65 years ago today...

Tom Dunlap

Tom Dunlap

Here from the beginning
Administrator
Location
Retired in Minneapolis
Climbing history...not tree climbing though

Norgay and Hillary summitted Everest

https://www.history.com/this-day-in...ae338f9cd67cfffeedb259ae825f42f4389df7b32fb22

Are there any mountaineers reading?

When I was in Wales I visited an inn near Mt Snowdon where the British Everest teams would stay while practicing for Himilayan climbing. They had some of the teams gear on display. Amongst my saved National Geographic's is the one with the article about the Expedition. Amazing!
 
Maybe I don't quite put myself in the class of a mountaineer but here's a cool story.
Quite some number of years ago, friends and family were fairly regular attendees at the Banff Mountain Film Festival which is held every year at the Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta. One year, Sir Ed Hillary was being specially honoured. My wife and the two kids were having evening dinner in the downstairs dining room at the Banff Springs Hotel. My son kept looking at a "older" guy at the table across from us and then the gentleman smiled and motioned for him to come over. After checking with parents, off he went and the two of them shared some story and jokes and they both laughed. Our son came back beaming and I asked (although I knew full well) who he had been talking to. Kind of breathlessly, he told me that was Sir Edmund Hillary! Everest! Sherpas! Avalanches! Glaciers! Needless to say the kids were both transfixed by the various mountain movies and lectures we attended over the next two or three days.

Over the years at the festival we've met and chatted with all sorts of mountain celebrity at the Film Festivals - Royal Robbins (standing in line for the theatre doors to open), Alison Hargreaves (after her book reading) and Calgary's own mountain raconteur Barry Blanchard and former Banff Park Warden Sid Marty (Men For The Mountains). If you get the chance to attend it is well worth the trip, to laugh and giggle at the great stories told and to marvel at presenters adventures with another kind of Vertical Addiction (apologies to the climbing shop of the same name). Lots of YouTube and movies available - check out the Banff Mountain Film Festival - Best of the Festival
https://www.banffcentre.ca/banff-mountain-film-book-festival
 
[QUOTE="Norgay and Hillary summitted Everest. Amazing![/QUOTE]

I would have been 4 years old !

Jack Bennett, a friend, ex-co-worker, and local resident in my area of Chardon, Ohio has many mountaineering & hiking accomplishments.

Author of "Not Won in a Day - Climbing Canada's Highpoints"(Rocky Mountain Press 1999) and "Dream Hikes Coast to Coast" (Menasha Ridge Press 2010).

(He is also a very, very smart electro-chemist.)

In 1990 he became the 12th person to climb the highest points in ALL 50 U.S. States, and in 1998 set a Guinness World Record for being the first to scale the greatest elevations of all 13 Canadian provinces and territories.

Sadly, a few of his co-climbers that I know, came back from extreme mountain climbs with him, without all of their fingers or toes.
 
GregManning said:
...without all of their fingers or toes.
Click to expand...

That... frostbite... is why I seriously limit my winter activities to ones for which I can prepare myself and my gear very well for the cold... and why I have never had any interest whatsoever in climbing a mountain. I don't even like to walk uphill in the winter. I'd rather make two trips packing out excessive winter clothes and gear that I didn't actually need because it was overkill, than freeze my family jewels off sitting in below zero temperatures.

I can't actually decide if mountain climbers are completely bat shit crazy, or not... but I'm pretty sure they have castiron balls.
 
All wonderful stories!

When I was rock climbing we'd go to Taylor's Falls on the St Croix River

We top roped and had fun

One Sunday a threesome came along. Grey haired guy and two young guys. We all chatted. The grey haired guy asked if he could tie in and get a Belay. Sure. One of my buddies belayed him. His buddies asked I knew who he was. Nope. Fred Beckey climbed on my rope. A brush with fame. Nice guy of course.
 
You may want to consider reading The Boys of Everest by Clint Willis. It's a really interesting and amusing perspective on how climbing was developing around the time of the FA on Everest.
 
I'm reading Wade Thomas' book...Into the Silence now

It's about the first Expeditions to Everest. 1921, '22 and '24. The two summit teams have just left camp in '22...one with and on w/o oxygen. INteresting reading

Someone said that Mountaineering would look a lot different if K2 were the tallest mountain and Everest second. K2 is a much more difficult climb
 
What is kind of amazing to me is that it used to be the cavers and mountaineers who were out in front leading the way when it came to state-of the-art SRS methods. Now it seems to me that it is the arborists who are pushing the envelope and coming up with all kinds of new stuff. Necessity is the mother of invention!
 
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