Posted by on Aug 27, 2011 in Mountaineering | 0 comments

Climbing The Grand Teton with Exum Guides

Climbing the Grand Teton
With Exum Mountain Guides
August 23, 2011
Wes Chapman
The Grand Teton
The name Grand Teton comes from the French name Trois Teton (three breasts) applied to the three Tetons by French Canadian trappers early in the 19th century. The area was largely abandoned by outsiders with the decline of the fur trade in the 1840’s, until a variety of scientific expeditions in the 1870’s, including the famous Haydon Geological Survey in 1871. In 1870, Nathaniel Langford said of the original trappers who name the mountains,” He indeed must have been of a most susceptible nature and, I would fain believe, long a dweller amid these solitudes, who could trace in these cold and barren peaks any resemblance to the gentle bosom of a woman”. It sounds like Mr. Langford never went through a Dartmouth Winter Carnival without a date.
I suppose that,” a rose by any name would smell as sweet”, and this is one sweet climb. Mr. Langford never experienced the pure exhilaration and sensory overload that is climbing the last 2,100 feet of this Hill. If he had, the nomenclature may have made more sense.
The Tetons – See the Resemblance?
A Rorschach test for French-Canadian Trappers
Mr. Langford had a fairly tortured history with the Grand Teton, trying first to rename it Mt Hayden and then claiming to have climbed it in July of 1872 with James Stevenson. The first documented climb was accomplished in 1898 by a party of four, including William O. Owens and Franklin Spaulding, pioneers of the eponymous Owens-Spaulding Route (5.4). It is now generally agreed that Langford reached “The Enclosure” on the West Summit, which was probably used by Native Peoples for spiritual rituals and/or eagle hunting.  
The other popular route up the Grand Teton is the Exum Route, pioneered by Glen Exum and Paul Petzoldt, who were the co-founders of Exum Mountain Guides. The legend is that Mr. Exum pioneered the route with the famous “Exum Leap” across the key move on the route. He was 18 at the time and wearing football cleats – such is the stuff of legends. 
Forest fires across Teton Valley, from the 2nd Boulder Field
We started the climb with light packs – Exum provides sleeping bags, hot water and sleeping pads – from the Lupine Trailhead. The hike up to the lower Saddle is over 6 miles, and passes through some of the most beautiful country in the US on the way. The Camp at the Lower Saddle Overlooks the Dartmouth Basin, Grand Targhee and the Snake River plateau; the remains of ancient eruptions from the Yellowstone Hotspot.
The climb begins with a relatively civilized wake-up call at 3:45 and a start up the Hill at 4:45 – in our case via the Owens – Spaulding Route. The Tetons suffer from notoriously bad lightning storms in the afternoons, and speed to the top – and back out – are key elements to a safe climb. Dan Starr is a great guide, and did a super job keeping us moving up the Hill. With the exception of a couple of “ball-of-snakes” delays with the ropes, we climbed without any problems, and were on top by 8:45. After about half an hour on the summit, we headed down and were eating an early dinner down in the Valley by 5:00. It was a wonderful end to a great climbing season.    
The 2nd Boulder Field and the Headwall leading to the Lower Saddle Camp
The Rogers celebrate their 30th anniversary on The Grand Teton
Middle Teton and the Black Diabase Dike
The Grand Teton at sunset
The accommodations on The Grand Teton at the Lower Saddle
Dan Starr, a great guide from Exum Mountain Guides
Three good friends, having a very good day on the Summit of The Grand Teton
Gary climbing a chimney on the Owens-Spaulding Route
The Author having a ball on The Grand Teton
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Posted by on Aug 26, 2011 in Mountaineering, Outdoor Fun | 2 comments

Yellowstone Super Volcano – A True Hot Spot

The Grand Teton Expedition
Yellowstone, Super Volcanoes and a Great American “Hot Spot”
August 21, 2011
Wes Chapman
The Grand Teton Reprised
I came west to climb the Grand Teton with a bunch of buddies from Maine in ‘88, only to be greeted by the worst fires in 100 years. They shut Teton National Park the day we arrived, so we spent the next few days in idle hooliganism – basically drinking and raising Hell in Jackson – leaving early to escape the reckoning for our mayhem and unpaid bar tabs. After more than 20 years, I figured that the statute of limitations had passed on our prior peccadillos, and it was safe to return and try again. Rather than tempt fate, this time the team included Gary and Jill Rogers, together with Pete Volanakis – with me the only remaining member of the original perps.
The Grand Teton is one of the mountains included in the fifty classic climbs in North America – having three routes of the total of fifty. It is a big mountain, 13, 775 feet, rising up from a dead flat valley floor above the Snake River. The total vertical is over 7, 500 feet and the scenery is absolutely spectacular.
The Grand Teton – an American Classic
Volcanism, Plate Tectonics and a Super Hot Spot
When I was I college, we were taught that The Yellowstone/Teton area was an interesting part of the uplifting event that created the Rocky Mountains (known as an “orogeny event”). While this sounded vaguely salacious, nobody really knew what caused the peculiar volcanic rock formations in the area. There was a very large amount of fairly recent volcanic rock around, but there really wasn’t a volcano that could be identified as the source.
Since 1980, a huge amount of work has been done, tying together information from disparate sources, and relying heavily on satellite imaging, revealing the story of the super volcano underlying Yellowstone. The volcano has repeatedly exploded violently over the last 13 million years, with three spectacular eruptions in the last 2 million years. All of the geysers and related hydrothermal activity in Yellowstone are due to residual heat from the volcano, and lie in a giant volcanic crater or caldera which measures 30 by 45 miles – larger than the State of Rhode Island.  The volcano is due to a “Hot Spot” at least 150 miles deep in the earth’s mantle, probably caused by localized radioactive decay and/or pressure relief due to plate tectonics.
The Caldera of the Yellowstone Super Volcano
Lifting up the Tetons
The uplift associated with the Yellowstone super volcano also created the Teton fault in the last 6-8 million years. This fault is a normal fault, meaning that all of the movement is vertical, and the amount of movement is spectacular – over 30,000 vertical feet. The Tetons are ancient rocks – 2.5 billion years old – lifted up from deep in the earth and tower 7,500 feet above the Teton Valley. The valley has filled in with sediments as the mountains eroded into classic V shapes, aided by both continental and local mountain glaciation.
Creation of a fault block mountain range
A Little Training, Then an Expedition to Yellowstone
We did a one day training session to learn the skills and methods preferred by Exum Guides, our guides for the climb, followed by a rest day before we headed up the Grand. The school was pretty basic, and had a very unfortunate outcome, as we lost one of our team, Pete Volanakis, to a sprained ankle. Undeterred, we decided to spend the next day in Yellowstone, surveying the remains of a super volcano and looking for Yogi and Bubu.
Gary practicing rappelling skills for the Grand Teton Climb
Yellowstone is all about explosive heat, and a fundamentally unstable environment. The area is pock marked by over 10,000 hot springs, boiling mud pits and geysers. It virtually all burned in the late ‘80’s, adding to the overall impression of instability, and covering the landscape with fresh young growth and miles of standing dead trees.
What makes Yellowstone dynamic is water, lots of very hot water juxtaposed with very cold water and wilderness. The place is full of minerals associated with hydrothermal activity like sinter, geyserite and travertine that we never get to see back East. The springs are full of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) which are capable of living in water near boiling, and are so plentiful that they actually color the water. These bacteria are so specialized that you can tell the temperature of the pool at a glance by the color of the bacteria that inhabit it.
The Yellowstone River flows through the entire Park, passing over a spectacular set of falls after passing through Hayden Valley. In Hayden Valley we passed by a grizzly bear feeding on a buffalo carcass, with a black wolf hanging around waiting to get his shot at some lunch when the bear was done. Overseeing the entire process were about a thousand tourists all getting too close, trying to get a photograph, but hoping not to end up as dessert.  
A hot spring at West Thumb Geyser Basin, with re-grown forest in the background
Yellowstone Falls
The Opal Spring
Old Faithful, on a 93 minute cycle
Our day done at this combination high risk petting zoo and water park, we headed back to Jackson, to get ready for the first day of the climb the next day. All the way back I read aloud from Lee H. Whittlesey’s fabulous book, Death in Yellowstone, Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park. Most of the stories involved at least two of the following four elements: 1) Bears, 2) Hot water, 3) Stupidity, and/or 4) Bad Luck. It sounds like a peculiar choice for a bunch of 50+ year olds headed up the Grand Teton the next day, but I suppose that we took solace in the fundamentally bad judgment of others, as ours was clearly somewhat suspect. 
The fabulous Tetons, heading back to Jackson
Acknowledgements & Sources
1)      Roadside Geology of the Yellowstone Country, William J. Fritz
2)      Windows into the Earth, The Geologic Story of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, Robert B. Smith & Lee J. Siegel
3)      Creation of the Teton Landscape, A Geological Chronicle of Jackson Hole & the Teton Range, J David Love et al
4)      The Earth Science Dept. of Dartmouth College, particularly the late, great Dick Stoiber and Half Zantop.
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Posted by on Aug 5, 2011 in Mountaineering, Outdoor Fun, Product & Service Reviews | 0 comments

Climbing Mt. Cotopaxi with RMI Guides

Mt. Cotopaxi (19,348 feet)
Climbing with RMI
Aug 2, 2011
Wes Chapman
Mt Cotopaxi
Otavalo Market & the Road to Cotopaxi
Otavalo Market on a busy Saturday
Coming off Cayambe we were cold, tired and in desperate need of a bath. The accommodations at the Casa del Sol in Otavalo provided at least a warm place to sleep, and a shower for those with a good sense of humor – hot water was not their specialty. The next day dawned clear and hot, with the promise of great gangas (bargains in Spanish) in the native market in Otavalo, and we were off.
Waiting for business in the Otavalo market
Martha modeling a native balaclava
One of the specialty musical instruments in Ecuador is the nose flute – you actually play it by blowing through your nose. As I surveyed the mountains of local handicrafts, I sneered that perhaps we should buy a nose flute. I was floored when Martha responded, “no need, I bought one yesterday”. I offer this item up to anyone interested in permanently borrowing a barely used classic Andean musical instrument.
Off to Chilcabamba Lodge and Mt. Cotopaxi
All good things must come to an end, and dragging trash and treasures (including a wooden framed hammock) we headed off for a long ride in lousy weather to Chilcabamba Lodge, perched on the Alti Plano on the flanks of Mt. Cotopaxi. The Lodge was, as advertised, charming, authentic, hospitable and featured pretty good food. I loved the place. I woke up in the morning to one of the most striking mountain views I have ever seen in my life – it was Cotopaxi – at once magnificent and intimidating. Cotopaxi is the perfect volcano shape, grading in a parabola from dead flat to 33 1/3 degrees – the angle of repose for most volcanoes. For an old volcanologist it was simply enchanting.
Chilcabamba Lodge with Cotopaxi in the background
Cotopaxi in the early morning sun
The Road to Cotopaxi
An icy road to Cotopaxi
We left Chilcabamba, and drove into the teeth of a thunder storm, which turned into snow as we approached the Hill. Cotopaxi is a bit of a national obsession in Ecuador, and is only 1.5 hours from Quito. Sunday is family day in Latin America, and the road was mobbed with smooth-tire knuckleheads bouncing off each other and getting thoroughly stuck on the ice. Our driver was great, and made it almost to the parking lot, before we moved into the 4WD vehicles, drove to the trailhead and finished with the .75 mile hike up a scree slope to the Refugio, which was jammed with weekend tourists. The Refugio is at 15,750 feet, and we were less than 48 hours from our last climb – looking at a short night, and very little sleep. I sure hoped that the next day’s climb would make it all worthwhile, and I was not disappointed.
The Refugio at Cotopaxi
The Excitement on the Glacier
The morning began at 11:30 PM, and we were off and up the hill by 12:45. Cotopaxi is a very steady climb up to the foot of the glacier. There are a number of large and fairly ugly crevasses at the foot of the glacier, in a fairly typical ice fall configuration. After around 1.5 hours of climbing we arrived at the base of the ice fall to find that a major snow bridge had collapsed. Climbers were backing up behind a Spanish team, which was trying to figure out how to get across. As Casey our head guide (with three successful summits on Everest) said, “you don’t get killed falling into an ice fall, you die when the ice fall falls on you”. The trick to safety in an ice fall is to get through it quickly – minimizing your time as a target reduces your chances of getting hit.
Casey supervises Corel and Lucy moving through the Ice Fall
Casey quickly dug a cut in the edge of the collapsed snow bridge, and we scurried down into the hole, across the bottom and back up the other side. All the while, the glacier was creaking and fracturing, making some fairly truculent sounds. We were all through and up the other side, and the Spanish team was still in the bottom of the hole when a major piece of ice fell – covering everyone with a layer of fresh snow blown up from the fresh powder. Such are the things that go bump in the night.
Standing at the edge of the Ice Fall
The rest of the climb up was blessedly drama free, and the morning views were simply breathtaking. We arrived at the top around 7:15, feeling considerably better than we did on the top of Cayambe. The summit is right on the edge of the double-crater rim, with clear fumarole activity all the way around both rims. Twenty minutes on top was plenty for photos and relaxation, and we headed down and back to Quito.
Jill takes a knee on the Summit of Cotopaxi
Characters du Jour – The Real Housewives of Byfield & Richmond
Lucy, Corel and Jill on the Summit of Cotopaxi
You have to admire people who do something really hard, and don’t make a big deal about it. Lucy, Corel and Jill were three ladies on our climb who fit that bill and more. All three are dedicated Moms and Wives living in the suburbs, but with a little secret – they love to climb mountains – high and tough mountains. Jill has been a great friend for many years, but she always get stuck playing with the boys in the Hills. Imagine her surprise and delight in meeting a couple of fun and incredibly fit new friends – from Richmond VA of all places. These three ladies were at or near the front of the pack all week, and climbed without complaint. At the top of Cayambe I noted that both Lucy and Corel had deep purple lips – they were really cold and probably anoxic – but they kept on with a laugh and smile. I asked Lucy how she managed to break in her boots, and she said that she and Corel did 6 laps per day running up and down a 23 story building, and the boots broke in fairly quickly. I’m sure that’s true. It was great climbing with these ladies, and I hope that our paths cross again on some mountain.
The People Who Made it Happen
There was a unique and highly qualified group of people who got us up and down these Hills, including the guides from RMI, the Ecuadorian Guides and support staff, and Martha who played an unexpected but very gratefully received roll as translator and organizer. The guides from RMI included Casey and Maile, and they did a great job with everything from cooking and cleanup through directing activities on the mountain. Freddy and Jamie were the Ecuadorian guide team, and did a terrific job. From a selfish perspective I was delighted to have Martha come along with us, but from an objective perspective her help was tremendous in translation and keeping things moving forward.
Freddy, Casey, Maile and Jamie on Cotopaxi
Martha on the Town in Quito
Adios, from Cotopaxi
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Posted by on Aug 4, 2011 in News | Comments Off

PCD News Release: LOI Submission for CMS BPI

PCD Partners, Inc. (PCD) of Lebanon, NH, has submitted a letter of intent as the convener of health care providers interested in Model 2 and 4 of the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement initiative sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Upon acceptance of this plan, PCD will work with stakeholders to receive adequate and appropriate data that will allow them to design, implement, and study episode of care bundles and their use as a tool to improve clinical quality and outcomes of care while decreasing overall healthcare costs across a coordinated continuum of care in the State of New Hampshire.

PCD plans to design and implement a first-in-class care delivery model with a special emphasis on critical access hospitals, integrating both financial and clinical elements, payment reform, and State of New Hampshire support to promote community health and access throughout New Hampshire. The delivery model will include coordination between PCD (the convener), at least three acute care hospitals, approximately six critical access hospitals, six home health associations, and a to-be-determined number of physicians and physician groups.

Although CMS does not consider critical access hospitals as eligible participating organizations under the initiative, PCD plans to include these important providers in its bundled payment initiative to extend and improve savings. PCD intends to analyze the data using both robust analytic tools and internal and external expertise in new care model development, reimbursement modeling, operational efficiency, and clinical quality.

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Posted by on Aug 1, 2011 in Mountaineering, Outdoor Fun, Product & Service Reviews | 0 comments

Climbing Mt. Cayambe Ecuador with RMI Guides

Mt. Nevado Cayambe, 19,003 ft.
Climbing with RMI
July 29, 2011
1:10 AM to 12:30 PM
Wes Chapman
Nevado Cayambe
Nevado Cayambe draped in clouds
As the name would suggest, Nevado Cayambe is a glaciated strato volcano, located directly on the Equator. It is, in fact, the only place in the world where the equator crosses a glacier, and it is the highest point on the equator. Access to the Hill is from the town of Cayambe, up 20 miles of road which gradually grades from bad to worse. Cayambe is variously listed as extinct or dormant, but it has a large amount of fumarole activity beginning around 18,000 feet, which makes for some fairly interesting patterns in the glaciers. The climb is pretty straight forward, and not very technical, but requires some care as there are numerous large crevasses near the top.
The mountain was first climbed by Edward Whymper (the first person to climb the Matterhorn) and the Carrel cousins in 1880, and claimed the lives of the famous alpinists Carlos Oleas and Cesar Ruales in 1974. 
Stuck in the mud on the road to Cayambe
Road to the Refugio
The Refugio (climber hut) is located directly below the main glacier, at 15,150 feet. Normally you can drive to within 1 kilometer of the facility, but very wet weather had rendered the road impassable 4 miles out, necessitating a very long approach. The accommodations are relatively spacious, and there are actual flush toilets as well as gas stoves for cooking. The RMI team did a great job of cooking, and the food was plentiful and tasty, although appetites are generally lacking at that altitude. The Refugio is unheated, and pretty cold (average around 38-40 degrees), and we all wore down jackets most of the time.
Hiking into the Refugio
Dressed for the weather in the bunkroom at the Refugio
Climb to the Top
Kickoff for the climb involved an 11:30 PM wakeup call, and heading up at 1:10. It had been a wet snow the day before, and we set out immediately in crampons up a little welded ash flow which rises about 250 feet directly behind the Refugio. We roped up and headed onto the glacier just beyond the terminal ice fall at the top of the ash flow. We made slow and steady progress up to around 18,000 feet where we lost a couple of our band of 10 climbers to altitude related issues.
Roped up in the dark on the Glacier
Just a little later the sun came up and afforded some beautiful views of the surrounding volcanoes. The atmosphere was fairly complex, with multiple cloud layers which made for some fabulous photos.
Mt. Antisana as seen from Cayambe
Cotopaxi, our next climb, as seen at daybreak
The climb to the top involved one steep and physically taxing pitch at 18,550 feet, to avoid the ridge where Oleas and Ruales were killed in an avalanche. The route involved climbing up a 250 foot steep pitch grading to a nearly vertical lip at the top. The lip came at about 18,800 feet, and when we got over the top, we were all very glad that there were only 200 vertical feet to the top. When I came over top of the ridge, I was gasping for air – really beat.   
Gary Rogers on a steep pitch to the top of Cayambe
Large Crevasses on Nevado Cayambe
I felt old, worn out and miserable. I was somewhat relieved later on in discussions with younger and fitter members of our team to hear that they too were about spent at that point as well. Climbing 80 degree ice at nearly 19,000 feet is a lot harder than walking up Kilimanjaro at the same elevation. We took a few minutes, caught our breaths, got our heart rates under 150 bpm, and finished the 20 minutes to the flat, snow swept summit.
The Team at the Summit
The trip down was more sporting than usual due to some confusion in the descent on the steep pitch near the summit. This led to more delays than expected, and a slightly longer time in descent. I was glad to have a chance to snap a few photos of the amazing ice formations just below the pitch.
A snow bridge over a major crevasse near the summit of Cayambe
The day ended with a 4 mile walk out to the vehicles and a very tired dinner at the La Casa Sol Hotel in Otavalo. We arrived tired, hungry, and in fairly desperate need of a bath. This climb was a lot of fun, but really pretty hard, and I was very glad that the mountain wasn’t 3,500 feet taller – like Aconcagua.
Characters of the Day
This has been a great group of fellow climbers to spend a week with. We’ve not had a cross word or an unpleasant exchange. Two of our fellow pilgrims stand out as some of the greatest guys I’ve ever met – a father and son team of Rob (father) and Clay. These guys come from West Texas, and share the optimism, humor and can-do attitude that make the place special. Rob is a Judge, and took up climbing late in life, but with unrelenting passion. He is a huge fan of Guadalupe Mt. in Texas, Wheeler Peak in New Mexico, anything in the Himalayas, Texas Tech. football (where he played inside linebacker), Texas politics, and anything he can do to spend time with his family. Son Clay is a free spirit who works for Apple in Austin and is a great outdoorsman, photographer and family man. If we can find some time in our schedules this fall, we’ll do a weekend of Wheeler and Guadalupe, working on the High Points list. I have never laughed harder in my life than I have this week with these guys, and there is nobody that I’d rather be on a rope with.
Rob and Clay on Pichincha
   
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