Ueli Steck Died

Here is the story from Alan Arnette, the best Everest season coverage.

Ueli was in Pakistan in 2009, as I was. He drove up the Karakorum, because we saw his name on log books as we drove up it. In 2016 late May, I believe he stayed at the Yak and Yeti when I was, ate breakfast just 25 feet away from me, alone. I never walked up to him because I was partly starstruck, didn't want to be that fan guy, and third, wasn't 100% sure it was him. Everyone at these mountain climbing things look about the same, fit, a little disheveled, wearing plaid name brand button up shirts, white, male, and mid 30s. Believe me, I wish there were more women in the sport.

After the fact I learned we had a mutual friend, so I sent our friend an email telling Ueli (although I misspelled it Uli) I would love to climb something with him. She forwarded it to him, unsurprisingly, I never heard back. The pool of people in the world who want to go fast on 8000 meter peaks without oxygen is small.

He was the best. The Swiss Machine as people called him. And now he is dead. He died the #1 most common way to die in the mountains, falling while climbing unroped. Everyone does it to some extent, and it's as risky as risk comes. Every year there is some famous or semi famous climber that dies while soloing, and despite what the best climbers say (including myself, definitely not a great climber, but not exactly an average one either) about soloing, it's dangerous!

I'll leave you with this video below of a speed record he set on a famous face, the north face of the Eiger. My thought is that he probably slipped and fell on something like the steep, but not really steep, section shown near the end of the video. Maybe a rock hit him. Maybe the snow was soft. Maybe there was some verglas.

He is survived by his wife. He had no kids, was 10 years older than me, and was a professional. Events like this make it easier to focus on running instead of climbing mountains.

I Live in Iowa: Week 89

Honestly, not a fun weak. I had a cold, all week. It started Thursday, December 27th, and I am still sick. It puts a damper on everything. I started the week in Sheboygan Falls and progressed to Dubuque on the first.

I ran 45 miles over the last five days of the week. I took the last four days of 2012 off of running. Four consecutive days off of running! That's huge for me! If that doesn't tell you how sick I was, well, you don't know me. I did do an 8x400 workout on Friday averaging about 71.5 with 1.5-2 minutes jog rest between intervals. Through all the intervals I followed the athletes I coach around the track as they walloped on my coughing and hacking self.

I worked three days this week. Pretty standard. Actually, we were a little light on work, that is, no one was breathing down our throats this week. A good week, I enjoy the short weeks. I have a good job, I enjoy working.

The highlight of the week, besides sleeping and napping a lot, was ice climbing Saturday afternoon. In Iowa, we climb a silo. About 70 vertical feet of ice. Three routes are open so far. I will definitely go again.

Yours truly starting out!

That's me on the right. The guy in the middle was taking my picture.

Upper left red pin is silo location near UNI in Cedar Falls

Finally a video, featuring one of the same characters from Devil's Tower this summer.

Where to live and start my company?

My Abaqus simulations have been running for 17 hours and should finish soon. That gives me free time to discuss places I want to live and start my company. Yes, I have decided to start a company even though I have no investors now. I'm just going to do it. What am I going to sell? Well, I'll start with ice axes and carabiners, then add climbing harnesses, gloves, pants, and running shorts. After that I'll make whatever I need. Those are all products where I've looked at what's available and thought I could make a product that would appeal to people more. Anyway the towns:

I like to run, a lot. I want to take a serious shot at making the olympic marathon trials for 2012 and 2016 and realistically there are two towns that have the coaches, athletes and support to make that a possibility for me sooner rather than later: Eugene, OR and Boulder, CO.

I like to rock climb, ice climb, ski, and just get out in the mountains. There are several towns around the country where you can get your fill of mountains and socialize (learn from) some of the best climbers in the world: North Conway, NH, Jackson Hole, WY, Boulder, CO, Seattle, WA, Salt Lake City, UT, and maybe Berkley, CA (I don't know enough about California to know which town would be best for mountaineers).

As you can see Boulder shows up on both lists. I've been there a dozen or so times and I love it. They have committed runners (I said hi to Jenny Barringer on a long run once) and they have hardcore climbers (just go into Neptune Mountaineering). Additionally, Boulder is close to Denver and all of the amenities that go with big cities yet it is not very big. Some mountain towns are a little isolated. I also do some road biking and a number of professional cyclists live there.

No town is perfect. Boulder is not a cheap place to live. Apparently it can get competitive there because everyone is a competitive athlete and wants to stand out. Constant competition is not always a good thing. However, I found in the short time that I have spent there that most people are pretty positive toward others in their chosen sport.

Changing subjects, this is my 100th blog post. Where will I be at 200? What about 1000?

Production Animals

Read this if you haven't already. Paul Graham talks about how to start a company. I've probably read it five times over the last two or three years before I was anywhere near actually starting anything. Scroll down to the part about people. I did this to one specific friend of mine (Jeff), well actually I've since tried to picture a bunch of people as animals since then, but I thought of my friend this way and he fit the bill. Fast forward to today. I was going through the campus center here at WPI and I see him on his laptop. I walk up and guess what he was working on... the ice axe! Are you kidding me?! School work and classes everywhere and he's working on the ice axe. How am I so fortunate to have such great people around me?

The waiting game

I've probably spent the better part of three hours today waiting on my finite element software to run a little faster so that I can fix a node for a 3D stress analysis simulation of the heat treating process that I have to complete for my research. The past two weeks I have finally gotten several simulations to work although my meshes have some distortion problems with 547 or so warnings for element geometry out of 30,000 elements. Fortunately that means no errors which is really what I was concerned about. So I sit here trying to be patient waiting for the servers to register that I clicked a node so that I can confirm the region for the boundary condition.

In other news, I approached a second company today about my ice axe after the first one said they had no interest. The farther time goes without finding a job the more I feel that maybe I should start a company making outdoor gear. Besides the ice axe I have ideas for a tent, pants, jackets, and carabiners. I've been going to this entrepreneur lunch series WPI has been having this past week and I decided I'd get a blog and put myself out there. I've also been learning about some of the basics of marketing and I've decided that when it comes to marketing over the internet or to climbers I would be great because that's what I am: a climber and an avid internet user.

Finally, I have a workout this afternoon with the track team and on my comeback from plantar fasciitis I'm so unsure about it. I mean it hasn't felt great this week and the two hour long run in the rain Sunday was not awesome for my immune system and I've been coughing all week. 

All I want to do is go climbing right now, even though my foot will probably hate me. So I talked to Jeff and since the machine shop was off limits due to a professional visit we couldn't machine any ice axe today so we talked for ten minutes and the result is that we're going climbing tonight at 7 PM. Outside. I haven't really done any climbing in the dark so it should be a great learning experience. It was warm today (49F) so the snow has probably all melted and it will quite possibly be soaking wet on the rock. I don't really care I'm going anyway.