Long's Peak and Extreme Irony

"“Extreme ironing - the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt"

Summer in Colorado translates to fit, young people put themselves in harms way for reasons as simple as a story to tell while eating or drinking. 14,000+ foot peaks abound in Colorado, so anyone desensitized to the ups and downs of daily life in the city puts on their hiking boots and hits whatever trail they can find.

Long's Peak is one of the most famous non-technical perspective-providing climbs in Colorado. At 14,255 ft. it is tall enough that the peak is subject to year-round storms of unbelievable intensity. Epic adventure of this sprt serves to remind me of my own insignificance in the grand scheme; I am a speck at the mercy of nature; a fly to be swatted.

Life and limb are only fun to risk if you have someone to risk it with. My buddy Alex, his friend Abe and I decided that life was too safe and in need of risk.

We packed rain gear, warm clothes, 5-too-many-pounds of food, headlamps, water, a first aid kit, pocket knives, 4 liters of coffee and, on an impulse, an iron. My first thought as we pulled away from Alex's house in Boulder at 1 AM was how good a freshly ironed pair of socks at the summit would make the trip.

We set out on the trail at 2:30AM and used the waxing gibbous moon instead of flashlights for as long as tree cover let us. The first 2 hours of the hike saw us bearded Boulder boys passing more than 10 other hikers on the way to the front of the pack. During the high season, this trail is known as the Conga Line; a dance which is really only fun if you are at the front, with the basket of fruit on your head.

At 4:30 we reached what the guidebooks called the Boulder Field; an increasingly steep pile of house-sized rocks. Navigation from cairn to cairn by moon- and flash-light proved difficult but manageable. The Boulder Field ends at a gaping maw of chunky, angular rock called the Keyhole. The Keyhole is known to have some of the strongest wind on the mountain due to its exposure. From the Keyhole, we began to follow a series of markers called fried eggs (painted yellow circles in painted red circles that mark the trail).


The Keyhole, as seen from low in the Boulder Field; I took this on the way down


Once we moved passed the high winds of the Keyhole, we began a traverse along the west side of the mountain. On the traverse, we ran across a man lying in a sleeping bag. This man and his son had been climbing the mountain the day before us and he had fallen and dislocated his ankle at the bottom of the toughest part of the hike after reaching the summit. His son carried a sleeping bag up to him and he spent the night under a rock on an exposed ledge thousands of feet above the valley floor. He told us that a group of rescuers was en-route but that, due to rescue protocol, they would not arrive until dawn. Later in the day, we heard a helicopter carry him off to safety. The easiness with which he coped with his perilous predicament made us feel a bit safer and better taken care of.

We left the injured man and finished the traverse in an hour or so. At the end of the traverse is the Trough; a 2000 ft. near-vertical channel lined with giant contiguous slabs of granite. Hiking through the thinned air at the 11,000 ft. start of the Trough was a lot like being strangled while working out on a stairmaster. To cope with the lack of oxygen, I put a mental system of 10 steps, stop, 10 breaths, into effect; at this rate, I could climb steadily.


Alex, at the top of the Trough
(note the large group 2000 feet below)

After the Trough is a skinny ledge that wraps around the mountain briefly. We were feeling in need of some food, so we took a 20 minute break and I used that time to iron my pants before putting them on.


The tool of the trade


A brief break to remove wrinkles and make myself presentable


From the ledge, we advanced to what is called the Home Stretch. This 60 degree slope of nearly crack-free rock was the closest thing on the route to a technical ascent. A single slip or misplaced foot could lead to a vertical mile of tumbling to the rocky valley below.


Looking down the Home Stretch to the valley below and the mountains beyond


One final oxygen-deprived push left us both mentally and physically breathless as we looked out across the large, flat summit at 8AM. It had taken us 5.5 hours to reach the top (most guidebooks recommend 8 hours), so a break was in order.


Abe and Alex; enjoying a good sit at 14,255 feet


On the summit of most mountains in Colorado is a guestbook of sorts. You sign the book with your name and time of arrival as a way of feeling a sense of recorded accomplishment. At the top of Long's Peak was a standard logbook as well as a zip lock bag with a disposable camera and a note with instructions for us to take pictures of ourselves and leave an email address so we could get the pictures later. I decided that the owners of the camera should know how comfortable we really were on this hike, so I ironed my backup pair of socks and put them on; warm feet are hard to beat.



Freshly-ironed socks were a luxury I was unwilling to give up for this mountain adventure



The tool at the top


We sat for an hour at the summit and watched other hikers perform their various summit rituals; some shared stoves and soup, some brought beer, some smoked cigars, some simply smiled in the summer sun. We stayed for an hour, soaking up the day, then shouldered our packs and began the descent; known in some circles as the A-knee-ilator.

Returning down the steep-sided chasms in the morning light gave us new fears and shakes. When danger is more obvious, it is MUCH scarier.


The wide valley below the Trough, now visible in the daylight


We followed what we thought was the trail we had arrived by but came to a feature called the False Keyhole. Confused, we read a very large warning label that mentioned how dangerous and wrong this route was. It took 20 minutes or so, but eventually we found our way to the actual Keyhole.



The front side of the False Keyhole; a 1000 foot sheer rock face.


We passed the Keyhole and the Boulder Field with no issues, decided we were making amazing time and took a nap on a sunny rock.

After our nap, we hucked it and broke into a near-jog for the 6 miles back to the ranger station and Long's Peak trail head parking lot. We arrived at 2:30 PM, 11.5 hours after starting out. Being too tired to mentally function, we went back to Alex's house and enjoyed 3 men's shares of delicious microbrew.


A last look back at Long's Peak


Recommendations for potential climbers:
- You should ARRIVE at the Long's Peak trailhead parking lot no later than 2:30 AM. We took one of the last available spaces when we arrived.
- You should be off the summit before noon to avoid the daily storms (even in the summertime).
- There is no where to get water; bring at least 3 liters apiece.
- Esoteric items are totally worth the mountaintop photo op.
- Don't eat a 12oz. steak 6 hours before getting on the trail; your farts will kill even the hardiest of mountain men walking behind you.
- If you live in Colorado, MAKE TIME TO DO THIS EPIC HIKE.

Until next time

Your favorite Extreme Ironer

Page

One for the Road

At the end of next week, when I end my service as a US Peace Corps volunteer, I will have been in the Philippines for 1204 days. Three years ago, I got off a plane in sweaty, gritty Manila carrying on my back everything I thought the Philippines was lacking (a backpack full of tools to save the world). Several active volunteers and some well-seasoned staff met my group at Ninoy Aquino International Airport and herded us like jetlagged, gawking cattle with no idea where they were or how they might leave into buses and off to the nicest hotel I would stay at for my entire time here.

For 2 months, I was trained in the Bikol language and cultural appropriateness of eating, drinking and pooping (always take a bite, take a shot if you are offered and NO ONE USES TOILET PAPER). I studied hard and, with the help of my unforgettable group of fellow trainees, managed to spend the better part of every day laughing until my sides hurt.



In June 2006, I was sworn-in to serve in the 265th batch of the more than 8000 Peace Corps volunteers to serve in the Philippines since 1961 (this picture is just of the people I trained with in Bikol, there were 75 of us in my batch of volunteers).



August 2006 brought a volcanic eruption



September 2006 brought the strongest typhoon seen in storm-smashed Bikol in 20 years.



November 2006 one-upped September with the strongest typhoon in the living memory of Bikol. More than a thousand people were killed in the ensuing landslides and another 40,000+ people were left homeless. I saw millions of dollars in relief money thrown around with little thought or accountability; ever wonder where your "help-the-poor" donations go?



In April 2007 my fellow volunteer, and friend, Julia Campbell, was murdered on a vacation in her last few months before leaving the country.



In May 2007 I decided that massive natural disasters weren't a good reason not to not do my job, so I helped set up a manufacturing center for household water filters. Since it started, the production center has made more than 350 filters and installed them in schools and homes around the region.



I spent the rest of my service designing and constructing multiple piped water supply pipelines to communities who previously had to walk more than a half mile to the nearest source of water (of questionable quality). I have greased political palms to do this.



I have used engineering equipment from world war II.



I have seen necessity be the mother of invention (this guy is using a hacksaw blade with his bare hands).




I have eaten rice for almost every meal




I have slaughtered, cleaned, cooked and eaten pigs, chickens, turkeys and goats.



I have crawled through caves, lept from waterfalls, slept on white sand beaches and swam through beautiful forests of coral.



I have survived lava flows, knee-deep mud, plants whose leaves will burn your skin, foot-long centipedes, hand-sized spiders and hot-dog-flavored-mayonnaise sandwiches on wonderbread.


THE BEST PART:
I was paid by the US Government to do this.

Careful: Peace Corps is not the protected bubble of happiness and fulfillment that its colorful pamphlets make it out to be. I went through a daily roller-coaster ride of emotions. Moment-to-moment things like being yelled and giggled at by every person I pass on the street were just as taxing as the bureaucracy and corruption that are ways of life in the Philippines. Almost nothing works the way it should and I expect all restaurants to have less than half of their menus available at any given time. These frustrations could bring laughter or anger depending on the hour of the day and the day of the week. On the other hand, the few (less than 10) moments of pure success I had made every other second worth it.

To anyone stuck in a rut/office without any kind of meaning in your life: JOIN. Peace Corps is a leap of faith, so I really can't tell you why except that I have not met a single volunteer who regretted the decision to join. You will gain so much more from the "sacrifice" of your two years helping those in need than the dollars you don't earn. Every hour of every day is different and exciting in ways you can't comprehend. You will be a celebrity. Any ideas you might have of "how the world works" will be smashed and reshaped into something incomprehensible to the current "you". You will see how families and communities of people can come together and collectively survive while under threat from global forces well beyond their mental grasp.

If you don't think you could join for whatever reason or you don't think they want you, at least take 5 minutes and Email a Peace Corps Recruiter and ask them what they are looking for. Or go to a Peace Corps Event near you. What you learn might surprise you.




If you have kept in touch over the last 3 years, thank you. The isolation of being one of 10 native english speakers in a city of 150,000 is powerful and it helps to have support from home.

Peace Corps has told me numerous times not to underestimate the mind-warp of coming home from the developing world the the USA. I want to give myself about 6 weeks before I am ready to start saving the people of America, but other than that my plans are no more detailed than eating a sandwich and maybe getting some sleep.

AND REMEMBER:

Water System Construction

Water System Construction Through Partnership (As published in the Aquinas University Campus Newsletter).

PICTURES AT THE END.

Aquinas University Foundation’s community development program in Lamba, Legaspi City has numerous aspects; from agriculture to education, and now potable water supply. A Level II (communal faucet access) water supply system is currently under construction in the center of barangay Lamba to dramatically improve the resident’s access to water for domestic uses. This project is being funded by a number of different stakeholders. Once completed, the water system will be managed by the barangay council, and eventually, a people’s organization.

The residents of puroks 1 and 2 of Lamba have a number of difficulties in accessing clean water for drinking, cooking, washing and other domestic needs. The closest potable water source is approximately 500 meters away, over a hill; men, women and children can regularly be seen carrying single gallon jugs to and from this source for their families. The barangay’s sandy soil and proximity to the Albay Gulf make all open and drilled wells undrinkable due to salt water intrusion and contamination. The source to be tapped for this system is a large, constantly flowing spring with no variation in flow during the summer.

The water system is very simple, yet effective. Water will flow, by gravity, through 2” diameter PE pipe for 500 meters until it reaches a high point in the center of purok 1, Lamba. In centro, a 9000 liter ferrocement (thin-walled concrete) water storage tank will be built to store water collected during the evening for use during the day. From the storage tank, another 2” diameter PE pipe will carry the water 400 meters to 8 different communal faucets strategically placed throughout the barangay for maximum benefit. Each faucet is built of reinforced concrete to ensure its safety.

This project has been prepared and will be funded by a number of different local, national and international agencies. The total water system budget of PHP288,000.00 is funded jointly by Hiefer International, the US Peace Corps and an in-kind labor counterpart from the community members. Community organizing and pre-project awareness were done by Aquinas University’s Center for Community Extension Services and the US Peace Corps volunteer, Page Weil, assigned there. Topographic surveys and water system design were done by the US Peace Corps volunteer, enlisting the help of the beneficiaries whenever necessary. The ferrocement tank technology was developed and tested for Albay at Aquinas University’s Rawis Campus; prototypes can be seen by the water refilling station near the cocofed building. Sunwest Development Corp has generously allowed use of the water source and the land where the transmission pipes will be laid since it lies within their property.

The people and barangay council of barangay Lamba have greeted Aquinas University and the US Peace Corps with open arms and, as of this writing, are working hard to make this plan a reality. The project is scheduled for completion in May of this year.


And now...PICTURES!!!



The children in this picture carried those buckets of water from more than 500 meters away. They do this every day.



To build this water system, we used WWII-era surveying gear.



Water is transmitted over a kilometer through 2" plastic pipe



Here the masons are plastering the reusable form for a 9000 Liter Ferrocement Tank (this is not the first one I have built)



There are few feelings in the world better than watching someone's face as they turn on a water tap in their neighborhood for the first time ever.



Kids playing in the spray of a pipe under repair.

I'm speechless

Ridiculous things that need very little explanation:


A meat-shop LITERALLY on the side of the road. Notice the fan with no blades for keeping flies away.



These are individually, and hand-wrapped, tomatoes and onions



A worker HAND-PAINTING the lane lines on the national highway. This was not just a touch-up job, he spent all day doing this.



Two girls are assigned to wrestle a single cow to the ground. It takes about 30 seconds.



A curious lizard on my kitchen counter



Cure-all drops from the Great Salt Lake (we all know how clean and full of healing energy it is).



I challenge you to figure out where to pee in this bathroom... (hint, it ISN'T the bucket).



Probably the most disturbing statue I have ever seen.



My workspace

An hour in the life

Over the course of a 1-hour bus ride on the national highway near my home in Albay I saw:

A pig
Rice being dried spread out on the road while cars zoom past
Old men sitting in front of small convenience stores staring at nothing in particular
A giant concrete pencil
Terraced rice fields in all stages of growth and planting
Fighting cocks being tested against one another
Both broken and working wells
Boys and girls holding hands indiscriminately
Trees used as lampposts/power poles
A truck with a giant picture of Jesus on the hood and the silhouette of a naked lady on the door
Men and women chopping things with large machetes
Concrete being mixed in the middle of the roadway
Painted school buildings with no books, chairs, teachers or students
A sign advertising a newly completed road where the name of the senator who funded the road is larger and more visible than anything else
A motorcycle with 5 people on it, none wearing helmets
Smiles with no teeth
Small stores (“sari-sari”) advertising Coca Cola and local beer at prices lower than bottled water
A dump truck that was welded together in someone’s backyard
“Decorative” (read: not functional) concrete columns painted baby blue and hot pink
Cigarettes with names like “Champion” and “Hope”
A female yogurt cart vendor taking a shit in a drainage canal
45 pound children fetching 5 gallon water jugs
Teens in school uniform clearing weeds with their hands
Stacks of cinder blocks weak enough to break with my fingers
Government-subsidized rice (people can’t afford it if it is more than $1/lb)
A cell-phone tower than has been recently rebuilt after being blown up by rebels; any company that refuses to pay their so-called “revoluntionary tax” gets attacked.
New water supply pipelines funded by the World Bank
Road signs sponsored by a local Chinese restaurant
People showering on the roadside wearing shorts
Naked babies
A woman carrying a 10lb+ roll of vegetables on her head
Vehicles with no mirrors, turn-signals, headlights or brake lights
Burning piles of trash
People hand-making fans from Abaca fibers
A group of men without shirts on getting drunk at a wake on $1/liter brandy
Dogs “stuck together” after having sex
$1.25/liter gasoline
The entrance to the city dump, flanked by people with sacks waiting to pick through the next delivery of trash
Hand-painted movie posters
Rotisserie chickens
Nursing students dressed in white pants, shirts and shoes without so much as a SPECK of dirt on them
Banks and pawn shops offering 15% APR interest rates
A giant Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) with the nicest basketball court in the province (that’s how they get new converts)
A statue in the fenced-in courtyard of the local church “Iglesia ni Christo” of an aborted fetus with painted blood on it and a sign that says “in memory of the unborn”

Jungles: concrete, abstract, vegetated

Conveniently, everyone I know has a calendar that starts in January and ends in December. This totally arbitrary system for keeping track of time has one distinct benefit: everyone I know is reflecting on the past and thinking about the future at about the same time. Since I like to know what people are doing with their lives, it is only fair that I share what I am doing with mine.

After 33 months of exclusively-Filipino experience in Southeast Asia, my girlfriend and I decided, through a complex process of pooling our pocket lint on a table to see if one of us would have to sleep with the pilot to get us on a plane, to go to Peninsular Malaysia.

Geographically, Malaysia is conveniently separated into two large pieces by the South China Sea. Malaysian Borneo is mostly Jungle and Elephants, Peninsular Malaysia, to the west, has these as well but is slightly better developed.

Culturally, Malaysia is a halo-halo (a Bikol word for mixture of completely random ingredients that don't necessarily share any traits whatsoever; conveniently, it is also a dessert) of Indians, Malays, Chinese, and both clean and smelly backpackers.

Mostly, the trip was a way to escape the food and noise of the Philippines for somewhere a bit cleaner, with deeper jungle and wilder animals.





Oil money sure can make some REALLY nice buildings





If aliens intend to contact rural Malaysia, at least we know they are prepared.





Jess vs. the Elephant





Monkeys!!!





Monkeys taking pictures of monkeys!!!





Even 5 ton elephants are no match for the MEGAFLICK





SQUISH!!!





That small child is having his hand eaten by a giant tentacle!!!





The largest Buddha in Malaysia





It could've been an Ent





Another very SINuous tree (no pun intended, even though it WAS in a church)





Hair for sale!




BEFORE YOU GO:

While Jessica and I were staying on Penang Island, the Pearl of the Orient so they say, we were located at a backpacker's hotel in the center of Georgetown. Jessica managed to get a fever and was bedridden for about 2 days. Over these days, I had to try hard to entertain myself; I didn't want to leave for fear of the paperwork involved in disposing of an American corpse in a Muslim country. I spent a good deal of time on one of two free internet terminals at the hotel looking for the appropriate forms and doing other things to pass the hours while the patient was sleeping. The last day we stayed there, I was getting ready to leave when a fat, round, ungroomed head throws itself at an awkward angle in between me and the computer monitor.

"Are you a YANK?" It belches

"Yes, I am. Why?" I respond with utter eloquence and humility

"That bloody explains it! I have been staying at this bloody hotel for 3 bloody days and every time I come out of my bloody room to use the bloody internet you are bloody on it bloody!!!!" It regurgitates after what was clearly several minutes of build-up before this encounter.

"Excuse me, I wasn't aware that you needed to make use of the efficient and currently-unavailable conveniences this marvelous establishment has to offer." I said with a touch of humility that could have changed the mind of a starving leopard looking to feast upon my angelic presence.

What followed was a pointless exchange where it was obvious that not only did he not actually want anything but didn't want me to apologize for having not done for him what I didn't know he wanted.


"Well, I'm sorry I couldn't help you out; can you please leave?" I say

"[ranting]... AND THIS IS WHY YOU YANKS ARE LOSING THE WAR IN IRAQ"

WTF?F?!?!?!?

Peace out and happy new year.