Words from Wik

Or at least I would like to think so. Taking a break from my Aconcagua posts, here’s something interesting I stumbled upon. I found a really interesting article about climbers and their personalities, here’s a bit of an excerpt:

… The personality of climbers was quite different to that of average people. Climbers scored higher in the areas of Novelty-Seeking and Self-Directedness and lower on Harm-Avoidance. What this suggests is that climbers generally enjoy exploring unfamiliar places and situations. They are easily bored, try to avoid monotony and so tend to be quick-tempered, excitable and impulsive. They enjoy new experiences and seek out thrills and adventures, even if other people think that they are a waste of time. Climbers therefore also participate in other adventure sports, such as mountain biking. When confronted with uncertainty and risk climbers tend to be confident and relaxed. Difficult situations are often seen by climbers as a challenge or an opportunity. They are less responsive to danger and this can lead to foolhardy optimism. Climbers also have good self-esteem and self-reliance and therefore tend to be high-achievers…

… An interesting observation of serious risk-taking sports people is that despite frequent near misses and accidents, they continue to participate in adventure sports. This persistence in the face of trauma is in my view quite unique. … The researchers commented that the level of trauma experienced by the mountaineers was similar to that experienced by fire-fighter and army personnel, yet they had only 10-20% the rate of psychological disturbance. Only 3% of mountaineers developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, whereas rates in firefighters are up to 20%…

Some interesting reading in my mind, read the full article here. Stay tuned for more from Aconcagua!

After three straight days of hiking (covered in my previous post) we reached base camp, which you can see in the picture below. When we first got here, I had a headache, was tired from all the hiking, a little bit hungry, and really needed a rest to get used to the altitude. So at first base camp was not an ideal place to be; walking around and doing anything was slow and required lots of effort. In the end, after coming down to be BACK here, it was such a luxurious place when compared to the higher camps (more on that in the next post).

Below is our more ‘permanent’ tent that we used for a kitchen and dining center, and also as the place to hang out, listen to music, chat about the latest news and events (among other things: discussions about Obama when we realized he would get sworn in while we were somewhere on the mountain).

A lot of time on the mountain was spent idle, just sitting around and letting our bodies acclimatize to the conditions. Below you can see me just hanging around in our tent, on my way in or out.

So what did we do during this idle time? I seem to get asked that question a lot. Well for one, we slept a lot, which was 10+ hours, or from dusk til dawn on most days for me, and for everybody else I am quite sure; one of the main reasons for that was that once the sun set you did not want to be outside your sleeping bag. Also later on when I had nothing else to do I thought: “what a better way to kill time than to sleep late into the day?” And also, how often in life do I get to REALLY sleep as much as I want? 🙂

I also had some books to read, and John Grisham’s books definitely are a good way to pass the time. Below you can see Emil hanging out with his music, and the books beside him are mine, one a Grisham and the other being Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills.

I also had my iPod with me, which was great for chilling out, however with it I learned one of the first things about altitude: hard drives do not work at altitude. At about base camp my (hard drive based) iPod worked sporadically, and Ryan our guide confirmed that it happens to most ipods, and that if I try to use it at even higher elevations I could damage it for good. So, it stayed at base camp, and for my next high-altitude expedition I will look into flash-based models.

This might be a good time to bring up the other things I learned first hand about life at altitude:

– I had really vivid, realistic, not-enjoyable dreams. That was not too fun, and apparently it’s not all that uncommon either. They did go away once I acclimatized, and then came back once we went higher.

– People have a lot more gas at altitude, and trust me I experienced that first hand. I won’t get into the details here but there were some funny (and also some not-funny) stories about that.

– Loss of appetite. I had heard about this, but didn’t realize the effects of it until the trip was over. At higher altitudes you don’t eat much, partly because the food is not that good or interesting, partly because you have had that same type of food every day for a week already, partly because you’re busy hiking or just living. And I didn’t think too much of it at the time, after all there were some days that we just sat around and rested, so if I’m not hungry that means I couldn’t possibly be burning that many calories! Then once I got down and took my first shower (after 15 days on the mountain without a shower, my personal best!!) I realized how much weight I had lost, as washing and feeling my stomach I realized that for the first time in my life I had lost the ‘spare tire’ around my waist and could feel all my muscles! (Lesson: if you want to lose weight go climb a mountain for a few weeks. Results guaranteed.)

One of the days at base camp we took a little hike away from the normal routes of where we came from and where we were going. That was just to keep our legs active, as days of rest can yield some tight muscles when it comes time to need them. Below you can see me enjoying some of the topography of the area around base camp.

Another way to pass the time was to sit in the tent and relax, maybe drink some tea, which we did a lot of in the higher camps where we did not have our dining tent, and our sleeping tents were all the shelter we had.

I also made sure to pray every day, as I have learned that mental strength is more of what gets a person to the top than physical strength. I would say a Rosary every day, and on some tough days of walking I would find myself praying as I’m going up, taking my mind off the burden at hand.

By the end of the summit push, when I had read all my books, my iPod was waiting at base camp, the weather outside was too bad to go and talk to people, I would just lay in my sleeping bag and do absolutely nothing. I think there was one day like that, when I can remember looking at my watch, thinking “I have about 8 hours left before I go to sleep with absolutely nothing to do”, and I literally spent that day laying there and just thinking, the first day of my life in a VERY long time where I did absolutely nothing, because there was absolutely nothing to do.

Alright, now that I’ve filled your head with what our idle time looked like, stay tuned for my next entry, when I’ll talk about the trips from base camp to the high camps.

Our start in Mendoza can be seen above, as we get our stuff ready to pack in the trucks. For some background I just wanted to introduce the people that will show up in the pictures. Our guide was Ryan from the US, who has summited Mount Everest several times, and Aconcagua ‘about 7 times or so’, to put it in his words! He was guiding our group of three, which included Emil from Sweden, the youngest of our party, Kerry from Scotland, the oldest of our party, and myself! We got to know each other pretty well on this climb, which is one of those nice things about trips like these. If you want additional info on hiking distances and elevations, refer to my previous post.

Alright, first let’s show the ‘before’ picture above, as we prepare to finally depart and start walking. The hike to the top of Aconcagua starts at Punta de Vacas (Point of Cows, as we walk beside the river ‘Cows’ (vacas) on the first day!), where we carry just what we need for the day and have mules carry the rest. The route is quite scenic, with some nice views and beautiful colors along the way.

We start ahead of the mules, and while we were taking our lunch break they passed us, and would be waiting at our first camp for us. The ‘mulers’ as they are called, the guys that lead the mules up and down the mountain, are quite nice, and every night that they camp on the way to Base Camp (BC) they have a big barbecue with great Argentinian meats of all kinds! And they usually share some with whoever needs a little extra nourishment!

The way was pretty easy, just trail hiking really, but there were some tricky points like crossing cracked glaciers that made it just interesting enough!

The first night was spent at Las Lenas (2700m, which is high enough to make it part of our acclimatization), and was pretty uneventful, just hanging around the campsite and getting to know the other climbers, talking to the mulers, learning how to put up a tent correctly, and getting that first sleep on the uncomfortable mattress.

The second day we hiked a little bit further, and spent the second night at Casa de Piedra (House of Rock), named such because there is a huge rock which has been party hollowed out and is used as a hut by the Mulers.

This evening was a little bit more eventful in that we had a bit of a snow storm come in, a preview of what we would face on the parts higher up the mountain. Below are the tents we slept in, two people in each.

The third day the hiking was a little more difficult at times, starting off with crossing a river (which we luckily got to do on mule-back thanks to the Mulers, as the other option was to take off shoes and wade through ice-cold glacier water, which was not an attractive option on a cold morning after a snow storm).

Also, the route was party on the side of a valley/canyon (that can be seen in the picture below), and made for some steep sections where good footing was critical. So on the picture below you can see our route, we started the third day at the end of the river valley behind me, and walked along and above the river.

The Mulers on their way to BC, with Aconcagua in the background.

From this point we also had a good view ahead at the mountain we were going to summit. This is really the first and last good view we had of the mountain as a whole, as when we got closer you couldn’t quite see it the same way. So I’ll use it to point out the route we followed, refer to that when I am talking about the higher camps in later posts (you may need to click on the image and pull it up in the gallery to see detail about the route we followed).

My typical mountain climbing dress: Waterproof/windproof yet breathable shell, polarized sunglasses, hat to protect from sun with a bandanna to have ear/neck protection, and my trademark Adidas pants.

After hiking about 5 hours each of the three days, we finally reached our destination, Base Camp called Plaza Argentina at 4200 m above sea level. And from this point on I will continue in the next post…

So as I hinted at in my last blog post, I will head down to Argentina to climb Aconcagua. I leave tomorrow morning, and hopefully will be back in one piece at the end of the month. In case you want to know what I will be up to, you can check out this link (look for “Aconcagua January 2009”, should be a link once our trip starts in a few days), which should lead you to any updates we manage to send out about our trip. Also, I am posting below the proposed itinerary so that you get an idea for what it takes to get up and down this thing. See you all back in Feb!

Update: We successfully made it to the top and back! Will post more info later!

Jan 5: Arrive in Mendoza. Our staff will meet you at the airport and transport you to your hotel;

Jan 6: Sort Gear and visit the Permit Office in Mendoza, private transport to Pentitentes (2720 metres/8,900 feet) sleep in hotel;

Jan 7: Drive to Punta de Vacas. Walk 8 kilometers/5 miles, to Las Lenas (2,700 metres/8,800 feet). Easy trail walking; mules carry baggage. Camping;

Jan 8: Walk 18 kilometers/11 miles, to Casa de Piedra (3,200 metres/10,500 feet). Easy trail walking; mules carry baggage. Camping;

Jan 9: Walk 15 kilometers/9 miles, to basecamp, “Plaza Argentina” (4,200 metres/13,800 feet). Trail walking; mules carry baggage. Camping;

Jan 10: Rest in basecamp;

Jan 11: Carry loads for acclimatization safety to Camp 1 (5,000 metres/16,400 feet). Walking on scree and through melted ice mixed with rocks. 4-6 hour hike. Return to basecamp;

Jan 12: Rest day in basecamp;

Jan 13: Return to Camp 1, spend the night there;

Jan 14: Carry loads for acclimatization safety to Camp 2 (5,900 metres/19,400 feet). Walking on scree and through melted ice mixed with rocks. 6-7 hour hike. Return to Camp;

Jan 15: Return to Camp 2, spend the night there;

Jan 16: Rest in Camp 2; prepare for summit attempt;

Jan 17: Climb Traverse to connect with normal route at Independencia to Summit (6,962 metres/22,835 feet). Descend via upper Normal Route and traverse back to our Camp 2;

Jan 18, 19, 20: Extra days for further summit attempts, weather, and additional acclimatization;

Jan 21: Descend to Plaza Argentina;

Jan 22: Descend to Las Lenas camp, walking 33 km;

Jan 23: Return to Mendoza in transport and have celebration dinner, stay in hotel.

Jan 24: Depart Mendoza and head home.

As some of you may know and have read on this blog, earlier this year I went to climb a 6000m mountain in Bolivia’s Cordillera Real. The trip was organized by two gentlemen, one a Bolivian named Iván Berdeja, and one a German named Christian. I have been keeping in touch with Iván, as he’s got lots of climbing experience, and with the latest email I sent about going to attempt Aconcagua, I got this reply:

Dear Wiktor,

I have very bad news. Our friend Iván died on Oct. 17 at the Cordillera Quimsa Cruz during a hike with a group of Italians. There was a lot of fog and he went forward in search of a path (there is a part with no path), he slipped and fell 250m. I can not describe to you the sadness we feel here. Ivan was a very, very good person.

I very much regret having to write that. At the same time I wish you a good expedition to Aconcagua. Please, will you leave a note in memory of Ivan at the summit?

Luck and greetings,
Christian

So I’ll say that this was totally unexpected, and I don’t really want to write any more commentary about it. I will let the letter speak for itself. However, what I will do is take a picture of Iván to the top of Aconcagua and leave it there (if I make it up). May he rest in peace.

Birdwatching. What a boring activity. I can think of many better things to do with my limited time than to walk around looking for birds just to see them. Maybe if I’m out to photograph them so I can share what I see with others that’s time better spent, but even that doesn’t seem very appealing. Birds are hard to get on camera, and there’s many better things out there to photograph after all.

That’s what I thought about birdwatching before I came to Bolivia. And in a way that is probably still how I feel about going to look for birds in Canada or most other places I know. The birds there just don’t excite me. But there’s something about the birds here that makes them actually interesting.

They are big and small, plain and colorful, fast and slow, something for everybody. One of the (few) nice things about working out in the field was working close to nature, and being able to, at times, just sit and watch the birds do their thing. Driving to and from site, sometimes a bird or two would fly beside our car for a good 5-7 seconds (an eternity when watching birds in flight). Or they would fly right in front of our windshield for a couple of seconds, enough to get a good look at the dynamics of its flight.

Once, on one of the very last days of the job, I saw a bird chasing a pretty big dragonfly. It was an intense chase, with swerves and dives and going back and forth, in a way I could hardly believe the bird was fast and agile enough to keep up. The scene reminded me of an intense air combat scene from something like Top Gun or Star Wars or something like that. It was intense, like ‘wow’ intense. Yeah.

I was lucky enough to get some birds on camera, most of which were taken by this watering hole on the drive to site. They are not quite representative of all the different colors and types that were there, you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s nicer to be there and see the variety in real life. So what do you think, could you ever consider birds to be interesting, or have I been in the field too long with a desperate need of real life? 🙂

My current role with BG Bolivia is on-site engineer of a pipeline river crossing construction project (see this previous post and its associated pictures for an idea of the work we are doing). Basically I am there to make sure the company who is doing the work for us is doing it in the best way possible in terms of quality, safety, making sure they do things according to standards and approved procedures, etc.

Now, working with a contractor is a very ‘interesting’ dynamic. We want them to do it: on schedule, safely, with attention to quality (so that the pipeline functions for 10-20 years and not just a couple). They, on the other hand, want to do it: as fast and cheap as possible. For the contractor, finishing the project, getting paid, and moving their equipment to another project is their (understandable) priority. Also, they are getting paid a pre-determined lump sum for the entire project, so if they can cut a few corners during the construction part and save some money, that money is all profit (and trust me, that is exactly what their bosses are telling them to do). So, with these differing priorities in mind, we move to the job site.

We come to site, see that the contractor is about to do some task, so we just re-enforce some concepts: “Hey guys, make sure you do this and that, as was agreed in the procedure. We don’t want any safety/quality issues coming up later because you didn’t do it.” They reply: “Yeah, of course we are going to do that, don’t worry about it.” We leave to check something else, come back, and they are doing it their own fast/wrong/unsafe way. We go find who is in charge, stop the job, exchange a few pleasantries that mainly include 4-letter words, and then we stay and supervise (or a more appropriate term, ‘baby-sit’) them until we see that they are in fact doing it the way that is required.

This problem continues over and over, in various different forms, ad perpetuum. We have no option but to get angry, show our displeasure at the contractor for doing/attempting whatever it is, to discourage them from cutting corners. They still keep doing it, but our job is to resist as strongly as possible so that they do not walk all over us and start telling us how to do the job. The only way to do that is to be an asshole.

Now, I will admit this is rather new territory to me. I would prefer to just sit down, agree on something, and have it be done that way. But that hardly ever happens. It is really quite a frustrating way to work, having to get physically agitated to solve problems, and for me to be arguing in Spanish is that much more difficult (they have taken advantage of that many times, to my obvious displeasure). It adds a whole new level of stress when a typical day on site involves getting mad and frustrated and playing babysitter to grown men. I am becoming better at being an asshole on site, but I question if that is actually a good thing.

Anyways, that is a bit of my rant, and a bit of insight into my job and why working on site can be quite draining. Now I will admit that contractors vary, and when you have good people that know their stuff and know what they are doing, it makes the situations a lot more manageable. In this case however, some of the guys on site (who are supposedly engineers, but I have my doubts for several reason, which I will not get into because I think that deserves a post all by itself) are so hard-headed that it makes the job very difficult at times.

Looking forward to getting back to Canada and working in the (likely more calm) office environment there!

Over the weekend I had the fabulous opportunity to take part in the BG Energy Challenge – Brasil. This challenge is run in many countries where BG operates (UK, Egypt, Trinidad, Houston, and obviously Brasil, among others). The event took place in Teresópolis, a town outside of Rio de Janeiro (the city of God!)

Basically the event is a team-building, corporate competition type of thing (think Calgary Corporate Challenge), open to any companies in the Energy sector. BG Brasil sends a couple of teams, other companies that operate in and around Rio also come (I’ve seen Schlumberger, Chevron, I think Shell was here somewhere). Obviously I was representing BG Bolivia; we sent an all-female team and an all-male team.

Each team has three people, and here in Brasil they organize the race as follows: from 8:30 to 12:30 all teams have to run (or walk) to as many checkpoints as possible, and at these checkpoints do a task, or just check in. The checkpoints are on a map given the night before, and strategizing which checkpoints to go to first/last/not at all is quite important. While we have not seen the results yet to see if anyone did, I think it is almost impossible to get to all the checkpoints and do all the tasks in the 4 hours, hence the importance of a strategy (in total there were 11 task checkpoints and 13 check-in checkpoints).

Here are some of the tasks that we had to do: get to the top of an indoor climbing wall and ring the bell; a blindfolded person has to walk a route through an old building being directed solely by his team members’ voices, and not touch any of the “booby-traps” (rope all along the route with bells on it to signify when it’s been touched); two team members ride a route by bike while the third runs along (that lucky third was me!); correctly identify flags of ten countries that were on display; solve two mathematical formulas without the use of anything, except natural elements (ie we could write in the non-existent dirt); smell some food/sauces and name them; hit a golf ball 50 meters; and my [start sarcasm] most favorite, one that made the most sense [end sarcasm] was to have two team members swim through muddy water with three giant inflated rubber balls to the other end, where they gave these balls to a third (lucky) team member who walked back with these balls on land, while the two in the mu… I mean in the water got to swim back. Oh yeah, and the swimmers had to wear their shoes. Ever swam with shoes on? In mud? And then ever ran with soaked, mud-saturated shoes? It’s not pleasant.

There were a few tasks that we never got to, never attempted, so this is not an exhaustive list. An important point though, many tasks could be lost, and then you get no credit for it. Touch a booby-trap rope and ring the bell on it? Game over. Don’t get both mathematical formula questions right? Sorry, no part marks! Then the entire 15 minutes of intense uphill climb, and then 5 minutes of descent, to get to and from the checkpoint is wasted, and everybody is that much more tired and unable to get to some other potential task.

In between all these challenges was obviously the physical part of getting to and from the checkpoints, and also the mental challenge of correctly navigating among them. And for the end, you pretty much had to make it back to the start/finish in four hours, or you start losing points for every minute you are over. We finished in exactly 3 hours, 59 minutes, and zero seconds.

I must say that the event was very well run and put together. Things flowed pretty smoothly; inevitable injuries (I personally saw a cut that later got 6 stitches, as well as a twisted knee) were handled well by the paramedic staff on site; they had about 3 photographers and 2 videographers recording the details of people’s runs and climbs and everything in between. If I ever get my hands on any of that media I will definitely share it.

So yeah, that describes the way the Challenge looked. It was fun, exhausting, interesting, a little bit dirty, and very exhausting. As of now we don’t have the results yet, so I can’t tell you how we did, but we were one of the more physically fit teams (though we failed on several challenges), so we have some hope. We will see and I will update!

Update: So we got 2nd place in our category, lost to the other team by only two points (we could have gotten 5 more points if not for missing a minus sign in the math formula task!) But that is quite good nonetheless, and most important it was fun for all. Oh, and our all-girls team got first in their category, so BG Bolivia represented quite well!

One of the nice things about living in a Spanish speaking country is getting to know all the Spanish music that is around. And there is a lot of it, all different genres, for everyone’s tastes. I have to share my knowledge about one artist in particular, whose songs are really nice to listen to, whether you know what he’s saying or not. That artist is a Colombian named Juanes. He has won many Latin Grammy Awards, has recorded songs with the likes of Black Eyed Peas and Nelly Furtado, and in 2005 was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people.

Personally I think his best songs are when he performs by himself, but either way his stuff is really good. I’ve listened to his last two albums titled Mi Sangre (My Blood) and La Vida… Es un Ratico (Life… Is But A Moment), and even without understanding any of the songs they got a nice sound to them. Someday soon I’ll try and get some of his older stuff that made him famous.

Anyways, give a few of his songs a listen. I have posted below two of his most popular songs from his latest album. If you like what you hear then you can look for the full albums (don’t know if any stores in Canada would carry it, but iTunes has his albums for download).

Let me know what you think!

Gotas De Agua Dulce

Me Enamora

Recently I put together some pictures from my field work here in Bolivia, describing what it’s like to be working on a gas pipeline river crossing project. Click on the picture below to link you to the photos, which will describe a bit how we do what we do, as well as the working conditions. Any questions let me know!