April 5, 2015
RIP Scott Fischer
I got to hang out with Ryan, my Last North North Expedition partner and adventure buddy last week. It was good to catch up even if briefly. Last year, at this same time we were getting stalked by polar bears and inching our way across the Arctic Ocean sea ice toward the North Pole.
Ryan has been busy this spring, guiding on Aconcagua for six weeks then to Carstensz Pyramid. He was back in Boulder for just three days before leaving for Everest and another guiding gig. He was tired but looking forward to Nepal. I have empathy for his situation. The guide life, while incredible and awesome in so many ways, is not always easy on the home front.
For my part, I've finally been able to come up for air after a super busy January, February and March. I thought things were going to slow down for me after my Polar Training course on Lake Winnipeg but that just wasn't the case.
I think about think about that frenetic pace and the cost it exacts, especially each Everest season. Scott Fischer died on Everest in 1996 and I remember reading about how worn out he seemed to others. Guiding Everest was a fairly new endeavor at that point and the work required to get clients, organize gear and support staff, let alone climb was substantially more intensive than today.
I'm not really in a position to comment on the 'how' and 'why' of Scott Fischer's death on Mt. Everest, but I regularly pour over adventure accounts to glean any bit of information that might make my next expedition more safe and hopefully successful. For example, in reading David-Hempleman-Adams account of his 1998 North Pole expedition I was interested to learn that Rune Gjeldness and he had mounted their ski bindings incorrectly so that the tails of their skis were more weighted than the tips. Initially, they had wanted to exchange their skis for correctly balanced ones, but found that having 'heavier' ski tails allowed them to ski up and over ice chunks more efficiently. It made sense to me and on my first expedition to the North Pole in 2006, I balanced my skis accordingly.
But for some reason that story Scott Fischer's fatigue and the consequences of being extremely exhausted have haunted me over the years. Maybe it's because I have felt that same intense tiredness on many occasions - the worst (or maybe one of the many tied for worse) being when I left for my 2010 North Pole expedition. Already frazzled after two months of frantic fundraising and preparation, I drove 15 hours straight from Colorado to Minneapolis arriving at WebExpedition Tim Harincar's house sometime around one or two in the afternoon. I had shipped a bunch food, equipment and clothing to Tim's and now needed to load all the extra gear into my very small car. I took an hour long cat nap then began packing. Space was so tight, I had to take our expedition Clif Bars and shove them under the seat to create space. All of our Mountain House freeze dried meals were shoved into a plastic barrel then tied it to the top of my car.
From Minneapolis, I drove to northern Minnesota to where I was still partially 'living' at the time. The next morning, I repacked all my gear and had a friend, Adam Harju, drive me a couple of hours north to Thunder Bay, Canada where I met one of my expedition partners, Darcy St. Laurent in a grocery store parking lot. After shoving all my gear in Darcy's truck, we went inside and purchased the rest of our expedition food - nearly two months of supplies.
The story goes on from there... Another 16 hour drive to Ottawa, running out of gas along the way. Another all nighter doing relaying gear to First Air Cargo then sorting personal gear for our flight to Iqaluit. When I finally made it through to our gate at Ottawa International, I immediately fell asleep on a cold marble bench. When Darcy woke me up a 30 minutes later because we were boarding, I had no idea where I was. It only got worse from there and even after two months, I was packing just hours before our flight departed for the ice.
Writing this now, five years later, I can't help but shake my head at all that chaos. Like Scott Fischer, it could have turned out much worse for me.
Image: Scott Fischer's memorial just outside of Thukla in the Khumbu Valley.
Ryan has been busy this spring, guiding on Aconcagua for six weeks then to Carstensz Pyramid. He was back in Boulder for just three days before leaving for Everest and another guiding gig. He was tired but looking forward to Nepal. I have empathy for his situation. The guide life, while incredible and awesome in so many ways, is not always easy on the home front.
For my part, I've finally been able to come up for air after a super busy January, February and March. I thought things were going to slow down for me after my Polar Training course on Lake Winnipeg but that just wasn't the case.
I think about think about that frenetic pace and the cost it exacts, especially each Everest season. Scott Fischer died on Everest in 1996 and I remember reading about how worn out he seemed to others. Guiding Everest was a fairly new endeavor at that point and the work required to get clients, organize gear and support staff, let alone climb was substantially more intensive than today.
I'm not really in a position to comment on the 'how' and 'why' of Scott Fischer's death on Mt. Everest, but I regularly pour over adventure accounts to glean any bit of information that might make my next expedition more safe and hopefully successful. For example, in reading David-Hempleman-Adams account of his 1998 North Pole expedition I was interested to learn that Rune Gjeldness and he had mounted their ski bindings incorrectly so that the tails of their skis were more weighted than the tips. Initially, they had wanted to exchange their skis for correctly balanced ones, but found that having 'heavier' ski tails allowed them to ski up and over ice chunks more efficiently. It made sense to me and on my first expedition to the North Pole in 2006, I balanced my skis accordingly.
But for some reason that story Scott Fischer's fatigue and the consequences of being extremely exhausted have haunted me over the years. Maybe it's because I have felt that same intense tiredness on many occasions - the worst (or maybe one of the many tied for worse) being when I left for my 2010 North Pole expedition. Already frazzled after two months of frantic fundraising and preparation, I drove 15 hours straight from Colorado to Minneapolis arriving at WebExpedition Tim Harincar's house sometime around one or two in the afternoon. I had shipped a bunch food, equipment and clothing to Tim's and now needed to load all the extra gear into my very small car. I took an hour long cat nap then began packing. Space was so tight, I had to take our expedition Clif Bars and shove them under the seat to create space. All of our Mountain House freeze dried meals were shoved into a plastic barrel then tied it to the top of my car.
From Minneapolis, I drove to northern Minnesota to where I was still partially 'living' at the time. The next morning, I repacked all my gear and had a friend, Adam Harju, drive me a couple of hours north to Thunder Bay, Canada where I met one of my expedition partners, Darcy St. Laurent in a grocery store parking lot. After shoving all my gear in Darcy's truck, we went inside and purchased the rest of our expedition food - nearly two months of supplies.
The story goes on from there... Another 16 hour drive to Ottawa, running out of gas along the way. Another all nighter doing relaying gear to First Air Cargo then sorting personal gear for our flight to Iqaluit. When I finally made it through to our gate at Ottawa International, I immediately fell asleep on a cold marble bench. When Darcy woke me up a 30 minutes later because we were boarding, I had no idea where I was. It only got worse from there and even after two months, I was packing just hours before our flight departed for the ice.
Writing this now, five years later, I can't help but shake my head at all that chaos. Like Scott Fischer, it could have turned out much worse for me.
Image: Scott Fischer's memorial just outside of Thukla in the Khumbu Valley.