Posted on 08/15/2016 6:49:43 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Canada’s Baffin Island is home to the highest concentration of unclimbed cliff faces on Earth. Naturally, the remote island has become a mecca for elite mountain climbers, known as alpinists. The pilgrimage is often made from Yosemite National Park in the United States, since the two attract a similar cadre of adventurers looking for a challenge. From the Yosemite mountaineering community, alpinists Cheyne Lempe and Dave Allfrey made one particular mountain the target of their climbing crosshairs: the Great Pillar. Even for a pair who are part of a young generation rising through the ranks quickly, a climb like the Great Pillar is deeply formidable. Beyond this, the two chose one of the most difficult routes, or “lines,” up the cliff face. Since the Canadian island straddles the Arctic Circle, heavy snow is possible any point, even in July, and the average temperature hovers below 15 degrees Fahrenheit. This climate is also ripe for polar bears. The more time spent on the ground, the more likely one is to come across them. It’s highly important to get on the cliff face as quickly as possible and stay there. This means sleeping while hanging from the side of the cliff. (Happily, this is something alpinists are fairly used to.)
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearlife.com ...
Wow, what a great adventure. I have spent my time in below zero temps and blasting wind waiting it out inside a tent.
Hopefully, they will fall to their death eliminating two more self centered, self indulgent thrill seekers.
At least they are living life on their own terms and not becoming elitist politicians wanting to control other people’s lives.
I have no interest in mountain climbing but it really is incredible what some of them can do.
I think I read that Theodore Roosevelt was the first American to climb the Matterhorn.
I’d rather die in the saddle than die a miserable cranky old man.
Do you miss it?
I was in Yosemite one time, standing below El Capitan, wondering what it would be like. Then I noticed there was some damn fool hanging in his sleeping bag from the face. It appears there is a crack in the mountain, from lower left to upper right as you face it, dude was right there, probably a thousand feet above me. Sleeping bag, pitons, somebody was in there.
I could probably sleep like that, after two hours of terror :)
Has anyone else seen the film “Meru”? Incredible climb of a knife edged peak in the Indian Himalayas.
Be much more fun slappin’ leather, fo sho.
That’s a good way of looking at it.
Same for the Wright Brothers, too, eh?
They had a good scene in that movie K2 of that way to sleep
on the side of a mountain.Imagine you have seen that movie.
It scared the crap out of the girl I saw it with.Scared me too a bit.
Keep alert for Polar bears too,Scary
Did your Momma ever admit she dropped you on your head and that’s why you have this urge to climb?
Pix would help here
The Matterhorn was first climbed by brit climber Edward Whymper, July 1865. He climbed from the Swiss side on the ridge in the center of the often photographed side of the mountain. I have climbed that route as high as the “Shoulder” near the top where you have to cross onto the face because the shoulder goes overhanging. I was there in July also, but the snow conditions were too avalanche prone. We knew we would turn back there at the shoulder, if we could even get there because we talked to the guides service and found no one had been above there yet that year. I think it was 1991.
We would have liked to climb the Matterhorn, but just went to the Shoulder as a warm up for the Eiger which we successfully climbed later in July. We checked with the guides service and found no one had climbed the Eiger that year either so we were the first in bad snow and ice conditions.
There is a pic and a video at link.
Interesting.
I saw a movie a few years ago titled “The Edge Of The World”. It was made in the 30s and was about a remote Scottish Island.
The Island had sheer cliffs of over 400 feet. There was a grave marker near one which gave the name and simply said “gone over”. According to the movie many of the residents had died that way catching birds.
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