“When will it be done?” growled the Pope.

“When it’s finished, [expletive unspoken],” replied Michelangelo.

[A joke cribbed from a manuscript I'm reading.]

Here’s an incredible run of Hindenburg photos published on The Atlantic’s website.

An email correspondent just brought this superb photo to my attention. It shows  one of Eurasia’s Ju-52s, and he asked if I thought it was taken at Chungking’s Sanhupa Airport, a cobblestone airport built on a Yangtze sandbar below the city.

I told him that I thought so, but then decided to see if I could figure it out for sure.

Comparing the hills in the background with this photo, which I know was taken at Sanhupa, I think it’s a definite confirmation.

The two hilltops immediately right of the pole in the picture above are an exact match to the two hilltops at the extreme right of the Ju-52 photo.

Renan’s footage also puts the Ruth into its proper scale, which none of my pictures ever accomplished.

Check out Renan’s short, it’ll be 3:11 of well spent, inspiring time. I used to live in that world. I’d like to get back to it.

I’ve always been astonished and grateful that we were able to get onto three such marvelous climbs. Recently, I shared pictures and stories from A Fine Piece. Here, I’m going to post about Shaken, Not Stirred.

First, I need to take issue with the story Jim told Joe Puryear, author of the Supertopo guidebook Alaska Climbing, in which Jim waxes poetic about how he and Jack Tackle had always had their eye on the climb that would become Shaken, Not Stirred but had never gotten around to climbing it. I’ve also heard him talk about how we spotted Shaken, Not Stirred from the summit of Mount Bradley, after we climbed The Bourbon Bottle Route.

Hmmmm….. that’s not how I remember it.

(I’m reserving the right to needle Jim here because he’s one of my best friends, definitely the best climbing partner I’ve ever had, and unless your last name is Tackle, Lowe, Bragg, Kennedy, or Engelbach I’m not extending you the same right. Period. Plus, he kinda hurt my poor little feelings.)

So here’s the real story — or, at least, here’s my version of it. Without any concrete objectives, Jim and I flew into the Ruth in May of 1997 with Kent McClannan and Jurgen Grunevald. Jim was familiar with the area thanks to the expeditions he’d made into the Ruth with Jack Tackle, he and I had done The Bourbon Bottle Route on the south face of Mount Bradley the year before, and I had photocopies of all the American Alpine Journal entries pertinent to the Ruth Gorge. Our plan was to fly in there and “take a look around,” “see what we could find,” and “hopefully get up something.”

We started scouting possibilities soon after Paul Roderick of Talkeetna Air Taxi slipped under the cloud layer and dropped us on the Ruth. (I loved flying with Paul, a real kindred spirit.) Kent was partnered with Jurgen, and I was with Jim, but it was Kent and I who went together to scope the enormous and imposing south face of Mount Dickey. We saw nothing attractive, but I thought to set up my camera tripod and take a zoom lens shot of the south face of the Mooses Tooth with the the bottom of Dickey’s southeast buttress in the foreground.

One peek through the lens changed everything.

Here’s the picture:

The Ham and Eggs couloir (first ascended in 1975 by Jon Krakauer, Thomas Davies, and Nate Zinsser) was clearly visible running up the sun/shade line left of the Tooth’s main summit, but what really caught my eye was the other couloir, the one just into the shade between the west and middle summits. It doesn’t show up too well in this scan, but through the camera lens I could see what looked to be a thin runnel of ice running up slightly to the right of the prominent snowfield high in the couloir and then merging into it not too far beneath Englishman’s Col — the high col between the Tooth’s west and middle summits.

The runnel looked viable, and it looked good.

It looked really good.

Looking through the lens, collecting my thoughts and trying to keep calm, I also realized that I had a problem: I was with Kent, and I didn’t want him and Jurgen to scoop the line. Both were good climbers, and given any opportunity, they’d nail it. Which wasn’t lost on me. So I kept quiet, albeit quivering with excitement.

There are two things in this world I’m good at keeping quiet over: things I’m told in confidence and new-route possibilities. (Fifteen years later, I’m still sitting on some good ones.)

Having spotted the Shaken, Not Stirred couloir, I’d sooner the Mooses Tooth fall over than have somebody other than me grab its first ascent.

Back to camp, I whispered to Jim about what I’d seen and threatened violence if he let on. He took a “ski around” and got himself a vantage. He liked what he saw and we organized a sortie.

We left the tent about midnight, climbed the icefall where the Root Canal Glacier tumbles into the Ruth Gorge to the base of the south face of the Mooses Tooth, and started up the route about six a.m. It didn’t take us long to realize that we were onto something really special. A pitch or two of hollow, rotten ice gained a straightforward couloir, and we climbed that for a long way, until it pinched down to the beautiful ice runnel I’d seen from the opposite side of the Ruth.

Here’s a good overview of the route that I found on the web. The coming photos will make more sense if you click on it and bounce back. Plus, you’ll see why it’s such a great climb.

And here’s Jim in an easy part of the couloir. I think he’s about to launch up into the narrow ice runnel.

The ice runnel served up the best climbing on the route. Jim got the best of it, and it was fabulous. Below is a shot of Jim copping a rest near the end of a long pitch:

Jim led the bulk of the runnel, which I think went on for four pitches. I got the last one. Here are two pictures of me that Jim took on that pitch (I think):

The couloir walls framed spectacular views into the Ruth Gorge. The picture below is an odd converse of the one I’d taken below Mount Dickey the day before, perhaps showing why the route hadn’t been discovered, since only a small slice of the Alaska Range is visible from inside the couloir’s depths.

As I recall, it wasn’t easy to find anchors in the mostly flawless granite beside the snow and ice, but when I did get a stance, I took this picture of Mount Dickey.

A bit farther up, I led the crux of the route, a short, sharp mixed step that wasn’t very well protected. I took off the pack to do it:

I was pretty psyched to get over that step. Above it, I could see that the route would “go” all the way to Englishmen’s Col, and except for a funky move over a snow mushroom that got us back into the main snowfield, it was mostly cruising — in a truly spectacular alpine setting.

Here’s Jim kicking back in Englishman’s Col while we brewed tea.

Jim taking in the sights:

In the other direction, we had an incredible view across the upper north face of the Mooses Tooth, which was holding the day’s last sunshine.

We climbed up and over the west summit of the Mooses Tooth and spent the rest of the night descending to basecamp. Here’s me just after arriving:

Despite  two nights without sleep, it didn’t take us long to graduate from hot Tang.

The Shaken, Not Stirred couloir is directly over Jim’s head.

I was delighted. I knew we’d scored a really good first ascent, and it became popular in a hurry, especially once Paul Roderick reduced the approach to five minutes by landing people on the Root Canal Glacier directly below the climb. People with good weather could suddenly knock out both Ham & Eggs and Shaken, Not Stirred in a single weekend.

Here’s what Joe Puryear’s guidebook has to say about Shaken, Not Stirred: “This narrow ice ribbon splitting the immense granite walls of the south face of the Mooses Tooth is an alpinist’s dream. Although it doesn’t provide an easy way to the actual summit, the outstanding nature of the climbing makes it exceptional. And with its easy access and short approach, this is about as good as it gets for Alaskan alpine climbing.”

Makes a guy blush.

As further evidence of my version of the route discovery story, I offer up the phone call I made to Jack Tackle as soon as we were back in civilization: “Dude, how’n the fuck did you miss that?”

Jack wasn’t too happy with my gloating, if I remember correctly (and probably wanted to beat me to a bloody pulp), but at least he had the Elevator Shaft and the Cobra Pillar to ease his pain.

I’d been giving Jim a hard time along those lines ever since we were in Englishman’s Col.

If you’ve got Shaken, Not Stirred stories of your own, please post ‘em or link to ‘em below — along with photos.

On a different topic, please take the time check out the three eStories I’ve just published. They’re only available digitally. However, if you’re NOT normally an eReader, you’ll be able to read them on Amazon’s “Kindle Cloud Reader” or the Barnes & Nobles “Nook for Web,” both of which open in your computer browser. (In my opinion, opening them through Safari on an iPad gives a top-shelf reading experience.)

Here they are:

Into Action is a stark military tragedy that hinges on a young soldier’s struggle to remain loyal to his distant girlfriend in a morally trying, sexually charged situation, and it spotlights the complicated emotional choices shouldered by young men at war.

My first piece of fiction, Into Action is a short story that takes place during Operation Just Cause, the 1989 invasion of Panama, during which I was an infantry platoon leader.

Into Action is available at Kobobooks, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble for $1.99.

In 2011, accompanied by National Geographic photographer Stephen Alvarez, I spent a jaw-dropping month climbing the highest mountains in the Islamic Republic of Iran as members of a goodwill exchange between the American Alpine Club and the Alpine Club of Iran, world-class organizations intent on doing something to improve the strained relations between the two peoples. Besides having wild adventures in gorgeous mountains, we built excellent relationships with their Persian hosts, gained a better appreciation of the ancient culture of Iran, and experienced some of the tensions inherent in life in modern Iran, all at a time when the two captured American hikers were still languishing in a Tehran prison.

The Atlantic published a short version in their April, 2012 issue; Rope Diplomacy: On the Steeps in Iran gives you the opportunity to read the full, detailed, and nuanced story accompanied by more than thirty of Stephen’s brilliant photos.

Rope Diplomacy is available at Kobobooks, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble for $2.99

Last but not least is Right Mate, Let’s Get On With It,  an article that explores the outrageous accomplishments and inner workings of one of the most powerful rope teams in mountaineering history – the partnership of Australian Andrew Lindblade and Kiwi Athol Whimp. Together, they climbed some of the most difficult, dangerous, and beautiful mountains in the world — among them Jannu and Thalay Sagar, vertiginous Himalayan summits that make Mount Everest look like a bump.

Right Mate, Let’s Get On With It is available at Kobobooks, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble for $0.99 (There seem to be issues with Right Mate on Nook, although strangely, not on “Nook for Web.” I’m trying to figure that out.)

And so back to Shaken, Not Stirred…

Here are good Shaken, Not Stirred photos from Ouray Ice Climbing.

Here’s the American Alpine Journal mention of the second, third, and fourth ascents of Shaken, Not Stirred in 2000, three years after we’d done the first. Kelly Cordes is a friend of mine. I’d forgotten that he’d done the second ascent. Very cool.

Here’s a link to the audio.

I’m happy he enjoyed Enduring Patagonia so much, and that he got a kick out of the ball washing stories — the weirdest job I’ve ever done.

One of the under-appreciated aspects of hardcore alpine climbing is how hard it is to earn the money to take the trips while simultaneously climbing enough to be in shape for the top-end trips.

But for the record, I did wash my clothes on those trips. Well, except for the month spent out on the ice cap. No laundry was done out there.

[UPDATE, 3/5/2013: I've scanned more of my Pollone slides, and I'm going to feed them in below, so it might be worth a scan through the set even if you've looked previously. And if you like this post, you'll also probably like the one I just made about the first ascent of Shaken, Not Stirred.]

Although A Fine Piece got just a single, toss-off sentence in Enduring Patagonia and wasn’t mentioned by name, I’ve always thought of it as the perfect alpine rock climb — uncomplicated approach, minimal objective hazard, excellent rock, and a mind-bogglingly setting. The climb went beautifully. We had stable weather and both of us were at the top of our games. I think it has been repeated a time or two, and although I’ve never heard from anybody who has done it, I’d guess that A Fine Piece will become extremely popular in the long run. [*Until I made this post, now I've heard from several!]

It was a dream come true to make the first ascent of such an incredible climb… if A Fine Piece were in Yosemite, it’d be in Steck and Roper’s Fifty Classic Climbs of North America and it’d be one of the most famous climbs in the world.

However, I wouldn’t have got to do its first ascent if it were in Yosemite, so I’m damn glad it’s not.

Torrecita Tito Carrasco on the left (we’d made its FA the week before), and the west pillar of Cerro Pollone dominating the center of the picture. A Fine Piece loosely follows the sun/shade divide for about 15 or 16 marvelous pitches.

I’d spotted Pollone’s west pillar and some other promising terrain in the Marconi cirque the previous June, coming down Paso Marconi after doing the winter west face of Cerro Torre with the three Swiss boys (Thomi Ulrich, David Fasel, and Stephan Siegrist). I made some quiet inquiries with Rolo about what besides Greenpeace on Piergorgio had been climbed in the cirque. The west pillar of Pollone had been attempted by Michel Piola and Daniel Anker in 1988, but not successfully, although they’d gotten at least two-thirds of the way up the pillar. They’re responsible for the single bolts left at what Jim and I would have left as bolt-free stances, but at least those bolts allowed us to return home with some hardware on the rack for a change. (Not that we returned home after that climb. We spent more than another month in foul weather, but at some point bagged climbing and walked from Chalten to Estancia La Maipu, one of the most enjoyable Patagonia adventures in my experience — but that’s a story for another day.)

Anyway, back in California after the winter west face trip, I broke the news to Jim that I had an eye on some good stuff up the Marconini Valley, but I refused to send him photos for fear of his inability to contain the secret. He signed up for the adventure sight unseen.

That, my friends, is the ultimate definition of trusting your partner.

And of not trusting him. Or of knowing what he can and can’t do.

We went down in November and caught a run of good early season weather.

But first, the necessities.

Here’s a self-portrait of me decanting a bottle of Breeder’s Choice whiskey for our sortie up the Marconi Valley.

My initial choice for the name of Torrecita Tito Carrasco was Torrecita de la Breeder’s Choice, in keeping with the theme Jim and I had established with The Old Smuggler’s Route, The Bourbon Bottle Route, and Shaken, Not Stirred and also because the peak was shaped just like the bottle, but I went along with Jim’s suggestion to name the tower in honor of his wife Angela’s Bolivian friend Tito Carrasco, who’d died in her arms in a climbing accident in Portero Chico. After all,  Angela had gifted me the air miles for the trip south in return for my promise not to fall on her husband’s head. Which, in light of events on Alaska’s Thunder Mountain the previous June, was neither an idle a gift nor an idle promise.

Here’s another picture showing both objectives. Tito Carrasco on the left, Pollone’s west pillar in the center background:

Bad weather came in after we climbed Tito Carrasco, and we retreated to Piedra del Fraile, then Chalten.

We spent a few days in Chaltén sleeping under a roof in real beds and taking hot showers while a strong storm lashed the Andes. One morning, Jim and I caught a ride up to the end of the road, shouldered food-stuffed packs, and walked up to the Piedra del Fraile basecamp. Operating wholly on intuition, with no visual or meteorological evidence to support our theory, we both felt like we were on the cusp of a good spell and decided not to stop at Piedra del Fraile but to continue straight through to our high camp in the Marconi Cirque. Neither of us said as much, but we both felt like the penance of the one-day walk-up would somehow earn us a good spell. Stupidly superstitious, I know, and when we covered the last of the fifteen-odd miles to high camp, both my hips were bleeding from the waist belt of my pack and my ill-fitting boots gouged into my Achilles tendons leaving them swollen and crucifyingly painful. Stupid, again, I know, but I never thought it was Patagonia unless you hung on the cross for a while.

The weather wasn’t bad in the morning, but it wasn’t good either. I would have loved a rest day, but we weren’t positioned for a launch, and we’d be caught short if we didn’t do another day of work and the weather improved. We did a quick equipment sort after breakfast and coffee and slogged the climbing gear up a long talus slope, a snowfield, and an easy glacier to the base of Pollone’s west pillar. And my God, was it ever beautiful, a massive pillar of gray-gold granite. The rock looked solid and clean, and the crack systems seemed to connect into a slight arc to the left. The only problem was that ice sheeted the bottom 300 feet of the pillar. We cached the gear in a waterproof bag, tied a rope from the bag to the base of the pillar, and returned to our high camp.

That afternoon, we watched from below as the wind stopped, the clouds parted, and the sun shone on the pillar far above. The day eased into a beautiful Patagonian evening.

The last light shimmered on the west face of Piergorgio

We hoped, as always, for two consecutive days of good weather, and in those days before internet weather forecasts, we had no idea whether or not we’d get them. I’d experienced a huge internal change on that trip, and I reveled in it that night, for unlike in years past, it didn’t seem like my fate hinged on the climbing I might do the next day. I’d done lots of great alpine climbing in the Alaska and Patagonia in the previous five years, and hope and desire weren’t the tortures they’d been in the past. I was finally able to live the Latin expression, adveniat, “whatever comes.”

I slept soundly.

[However, I'd done two expeditions to Patagonia already that year, in February and June/July, in addition to an August climbing trip to Iran, so maybe philosophy didn't have much to do with it -- maybe I was just tired.]

We got after it the next day. The approach was easy, and not dangerous.

Wanting the last of the ice to melt, I think we got a pretty late start.

Here’s Jim at a belay low on the route.

Almost from the minute we started climbing we could see over the row of peaks to the west onto the ice cap. The climbing was superb, on near-perfect rock, and I was climbing really well. All I cared about was the climbing, doing it right, and doing it right now.

I wish I could summon such existential perfection in my quotidian existence. Sometimes I get it in surfing, sometimes I get it in writing, sometimes in a few other things… But never often enough, and never like I got it in alpine first ascending.

I’m a little unsure what order all these photos happen in, so please forgive any errors.

Jim, getting a dose low on the route:

Getting my share on day one:

Jim again

We bivied at the end of pitch 7, on a wide, flat ledge. (Doing the whole climb in a day would be a better modern option.)

Jim and I made dinner while the sinking sun set fire to the west. Some bands of cloud glowed orange while others stayed black and still others tinted pink and purple and red. We spooned up noodles and tuna in mute wonder.

The same view a few minutes later. Or maybe it was the other way around.

The climbing the next day was absolutely stunning…. I can’t remember precisely what order all this stuff happened in, but I’ll do my best. The rock was as close to perfect as I ever hope to encounter on an alpine climb.

Jim stemming.

And getting us around a flake.

Me leading some stellar cracks.

Jim getting after it.

And then higher up the same pitch…

Two more of me.

Strange weather floated over the range both afternoons. No wind disturbed us on the pillar, but a mesh of clouds marched in from the Pacific each afternoon, hung still in the sky, and then reversed direction and moved slowly back out to sea. From my belays I watched cobweb shadows cast down through the clouds undulate on the white and gray  surface of the ice cap.

Jim leading off a stance as the clouds moved in.

Three of me on another excellent set of cracks

Jim up high, leading off another stance

Cerro Torre popped into view and we hit a nice ledge

Jim chilling on the ledge, when we knew we had it in the bag…

Here’s me on that same ledge, absorbing Patagonia. (This might have been on the way down — I can’t envision myself looking that relaxed on the way up.)

For once, I got the glory pitch…

and first gander at the most spectacular summit view I have ever seen in my life.

We looked down into the Torre Valley from our lookout above its head and could see all the way out beyond Lago Viedma. The western aspect of Fitzroy looked close enough to touch and we could see the north face of Aguja Poincenot, where we had had such an adventure three years before. Inominata’s west ridge and the west face of Aguja Saint Exupery, the scene of two others, lined up next to Poincenot and across the valley from them rose the southeast ridge of Cerro Torre – the Compressor Route – in profile like a cathedral’s flying buttress. From our aerie, we could make out the features of the west face above the headwall. I could see the little shelf where the Swiss boys and I had spent our last night on the Torre during the winter ascent. Jim pointed out the spot where he, Stefan Hiermaier, and I had made our emergency bivouac during our stormy retreat from atop the compressor, and he eyed the summit of Torre Egger, whose first ascent he’d made with John Bragg and Jay Wilson in the mid-1970s. We looked down into the horseshoe of the Marconi Glacier and onto the summit of Torrecita Tito Carasco, the spire we’d christened the week before. And out to the west, running north and south to the uttermost extremes of vision, lay the Southern Patagonian Ice Cap, one of the least knowable landscapes on earth.

We were in a world of absolute alpine perfection.

Here’s a slide of Fitzroy, de la Silla, Desmochada, Poincenot, Inominata, Saint Exupery, de la S, and Lago Viedma from the summit of Pollone’s west pillar.

And the incredible fin of Piergorgio, in perfect profile, with the southern Patagonian icecap in the background, which was the view that named the route…

… because Jim, up near the top of Pollone’s west pillar and seeing that view of Piergorgio’s west face and the route Greenpeace in perfect profile, blurted out something to the effect of, “What a wall, and God damn that looks like a wild ass climb, but who’n the f*#k names a route after an environmental movement? F*#kin’ whales. Greenpeace my ass… this route is a A Fine Piece.”

The weather continued weird, but it felt stable, and the ledge where we’d left the sleeping gear was so good that we did a bonus bivy on the way down, and Patagonia treated us to another outrageous spectacle.

We were down in high camp about midday, in plenty of time to enjoy that decanted whiskey. We’d earned it.

And some coffee.

And some chow

Reflections on the climb, one of the best I’ve ever done…

I’d never been on a high-quality virgin summit before that trip, and then I got two in about a week.

I still can’t quite believe that I got to do the first ascent of such a beautiful climb.

A Fine Piece indeed.

ODDS & ENDS:

If anybody got hot and strapped on A Fine Piece, I’d love to have a ‘biner or some other piece we left behind for the mantle shelf… [I'm looking at you, Kauffman brothers!]

Here’s my recent post of photos of Jim climbing in Patagonia and Alaska from the Enduring Patagonia years. I’d love to get Enduring Patagonia in front of another generation of climbers, and for it to be the book climbers use to crack open our world for  friends and family who might not appreciate and understand the passions that drive us.

I’ve got another run of slides coming from the first ascent of Shaken, Not Stirred that Jim and I did on the south face of the Mooses Tooth — another classic. (And they’re coming soon.)

[UPDATE!] Just had brought to my attention the recent ascent of A Fine Piece made by brothers Joel and Neil Kauffman and David Allfrey. Is theirs the second ascent? Here’s their story, with their own killer photos. Can’t believe how psyched I am to read about their climb and to hear that they enjoyed their ride up the route. Well done, boys!

Really neat to see their pictures in some of the same sections as I’ve posted above — like the “getting my share low on the route” pic.

Surfing the web, I think that the Kauffmans and Allfrey were probably the third ascent, although possibly the second ascent of the whole route, because Blake Herrington and Scott Bennett did a 4-pitch variation to A Fine Piece at the start of their excellent 2011 traverse of Pollone — an excellent adventure! Here’s their AAJ report. (Although where A2 crept into our rating of the route, I don’t know. I’d have called it 5.10, A1, and I’d expected it to go free at about 5.11a, if that.) Here’s another report from Herrington.

Allfrey did A Fine Piece within three days of arriving in Patagonia on his first trip EVER, bus to summit. That floors me. Here’s his photoblog.

One of the Kauffmans told me that the route had received at least one other ascent this season. Does anybody know the details? Of that or any other ascents? If not, it has had three and possibly four ascents to date. Please keep me posted with any subsequent developments and/or future ascents.

So, as far as I understand it, here’s the history of the route:

• 1988: Michel Piola and Daniel Anker attempt.
• 1999: Crouch and Donini climb and christen A Fine Piece
• 2011: Blake Herrington and Scott Bennett. 4-pitch variation to the start of A Fine Piece as part of their Pollone traverse.
• 2013: Joel and Neil Kauffman and David Allfrey
• 2012-2013: The other ascent mentioned by one of the Kauffmans
• Any others?

[UPDATE #2] This past week, I’ve been having a hard time making sense of the fact that there’s no way I could do such a thing as A Fine Piece any more. If you’d have asked me in 2000, in the aftermath of that climb, I’d have said there was nothing in the world that could cut me off from that sort of climbing. I was spectacularly wrong, and I’d spend most of the next decade committed to raising my son, Ryan, surfing, and to writing China’s Wings.

[UPDATE #3] I got an email a few days ago from a guy in a Chalten bar fishing for route beta. Apparently there was a window of good weather on the way and he wondered if I could give him any last minute info… I still can’t get my head wrapped around knowing when you’re going to go climbing in Patagonia. Gosh, the not knowing was the whole point, the cornerstone of Patagonian chaos. I’m glad I got to do it without meteorologic foreknowledge, and that I was able to meet that not knowing and glean some small measure of success.

And now LAST BUT NOT LEAST, if you’d survived to the end of the longest blog post I’ve ever made, perhaps you’d be interested in three eStories I’ve recently released.

They’re only available digitally.

However, if you’re NOT normally an eReader, you’ll be able to read them on Amazon’s “Kindle Cloud Reader” or the Barnes & Nobles “Nook for Web,” both of which open in your computer browser. (Opening them through Safari on the iPad also gives a good reading experience.)

Here they are:

Into Action is a stark military tragedy that hinges on a young soldier’s struggle to remain loyal to his distant girlfriend in a morally trying, sexually charged situation, and it spotlights the complicated emotional choices shouldered by young men at war.

My first piece of fiction, Into Action is a short story that takes place during Operation Just Cause, the 1989 invasion of Panama, during which I was an infantry platoon leader.

Into Action is available at Kobobooks, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble for $1.99.

In 2011, accompanied by National Geographic photographer Stephen Alvarez, I spent a jaw-dropping month climbing the highest mountains in the Islamic Republic of Iran as members of a goodwill exchange between the American Alpine Club and the Alpine Club of Iran, world-class organizations intent on doing something to improve the strained relations between the two peoples. Besides having wild adventures in gorgeous mountains, we built excellent relationships with their Persian hosts, gained a better appreciation of the ancient culture of Iran, and experienced some of the tensions inherent in life in modern Iran, all at a time when the two captured American hikers were still languishing in a Tehran prison.

The Atlantic published a short version in their April, 2012 issue; Rope Diplomacy: On the Steeps in Iran gives you the opportunity to read the full, detailed, and nuanced story accompanied by more than thirty of Stephen’s brilliant photos.

Rope Diplomacy is available at Kobobooks, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble for $2.99

The third is Right Mate, Let’s Get On With It,  an article that explores the outrageous accomplishments and inner workings of one of the most powerful rope teams in mountaineering history – the partnership of Australian Andrew Lindblade and Kiwi Athol Whimp. Together, they climbed some of the most difficult, dangerous, and beautiful mountains in the world — among them Jannu and Thalay Sagar, vertiginous Himalayan summits that make Mount Everest look like a bump.

Right Mate, Let’s Get On With It is available at Kobobooks, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble for $0.99 (There seem to be issues with Right Mate for Nook — I’m trying to iron those out — although it looks to be working perfectly on Nook for Web.)

My 12-year old son Ryan and I were reading at the kitchen table last night when he exploded with gales of laughter. Nothing too unusual about that, except for the fact that he’s reading my book, Enduring Patagonia, to fill a requirement for his school reading class, which makes the kids read in a wide variety of genres.

“Dad, would Enduring Patagonia count as an adventure book?” he’d asked.

“I should hope so, Little Friend. Assuming Mrs. Duggan agrees. You’ll have to check with her.”

Mrs. Duggan must have given it the nod, because Ryan plowed though half of EP on Friday night. Very odd feeling for me to be reading next to him while he was flipping the pages of a book that’s a pretty accurate snapshot of my brain in the year before he was born.

He didn’t say much, and he didn’t have many questions, but he must have liked it because he read more than a hundred pages without taking a break, and his momentum carried over into Saturday.

Saturday evening, we were reading at the kitchen table and he burst out with gales of laughter — it was the ball washing episode that was killing him.

Later, he exploded laughing again, and tramped down the hall to quote Donini on baseball and granite tombstones (pp. 127), which was positively surreal.

I called Jim and told him right afterward.

It’ll be fun when Ryan gets to the Supermouse. That’s really going to make him howl.

We were out for dinner last night, and he had his nose stuck in the book right up to the second our pizza arrived.”Dad, this is good. It really makes me want to go climbing.”

Oh shit.

[EDIT: Thoughts I've imported from a post I made in the supertopo threads.]

It’s pretty great to see how much Ryan’s enjoying Enduring Patagonia, but it also raises a pretty serious question about what it means to be a parent, and a climber.

Of course I love climbing, and as an individual, it defines who I am as much or more than anything else, and I’d be delighted to teach Ryan to climb — if it’s something he genuinely wants for himself.

But I don’t think it’s right for me to make him into a climber just because I’m one. The sport is just too damn dangerous, as any deep perusal of the threads on the supertopo.com discussion forums makes obvious.

Ryan on Holdless Horror in Tuolumne Meadows in 2011

We’ve done some gym climbing and have taken a few trips up to Yosemite and Tuolumne, which have been great, and great experiences for Ryan, but I haven’t pushed climbing too hard. We only go when Ryan asks to go, which he hasn’t done very often — just a time or two a year.

If Ryan wants to be a climber, I feel like it should be his decision as much as possible, one that he makes when he’s a little older than he is now, when he’s grown into more of his own person. This is one passion I really don’t feel comfortable pointing him too strongly toward without him wanting it for himself. I have a pretty strong intuition that I shouldn’t force feed it to him, that I shouldn’t make him a climber without it being his decision, his desire.

Of course, when the time comes, if he wants to learn, I’m going to be delighted to teach him. And I’m going to want to do it myself.

I’d also be very interested in hearing from other parents how they’ve dealt with this issue.

To me, it feels like a big one.

[UPDATE #2]

… and then, of course, at a stoplight on the way to a birthday party, he hit the part about the Supermouse… (and I was ready for it.)

There’s some other climbing-related stuff in the recent Enduring Patagonia posts, with lots of photos, including these of Jim Donini, Charlie Fowler, and J. Jay Brooks. And then five pages of Patagonia photos, starting here and moving forward in time. I’ve got a lot more Patagonia and Alaska photos currently getting digitized and I’ll be posting them soon.