Haute Route 3/30/2009

Bourg-St. Pierre to Valsorey Hut

Woke up at 7:00 AM. I had had an acceptable but certainly not a stellar night’s sleep. Bill got me out of my little one man bed and then I rousted Brian and Scott who were both dead to the world. Downstairs I found a breakfast of champions: fried eggs, granola, bread, jam, ham cheese, OJ and coffee. We each had three pulls off of the shiny espresso machine. The left-over ham and cheese was wrapped in napkins and stuffed into Scott’s pack.

We began the climb across the road from the hotel, and we were skinning by the reasonable time of 9:00. Freezing rain had coated the highway with a slick layer of ice and we nearly had to don crampons just to make it across without breaking a hip. A one hour gradual ascent up a road leading to a river drainage brought us to the Valsorey Hut/Velan Hut fork. The modern curves of the steel clad Velan Hut came into view; we were still searching for our destination. We continued up a narrow chute that opened up to a plateau. Finally Bill spotted the Valsorey Hut; the little stone and timber structure was maybe fifteen hundred vertical feet away. Stopped for lunch at about 9000 feet, the sky had cleared, and it was time for some sunscreen. The final 1000 feet were a bit of a struggle, two slough release avalanches clenched me up pretty tight. Above us new snow hung to rapidly warming dark rocks. Luckily the sloughs were slow moving and you could hustle to get out of the way.

We arrived at the hut at a little past one in the afternoon. A slow moving Welsh pair was in front (Bill and I had caught them at the avalanches) and a French quad came up behind. A group of four showed up at 4:45, we had passed them earlier in the day; I wonder what had taken them so long.

Scott nice and warm inside the Valsorey hut

Our home for the night

Velan Hut - see it there on the ridge

Brian starting across the avalanche slopes

Haute Route 3/38-3/29/09

Travel Day – Seattle-Amsterdam-Geneva-Martigny-Sembracher-Orsieres-Bourg-St. Pierre

Everything had to work like a Swiss watch if we were going to make it to Bourg-St. Pierre Sunday night. The critical link was in Orsieres: we had to catch the last bus, so any missed connection would have ended with us stranded one stop short of our starting point.

We changed into our mountaineering clothes and packed our backpacks in the Geneva Airport. We were doing a point A to point B trip and would have to ditch our street clothes and any miscellaneous travel gear somewhere along the way – we figured on stuffing it all into a couple of lockers in the Martigny train station.

Thank goodness for Swiss precision, we arrived in B.-St. P at around 6:30 – exactly as planned. Everyone was a bit jet-lagged especially Bill who had just come from Asia via Salt Lake City and Detroit. Scott is the type of guy who really needs one of those transporters like they had in Star Trek – in other words he likes to be places and doesn’t necessarily enjoy getting to places – he visibly relaxed when we stepped off the bus in this snowy little Alpine Hamlet. As for myself, I worry not one bit when I’m with the boys, there’s nothing we can’t handle.

Bourg-St. Pierre is a small village hanging to a hillside below the Col Du St. Bernard, at the Swiss-Italian border. Bill and I spent two days here in 2000 and it looked exactly as it did eight years ago. I couldn’t remember where we had stayed in 2000, so after making an internet search I reserved us a couple of rooms at the L’Hostellerie Du Moulin, which, as it turns out, is owned by a French speaking Swiss guy named Stephan. He was a gracious host and served us a big fondue/pizza dinner despite the fact that we had tried to go to another restaurant first. During our walk to the hotel we passed by the place we had stayed at in 2000 - the Hotel Aubergine – which had served us an amazing fondue. We wanted more of the same so after two beers at the Moulin we went to the Aubergine. The place was packed; the entire town must have been there. We were shoed out of the place – no room at the inn – and so we returned to see Stephan. I think it turned out for the best, we had a big fondue then some pizza, some wine and finally some high test white lightening that Stephan had poured into four tiny shot glasses. Was in bed and snoring by 10:00. We had worked hard to stay awake all day in order to minimize jet lag, and I looked forward to a well-earned rest.

Hot Foot

Had a big day on Saturday, literally moved a mountain – a twelve cubic yard mountain of bark to be exact – using only a grain scoop and a wheel barrow. The whole family was out working in the yard and we made a big burn pile, incinerating everything that was dry enough to ignite. When everything that could burn was burned we had a huge pile of glowing embers, I was raking them out, feeling the heat when I said to my eleven year-old son, “bet I can walk through that - barefoot.” Well one thing led to another and soon I stood shoeless and sockless at the edge of the glowing coals. I cleaned away any rocks that might have stuck to my feet and gingerly walked across; I then turned around and came back. Cant' say that it was totally pain free.

In hindsight walking barefoot across glowing coals in front of your elementary school age children probably wasn’t all that smart. Going to bed that night Melony said, “I bet if we took the thousand closest fathers not one of them would have been stupid enough to do that.” I took that as a compliment.

Bertol Hut

The Bertol Hut is something that can only exist in Europe. Stay tuned for photos on how to get into that thing.

Buy Nothing Month – Sort Of

Well I decided that March would be “Buy Nothing Month” and I did pretty good – for the first seven days. Yesterday I decided that my 70mm climbing skins would be no good for the upcoming Haute Route trip and that I just had to upgrade to 110mm. That’s over 50 sq inches of added surface area, man I can’t pass that up. No more skidding and slipping downslope for me. Sliding down the uptrack is like a wide open valve on your energy reserves, and since I’m coming into this trip a bit undertrained I’m going to need all the help I can get.

I’m back on the wagon starting today, I’ll report back on the progress

Taking The Time

Due to back, knee, hip and shoulder injuries I’ve been spending a bit of time at the Birkum (hot) yoga studio. Positioning my mat and straightening my specially designed hot yoga towel just so has become kind of a ritual for me and it got me thinking about the Islamic call to prayer. I’m not exactly sure where the connection is, perhaps it’s the rolling out of the yoga mat and the rolling out of the prayer rug, but anyway it got me thinking.

It seems to me that Islamic religion has done two things right: one is it encourage its adherents to occasionally (five times a day I think) stop what they are doing and to “get their mind right,” and secondly it incorporates fasting into its traditional rituals.

Imagine if all those sandbox Caesars on Wall Street as well as all those underperforming overpaid auto and bank execs had stopped every few hours and took five minutes to reflect and get their mind right. I’d wager that we wouldn’t be in the mess that we’re in right now. The world moves so fast that it seems like once you’re on the wrong path it becomes increasingly difficult to get off. Worse yet, the longer you’re on the wrong path the more vehemently you defend and attempt to justify that path no matter how wrong and misguided it is. I’m sure in the end good old Bernie Madoff was doing all kinds of mental gymnastics to internally justify his actions, but imagine if, fifteen years ago, he had stopped every few hours and spent five minutes contemplating. Perhaps Madoff is a bad example, I imagine him to be rotten to the core, but for most of us I’d imagine a few minutes of contemplation every day would do us good. Isn’t prayer, for the most part, formalized contemplation?

Fasting is another good way to get your mind right. It’s hard to be empathetic on a full stomach. Before the invention of industrialized farming I would wager that every human, outside of royalty, experienced serious hunger at least once in their lifetime. “There but for the grace of God go I” was a way of understanding the world and one’s connection to it. In the absence of traditional feast and famine cycles it seems important that we occasionally step out of our comfortable world and become a little hungry. We should all strive to go through life with open eyes, but how can you truly see when your belly is perpetually full.

On Winning

Growing up I was only exposed to a single parenting style – that of my parents – but now that I’m a parent who talks to and observes other parents I’ve come to realize that there is no singular correct child-rearing philosophy. Every parent I’ve ever met essentially wants their children to be successful, but what is success? I guess at its basest level a successful adult is someone who can exist independently, in other words someone who isn’t a drain on his/her parents. But can simply existing without constantly having to ask your mom and dad for an allowance be considered success. For some yes, for others no.
Folks of my generation freely throw about the work loser: he’s a loser, she’s a loser, they’re losers. Perhaps this is an offshoot of our capitalist society; capitalism is definitely all about winning and losing. But is it really that cut and dried? Do sayings like “second place is the first loser,” or “if you don’t win you’ve lost,” speak any kind of truth? When I look back on my own life, though I’ve entered I’m sure over one hundred competitions, I’ve never won anything (I did win the cub scout pinewood derby once, but my dad built that car), does that make me a loser. Eighteen years after saying my vows I still have a happy marriage, my kids are nearly perfect, I’ve climbed an eight thousand meter peak – no oxygen – completed two Ironman races, ran five marathons, posses a graduate degree (I think that piece of paper is around here somewhere) have a loving extended family and have a circle of friends that would be the envy of any man, so I really don’t feel like a loser. But still I’ve never taken home that gold medal.
The reason that I’m pondering this is because I’m continually pondering whether or not I’m doing a passable job as a parent. Over the years my kids have been involved in a number of sports and during that time I’ve observed a number of boys and girls who are obsessed with winning. The sport/event is fun and worthwhile if and only if they can win. It would be easy to say “well look at the parents,” but that isn’t the case: some of the most laid back parents have the most driven kids – at least that’s how it appears to the outside observer. It’s a kind of chicken/egg thing: is the fastest kid in the class naturally talented and therefore pushes himself because he knows he can win, or does he possess only average talent but is willing to push harder because he hates to lose. Do these kids love winning or hate losing? Personally I think it’s less of the former and more of the later.
I’ve never entered any competition with the expectation of winning and therefore have never been all that disappointed when I didn’t stand atop the podium. This isn’t to say that I don’t try hard: in the triathlon world I’m a fifty percenter, but I still train incredibly hard and race as though I’m being chased by the devil. I know a lot of people hold the philosophy “if you can’t win don’t enter,” I also know that a lot of parents think they are doing their children a favor by demanding that they win – that they crush the opposition – it’s a dog eat dog world out there, you’d better have the sharpest teeth. That’s a tough philosophy for me to swallow. I suppose I’ll just keep going with what feels right, and I suppose I don’t regret telling my son “who cares if he won today, in ten years he’ll be selling you shoes.”