bigger than Facebook allows, you can find them here. Take care!

The summit was reached on September 27 by our group, at 8:40 am Tibetan time by me! We are now safely back in Kathmandu, have a look at the few pictures I posted on facebook by clicking here. See you all back home soon!

Last update I wrote was from Nyalam, a town we rested in while on the road in Tibet to help with acclimatization. It was the last place with an Internet connection; I am sending this through a sat-phone modem (for a modest price). Since there will not be that many interesting and exciting things for the next couple of weeks, I will probably not be writing too much, if anything. Using people’s computers that have been charged by even different people’s solar panels, I don’t want to be hogging their equipment for little updates. You can get most of what I would write at www.summitclimbnews.com for the next few days while we try to go to the higher camps for our acclimatization. Make sure to tune in to www.summitclimbnews.com close to the end of the month (Sep 24/26 or so) as that is when we should be starting our summit attempts.

But I will make the most of this post and fill you in on the happenings lately.

After Nyalam we moved to Tingri, another town along the way that was a little bit higher in elevation where we rested for a couple of nights. Here is where I started feeling really shitty. The food was horrible, and even though I was forcing myself to eat, I found myself losing weight (noticed by my watch fitting looser), low on energy, etc. It didn’t help that we had the exact same dish of crappy Chinese food for four meals straight. Now some food I could eat for 4 meals in a row (tomato soup, spaghetti), but this was definitely not it. Not sure if this is also somehow tied in but I started to get some stomach issues that made me go to the bathroom more frequently than I would have liked.

Now there is a reason I am getting into the details above. Here success, which is either reaching the summit, getting as far as your body lets you, or any other personal goal people may have set for themselves, are not really dependent on one’s climbing ability. They are dependent more on staying healthy and avoiding getting affected by altitude, bad food, unclean water, lacking sanitary conditions, colds, coughs, sore throats, bad nutrition, you name it. It’s basic survival. For each of the things above there’s either pills you can take to prevent/treat it, or a method you can implement (boil water, sanitize/wash hands, etc.) This gives the entire expedition a weird focus, as people are constantly popping pills, waiting for water to boil, worrying about clean hands. I myself do the same, as one slip-up in getting an upset stomach at the wrong time can end my expedition. I limit my pill-popping to Diamox for altitude reasons, though I took some stomach antibiotics at base camp to get rid of something my body could not fight on its own.

After Tingri we moved to Base Camp (BC), where we set up some tents for sleeping, as well as a dining tent and a separate kitchen tent. Here we were finally free of the food forced upon us in the towns, and we had our own cook make meals from our own food. The food was unbelievably delicious! Even rice, which we were sick of after almost a week of it non-stop, was delicious compared to the stuff we had previously.

Now the fact that the food was good may seem like such an insignificant fact, but really it is a necessary physical as well as psychological ingredient to successfully climbing a mountain. We will end up losing lots of weight on this trip, and if we can’t even build a good base at the start we have no chance of any success.

To be continued…

Hello all, I thought I would post a bit of an update not just on where we are and what we are doing, but how I feel about all the things I have seen and experienced so far.

First I will go back to the Friday before I left, after leaving work in Calgary. As I was walking from the office to the train station, I had all these thoughts about the trip. They were not really positive; I was aprehensive in going, I was thinking, “Why am I leaving this beautiful city and this beautiful life with all these wonderful people and all these wonderful experiences that I have been having since coming back. Why am I leaving all of that behind for the unknowns of a different city, country, continent, and then place myself in so much discomfort of expedition mountain climbing, away from the basics of Calgary life that are in-obtainable luxuries here in the Himalayas.” This was on my mind and combined with knowing that I still had to spend all day getting all my things together, and the next day packing it all into two bags.

Luckily my brother called to wish me a happy birthday (I spent my birthday with these thought and with packing!) and I could talk some of that out and that made me feel better. And I knew I was going along with the trip so it had no effect on whether I would go or not. In the end I saw it as another aprehension of doing something just before doing it, but once you started it’s not that bad. It’s like dreading work as you are getting to work, but once you get there it’s not that bad. Or not wanting to go work out or excercise, because the mind is telling you to be lazy, but once you go and are doing it you enjoy it, and enjoy the after effects as well.

This aprehension went away as I was flying in, but came back for a little bit as the culture shock of Kathmandu took me by surprise. Luckily, the people that I will be climbing with, and the ones that are organizing the expedition, are awesome people. We’ve had many interesting chats and discussions and funny jokes, all with people that are, for all intents and purposes, still strangers. That’s the wonder in going expedition climbing, barely anybody brings a friend, and so everyone ends up being friendly to everyone else. So I look forward to spending the next month with them and building up some good friendships.

A bit of a view I have on the locals here: The Nepalese are some of the nicest people I have met. People greet you in the street, smile as you walk by, and seem to be quite happy living the life they live. Perhaps another example of a financially poor nation that makes up for it by being richer than most in happiness, something people in the developed northern hemisphere don’t seem to have a concept of. The Tibetans are also very nice people, and they have about them a very specific look. Almost all have rosy cheeks, which makes the babies (and the ladies) very cute. The Chinese are a different breed, and although officially Tibet is a part of China, really it is not. The people are different, the languages are different. The Chinese here seem to me to be imposing, trying to show superiority.

Let me give you an example from the border crossing between Nepal and Tibet. First of all, what you need to know is that even though there is a bridge that makes up the border, and this bridge can be driven over, motor vehicles do not seem to be allowed to cross. This means that entire fleets of semi trucks come to the border, are unloaded by labourers, and goods are carried across the border by porters, through customs and immigration and everything. Then they get re-loaded back onto other trucks, etc. (this happened with our checked baggage also). We saw ladies carrying large propane cylinders on their backs, strapped to their head as seems to be the normal way of carrying things here, and then on top of the propane cylinder was a basket with her baby in it. Wow. Anyways, on the Chinese side one of the officials/guards was slapping some of the porters and hitting their load because they were not standing in a clean line. This same official told me as I stood by the passport counter and rested my hands on it, not to touch the counter. And in general their presence in Police stations and other official building seems imposing and unwelcome.

Alright, on to another topic. Diamox is a drug used for (among other things) helping climbers acclimatize to elevation. I wasn’t sure about whether or not I should take this drug, but I have and I am absolutely amazed at it’s effectiveness. In 24 hours we went from Kathmandu at 1350 meters, through the border crossing, and into a Tibetan town of Nyalam at 3750 meters. Then, after sleeping very well during the night (which is not normal when moving to a new high altitude), we went on a quick hike up to above 4000 meters. I had no problem, the altitude made for some tough breathing, but that is nothing and quite remarkable. To ascend 2400 meters in 24 hours, and then go climbing even higher the next day is unbelievable. Normally people should ascend 300 meters per day (or 600 per day then rest day, etc.)

Alright, that’s all I had on my mind today. Will post more as news develops. Bye Bye!

Hey everyone! Just checking in from the Chinese side of the Nepal/Tibet border. So from the last post there was a change of plans, there were supposed to be strikes on the road to the border so instead of leaving this morning at 4:00 am, we left at midnight instead. We drove pretty much all night, and got to a washout in the road at about 5:00 am. Luckily by then we had passed the area with potential strikes, so that part was a success, and we were not too far from the border either. We had to wait until after 6:00 when the Nepalese would wake up and be able to organize us a bus on the other side, so there was a little bit of waiting involved. That’s pretty much what the rest of our day would look like too; getting across the border was a lot of lining up, waiting, getting our bags seached, all done very throroughly, and lots of idle time waiting in between (and catching little naps whenever possible).

So the crossing is behind us, now we will head to Nyalam, and that will be our rest stop for a couple of days, before we head to Tingri for another couple of days. Or that’s the plan anyways, people who have been here before have this saying “This Is Tibet”, and you never know what you will get. We’ll see how those plans work out.

Alright, I have to head out as our bus will be leaving soon, take care and see you all!