170 more days...

Recent features on Mountainzone.com
If you haven't done so and have the time, there are several interesting articles up on Mountainzone.com. If you read anything, read the latest column by Dave Hahn. Dave has a pretty interesting perspective on life and being a mountaineer. He has an enjoyable writing style as well, and I hope someday he decides to author a book. This column is a report from Antarctica, where Dave has spent most of his "winters" the past several years. If you have extra time and are browsing the Mountainzone site check out some of the stuff about Aconcagua. It's the highest peak in this hemisphere and a prime warm-up climb for Everest. You can read about Al Hanna, a 69-year-old Chicago climber who has completed some very difficult peaks in the past eight years.

Condo Climbing Web Site
I haven't done too much with the site yet, but if you want to go back and read any of my previous emails to the group I've posted them at www.scholars.uni.edu/~johnson. I hope to add a little more to the site as this semester goes on, but for now the emails are about the only thing there.

I'm keeping this message relatively short with the hopes that people will save their reading for Dave Hahn. Otherwise, I hope everybody is enjoying the warmer weather and using it as an opportunity to get outside and get into shape. The more fit we are the better we will climb. Like many things in life, climbing a mountain isn't a race but you still don't want to finish last. So GET FIT!

"That's an interesting question. In fact that's sort of a big question. Because I'm not...I really sort of steer clear of the whole, you know, "World's Best Climber" stuff. This sort of hype. Because I don't really quite agree with your statement that I do things unusually better than the average person. I think climbing really doesn't lend itself to that. Climbing is a...there really is a fastest runner, and there really is a guy that jumps the highest, you can measure it. You know what I mean? You can quantify and put a number on it. Seconds, feet, millimeters, whatever.

Climbing is just too subjective. And it's a lifestyle, it's not a sport. I don't really think there is such a thing as a "Best Climber." There are certainly talented climbers, but I think mostly there's just, you know, sort of persistent, sort of anal climbers, you know? They just can't give it up. And those are the ones that sort of go on and do lots of climbs and harder climbs or whatever. Yeah, those people that just don't, you know can't, shake it off. That's what I am."

-Alex Lowe, responding to the "World's Best Climber" question

Last Updated:  Saturday, September 09, 2000