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Post by: Steve Whittington

Quest For Everest: -44 With The Wind Chill


Part of my training for Everest is not just increasing endurance, cardio and strength. There is also gear prep and making sure the systems all work together the way they should.  With that in mind, I have been marching around in my new high altitude boots to break them in. Further to that goal, I have left the outer boots in my garage overnight (they are a double boot system) to simulate putting on a frozen boot in the morning on the mountain.  Trust me, it can be quite challenging – there have been times at altitude in which putting on my boots took 15 minutes alone!
 
All that said, when a weather watch was announced on the radio that outside temperatures would be plummeting below -40°...

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Post by: Steve Whittington

Quest For Everest - Back on Ice: Guinness Gully and Guinness Stout



At 5:00 am while driving out to Field, BC from Calgary,  I mentioned to my climbing partner Jeff Dmytrowich: “One of the these weekend climbing trips I want to roll into it with lots of sleep instead of none from travelling the week prior.” So that was the start of a long day -  I was already tired with ambitions to climb 5 pitches of vertical ice (Grade 4 and Grade 4 +)  with a bit of a grinding slog between pitch 3 and 4.
 
We parked at the trailhead, read the route description and began slogging our way up through trees on steep terrain until we found a trail.  The route description indicated a 15 -20 minute approach,  so at 35 minutes we knew something was wrong, but felt we must be going towards the climb or at least the upper pitches.  The path through the woods had turned into a gully that was icy and steep, so we had put on our crampons.  We finally reached the climb after a 1000 foot of front pointing up the gully.  Our calves were burning, and we had reached the top of the third  pitch over half way up!  Yep, we had gone the wrong way, we had hiked up the descent path.

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