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The Christchurch Earthquake

26/02/2011

When the Earth Shakes, and We Humans on it.
Make a *donation directly to NZ Red Cross Christchurch Fund

Epicenter: Lyttelton from above our house, a day before the quake

Amanda and I escaped. We were in Christchurch about 19 hours before the earthquake hit, just in front of the main church , which is now collapsed,  in the square dropping off my passport and work visa application at New Zealand immigration, We also ran some errands, and split up in the afternoon, Amanda stopping by a store, and I picking up our van at the bus depot.

When the earthquake did hit we were both at home. I was in the hallway, and all of sudden, I was being thrown about. I was disoriented for a few seconds, then ran down the hallway to grab my pregnant wife’s hand. She looked as confused as I, as we ran for the door. We had just experienced the earthquake 1km from the epicenter. Our rental home is just across the Lyttelton Inlet in Diamond Harbor’s Charteris Bay.  As I grabbed Amanda’s hand and we ran out of the back door of  the steel-framed house, I thought, “This isn’t good for Christchurch.”

Little did I know how bad it was.  Just over the crest of Port Hills, 20 min away, it was Hell. (more…)

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Posted in Climb/Ski/Mntneering, Focus on MSI People, Inspirational People, Leadership, Mountain People, MSI News, New Zealand, Power of Place, Service | 2 Comments »

MSI Gears up with Programs

17/11/2010

Mountain Spirit is advertising in Wisdom Magazine, and Spirit of Change aiming at people who might be at a crossroads in their life, or simply wanting to try a new challenge, or learn something new.

A non-profit educational organization

Creating a Sustainable Lifestyle program will be held in Northern Vermont next spring at a peaceful retreat center, focusing on the personal – sustainability and health. Learn how to plant a garden, the basics of yoga and meditation and of course time for relaxation in a beautiful place.

Drumming Jamaica program taught by well-known instructor Bob Bloom will be held in Treasure Beach Jamaica from Feb. 7-11. There will be about 20 hrs of instruction with plenty of time to explore the beaches and local culture. Lodging will be at the Calabash House.

New Zealand: Our other base. We will be based on the South Island near the Southern Alps. Aimed at active travelers but with flexible offerings, depending upon your interest and focus. Options are trekking, glacier travel, rock climbing, or simply walks and getting into the lessor known areas of the Wanaka and Queenstown area, with options of other parts of South Island depending  upon your availability, interest and energy. Be ready to step out and see something new.

For more info, see our website: www.mtnspirit.org

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Posted in Climb/Ski/Mntneering, Conservation, Environment, Health, Holistic Living, Inner Work, MSI News, Music, New Zealand, Service, Spiritual, Sustainable Living/Communities, Sustainable Travel, Traveling, Your Food Supply | Leave a Comment »

MSI Adds Rock Climbing to Programs

01/10/2010

Rock Climbing is not new to the founder and other staff at Mountain Spirit Institute, but it’s new to MSI. R. Richards was a rock camp instructor for Outward Bound’s Semester Course  in Joshua Tree, CA, a staff trainer, and guide for Alpine Ascents in Seattle. He has been an individual member of American Mountain Guides Association since 1984, (which doesn’t connote certification), and MSI staffer Craig Cimmons has taught rock climbing for years in Vermont, and ran the Outdoor Program at Green Mountain College.  Bob Stremba runs the Outdoor Pursuits program at Fort Lewis College, and has been a long-time rock climber and outdoor instructor.

From MSI's Webpage on Rock Climbing

“I always thought it would be cost prohibitive to include insurance for rock climbing as part of our Worldwide Outfitters and Guides Association coverage, but I was wrong,” says founder Randy Richards, adding, “We should have added it years ago, and feel like we really want to take advantage of what we have to offer.”  Cimmons,  Stremba,  and Richards all place a high importance on not only safety but a comfortable learning environment.  “With years of teaching rock climbing, and many students with whom we’ve shared our skills, we feel we want to continue to get out on the rock!” says Richards.

MSI includes rock climbing not simply as an outdoor adventure activity, but uses the climbing as a metaphor for life.  The facilitators set the tone for participants to take a look at how they problem solve on the rock, and see what correlations they might make in how they solve problems in their daily life. Trust and team-building are also important elements of rock climbing.

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Posted in Climb/Ski/Mntneering, Experiential Education, MSI News | 1 Comment »

Glacier Melting & Time-Lapse Photography

27/09/2010

“More ice is released into the global ocean, from this glacier*, than from any other glacier in the Northern Hemisphere. If sea level rises, this is where it all begins. This is it, ground zero.”

EIS's James Balog

From: NPR’s Living on Earth
A photographer was one of this year’s Heinz environmental award winners. James Balog’s project — the Extreme Ice Survey — documents the rapid melting of glacial ice through time-lapse photographs from cameras in some of the world’s most remote areas. Host Bruce Gellerman talks with James Balog about the Extreme Ice Survey.

GELLERMAN: Winners of the prestigious Heinz environmental award have just been announced. This year the Heinz Foundation is honoring a wide variety of environmental innovators including a distinguished academic for his work in sustainable transportation, a pioneer in green chemistry, and a scientist who studies the suspected endocrine disrupting chemical BPA.

Awards and checks for a hundred thousand dollars will also be going to several winners who focus on climate change, among them James Balog. He’s director of Earthvision Trust and a one-time climate change skeptic. James Balog joins us from Boulder Colorado. Welcome to LOE…and congratulations.
BALOG: Well, thank you so much. It’s a wonderful week, and a wonderful honor and a privilege. I feel very blessed.

GELLERMAN: A climate change skeptic winning one of the premier environmental awards. Now, that’s an achievement.

Greenland ice sheet melting fast

BALOG: Well, I’m not a skeptic, and I haven’t been in a long time. Twenty years ago, I thought this whole science was based on computer modeling, and I’m a bit of a technological Luddite, and I thought that if it was all based on computer modeling, there could be something wrong with it. But then I took the time to learn about the evidence that was in the ice cores, and then I got out into the field and looked at what was happening to the glaciers, and I realized that this was not about models and projections and statistics. This was incredible concrete and real and immediate and happening really quickly.

GELLERMAN: In a sense, seeing is believing.

BALOG: Yeah, absolutely. As a photographer, my whole career and as a once-upon-a-time experiential educator for Outward Bound School, and as a mountaineer for forty years, I am quite keyed in to the feeling of experience. You know, seeing things, feeling things, touching things. Letting the vibrate in your chest, well when you are standing at the side of these glaciers and you’re watching huge masses of ice go away, you really get it.
Read the rest of this interview….

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Posted in Climate Change, Climb/Ski/Mntneering, Film/DVD, Mountain People, Sustainable Living/Communities | 1 Comment »

The Mountain Spirit

19/07/2010

Book Retroactively Inspires our Organization’s Name

Book inspires my mission

While house-sitting here in Durango, at fellow Mountain Spirit  board member Bob Stremba’s house, I ran across a book on his shelf entitled “The Mountain Spirit”. Naturally I was intrigued. It looked like an old publication, and indeed, it was published by Overlook Press in 1979.

It’s an anthology with authors Georger Steiner, Galan Rowell, Dogen, David Roberts, Evelio Echevarria and Jeff Long and more.  Some of the chapter titles are: A History of Imagination in Wilderness, The Isolated Mountain, Alaska and Personal Style, Cairns, Modesty and the Conquest of Mountains, Bouldering: A Mystical Art Form, and Mountains in Early Taoism.
From the book’s back cover:
” The past few years have seen an extraordinary growth of interest in mountaineering all over the world, especially in North America. Until now, there has been a marked tendency among writers to concentrate on only the sporting aspects of mountain climbing.

The Mountain Spirit is the first work to explore the spiritual realm of mountains and mountain climbing in a philosophical, poetic, and even religious context. Bringing to the reader the excitement of heights and distant perspectives i, this book presents original material from an eclectic writing community and a unique approach to the aesthetics of the mountain experience”.

Reading through the pages, I was to see the book giving more expression to what I already felt but up till now, hadn’t expressed in the mountaineering aspects of this book. I’ll be ordering my copy today, and will see what I can do to get extra copies to fellow board members.
Our organization was founded on the idea of helping people to connect to themselves, each other and the environment. Mountaineering, and being in the power of mountains, is a natural ingredient in spiritual growth. We hope you’ll check out this book, and come with us on an adventure of the spirit in the mountains.

D.R. Richards, Founder
Mountain Spirit Institute

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Posted in Books, Climb/Ski/Mntneering, Spiritual | Leave a Comment »

Everest Basecamp Clean-up Successful

24/06/2010

Cleaning Up After Climbers

The Swiss family Schwörer and their companions on the TOPtoTOP Global Climate Expedition have successfully completed their project to clean up Everest Base Camp. Unfortunately, expedition leader Dario Schwörer didn’t manage to reach the summit of the “Roof of the World”.

As already reported, for the last seven years the Mammut-sponsored TOPtoTOP expedition has been traveling all over the world, from Switzerland to Everest Base Camp, freeing our environment from discarded rubbish. The family used carbon-neutral forms of transport, such as walking, cycling or sailing, to reach their destination. Read the rest of this article at Mammut.ch

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Posted in Asia/Himalaya, Climb/Ski/Mntneering, Conservation, Environment, Mountain People, Sustainable Travel, Traveling | Leave a Comment »

Inspiration, Alaskan Style

09/06/2010

This is a slideshow featuring pictures from the Alaska Range, found on the Facebook page from the good folks of Talkeetna Air Taxi. Click on the image to go to there.

Shots from Alaska

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Black Diamond Equipment: Sold

11/05/2010

Utah’s Black Diamond Equipment sold for $90 million
By Mike Gorrell, Salt Lake Tribune, USA

Chouinard started BD

Peter Metcalf knew the business model he followed for two decades in building Black Diamond Equipment Ltd. from scratch into a $100 mil- lion-a-year company was insufficient to carry the Salt Lake County-based firm far into the future.

But now Metcalf believes he has found a partner with the financial resources to grow in a global economy. Clarus Corp., a publicly traded Connecticut company with no operations but lots of money to invest and $200 million worth of tax-loss credits, announced Monday that it is buying Black Diamond for $90 million.

A newly created company will continue to carry the Black Diamond name and retain Metcalf as its president and CEO. But it also will offer a broader line of respected outdoor products. As part of the deal, Clarus purchased Sacramento-based Gregory Mountain Products Inc. for $45 million and will.. Read the rest of this article

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Posted in Climb/Ski/Mntneering, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Chamonix Ice

08/04/2010

Ice bouldering near Chamonix

By D.R. Richards

Oops.

I got some shots of this ice climber practicing on the glacier just near the entrance of the Mont Blanc tunnel in Chamonix, France. It’s a great place to practice with good top-rope sites.

There are more images but these two seemed the most dramatic, especially with the gaping circular crevasse below. It reminds me of the threat of circling the drain.

Where do you start? How do you  lower to flat ground? Not to worry, there was a good ice ledge where climbers can tie in. Ykes!

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Eastern Alpine Ski Touring

06/04/2010

I’d grown up, skiing every spring, on Mt. Washington’s east side – Tuckerman’s, Gulf of Slides, and Great Gulf. Once,  I think I took one run, years ago on the west side,  but last week Junji Itagaki suggested we head up to his favorite haunt. I don’t often get in ski touring mode when back east, but the west side of Mt. Washington is as close as it gets to a wonderful alpine touring experience on the east coast of the U.S.
We climbed up Munro Gully, then headed to the Lake of the Clouds, then over to the summit of Mt. Washington, for a nice descent down Ammonoosuc Ravine, on thick but great snow. I think we had record-breaking temperatures that day. (See my earlier post on getting kids outside, which was filmed in Ammonoosuc Ravine).

Mt. Washington's West Side

Pictured above, Junji Itagaki, Lake of the Clouds and its Hut, Mt. Washington to the right.

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Posted in Climb/Ski/Mntneering, Mountain People, MSI News | Leave a Comment »

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