You do what you can, but at the end of the day, a successful Himalayan expedition means making smart decisions so you can come back for another crack. 
Reaching a high point on Makalu earlier this month, Chris Warner (at right, above 7,000 meters on the mountain) developed serious respiratory problems. It could have been a pulmonary embolism or an upper respiratory infection, either of which are extremely serious at high elevations.Either way, Warner and partner Marty Schmitt, with the gracious help of a British team also on the mountain, descended as quickly as possible. After getting to lower ground, Warner was helicoptered to a Kathmandu hospital, where he was treated for bronchial pneumonia and later released. There’s a full account on Explorer’s Web.We’re psyched that given the unplanned events, all turned out well for the team, and in Himalayan mountaineering, you’ve got to be ready to roll with sudden changes. Congrats to Chris and Marty for making it above 7,000 meters on a formidable mountain, and we’re looking forward to their design feedback on the newest version of the Gregory Makalu pack, which they were testing on their expedition.
Tag Archive for 'Chris Warner'
Somewhere near 7000 meters on the SE Ridge of Makalu
The temps dipped well below Zero (F). The winds tore across the face, the ropes twisting in the air. Marty and I were tied to opposite ends of the skinny rope, the distance between us slowly growing. Mentally, it was probably hardest on the belayer. The cold clawed its way into his bones. He could barely move, maybe not even shuffle, since he was tied to a single piton or ice screw, slumped onto a sloping ledge, feeding out the tiniest bits of slack rope. That’s all the belayer did, hour after hour: feed tiny bits of slack to the climber, sway side to side to shake the pain out of his harnessed hips and fight a losing battle with the cold.
In the distance, popping in and out of the swirling clouds, the lead climber inched upwards.
“Have you found an anchor,” the lead climber’s radio would crackle, disturbing the purposefully meditative state hewas in. While leading we shift into this “zone”, building an impenetrable wall to keep out the fear: falling rocks, frostbitten toes, and hundred foot falls. It is a survival tactic that allows us to bridge the hundreds of feet of danger that separates us from safety. The leaders’ job is to keep moving. If he stops, the belayer may freeze and the danger will never end. “Why,” the leader swears under his steaming breath, “did you have to call me just now? Just when my ice axe placements are suspect, my calves are cramping, and my numb fingers are reminding me that my toes were once numb too. Why did you call when I am most afraid?” But of course the climber would never say that. Any admission of fear opens the flood gates. A tidal wave of self doubt would rush in.
The stress redlines as you take your hand off an ice axe to push the microphone button. “It’s right ahead…..fifty feet…..black rock…..need slack…..just ahead.” And the leader’s hand grips the ice axe again. Hyperventilation settles into heavy breathing: the normal challenge of altitude replacing the power of fear. It is time to swing the ice axes into a new section of ice. Then kick the crampons in a bit higher and drive the body upward. Forty-nine more feet to go.
Why we’re on the SE Ridge, risking frostbite, terrible falls, and a nearly complete assortment of mountaineering dangers?
When it comes to 8,000-meter peaks, you only get so far looking at photographs, and reality becomes a lot clearer when you get to the mountain.
In that vein, Gregory-sponsored climber Chris Warner and teammate Marty Schmidt, who are testing Gregory’s new 2011 redesign of the Makalu on the very peak it is named after in the process of trying to put up a new route on the mountain’s south face, have had to reassess their intended route on Makalu after a tricky approach and lots of rockfall. But, they’re still pushing on, though it’s not exactly clear from their dispatches how they have adjusted their intended route.
From a video they posted, they’ve probably got a little more on their minds than posting updates, though the team has done a remarkable job with dispatches from a remote location.
There’s no better testing grounds for Gregory packs than some of the most remote and extreme places in the world. Getting into these kinds of places is the reason we build many of our products, and the inspiration for our design team.
So it’s a standard part of Gregory’s protocol to send prototypes of our packs to the kinds of places for which we build them. And that means at a certain point turning things over to the pros.
In that vein, Chris Warner and his Shared Summits team, who heads pretty much every year for the highest peaks in the world, will be putting prototypes of some of our new mountaineering series packs for 2011, including the new Makalu (check out that good-lookin’ pack), to the test on that pack’s namesake - 8,485-meter Makalu (27,838 feet) on the Nepal/China border.
Chris, who’s a veteran of 13 expeditions to 8,000-meter peaks and some 160 mountaineering expeditions over the last several decades, and his team are attempting to put up a route on the unclimbed south face (in red below). The expedition departed today. 
Beyond an inspiring adventure, the team will be putting the Makalu through the paces, and providing Gregory some extremely valuable real-world feedback with some of our 2011 mountaineering series prototypes from some of the world’s most demanding conditions. Check back for updates on the team’s progress.
Usually, the folks who organize high-altitude mountaineering trips tend to be good leaders. That’s probably because you have to be an effective leader to put together those kinds of incredibly detail-oriented trips, and keep things under control in such extreme situations. So it’s no surprise that a lot of expedition leaders also have motivational speaking careers on the side, talking in business settings about leadership.
Chris Warner, one of only only nine Americans to have summited both K2 and Everest, the author of High Altitude Leadership, owner of a business that runs climbing trips and operates climbing gyms, and a Gregory-sponsored climber, recently gave a talk at Google, some little company located in central California, on leading teams in extreme environments.
Although a little long, it’s an interesting view.
If you’re interesting in seeing Chris in person, and happen to be located in the D.C./Baltimore area (near where Chris lives), he’ll be giving a free talk that’s open to the public this Saturday, May 2, at 10 a.m. at The Maryland Real Estate Exchange (owned by a member of Earth Treks, Warner’s climbing business).
The topic, a version of the same talk he have at Google, will hinge on his team’s 2007 attempt on K2. Here’s how to get there.
If you follow news from the high-altitude climbing world, you know it’s been a serious couple of weeks on Pakistan’s Nanga Parbet.
The Shared Summits Team that Gregory co-sponsored on their trip to Nanga Parbat found serious conditions and unforgiving weather on the mountain and took a more moderate course than some of the teams that were there. Expedition Leader Chris Warner says when it comes to climbing 8,000-meter peaks, success is coming home.
Now that the team has left the mountain, Warner has a few thoughts on what he saw over recent weeks, and what really matters when it comes to climbing big peaks.
Chris Warner’s at it again. The man who led last year’s successful climb of K2 - the subject of a Emmy-nominated docu
mentary on NBC - is off with a team to attempt Nanga Parbat, a mountain he tried to climb (and almost did, within 100 meters of the summit) in 2004.
As it was last year on the K2 expedition, Gregory Packs is a sponsor of the trip, which this week saw the team start making their way into more serious and technical terrain above camp 1.
The crew has a great web site to which they’re posting regular dispatches, so it’ll be easy to check out their progress over coming weeks.
