The Cleanest Line

Watch the Trailer for Groundswell

by Chris Darimont

How could we possibly give voice to marine mammals and other life threatened by one of the largest industrial projects ever conceived? After all, whales, dolphins and the like – as intelligent as they are – cannot mount their own defense against the oil industry.

[Video: Groudswell (Trailer) from the Patagonia Video Gallery]

Oil giant Enbridge Inc. and its international partners have proposed the Northern Gateway Project, a massive pipeline that would cross nearly 650 miles of Canadian wilderness, hundreds of fish-bearing streams, and dozens of First Nations territories. This oily tentacle would stretch west from the Alberta tar sands to British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest where the raw crude would await transport by tankers to Asia and, potentially, California.

Never before have oil tankers dared to travel along this stormy and largely unspoiled coastline. Most vessel traffic consists of modest fishing boats owned by people from remote aboriginal villages that dot the shores. These people continue to depend on the abundance their ocean provides them. Not surprisingly, their opposition to Enbridge and the Northern Gateway project is fierce.

Cerro Torre: Deviations from Reason

by Kelly Cordes

Late afternoon January 16, Hayden Kennedy and Jason Kruk sat on the summit of Cerro Torre, making a decision.

Backup. For starters, let’s be clear: None of us has an inalienable right to summit anything. If you aren’t capable of climbing a peak after a manmade path has been removed, nothing has been stolen from you.

“If there is such a thing as spiritual materialism, it is displayed in the urge to possess the mountains rather than to unravel and accept their mysteries,” wrote the great Polish climber Voytek Kurtyka.

[Cerro Torre, with the southeast ridge roughly ascending the spine, facing the camera, in the center of the frame (the route approaches around from the right, out-of-view, to reach the huge snow blob at the base of the ridge). Photo: Kelly Cordes]

I’m specifically referring to yet another raging controversy on Cerro Torre, the otherworldly Patagonian spire. In my 11 years at the American Alpine Journal (where I’m the senior editor), I’ve educated myself on Cerro Torre’s bizarre and complex history. I also have first-hand knowledge – in 2007, Colin Haley and I climbed a new link-up on the south and west aspects of Cerro Torre, before rappelling down the controversial Compressor Route (which ascends the peak’s southeast ridge).

The Ptarmigan Traverse

by Steve Graepel

Scott scrambles up to Cache Col and drops his pack besides mine. We've been moving just over two hours since the trailhead and have stopped to get our first glimpse at the route before us. Our goal is the Ptarmigan Traverse – a 35-mile off-piste, haute route traversing the southern upheaval of the North Cascades.

This terra incognita was first explored in July of 1938 over a period of 13 days. The Ptarmigan Climbing Club made numerous first ascents along the route – an effort that is still recognized as one of the greatest feats in the North Cascades… ever. Their report was never published, and due to tumultuous world events, the traverse wasn't repeated for 15 years. In September of 1953, Dale Cole, Bob Grant, Mike Hane, Erick Karlsson and Tom Miller reversed the route and published their report in The Mountaineer. It was this second traverse that turned the Ptarmigan Traverse into the classic it is known as today. Miller’s photos were published as a book, The North Cascades (1964), and later submitted as supporting documents in a bill sent to Congress that established the North Cascades as a National Park (1968).

[Above: The author jogs up to Cache Col from Cascade Pass. All photos courtesy of Steve Graepel]

Time On His Feet – A Former Runner Looks Back

by Craig Holloway

I ran my last ultra on a warm, spring day in Wisconsin five years ago.  The course was surprisingly tough – small roller coaster hills come at you like black flies. Crossing the finish line I didn’t feel the exhilaration that I normally do after a race. I chalked it up to burnout and decided to take the rest of the year off. I didn’t run the following year either and eventually packed all my running gear in a box and put it in the garage.

[The serene one, Craig Holloway, trots the Timberline Trail toward Mount Hood, Oregon. From his 2005 field report "Lost on Adrenaline." Photo: Scott Jurek]

Two years went by and I still hadn’t laced up my running shoes. I knew it wasn’t going to happen and decided to stop running – after twenty-six years. It felt like the right thing to do. Now I crew for friends and it’s satisfying to be a part of their race day experience. But I do miss pacing and the responsibilities that come with that role. I’d like to share a few stories about the experiences I had with runners on their 100-mile journeys.

Confessions Of A Yoga Non-Believer

by Brittany Griffith

It started off benign enough: Walker sent out an email to all the ambassadors inquiring who did yoga and would be willing to test out Patagonia’s new yoga line. Of course, I bristled at this. Yoga? That’s for girlfriends. I’m a climber, have a black belt, and have raced on the professional downhill mountain bike circuit. But, that noted, I’d be damned if one of the other ambassadors was going to get to test out the newest bra top before for me just because they “yoga’d” and I didn’t.

So I responded to Walker’s email that yes, I “yoga” and in fact hold bi-weekly yoga classes at my house – which wasn’t a total lie. My neighbor, Porter, who had attempted to espouse the benefits of yoga to me countless times and try to get me to go to a class with her, would come over to my house a couple of times a week for living-room sessions of grammar school PE-style sit-ups and push-ups, and loosely follow a late '90s Rodney Lee “Yoga for Athletes” DVD (fast-forwarding through the parts I didn’t like). No “Oms” or “Namastes” with Porter and I – just general rants about life in SLC (like the local hoodlums’ uncreative tagging of garbage cans, fences and the nearby Mormon church’s dumpster). This was my yoga. No need to pay someone to show you how to stretch, breathe, and recite poetry while you lay on the floor. [Above photo: Porter Teegarden]

Copp-Dash Inspire Award Accepting Applications for 2012

The Copp-Dash Inspire Award is currently accepting applications from January 1, 2012 through February 29, 2012 for small climbing teams attempting fast and light alpine climbing objectives with a desire to creatively document and share their experience. The award was established in memory of American climbers Jonny Copp and Micah Dash, who were killed in an avalanche in China in May 2009 along with filmmaker Wade Johnson.

Sponsored by Black Diamond Equipment, La Sportiva, Mountain Hardwear, and Patagonia, with support from the Jonny Copp Foundation, American Alpine Club, Alpinist magazine and Sender Films, the Copp-Dash Inspire Award will distribute $20,000 this year to North American applicants.

The Underwear Story

by Luke Mehall

My dream job would be being an underwear model. A friend helped me figure this out one day after I’d just purchased some new undies, and we were looking at the models on the packaging.

“What a job that would be, wearing underwear for a living,” I said.

“You could do it,” Amber answered. “And since you’re a climber you could model for Patagonia.”

A quick check of the Patagonia catalog showed that they didn’t use the same advertising technique that we imagined; my visual image was Victoria Secret style for the female models. Still the dream was planted.

[Above: The author sent us this photo from his modeling portfolio. Color us impressed. Joshua Tree, California. Photo: Dave Marcinowski]

Les Landes

by Patch Wilson

A friend of mine, Nick Pumphrey, who I grew up with surfing, skating and generally causing mayhem, now lives in South West France. He has called Hossegor home for about six or seven years now. Now turned semi-professional photographer he still works the summers in bars and restaurants and sleeps in his van to save money so that he can head on missions throughout the winter. His van holds this amazing quiver of longboards, single fins, alaias, bodyboards and swim fins. All the wave-riding equipment you could need for whatever one of the best stretches of beachbreak in the world could throw at you.

[Me cruising on my Fark Quad. Photo: Nick Pumphrey]

Dirtbag Diaries: The Year of Big Ideas 2012 - Frozen Lemonade

by Fitz & Becca Cahall

When will it snow? It's the question on the lips of ski town locals throughout the West as fluttering flakes have been late to arrive. Sill, the winter provides opportunity: tacky mountain bike trails usually buried under feet of snow, ice climbing on routes normally inaccessible, and ice skating on remote alpine lakes. John Dittli says the skating has been epic in the high Sierra. While others have bemoaned the lack of snow, John has seized the extended window to ice skate on multiple lakes – many more than a typical year allows. He may even secretly hope that the snow remains at bay for a little longer. In the spirit of making the most out of a situation, we present the Year of Big Ideas 2012 – goals from friends, pros and creative thinkers. And no matter what 2012 brings, we'll make sure there's more lemonade in all we do.

Listen to "The Year of Big Ideas 2012 - Frozen Lemonade"
(mp3 - right-click to download)

Visit dirtbagdiaries.com for links to download the music from "Frozen Lemonade" or to hear past episodes of the podcast. You can subscribe to the show via iTunes and RSS, or connect with the Dirtbag Diaries community on Facebook and Twitter.

 

Stories and the Lost Coast

by Kelly Cordes

Wolf, bear, human – in August 2010 Cameron Lawson and Brett DeWoody took a wild, 350-mile bicycle and packraft journey from Yukutat to Cordova, along Alaska's "Lost Coast," following bear and wolf tracks, navigating heinous brush and swollen river deltas, engaging in true wilderness under their own power. Lawson, a photographer and a pilot, had flown a small Cessna over the Lost Coast the year before, but covering the same terrain by bike and packraft proved a wholly different experience – of course – and Lawson’s images and words give us a fantastic insight into a real-deal adventure. Check out his slideshow in the Patagonia video gallery – here’s the direct link (sorry, techy stuff won’t let me embed it).

[Screen grab from The Lost Coast slideshow. Click here to see the whole thing.]

It’s a video world, and Lawson’s is a still-photos-with-written-captions story, but that doesn’t matter to me: I love good storytelling. I don’t care so much about the medium, though the differences intrigue me.