Mountaineering Books

If you plan to be serious about mountaineering, you will need to read a few books.  There are many classic mountaineering adventure stories out there and I am slowly making my way through them.  Here's a few listed along with a few comments.  



Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer:  This is a relatively recent book on a fatal Mt Everest expedition.  Certainly a great read with a very gripping story.




Minus 148, by Art Davidson.  This book is about a small expedition that set out to be the first to Summit Mt Mckinley (Denali) in the winter.  These guys were nuts!!  The bottom of the windchill chart they were familiar with was minus 148 degrees F.  They knew it had to be that or worse with the -40 degree 100 MPH winds they felt!  I thourougly enjoyed this book.


Addicted to Danger, by Jim Wickwire.  I stumbled across this book in a thrift store.  It's even an autographed copy!  I picked it up before a flight to California and I couldn't put it down until I was back in Seattle!  This a memoir of Jim Wickwire who is a retired Seattle Attorney and Mountaineer.  Jim has climbed with many of the famous American mountaineers like the Whittakers.  Jim will take you on a whole bunch of his life's adventures in the mountains as he flirted in the face death.  Your emotions will be touched as he describes tragic events where his fellow climbers died beside him.  The title is a true depiction of Jim Wickwire.



Annapurna, by Maurice Herzog.  This an older book about the first French expedition to summit Annapurna in the Himalayas.  The book was originally written in French and was translated into English.  The book starts off a little slow and I struggled to get engaged at first.  I kept reading it since I knew it was  a classic mountaineering book (Jim Wickwire mentions it as a book he read in his youth that inspired him to climb).  The slow start of the book actually reflects the actual adventure of Annapurna.  It is a very long approach to get to Annapurna and much of the book details the trip leading up to the base of the mountain. The book gets a little gruesome at the end as the climbers extremities are amputated by the expedition Dr Oudot...


Freedom of the Hills, by the Mountaineers.  This is the book that every camper, climber, mountaineer, etc needs to read.  This is essentially a mountaineering textbook covering everything you need to know from crevasse rescue down to how many calories you need to consume from carbs, fats, proteins...


In all the adventure books I've read so far, I end up climbing up these mountains in my imagination just as you would do with whatever book you're reading.  I think there is a lot of value in preparing mentally for the climb.  Police and Military training focus heavily on mental preparation.  Think up the situations that you may face and imagine how you would overcome the situation and what gear would you need to survive.  Frequently up in the mountains we need to be able to improvise when things are not going well.  Here's are some simple examples and some things I should have done...
It was fast approaching dark so I hastily pitched my tent on some lousy uneven ground.  All night I was sliding off my sleeping pad and I hardly slept.  Next to me was all my gear.  Why didn't I just stuff my gear under one side of the sleeping pad to make me level or provide a barrier?  One time I woke up to a frozen tent (about 5 degrees) and my boots were frozen stiff.  Why didn't I put them in the bottom of my sleeping bag?  Trust me, that mistake won't happen again.  I still remember the frozen toes thawing out in the bathtub.  Or, what if I dropped my gloves up high on the mountain and they slide off a cliff?  Will my hands freeze?  How about pulling out a pair of socks to put over my hands?  In distress and high altitude, the mental capacity shrinks, so one needs to have some background knowledge to lean on.  Hopefully as I read these novels, I can learn from the other climbers and tuck away this info for a timely need up on the slopes.  Thankfully, I serve a God who will make the difference for me when I fail to be prepared.

Camp Muir

Well, the Mercado Mountaineer had a great little adventure up to Camp Muir on Mt Rainier in Late October.  I've been up to Muir in the summer and the terrain is completely different in October.  The Muir snowfield in the summer is littered with soft snow and thousands of boot tracks.  Not so in October.  The snow is perfectly flat and hard.  My crampons barely sunk into the hard icy snow.  Ok, now let me backup a little bit...

After coming down from Mt Adams on Labor Day weekend, I was getting cabin fever down at 500 ft.  I needed to get back up to 10,000 ft where there is peace and solitude on the mountain.  I find the mountains to be such a wonderful place.  Of course the mountain has no feelings about who decides to climb her slopes, so proper gear and preparation are key to making the mountain a wonderful place.  Otherwise, the conditions can ruin your experience and even claim your life.  I can now say navigating  through a white-out for over an hour was not too scary while trusting in my GPS and compass.

My experiences on the mountain are so wonderful that I have a great desire to share these experiences with those who I am close too.  I took a good friend up in June.  He will never forget that experience.  I decided to take my brother-in-law up to Muir on this October trip.

After checking the mountain weather forecast, I realized crampons were going to be required.  The forecast called for 10-15 degrees and 15-20 Mph winds (-9 wind chill).  Looking back, I realized it was a little ballsy to take up my brother who has no mountaineering experience as well as subjecting him to the dicey weather conditions at 10,000 feet in late October.  At about the 9000 ft level I stopped to turn around to check on my bro.  I began to walk back a little to see where he was at.  My crampon dug in unexpectedly and I went down on my knees.  Before I knew it, I was sliding down out of control with no ice axe in my hands, just trekking poles.  I was able to arrest by dragging my feet.  I was fortunate to have this fall on a less steep section of the trail.  I was headed for a very steep section littered with sharp rocks that would have caused major if not fatal bodily harm!  I consider this scare of great value since it put some much needed fear into me.  Immediately my fears went to my brother because of his inexperience.  He was fine and I stressed to him to just take slow methodical steps up to the top.  I had an ice axe, but I decided not to use it since my brother did not have one and he wouldn't of been able to make much use of it if I gave it to him.  Due to my little scare, our time spent up at Camp Muir was a little rushed as I was uneasy about the downward trip ahead of us.  It was 3:30 and Sunset was at 6pm.  Consequently, I forgot to get some good photos of us together at the top.  We did have a much needed warm meal that we cooked inside the public shelter.  We each ate a mountain house meal and drank a cup of hot cider.

In the 45 minutes we spent at the top, the snow picked up as well as a little bit of wind.  With my GPS in hand, we walked into the white abyss and blindly traveled back down.  The whiteout lasted about an hour.  I stopped every few minutes to unzip my coat and pull out the cozy GPS in my chest pocket to check our heading.  By the way, I highly reccomend the Garmin 62ST handheld GPS.  I was able to turn in on when we left our car and keep it on until we returned 9 hours later with still 75% battery charge.  The tracks it records was key to my peace of mind while walking down the mountain in the whiteout.

In the dark, about 7pm, we made it back to the car and thanked God for a safe trip to Muir.

I am going to take away a few lessons learned from climbing on Rainier this time of year:

• Wear a helmet on that steep and hard icy stuff!
• Ditch the trekking poles when you get to the Muir snowfield.  Pull out the ice axe.
• Roping up together would be a good idea too.
• Always bring the crampons.  (we would have NEVER made it up that terrain without them)
• Always have a GPS and compass with you (which is one of the 10 essentials)

It was a great trip and the little bit of adversity and fear I experienced is something I will cherish and it will be a strength to me on future climbs.

Thanks for reading.
~Aaron

Flag Pole Raising

As a proud American citizen, I decided to put up a flag pole in front of my house.  So, my journey for purchasing something usually begins at Craigslist and a search engine called AdRavage (www.adravage.com).  AdRavage has helped me locate a number of great deals ranging from my garbage disposal to my engine lathe.  You simply setup a account and create a search criteria.  AdRavage will notify you via email or text message when something appears on craigslist matching your search criteria.  You can have AdRavage look as often as every 5 minutes or once/day.  Anyways, I found a guy selling old street lamp poles.  I borrowed a friends car trailer and bought it.  I'm not quite sure if I was legal or not hauling a 28 foot flag pole down the interstate, but I made it home without seeing the blue lights.

Being an engineer can be costly.  I tend to follow the motto, "When in doubt, make it stout."  So this flag pole is no exception.  It is anchored to the ground with 2400 lbs of concrete and attached with 3/4'' J-bolts.  In reality it is probably anchored appropriately if it was to be installed by the city as a light pole.  The over-kill part is that I'm making a flag pole out of a 310lb piece of steel.  Most poles are fiberglass, PVC, and the really heavy duty poles are aluminum. 

Prior to getting the pole, I was doing business with a local company for my job.  I liked their work and I hired them to sand blast and paint my flag pole.  I went with a green to match my home and shop and also it is a common color for street poles now in many cities.

Now most people would just use a rope and pulley and tie a few knots to attach the flag.  Not me, I felt the need to use stainless steel cable pulled to 50lbs of tension between two pulleys.  I was really considering doing the internal cable method by routing the cable up through the center of the pole and using a counterweight outside of the pole, but I quickly realized the cost would be much higher and my lack of time killed the idea.  I even thought of using a motorized pulley system to raise and lower the flag.

I love food and I tend to use it to lure people to my home to get man power.  Putting up this heavy pole required some heavy lifting equipment or a surplus of muscles.  The muscles route was easier and cheaper to do.  After two tries, the pole made it into position to be bolted down.  Nobody died.

The historic event in the Mercado family was captured on film and after some editing with my iMovie11 software, the video can be viewed here:  

~Mercado Engineering

Introduction

My name is Aaron Mercado and I have decided to give blogging a try.  I've been an internet user since I was a small boy and for the most part, I've never contributed to the World Wide Web.  I've always used the internet in a one-way, read-only fashion.  Perhaps something I post may be of use to someone and for no other reason, I will benefit by putting my thoughts and ideas down in electronic format.  I've benefited from the wealth of knowledge on the web probably thousands of times so I would like to give back in some minuscule way.

I'm an engineer by trade and I try to be a spiritual man following after Christ.  I envision this blog to be mainly about Engineering and some religious & family topics.

I find the need in my life to express to someone or something the stuff that goes on inside my brain.  I frequently share my thoughts with my wife, but she can only understand and take so much of the nerdy stuff I tell her about.

Here I go...