View Full Version : How To Climb Down a Mountain
Nice essay here.
https://davidkeithlaw.wordpress.com/2014/06/10/how-to-climb-down-a-mountain/
Osceola is in the Whites, just south of the Kanc, not far from the AT.
Lone Wolf
06-10-2014, 20:39
it's just walkin'. grab ahold of roots and rocks and walk on down. no poles needed
illabelle
06-10-2014, 20:57
VERY nice essay, Rafe. Thanks for sharing!
Climbed (and descended) Mt Carrigain via the Desolation Trail yesterday - from personal experience, I can say the author speaks the truth.
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garlic08
06-11-2014, 08:05
Nice writing. I've always held forth that most accidents happen on the descent. A climber I know says accidents always happen after lunch. A skier I know says all fatalities occur on the last run of the day. Basically they all say you need to be most careful when you're tired and your mind starts wandering to the beer, the pizza, the game that night, etc.
Monkeywrench
06-11-2014, 09:50
A skier I know says all fatalities occur on the last run of the day.
Um. Yeah. Obviously.
Another Kevin
06-11-2014, 10:44
Um. Yeah. Obviously.
Zombie skiers. It's a concept.
Another Kevin
06-11-2014, 11:00
it's just walkin'. grab ahold of roots and rocks and walk on down. no poles needed
It's just walkin' - until it isn't. (I've crossed that line, sometimes inadvertently. I'm sure you have, too.) Reducing it to the point of being ridiculous: at some point you need skis. Or a belay. Or an ice axe. Or any one of a number of other things that get beyond "just walkin'."
I know it's controversial whether Class 4 scrambling even exists - by the time you're experienced enough to have an eye for grading the rock, you think nothing of free-soloing 5.4's. But for a flatlander, an exposed Class 4 ain't just walkin'.
And the article said nothing about poles. I know you feel strongly about them, but why are they relevant here? For what it's worth: I disagree with you about poles in general (for me, they're knee savers), but agree that once you're grabbing onto rocks and roots, they only get in the way. I've zip-tied mitten hooks onto my poles and threaded D-rings onto a couple of my pack's straps so that I can stow the poles in seconds to get them out of the way for scrambling or to bring out my ice axe.
Disagree with part of your advice Rafe. You said, “On the way down there are two things to remember: don’t stop, and don’t rush.” I will certainly stop if I feel the need for safety reasons like further scouting my route down, I'm a bit fatigued, etc
It ain't walking, it's falling with style
Disagree with part of your advice Rafe. You said, “On the way down there are two things to remember: don’t stop, and don’t rush.” I will certainly stop if I feel the need for safety reasons like further scouting my route down, I'm a bit fatigued, etc
It's just an article I found -- not "my" advice by any means. I kind of liked the photo and the writing style, if not 100% of the content.
It can be a challenge to describe in words what Appalachian mountain hikers know from experience.
Pedaling Fool
06-11-2014, 14:52
Disagree with part of your advice Rafe. You said, “On the way down there are two things to remember: don’t stop, and don’t rush.” I will certainly stop if I feel the need for safety reasons like further scouting my route down, I'm a bit fatigued, etc
It's just an article I found -- not "my" advice by any means. I kind of liked the photo and the writing style, if not 100% of the content.
It can be a challenge to describe in words what Appalachian mountain hikers know from experience.
That's what I was going to say, it's advice in the article, Direct Quote:
What happens on a climb, it seems, is that you learn something. How fit you are, or unfit; how patient or impatient; how determined or how fickle. You learn how to do it and how not to do it. Hours after this first climb, I heard words of wisdom that I would not have understood had I heard them before ascending and then descending Osceola:
“On the way down there are two things to remember: don’t stop, and don’t rush.”
Good advice when you’re on the side of a mountain. In fact, good advice almost anywhere, when you think about it.
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________
This guy (author) sounds like someone who has never climbed a mountain before or since this one climb he wrote about.
.
This guy (author) sounds like someone who has never climbed a mountain before or since this one climb he wrote about.
Well, he says as much: "We approached the mountain in blissful ignorance – led by an experienced hand, but somehow oblivious to what it would mean to go up, and then come back down, this mountain."
Sometimes those who aren't experts have interesting insights and ways of expressing things that the experts take for granted.
As for the don't stop, don't rush bit: I think it expresses something I aim for, namely consistency. Finding a pace I can hold for a good long time, rather than rushing ahead and then having to take frequent breathers.
That's not to say I don't stop from time to time. (Though lately I've done a couple of hikes with a partner that doesn't believe in taking breaks...) When I find a pace that doesn't require stops -- all the better.
Drybones
06-11-2014, 17:44
My dad and I used to squirrel hunt together when I was a kid, a squirrel would go into a hole high up in a tree and he'd send me up the tree with a split switch to pull him out, it didn't look good one day and I said "how will I get down", he replied, "Don't worry about getting down, that's easy, all you have to do is let go".
Pedaling Fool
06-11-2014, 19:59
Well, he says as much: "We approached the mountain in blissful ignorance – led by an experienced hand, but somehow oblivious to what it would mean to go up, and then come back down, this mountain."
Sometimes those who aren't experts have interesting insights and ways of expressing things that the experts take for granted.
As for the don't stop, don't rush bit: I think it expresses something I aim for, namely consistency. Finding a pace I can hold for a good long time, rather than rushing ahead and then having to take frequent breathers.
That's not to say I don't stop from time to time. (Though lately I've done a couple of hikes with a partner that doesn't believe in taking breaks...) When I find a pace that doesn't require stops -- all the better.
Yes, sometimes novices can give a unique view point of a particular endeavor. However, I didn't see that unique perspective in that article, maybe you did, so I say fine, to each his own...
Many times the novices just bitch about things that everyone else has already experienced and over it, that's how I saw the article.
If I take 100 novices on a 3-hour bike ride, I'm sure the bulk of them will pine over their sore ass and coming up with various strategies on ways to approach a long ride...to which I'd say, MTFU, bitch:)
Just Bill
06-12-2014, 12:00
it's just walkin'
it's not just walkin'
Tricksy fella.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrarian
Pedaling Fool
06-12-2014, 12:13
Tricksy fella.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrarian
Or maybe it's just an extension of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes
One of my favorite is The Arrow http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/#Arr :)
3.3 The Arrow
The third is … that the flying arrow is at rest, which result follows from the assumption that time is composed of moments … . he says that if everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always in a now, the flying arrow is therefore motionless. (Aristotle Physics, 239b.30) Zeno abolishes motion, saying “What is in motion moves neither in the place it is nor in one in which it is not”. (Diogenes Laertius Lives of Famous Philosophers, ix.72)
This argument against motion explicitly turns on a particular kind of assumption of plurality: that time is composed of moments (or ‘nows’) and nothing else. Consider an arrow, apparently in motion, at any instant. First, Zeno assumes that it travels no distance during that moment—‘it occupies an equal space’ for the whole instant. But the entire period of its motion contains only instants, all of which contain an arrow at rest, and so, Zeno concludes, the arrow cannot be moving.
An immediate concern is why Zeno is justified in assuming that the arrow is at rest during any instant. It follows immediately if one assumes that an instant lasts 0s: whatever speed the arrow has, it will get nowhere if it has no time at all. But what if one held that the smallest parts of time are finite—if tiny—so that a moving arrow might actually move some distance during an instant? One way of supporting the assumption—which requires reading quite a lot into the text—starts by assuming that instants are indivisible. Then suppose that an arrow actually moved during an instant. It would be at different locations at the start and end of the instant, which implies that the instant has a ‘start’ and an ‘end’, which in turn implies that it has at least two parts, and so is divisible, contrary to our assumption. (Note that this argument only establishes that nothing can move during an instant, not that instants cannot be finite.)
So then, nothing moves during any instant, but time is entirely composed of instants, so nothing ever moves. A first response is to point out that determining the velocity of the arrow means dividing the distance traveled in some time by the length of that time. But—assuming from now on that instants have zero duration—this formula makes no sense in the case of an instant: the arrow travels 0m in the 0s the instant lasts, but 0/0 m/s is not any number at all. Thus it is fallacious to conclude from the fact that the arrow doesn't travel any distance in an instant that it is at rest; whether it is in motion at an instant or not depends on whether it travels any distance in a finite interval that includes the instant in question.
The answer is correct, but it carries the counter-intuitive implication that motion is not something that happens at any instant, but rather only over finite periods of time.
Think about it this way: time, as we said, is composed only of instants. No distance is traveled during any instant. So when does the arrow actually move? How does it get from one place to another at a later moment? There's only one answer: the arrow gets from point X at time 1 to point Y at time 2 simply in virtue of being at successive intermediate points at successive intermediate times—the arrow never changes its position during an instant but only over intervals composed of instants, by the occupation of different positions at different times. In Bergson's memorable words—which he thought expressed an absurdity—‘movement is composed of immobilities’ (1911, 308): getting from X to Y is a matter of occupying exactly one place in between at each instant (in the right order of course). For a discussion of this issue see Arntzenius (2000).
Lone Wolf
06-12-2014, 12:35
Tricksy fella.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrarian
whatever. the quotes aren't in context. quit trollin'. stay on topic
Just Bill
06-12-2014, 13:19
whatever. the quotes aren't in context. quit trollin'. stay on topic
Just saying HI- looked like the topic was well covered and the drift thoroughly explored.
If you stick to standard two word answers it will be harder to quote you out of context- but don't let me discourage you from branching out.