Top 10 social distancing moments of the decade
Boredom presents a very real, if insidious, peril. To quote Blaine Harden from the Washington Post: "Boredom kills, and those it does not kill, it cripples, and those it does not cripple, it bleeds like a leech, leaving its victims pale, insipid, and brooding...Rats kept in comfortable isolation quickly become jumpy, irritable, and aggressive. Their bodies twitch, their tails grow scaly."
Jon Krakauer, "On Being Tentbound," Eiger Dreams
Growing up, I would read and re-read mountain literature. One piece that has always stuck with me is Jon Krakauer's "On Being Tentbound," which describes the all too common ordeal of being stuck in a tent in bad weather while on expedition. I've been tentbound on numerous occasions and always smirked as I know this is what Krakauer warned me I'd signed up for.
How's it going for me these days? Not particularly well. But I'm enjoying leaning into being tentbound and sort of embracing the suffering. That's one part of mountain trips I genuinely enjoy: acknowledging when things are getting tough.
So, in this moment of reflection, I figure I'd share the ten most socially-distanced moments of the last decade. Starting with...
10. Camping alone on the summit of Shasta, winter.
Just before the pandemic really got going and shelter in place orders went into effect, I traveled to Mount Shasta and bivouacked on the summit. The stars were unbelievable.
9. Little Switzerland
In 2014, Brad Lipovsky and I traveled to the Pika Glacier in Denali National Park. A ski plane dropped us off and picked us up 9 days later. In the Alaskan summer, it was light 24 hours a day, so we became nocturnal and climbed beautiful granite lines by night. The feeling of remoteness was palpable...except when the planes landed each day for tourist photo ops.
8. The Absarokas
The Absarokas are one of Wyoming's wild ranges, seeing much less attention than the nearby Tetons or Wind Rivers. I helped teach a field course there several Septembers and we had wild experiences each time. Perhaps the craziest was when grizzlies came into camp and pawed under the vestibules of several tents!
7. Jarbidge
Where's the furthest from a paved road in the lower 48? Jarbidge, NV. On the three-hour drive north from Elko, we ran into an absolutely apocalyptic Mormon cricket plague. The roads were slick from their corpses, and the others cannibalized in the tire tracks. Camping in an environment where the entire ground was moving (and crunching!) underfoot was an absolute nightmare. EWWWWWW!
6. Gasherbrum II
On the summit of the world's 13th highest mountain, I felt alone. OK, technically, I was with people. Pasang and Mingma Gyalje. But that was it. And it was a storm. Rappelling down on the border of China and Pakistan I knew we had to get everything right if we wanted to see people again.
5. The Pamir
Tajikistan is the world's 3rd or 4th least visited country at just 4000 visitors per year. And hardly any of them come over the Karamyk pass, formally closed to foreigners. Fortunately, my handlers had pre-bribed the military with cigarettes. And I can assure you none of them are alpinists...the customs officers laughed at our tourist visas.
4. The Whites
The wildest, most remote and longest stretch of tundra in the lower 48 belongs to the White Mountains of California and Nevada. I learned just how far they were from civilization when I was caught in a ferocious windstorm during November, 2014.
3. The Inylchek
In 2015, I walked alone up one of the world's greatest glaciers, the Southern Inylchek in Kyrgystan into the heart of the Tian Shan. Even though I broke my toe on day one, I had a wonderful and life-changing trip. This is as good and as wild as big mountains get. And the rivers draining them...forget about it.
2. Rolwaling
How profoundly wild is Rolwaling? Just look at the header of this site...I'm ascending the final few meters to the foresummit of unclimbed Langdung. Within sight of Everest but receiving only a fraction of the attention, Rolwaling is a stunningly beautiful valley with wonderful people. But in order to get there, you'll have to earn it, as the road ends down low in the rainforest.
1. The Gobi
I'm heavily biased towards the mountains, so this is high praise. I've never felt more vastness, more small, than when I crossed Mongolia's Gobi desert in 2012. Not only is Mongolia the world's least populated country to begin with, but the inhospitable landscape in the southern part of the country is incomparably remote. We drove for four days without seeing anyone, navigating only by GPS and sometimes covering just 5km in an hour. It felt like being out at sea. Did I mention we found multiple dinosaurs?
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final.
Rainer Maria Rilke
