We live in a very immature, impatient society -- everybody wants everything, immediately. Where folks once planted seeds and nurtured them to fruition, now they buy ready grown plants, stick them in the ground, and pick the tomatoes three weeks later....It is the same with skiing, hiking -- fill in the blank: today: the idea, tomorrow: buy the equipment, next weekend: climb the glacier....and the obit is printed the following Tuesday. I took up hiking less than a year ago, and it is amazing the number of people who are "shocked" that I have not done Whitney, yet. It's a darn good thing, too, because I have made some profoundly bad decisions in the past 8 months -- decisions that could have been fatal in a less forgiving environment. For the moment, time is on my side, and when the conditions and company are aligned, I will make my summit bid.
B
PS Laura, I loved your Colorado pix! Do I understand correctly that they "seed" the ice by turning on water spigots at night????? Seems like some urban "waterfalls" could bee created that way! (I once saw a picture of a frozen "waterfall" hanging from a building where a water line had broken over night)
I started getting serious about this stuff in ~2000...at the age of 49. I bought a pair of snowshoes. When the snowshoes wouldn't take me where I wanted to go, I bought a pair of crampons, when I glissaded with my crampons on using a pair of trekking poles as a brake and ripped out the ass of my Gore-Tex pants and severely spraing my ankle I bought an axe, when I decided I really did not want kill myself I arranged a weekend in Bishop with SMC for a snow travel course and when I finally felt comfortable enough with my skills I decided to conquer Mt. Whitney in May 2007.
As my build my skill level I get to see more and more of what I want to see in winter. Experience has informed me, these mountains are not going anywhere, they will be there when my skills are up to the challenge.
