The Happy Feet Routine

In doing some random research (I think tying to find out why my Vega HA boots had taken such a harsh toll on my feet when taken out for a shakedown in the snow) I found the following useful advice on Andy Kirkpatricks Psychovertical site (Mountain Boots).

At the end of the day take off your shells and knock or wipe out any snow or ice inside. Don't leave the shell outside in the snow, put them under your head and use them as a pillow, or stow them inside your rucksack. This is done to try and stop them getting super cooled, resulting in them super cooling your inner the following morning. If the laces are icy then try removing them with your teeth (WD-40 can work well on laces).

Next get into your sleeping bag with your inners on after first loosening the laces. You should have a plastic zip lock bag with a complete spare pair of socks ready. Take these out and put them next to your skin to warm up. Next remove one of your inners and take off your socks, sticking them down your top for later. Once your feet are bare, dry them off with something and then rub them to get rid of any clamminess and promote circulation. Once this is done put on your dry socks. Your feet should now be warm. Repeat with the other foot. If you're into a bit of luxury you may have some down booties as well.

Don't just stick them on. Try to warm them up first, I do this by blowing my hot breath into the boot then pulling it on. Remember to pull your socks up and try to avoid any gaps in your legwear at the ankle. Next dry out the inside of the inner boot using one of the removed socks. This is often best done by first removing the insole. Once dry (closed cell foam will just have moisture on the surface) the inners can either be put back on loosely laced, half put on (toes in the heel), or placed somewhere inside the bag to stay warm. Personally I put them at the foot end to give my feet a little more underfoot insulation from the ground. Fill your water bottle for the night and the next morning with hot water and place it between your thighs (not at your feet), as this will warm the blood heading down to your feet.

bq. Before you go to sleep take your damp socks and lay them flat next to your skin (grim but worth it). I usually lay the socks across my stomach, chest or thighs. Another option is to wear them on your hands and stick your hands next to your skin or in your pockets. In the morning these socks should be dry and they are put in the zip lock bag and put away for the coming night. Your inner boots and socks should all be warm and ready for action now and all you need to do is tighten up your shells. If using the stove it might be worth holding both the inner and outer over the flame (don't set fire to your boots for God's sake), in order to remove any chill and start the day off with hot boots.

The majority of frostbite cases could have been prevented if climbers had followed these basic rules. Starting off with wet socks, inner boots that have been left to freeze, or shells encased with ice is like begging for black toe.

Now I don't know how much of this is going to apply to the Mera trip, its hard to gauge how much of it will be spent at altitudes where these sort of practices are necessary. I do however think its prudent to try this sort of thing out in advance - so this evening I got into my sleeping bag with my inner boots on, and gave it a go. It turns out it is a little harder than I anticipated. Firstly there isn't a lot of room to try and remove the inners (which then take a lot of space up in the sleeping bag). Secondly changing socks was quite a challenge, because of the limited space, and trying to get them on the right way. Oh and I didn't try drying my feet, or doing anything too clever. Like most things though, I'm sure some practice will make it so much easier (and it's probably no more difficult then the end of watch procedure I've done sailing - with the benefit that you are not doing it in a tiny bunk on a boat trying to throw you out of it!).

I never did find an answer though to my feet troubles from last week, but I have a suspicion what was the case. I was lazy and put the inner boots on whilst they were in the outer boots. This means that you cannot tighten them properly round the ankle - but that you can 'compensate' by over tightening round the calf. Once my shin has recovered I hope to give this a go, and hopefully not cause the same issues.

New Stuff

As 2011 starts knocking at the door - I shall be updating the blog with preparations for my trip to Nepal, and a few new things like some reviews and the like. The first of these went up, as I review an old album that probably rates as a classic from 18 years ago!

Review: Sugar - Beaster

One of the best gigs I remember from my University days, was seeing Sugar at the Roadmender in Northampton. It must have been 1992, as Copper Blue wasn't yet out, and I really went to see them as this was Bob Mould's first band after Hüsker Dü. I'm not sure I remember much about the night beyond it being this immense tsunami of noise that poured from the stage with no relent. If you asked me to say what they sounded like, well I'm not sure I could have told you - but I wanted more!
A few weeks later Copper Blue finally made into the shops, and although a great debut album, it didn't reflect Sugar as a live band, and I still found myself yearning for that terrifying primal scream I had heard on a hot summers night. The end of the album, after the last song Man on the Moon was to provide a hint, that something was coming…
In the April of 1993, Beaster, a six track EP of tracks recorded during the Copper Blue sessions was released, and they couldn't be any more different, the Mr Hyde, to the Dr Jekyll found in Copper Blue. This snarling, uncommercial and bleak as hell album, is perhaps Sugar's finest hour, and finally showed the raw power, and emotion that the band brought to the stage.
This 'Beast at Easter' (as the NME titled there review, 5 stars as I recall) lures you in with the hypnotic charms of Come Around, a song that could have fitted on Sugar Blue without notice, it is however the enticing lure into 30 minutes of something else entirely. A sustained note at the end then leads to the chaos of Tilted (and yes everything is tilted now), and hey it doesn't sound too bad, then it ups the pace and breathlessly you chase along trying to keep up with this outburst. These were the days of Grunge, the guitar solo was an anathema, yet Tilted features a blissfully distorted solo that races away but never seems out of place.
There is now no respite, we move from the galloping carnage of Tilted to Judas Cradle, opening in discordant feedback and moving deeper into the dark heart of this gem - guitars swirl, the rhythm section batters on regardless, the vocals are impenetrable in the mix, this is your guide to a very personal hell.
The beauty of this album though, is not just that it's a visceral expression of anger, but that it captures that purity of feeling, as anger resolves, and hope is yet again seen at the end of the torment. JC Auto is the beginning of this resolution, if Judas Cradle is the fractured thoughts of the flailing mind, then JC Auto sees focus return, it is a climb out of despair. It's still brutal, the pace unrelenting, but it's looking outwards not inwards. Then everything is kicked upwards once again, perhaps not surprising for a song titled 'Feeling Better', like Come Around, we are now restored the comfortable world of Dr. Jekyll's Copper Blue. Finally, the resolution is complete with the haunting sounds of Walking Away, a simple ending to this complex and challenging album.
Sugar were to go on to record one more studio album (File Under: Easy Listening), before Bob Mould moved onto other things, though they probably didn't register much outside the readership of NME and Q Magazine, the three albums - with Beaster being the high point for many are a better achievement than many indie bands could hope to dream of. If you don't own any of them, you should.

It looks like it's not on iTunes, and Amazon only has used copies http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beaster-Sugar/dp/B00002494E but it's worth tracking down…

W7583

I seem to have spent a lot of the last few years picking up silly little niggles which have taken some time and effort to sort out with the very good physiotherapists at Witty Pask and Buckingham. Earlier this year, after a run in icy conditions in February, I picked up what I thought was another niggle, and so off I went to see Dan, and get things fixed.

Well, it turns out this perhaps wasn't a silly little niggle, after managing my way through the London Marathon (where most of the issues were really down to the training I hadn't done as a result of the injury, rather than the injury itself), the pain in my knee just hasn't gone away. To make it worse, inaction seems to be just as unhelpful, any time spent with my knee at anything more than 80º causing pain. It was time to admit defeat, and a consultation with a local sports orthopaedic surgeon was sought.

In the last two weeks, I've had my knee X-rayed, then needed an MRI (something I was quite happily taking in my stride until I got to the hospital and started filling in the check list prior to the scan, as an MRI involves a ridiculously large magnet, then they want to know there are no stray pieces of metal in your body, which if you're like me, means you start thinking about every scrape an incident you've had that might have put something metallic into the body without knowing!)

Luckily it's damage to the tendon, and not the cartilage, and the usual turn of events would be to inject steroids to help the tendon calm down. Of course being me, it had to be something unique (in fact so unique that I'm going into the Professors lecture file, infamy at last!) and there is a split at the top of my right patellar tendon, which means that this cause of action could cause damage, rather than repairing the tendon.

So I'm left with the option of surgery, it's a three month recovery (including two weeks in a splint), and luckily I can get in in the next few weeks, which means I can be recovered by January (of course being told it's a three month recovery means I shall be aiming for two!), and still have plenty of time to get back to full strength for Mera Peak in April.

Much like the MRI, I have launched into it, knowing it's the right thing to do, but as time passes, I'm starting to worry a little about not being mobile for up to a month, and the impacts that will have. It is of course better to get it out the way, and not need to do this later in the year and completely mess up 2011 plans.

So, I have two weekends of mobility left!

This is what I call an airport

During some of my down time on Sunday, I spent some time finding out a bit more about some of the places I'd be going to whilst I was in Nepal. Having always had something of an interest in aviation, the flight from Kathmandu to Lukla sounds like quite an experience.

"So it was with mixed feelings that I boarded the Twin Otter, a small twin engined STOL aircraft, caable of carrying about fifteen passengers… Only a few of us had made the flight before and the others were keenly anticipating views of the Himalayas. I was gloomily contemplating the far more dramatic mountain landing at the other end, for I knew Lukla to be one of the most terrifying places to put down that could possibly be imagined."

Storms of Silence, Joe Simpson, Vintage 2007.

The thought of getting a first glimpse of the Himalayas from the air sounds fantastic, and an exciting way to be introduced to the mountains. I'm not sure however though, if I'm ready to be subjected to landing on the runway at Tenzing-Hillary airport, that is 527m long, with a 12% grade (meaning that the one end of the runway is 63m than the other). It's pretty dramatic though, as seen below. (Look out about 40s into the landing you can see a flight getting away from Lukla and banking away!)

Landing at Lukla

Takeoff from Lukla

Ground operations are pretty hectic too, it sounds as though weather can severely limit the ability to fly into and out of the airport, therefore it gets pretty busy when there is a window in the weather. A pretty hectic five minutes can be seen here. You can't really see the grade on the runway, till the first flight takes off and launches itself at the end of the runway (oh and thats a 700m drop at the end!)

Flight operations

It's all part of the experience though, it isn't mountaineering unless you've had an experience in some form of transit, that has made you wonder if you're even going to make it to the mountain. 

Update on Tuesday, September 14 by Nathan Adams

Just found out that the History Channel ranked Lukla at #1 in their top 10 Most Extreme Airports! Also learnt that the airport was conceived by Sir Edmund Hillary as not just a way of getting climbers to the mountains, but as a way to bring books to local schools. The area around Lukla is inaccessible by road, so everything is flown in.