[Steve House]

Steve House on March 7, 2017 at 5:20 pm · in reply to: food on a route #4211

Hi rhysmacallister,

On the stoves. Todd Bibler (of the old Bibler stoves and Bibler tents, now Black Diamond Tents) showed me this trick in about 1995: Buy a piece of hollow thin-walled copper tubing, you’ll need 50cm or less. Pound it flat. Then cut the length so that the ends of the copper are on the edge of the flame and the middle of the length of tubing wraps very tightly around the base of the fuel canister. Then use an old foam sleeping mat and tape to make an insulating cup for the fuel canister that also will keep the flattened copper heat-transfer tubing tight to the fuel canister. This works great. Much better than any other system I’ve seen.

Secondly, food. Here is my system:
Breakfast: 1-2 bars that go well with my tea/coffee. I like a hot drink in the morning but don’t want to cook anything.

Lunch: Starts shortly after breakfast and extends until shortly before dinner. What you bring will depend on the intensity of the climbing. If you are moving fast and working at a high intensity, you’ll want mostly easy to eat carbohydrate gels. If the climbing is slow and technical (like the route you did on the P. Dru) then you want more variety, in this case I might actually bring things like bread and cheese. And nuts. I always bring nuts. It’s up to you if you bring dried fruit as well, I like raisins and apricots. But nuts, especially roasted (not salted) almonds, are my favorite. I also like (toasted) walnuts and cashews. Chocolate is something I’ll bring if the climbing is slow, but not if the climbing is fast. If the climbing is fast then the sugar in the chocolate makes me crash.

Dinner: I do it like this: Have nuts available for the pre-dinner snack and start eating as soon as the stove gets turned on. You can’t digest nuts well if you’re working really hard, but now that you’ve slowed down and can start to drink again, the nuts will get you a good balance of fat and protein to kick start your recovery. If you’re going super-light, try a ‘recovery drink’, I like the “chocolate smoothie” Recovery Brew from GU Energy. This is the lightest option and has stuff like Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs) which are very helpful, especially on a longer term expedition.
Then make a pot of tea. Share with your partner.
Then make a pot of hot water: Make 2 freeze-dried dinners. (I like the spaghetti best generally.) And put them in the drop in pockets inside your parka to keep them warm. They HAVE to stay as warm as possible. They also take easily double the amount of time to rehydrate as the directions will tell you.
then make a pot of soup. Share with your partner.
Then make a pot of tea. Share with your partner while you eat your food.
Then fill bottles and maybe make another brew.
Break out a good chocolate bar for desert. Share with your partner.
If you’re going super light, like you have to on big alpine routes, especially at high altitude, then forget hot water. Drink plan warm water. You don’t have enough fuel or enough time to bring a pot to a boil.

Hope that helsp.

[Steve House]

Steve House on February 27, 2017 at 11:26 pm · in reply to: Sports Psychology/Mental Training #4137

Hi Nate,
Great question, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to answer it, not exactly.

First, let me try to rephrase what you’re asking for. Correct me if I’m wrong, but what I hear in your two examples could be boiled down to ‘mental toughness’, keeping it together in tough and potentially dangerous situations.

This capacity can be improved through a number of approaches, that separately, aren’t nearly as useful as they are together. Secondly, everyone is different and each of us has different strengths/weaknesses and needs in this arena. Thirdly, the resource, is you.

So let’s get started. I want to point out that I will not get to everything in one post, but I think this is such a valuable discussion that I’d like to come back to it as I (or any of you) are inspired.

First up is fear. Fear has its origins in not knowing. You don’t know if you can make the move or not, and suddenly you’re afraid, right? But the fear-inducing-not-knowing in the situations you’re talking about is much more complex. Think about this as it pertains to you personally. What is it that elicits the fear/anxiety. Is it the weather? The hold breaking? Being too tired to finish the pitch? Getting into a dangerous position on a pitch and not being able to reverse the moves? This list, in terms of alpine climbing, could be virtually endless but I’d bet that you have a few that are particularly poignant, or scary, for you.

Now you’ve got your task list. That means that you need to figure out how you’re going to address each of those situations if and when they arise. In many if not all cases, the answer won’t be concrete. There is no answer such as jumping off a sport route onto a good bolt to feel better about falling onto bolts. This won’t (and shouldn’t) make you feel more comfortable about falling on potentially inadequate gear in limestone high in the alpine. But, learning (by experience) that you can place good gear in limestone and that when there is no good gear you can and will change plans and/or bail safely, is a valuable coping mechanism for your fear of getting into a dangerous runout pitch and getting hurt. It comes down to ‘know thyself’, meaning knowing (or deciding) that you’ll exercise good judgement for you on that day and either find and place good gear to protect you before you launch or you’ll come down.

In my early/mid 20’s I would have tons of anxiety going up on big alpine objectives. I’d stare up at those walls and gulp, seriously wondering if I’d come back alive. But, I remember that weight being lifted when, after several big alpine routes together Barry Blanchard pointed out to me that he/we know how to stay “attached to the mountain” as he put it. Meaning we could move up and down safely, maybe not always as fast as we would like because limestone climbing (and gear placements) are hard and time-consuming. But we’d be patient and we’d find something to stay attached to the mountain. Yes, I’ve since spent up to 3 hours crafting one anchor to meet this criteria, but I never doubted, or feared, during that process that I would not find an anchor. I knew I would, no longer how long it took.

Hope that helps. I’ll put together some more thoughts over the coming days/weeks/years. Keep it going.
Steve

[Steve House]

Steve House on December 5, 2016 at 11:59 am · in reply to: Alpine Combine question #3618

Hi Steve G,

I’m glad you found us here and thanks for posting.

1) This is all-out. As fast as you can do. It’s also quite similar to an Anaerobic Threshold Test as we discuss elsewhere on this site.
2) There is no prescription for this, but our intention was that one would use it at the beginning of each training cycle. Especially the hill-climb can be a nice thing to do a re-test on from time to time to confirm your progress.
Steve

[Steve House]

Steve House on November 8, 2016 at 4:53 pm · in reply to: Acclimatization #3419

Hi Max,
I wanted to add that you will be able to go up to 14K as long as you can quickly get back down low again. During these quick up and baks you will probably notice that you’ll feel worse several hours after you’re on the summit. Expect this period of discomfort and just keep moving down and you’ll be fine.