My so-called life

Climbing Mt. Shasta

Paul — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 04:26:39 GMT

Mt. Shasta Climb August/September, 1976 Climbers: John ? Gloria Gillespie Paul Howard I hooked up with John and Gloria in Nevada or Sierra County somewhere on the Truckee River, where John had been running in some kayak races. After the final race was completed, we headed north up Hwy 89 toward Redding. We spent the night at Castle Crags State Park so we could get a shower, and drove into Mt. Shasta City the next morning. We visited an outdoor equipment store to rent crampons and ice axes, drove up to the Bunny Flat trailhead, and hiked leisurely for probably not more than an hour or two, to a reasonably flat spot, not far from a small glacial lake, to spend our first night on the mountain. That first night’s camp was probably somewhere in the vicinity of 41° 23’ 18.5" N, 122° 12’ 36.5" W. In the morning, I was up pretty early, soon after daybreak: probably around 6:00 AM. I observed climbers coming over the small ridge near our camp, and passing nearby on their way up the mountain. These earlybirds leave various trailheads in the dark, with the intention of making the summit and returning to their vehicles in a single day. John, Gloria and I had the luxury of time and were planning to take 2-3 days to reach the summit, stay there at least over night, and take our time coming back down by a different route. I fired up my stove, made coffee, and sat sipping as I watched climbers becoming smaller and smaller specks of color gaining altitude up the canyon to the NE of our camp. Then it happened. I witnessed a rockslide coming down the canyon from the red cliffs NNE of our position. The sound was muffled by distance, but a slight rumble could be heard echoing through the canyon. The flying dust, dirt and rock was visible as an avalanche of material rained down upon the two climbers who most recently passed through our camp. Strangely, at the point where one of them stood, the debris fall seemed to split into two paths, leaving a tiny island of safety around her. Her climbing partner, behind her and somewhat lower, had fallen or taken shelter on the edge of the avalanche. She turned, left her temporary island of safety, and began descending toward him, when a rock the size of a refrigerator knocked her to the ground. I can’t remember if John and Gloria were up by this time, or if I woke them screaming about the plight of our fellow climbers. We then observed two climbers who were ahead of the stricken couple coming back down to their aid. One of them began yelling incomprehensibly and virtually running back down the trail toward us. John dressed hurriedly and started up the trail toward the incident. A few minutes later, as the frantic climber descended and John got closer to him, John was able to make some sense out of what the fellow was yelling, and turned to relay some bits of message to Gloria and I. One climber dead, one unconscious. Bring first aid, water and sleeping bag(s). Go for help. We decided that Gloria should pack what equipment she thought would be helpful, and follow John up to the victims. I would go for help. I pulled out and reviewed my map of the mountain. There is a ski area about 4½ miles or so, almost due south of our position. There was only a single major ridge between here and there, the remainder of the route being a general descent, half above, and half below timberline. Navigation would be pretty easy for the upper portion, but more difficult once I was in the trees. It might have made more sense to hike to the cars, and drive back down to town to notify mountain rescue, but at the time it seemed more expedient to head for the ski area. I quickly packed a bivouac pack, including my sleeping bag, a tarp, some food and water, flashlight, etc., as I didn’t know how long the trek might take, nor if I might have to spend the night if I didn’t easily find my target. Note that this was 10 years before the establishment of the US Global Positioning System satellites and navigation was by map and compass, and taking bearings on visible landmarks. I set out southerly, up a steep open rocky slope, before the screaming madman even reached our camp in his frantic and urgent effort to get off the mountain. However, I could finally make out some of his ravings about the spirits of the mountain not wanting us here and that we should all get off her, before I disappeared over the ridge. I hiked quickly and steadily. I could make out the ski area below long before loosing visibility to the forest, and took several compass readings so that I could stay on a relatively steady course. I was fortunate in that I reached the upper ski runs in less than 2 hours, and even more so in that there were people working there in August, which was a gamble on my part. The first person I encountered was a Caterpillar operator, who said that there was a radio phone available at the operations center, and pointed out the building. I explained the situation to somebody there, who fired up the phone and dialed 9-1-1 or the number of the local sheriff’s office, and I was soon relaying my story to the dispatcher. I don’t remember whether I was using a USGS quadrangle or a more generalized USFS map, but I was not very certain of the position of the accident, and was unfamiliar with local landmarks and their names. I described the red rock cliffs above the avalanche location and the dispatcher was pretty sure that I was describing what I believe he called Red Bluffs. I was only at the ski area for 5-10 minutes, and began my return trek, which would prove to be much more arduous and take much longer. As I approached the final ridge above our camp, I could hear and occasionally see the rescue helicopter as it circled looking for people and then a place to set down. It landed, cut engine power, but never went silent. After a while fired back up, rose above the ridge before me, and flew to the west, before I made the crest to again see into the valley where my friends were. Rather than descend back down to our camp, I traversed northeasterly to join John and Gloria at the body of the deceased, where they worked with rescue crew who had stayed back to move the victim to a safer landing zone. The helicopter returned, in what may have been and hour or two, and set down on very rough rocky terrain on what the rescuers had determined to be the closest place level enough to set the craft down safely. We moved the body bag down the mountain with ropes, reeled out by 2-3 of us with heals dug as much as possible into the skree, and carried by the rest of us, constantly falling or sliding down the slope. The going was slow and arduous even after we were joined by the returning pilot. It was probably an hour or two before our deceased compatriot was finally loaded into the helicopter for her ride down the mountain. As of this moment, on Saturday, November 04, 2006, the slide location is evident in a satellite image through Google maps, 41° 23’ 40" N, 122° 12’ 19” W, in which a recent avalanche marks the approximate track of the 1976 rock slide. After the rescue crew’s final departure, John, Gloria and I returned to camp for a long overdue meal. We didn’t talk much, nor have much to say. We decided to postpone decision about whether we would continue our climb, or leave, until morning, and fell into exhausted sleep in our tents. The next morning we decided to continue our intended climb. From that point, the climbers’ route moves up the canyon to the northeast to near 41° 23' 48.00" N, 122° 12' 5.00" W, thence continuing NE’ly to a ridge at approx., 41° 23’ 54" N, 122° 11’ 53" W, thence NNW’ly traversing an east-facing slope to a point near 41° 24’ 04.2" N, 122° 11’ 56.4" W, thence continuing northward up a ridge through a series of switchbacks to the ridge of the caldera at about 41° 24’ 21.5" N, 122° 11’ 51" W. We camped the third night at the bottom of the caldera, near a dozen or more bubbling sulfur hot springs, at about 41° 24’ 34" N, 122° 11’ 46.8" W. The springs were hot enough to cook in, simply by nestling a pan into the hot bubbling mud. John surprised me, and probably Gloria also, by producing a bottle of wine, and two-piece Nalgene wine glasses. We wined and dined in the ecstatic high of altitude and fantastic scenery that makes the effort worth while. We made a toast, and spoke a memorial to the couple who had suffered the misfortune which we all risk in climbing in such dangerous environments. We returned to our vehicles the following day after a long day’s descent by a more westerly route which took us down to the minor cone of Shastina. Descending the pumice, ash and fine skree slopes was fast and easy, where each 30” step might carry one six feet down the mountain. At times it was possible to run at near 10 MPH with full pack and stay on one’s feet most of the time. The next morning we parted company, John and Gloria returning to Sonoma County, and I continuing my move to Oregon.

Iraq photos

Paul — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 08:40:10 GMT

I decided to post a few pictures from my Iraq adventure. I'm not sure why, after three years. It had been ten years since I returned from my year in Rome, and I hadn't been further out of the country than Sinaloa in that decade. I was pretty low on funds (couldn't really afford that dreamed of trip to Thailand), when the army offered me an all-expenses-paid four-month fun tour of Central and Northern Iraq. Of course, I suppose amongst the people I hang out with, it probably appeared to be a shameful thing to do. I really had the best of intentions, thinking that I might be able to contribute in a small way, to the recovery of a people whom my country had bombed and murdered thousands. So, I went there. It was like a bad LSD trip. It was other-worldly. It was like a gigantic Disney Corp. theme park - "Army World." It was full of army trucks and soldiers with big weapons, but with only minimum gunfire and explosions for effect. The campers dress like army guys, get to ride in all sorts of kul military vehicles and fly in helicopters. The staff (Disney employees) carry big rifles or handguns. They look really real, but nobody ever shoots at anything. There are small explosions at night, and we are told they are from incoming mortars, and we just take them at their word, although nobody is ever hit. Sometimes we find small craters and shattered debris in sidewalks, streets or sticking in the bark of trees, to indicate where a mortar hit during the night before. I found a huge shell in the ground while walking in a decrepid orchard, and reported it to ordinance. It remained there as long as I was in Tikrit, no doubt planted by staff to contribute to the realism. I fell from a truck and broke some ribs (boy, did that ever hurt!). I got to fly in a medivac helicopter and stay in a real field hospital. That made for a good story. For the first couple of months, the food was packaged “meals ready to eat,” or MREs. They’re not too bad for camp food, but they get really old in a few weeks. I lost about 10-12 pounds. Then Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), one of the giant corrupt subsidiaries of Bechtel Engineering, came in a built a giant mess hall tent structure, brought in food from all over the world, and cooks from India and Pakistan, and we started eating like royalty, and the US taxpayers slipped another few million to Bechtel. So, anyway, here’s a few pics from the early days of the worst crime this evil country has committed since Viet Nam. I was there.

The Playa

Paul — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 21:26:46 GMT

Notes from the Desert To me, the word "playa" means beach. This giant alkaline lakebed is also called a "playa," I suppose for its similarity to a beach. ...but it's not very similar to any beach I've known. It's a hundred square miles of dry dusty dirt after the winter lake dries up. It's a seemingly endless flat surface textured by the cracking and warping of the surface soil as the moisture sinks into the ancient lake sediments and is sucked into the moistureless atmosphere. It is the most lifeless environment I have known, but not without its sparse life. I found a long tan praying mantis beneath my truck yesterday, killed a mosquito on a co-worker's shoulder today, and watched a crow or raven soar over the city this evening. I arrived late Sunday night, slept beside the empty highway a few miles out of Gerlach, and dropped into Bruno's for breakfast early Monday morning. I was surprized to see no Burning Man people or activity, as Monday was supposed to be the big MOVE day, in which all the staff would move from the trailer park ghetto of Gerlach to the Playa, and the skeleton of the emerging Black Rock City. After a relaxed breakfast, I filled the tank at Bruno's shell station, and headed out to the Playa. Immediately after pulling out of town and heading north, activity was visible on the Playa. Turns out the big move had been happening all weekend, and pretty much everybody was out on the dirt by Sunday evening. The city has moved a mile and a half north of where it stood last year, supposedly because the BLM is concerned about the compaction of soil where the streets have been for several years. The long dusty driveway one travels after leaving the highway is much longer than in previous years, but will hold more of the coming traffic jam off the highway itself. There was nobody at the gate. There wasn't even a gate! There was merely a break in the 7 mile pentagonal perimeter fence. I drove up 6:00, the central boulevard of the emerging city, to a construction site near Center Camp, and asked the whereabouts of Quinn (my boss). "Oh, he's probably out at the depot" was the reply, as though I'd know where that is. It's down there at about 5:30 outside of the last street. I pulled up at the depot more than an hour too late for the 7:30 all-hands meeting, but found Quinn and a dozen familiar faces. I was instructed to take the day off, set up my camp, and acclimate. It's common for folks to think they need a day or two (or three) to get used to the heat and the dryness. Bull shit. "I'll set up my camp and meet you at the "commissary" for lunch, and work assignment," I replied. To me a commissary is a place where something, usually food or food-related, is stored and dispersed. Here is means mess hall or cafeteria - a place where food is prepared and served, and meals are eaten. It is a giant circus tent, about 100' long and 40-50' wide where meals are served and eaten, joined by another tent perhaps half that size where food is prepared, joined by about 4 freezer/refrigerator vans where the food is stored, and from which a dull diesel engine roar issues non-stop 24 hours a day. I parked the truck at 3:20 and Guess, pulled out my 100' tape, and proceeded to mark out a piece of ground. I set a pile of pipes, hardware, plastic storage bins and such on the ground, drove some corner stakes, set a handful of pink survey tape streamers flying in the wind at each corner, and went off to lunch. Build fence. Build more fence. The order of the day. and most of Tuesday. ...and now it's Friday, and we built even some more fence. 8' tall fence of 2x4 frames covered with black geotextile stretched between 4x4x12' posts on 10' centers, set in 3' deep holes bored with a Bobcat fitted with an 8" auger. Or orange plastic warning fence stretched between "T stakes" driven 15" into the ground at the expense of some young buck's back. Or some other kind of fence. The team I work with is called "Special Projects." When we're not building fence, we're building shade structures, or a deck for some trailer, or putting a new door knob on somebody else's trailer, or replacing the glass in some broken window, or whatever is needed that isn't covered by some team created for that specific task. There is a team building the Man Base. There is a team out at the "Station" or the "Ranch" building "The Man." There is a crew constructing the Temple (which is barely 2' high after a week of work). Gate crew has also put in a few miles of fence, reconstructed or remodeled their little guard huts, set up an organization and started searching and checking identity of those trying to enter. Shade crew has build a couple hundred square meters of open air structures covered by black shade cloth or geotextile. The Camp Artica crew is building the ice distribution facility, and I am looking forward to the arrival of the ice trucks. The Center Camp construction crew is building their fantastic round cable tensioned structure which will provide maybe 10,000 sq ft of comforting shade, a stage and that most wonderful of facilities, the coffee shop. And, of course, there are a scattering of art installation teams already building on some fantasmagora out on the playa. But most amazing of all is the Belgian team building the biggest thing yet to rise from the alkaline flat. A team of about 40 folks, mostly artist carpenters arrived about Wednesday from Belgium, with a well organized camp, a full kitchen, enough food to feed themselves for 4 weeks, and an astounding design to blow the minds of their American counterparts. They began work on three towers, which all began to grow toward one another as they rose into the clear dry sky, and all joined today at about 50' above the ground. I wish I had a camera and could post an image, but even a photo couldn't capture it's grandeur. I'm sure you'll agree that it is fantastic when you see it, and I can imagine that this strange and seemingly chaotic structure will take on a totally new magnificence as it reaches its completion. It’s quite interesting, and telling of American naiveté that the DPW yokels want to call the structure “The waffle” as expression of our limited knowledge of Belgium. The Belgians call their project “Euchronia, a Visit to the Future” (or a Visit FROM the Future, I don’t remember), but the silly “burners” insist on calling it “The Waffle.” It disappoints me, but I’m sure it simply reinforces the Belgians’ impressions of Americans as unsophisticated and poorly educated. The sunsets are fantastic, but already as I perch atop my truck in the Guess hinterland, can see a haze of dust lying over the city center, as people cruise irresponsibly about in their gas-guzzling, dust and pollution-producing vehicles. And I have new neighbors. Up to Wednesday, my closest neighbor was Cowboy Carl, who settled his classic little stainless steel Airstream in at about 10:00 & "H." He makes a great neighbor, as he generally has 2-3 of the most beautiful women of DPW over for wine after dinner, and then settles in to sleep by 9:00 or 10:00. He' up by 5:00 but his activities have no impact on my sleep at what seems like 2,000 ft away. then somebody moved in at about 5:00 and "F" which seemed really close. Today somebody moved in at about 4:30 and "G" which is literally right down the street, which is more like only 1,000 ft away. The city is beginning to fill up. There are parties and loud music every night. Most of the noise comes from the "First Bar," named in the style of the 1st Baptist Church, but intentionally mocking "First Camp" where all the highly-paid Burning Man mucky mucks live in air-conditioned comfort in luxury RVs and camper mobiles. First Bar of course brags that it is the 1st bar established at Black Rock City in 2006. It is stocked with a few aged bottles of cheap vodka and tequila, a sad assortment of bad mixers, no water and no ice. It now has a 2-3 hundred sq ft of shade structure, a couple of couches, a little stage, one rope light (red), 3-4 bar stools, and a dozen or two drunks each evening making fools of themselves. The Burners Without Borders, a Burning Man disaster relief team formed last year after the event (as Katrina struck the Gulf shore during the event week) brought together a group of more mature and compassionate team than the DPW, has teamed up with the Temple team to put together a comfortable camp at about Esplanade and 3:00. They have a large (maybe 600 sq ft) shaded, carpeted space, cold beer, pleasant music, comfortable couches and nice people. A far cry from the noise and rowdiness of the DPW ghetto and First Bar. More later...

Lately

Paul — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 05:12:00 GMT

Spent the month of June in San Francisco. I am still depressed and disappointed that I was unable to finish the project. By the time the plumbers had their portion ready for inspection, I was due at the Country Fair. The fair was wonderful as usual. Maybe more wonderful than usual. I spent the weekend of July 21-23 workin' for the Black Rock City Dept of Public Works. Last weekend I'll be able to put in there until I move down in mid-August. Picking up some fallen rock out of the highway 58 about an hour & a half SE of Eugene, I cut the bejeebies outta my right hand. Now I'm partially disabled and have further excuse to do almost nothing. Not really getting any work done, but making general prep for heading for Burning Man. Friday I'm headed for Portland to see Pink Martinin at the zoo.

My obsession

Paul — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 14:46:47 GMT

Lately (like for the past 30 years) I have been increasingly concerned and alarmed by the insane growth of environmentally destructive American suburbs and consumptive lifestyle. My concern over the dramatic over exploitation of water resources was one of the major factors in my decision to leave Arizona, and eventually settle in the soggy Pacific Northwest. My concerns have become a virtual obsession with the passing of the world’s peak of petroleum production, and the stark realization that there will be less and less of this most precious resource as there are more and more people on the planet demanding a share. Many others have stated my beliefs and concerns more articulately than I can, so I offer here a few excerpts from a few of those thinkers and writers. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - “Americans ought to regard the word "growth" with trepidation. When invoked by presidents and economists, it is meant to imply ideas like "more" or "better." It's a habit of thinking left over from the exuberant phase of the industrial age, when there was always more of everything to get. Nowadays, though, as we enter terminal years of cheap energy, the word "growth" invokes a new set ideas.” James Howard Kunstler http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - “With the coming of Peak Oil and the beginning of long-term, irreversible declines in the availability of fossil fuels (along with many other resources), modern industrial civilization faces a wrenching series of unwelcome transitions. There are specific practical things that can be done, right now, to deal with the hard realities of our situation. The problem is that most of them are counterintuitive, and fly in the face of very deeply rooted attitudes on all sides of the political spectrum. The first point that has to be grasped is that proposals for system-wide, top-down change - getting the Federal government to do something constructive about the situation, for instance - are a waste of time. That sort of change isn't going to happen. It's not simply a matter of who's currently in power, although admittedly that doesn't help. The core of the problem is that even proposing changes on a scale that would do any good would be political suicide. Broadly speaking, our situation is this: our society demands energy inputs on a scale, absolute and per capita, that can't possibly be maintained for more than a little while longer. Sustainable energy sources can only provide a small fraction of the energy we're used to getting from fossil fuels. As fossil fuel supplies dwindle, in other words, everybody will have to get used to living on a small fraction of the energy we've been using as a matter of course. We - and by this I mean people throughout the industrial world - have to make the transition to a Third World lifestyle. Fossil fuels made it possible for most people in the industrial world to have a lifestyle that doesn't depend on hard physical labor, and to wallow in a flood of mostly unnecessary consumer goods and services. As fossil fuels deplete, all that will inevitably go away. We have to start with the recognition that the most likely outcome of the current situation is collapse: to borrow the Club of Rome's formulation, sustained, simultaneous, uncontrolled and irreversible declines in population, industrial production, and capital stock. Since fossil fuel production will decline gradually, not simply come to a screeching halt, the likely course of things is gradual descent rather than freefall. Civilizations go under in a rolling collapse punctuated by localized disasters, taking anything from one to four centuries to complete the process. It's not a steady decline, either; between sudden crises come intervals of relative stability, even moderate improvement; different regions decline at different paces; existing social, economic and political structures are replaced, not with complete chaos, but with transitional structures that may develop pretty fair institutional strength themselves. With … fossil fuels gone or badly depleted, nearly twice as many people in the world, and the global economy in shreds, the gap between production and demand will be vast. The result will be poverty, spiraling shortages, rising death rates, plummeting birth rates, and epidemic violence and warfare. Not a pretty picture - but it's not an instant reversion to the Stone Age either. So what does work? The key to making sense of constructive action in a situation of impending industrial collapse is to look at the community, rather than the individual or society as a whole, as the basic unit. We know from history that local communities can continue to flourish while empires fall around them. There are, however, three things a community needs to do that, and all three of them are in short supply these days. First, a community needs some degree of local organization. The second thing a community needs in the twilight of industrial society is a core of people who know how to do without fossil fuel inputs. Survival skills such as organic gardening, low-tech medicine, basic hand crafts, and the like need to be learned and practiced now, while there's time to do so. Similarly, those people who cut their fossil fuel consumption drastically now - for example, by getting rid of their cars and using public transit or bicycles for commuting - will be better prepared for the inevitable shortages. The third thing a community needs is access to basic human requirements, and above all food. …most American cities of half a million or less are fairly close to agricultural land that could, in a pinch, be used to grow food intensively and feed the somewhat reduced population that's likely to be left after the first stages of the collapse. What's needed is the framework of a production and distribution system around which this can take shape. The good news is that this framework already exists; it's called the farmers market [and Community Supported Agriculture] movements. The important point, it seems to me, is to do something constructive now, rather than presenting plans to the government in the perfect knowledge that they will be ignored until it's far too late to do anything. Excerpted from: John Michael Greer, “The Coming of Deindustrial Society: A Practical Response” http://www.hubbertpeak.com/whatToDo/DeindustrialAge.htm - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - “One of the great lessons of hard times is that there's strength in community. All over North America, and in many other lands, people who lived through more troubled times founded and joined lodges and other community organizations as a way to deal with adversity. (It's worth recalling that in 1900, some 40% of the adult population of the United States belonged to at least one lodge.) Many of these same organizations are still in existence, provided with resources and traditional ways of dealing with hard times, and ready to help a new generation deal with a period of renewed instability. What can lodges and other community organizations do in the face of a troubled future? Plenty. By bringing people together, combining resources and knowledge, and working with each other in ways tested by hard times in the past, they can make it possible for people to survive crises that individual resources can't surmount. They can deal with short-term problems like natural disasters by taking care of their own members and freeing community resources to help others. They can deal with long-term problems like recessions by sharing resources and working together. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, and in earlier times of crisis, lodge halls across North America were centers of community self-help and mutual assistance. This is a role that surviving lodges and community organizations of other kinds can take up again.” From: The Stormwatch Project http://home.earthlink.net/~stormwatchproject/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "More and more thinkers, from various disciplines, are converging on the same overall vision; a globe with thousands of locally managed, self-sufficient economies based ecologically meaningful boundaries and where possible comprising culturally and historically integrated communities." From: Mary E. Clark, “Rethinking ecological and economic education: A Gestalt Shift” World .Bank Conference on Ecological Economics of Sustainability, Washington, 21/5/1990, 226-7. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - What can we do? David Suzuki offers the following as the 10 most effective ways we can help conserve nature and improve our quality of life. 1. Reduce home energy use by 10% [or more PV] 2. Choose an energy-efficient home & appliances 3. Don't use pesticides 4. Eat meat-free meals one [or more PV] day(s) a week 5. Buy locally grown and produced food 6. Choose a fuel-efficient vehicle [like a bicycle PV] 7. Walk, bike, carpool or take transit 8. Choose a home close to work or school 9. Support alternative transportation 10. Learn more and share with others The David Suzuki Foundation http://www.davidsuzuki.org/WOL/Challenge/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Personally, I believe as John Greer notes above, that building community, learning and sharing low energy living skills, and formation of relationships with local farmers are more important in the long run than driving a fuel-efficient vehicle, but …I think that all of Suzuki’s seemingly naïve suggestions for conserving resources are positive steps we can take toward preparing ourselves for the coming age of scarcity. I welcome your comments. Paul