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Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Snow, Audible, Cold Reading

Now why would someone who generally hates cold weather and snow become so intrigued by books and videos about mountaineering? I was fooling around with my IPODs (have one of each generation being an addict to electronic devices) that plays video and just for laughs downloaded The Discovery Channel's Everest series from iTunes and watched it on my little iPod. Clarity and resolution are astonishing.

That got me back into Jon Krakauer's Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains.
It's outstanding. I had already read Into Thin Air and Into the Wild, both excellent. So here I am blowing snow off my long (800 ft) lane, knocking back drifts, trying to keep my glasses free of snow, enjoying Audible's Eiger Dreams, read quite credibly by the author. Bizarre scene, but very enjoyable. I'm also listening to the Boys of Everest; also outstanding.

I am more than a little surprised that no one has forced the climbers to clean up after themselves, What a mess on the Everest summit; and apparently, according to Krakauer, it's difficult to find clean snow to melt on Mt. McKinley there is so much excrement from previous climbers. Time to send some cleanup expeditions.

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