While descending from the top of Mt. Humphrey’s, Arizona’s highest point, I had the idea to make a video interviewing my fellow peak-baggers about our current national crisis. I’d never seen a mountain so populated with golden-agers, who were walking slowly up and down the pine-clad peak in twos and threes. Surely some of them would have something wry, pointed, or wise to say about Palin and, as she might put it, the failin’, bailin’, and complainin’.

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This is the last installment in the first series of videos that Jimmy Chin and I made for the Conservation Alliance and Timex Expedition.

It features Luke Reynolds, songwriter extraordinaire and vocalist/guitarist for Pictures and Sound, which released their first album this summer, and which you should own.

Click here for this video’s Vimeo page, where you can watch it in full screen high def. Soon, you’ll be able to watch videos ih high def right here on The Snaz!

Maybe that title’s too harsh for an obit for America’s most artful, scholarly, and absorbing climbing magazine.

Alpinist takes a whipper? (Too casual.) Alpinist rappels off the ends of its ropes? (This implies a preexisting, downward trajectory.) Alpinist peels? (Meh.)

The title stands. It suits founder and editor Christian Beckwith’s vision for Alpinist, which favored directness of documentation and faithfulness to the sport. If you deck, i.e., hit the ground from any appreciable distance in climbing, you die (unless you’re Lynn Hill). Hitting the ground is climbing’s most immediate horror, but also provides its metaphysical counterweight, as we all deck in the end. Alpinist just hit ground sooner than we all thought it would.

So what happened?

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Update: Cat found! He had a brief but torrid affair with a cat-fancying neighbor. Thanks for all the tips (seems there are more than a few footloose black cats in So-Brew) and sympathetic emails!

One of The Snaz mascots (mascat) has been missing for three days. He was last seen skulking around the alley between Karns and Kelly on S. Glenwood Street in town. He has a handsome black coat, a red collar with rhinestones and one short whisker on his chin. Named after prolific climber Rolando Garibotti, Rolo, the cat is about one-year-old. He loves playing outside, napping all day and making friends with other animals. Please call 307 690 0715 with information. You will be rewarded for his safe return.

UPDATED: Jimmy Chin, Conrad Anker, and Renan Ozturk are back from their adventure on the Shark’s Fin of Meru in India’s Garhwal Himalaya. The trio spent 18 days on the route, stretching to the breaking point their 10 days’ worth of food and water. (The storm depicted in the video above stopped them cold for five days.) Having slashed their rations on the second day, breakfasts for the rest of the climb for each teammate consisted of four spoonfuls of oatmeal and a third of a Clif bar. They each consumed half a liter of water per day.

On such rations, it’s amazing they got as far as they did, considering that Jimmy compared the route to “climbing El Cap on top of Denali.” He said the line up the steep headwall was similar, in fact, to the east face of El Cap. Unfortunately, cracks were scant, and Conrad would rate two of the pitches that Jimmy led as “modern A4″ aid climbing. Once atop the headwall, they thought they’d find easier travel on the summit ridge. Instead, they encountered a steep and unavoidable gendarme. After 35 pitches of technical climbing, they pulled to within 60 meters of the summit, but were finally forced to turn back. At that point, reports Jimmy, the team had pushed themselves to their very limits. “We gave it everything, absolutely everything we had,” he said. Both he and Conrad agreed it was the most demanding climbing either of them had ever done.

You can find more videos at merudispatches.blogspot.com. Also, since my last post about their endeavor, Jimmy added a slew of typically gorgeous shots to the blog, from what looks to be one of the most insanely picturesque basecamps on earth. Psyched to see more and hear more about their adventure. Glad you guys made it off the mountain intact!

Words and Pictures by Lauren M. Whaley

While crews at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort dismantle, excavate, pour, pound, weld and wire, filmmaker Peter Pilafian shoots.

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