While the other article is still in the making (should be out fairly soon though), I thought to list the top three stupid things, I’ve done on the mountains. I’ve (luckily) learned something out of each, I hope you’ll either enjoy or learn from these three small stories as well.

Top three stupid things I’ve done on the mountains:

Number one was the large stone on top of a glacier formed stone ridge close to Annapurna base camp in Nepal. Well, not really the stone, but the fact that I had to climb on top of it. In 1996 we were hiking there with my friend. The last part of the path to the base camp goes on the side of a kind of stony ridge, there it was, right from our trail, a HUGE stone on top of the ridge hanging half out over about 200-300 meters high cliff, not exactly vertical, but steep enough to result deadly fall. Obviously I had to climb and get myself photographed (too bad, I couldn’t find the photo anymore) there. Once I was coming down from the stone I felt how the stone moved slightly. It was a scary moment. I’ve been avoiding such stones ever since.

On the same trip we did quite a few other stupidities as well. Like walked just in few days to the base camp (4130 meters above the sea level) and we didn’t stop there, we went about 700-800 above it without any acclimatization what so ever –> we were lucky and we didn’t get any serious mountain illness. Besides providing few opportunities for danger Annapurna is extremely beautiful spot, there is several over 7000 meter peaks around the base camp and there’s probably no other place such as this in the World. And if you’ll just do it like guide book says, it’s pretty easy to get there as well.

Number two I did while my first trip to Kebnekaise, Sweden. It was late on the summer. We were going up the east side route with my girl friend. She’s slightly afraid of heights and at some point we were so in so steep and high spot that she didn’t want to go further, especially because the next portion would have been on the glacier. Luckily there was another pair coming up straight behind us and one of them agreed to continue with me to the glacier. So we put on the crampons and all the other gear tied the rope (wrong way) and started ascending on the glacier. Neither one of us had any experience on glaciers nor red anything about them. Eventually I fell in to crevasse, which luckily wasn’t too wide. I managed to grab both sides of it with my hands and pull myself up from there.

Though on those first two I didn’t suffer any damage what so ever, the number three got nominated because I got some (though small) damage while being stupid. It’s the sliding incident that happened at the Hourglass fall, where I slid (and rumbled) down several hundred meters on a steep snow slope. If you’re interested, read the full article.

This particular occasion happened last year in Skibotn valley, northern Norway at ice fall called “Hourglass”. It’s very beautiful late season fall, with height about 250-350 meters. Since we already had two full days of climbing behind us at Tamok valley, we weren’t there for climbing. We were just probing for possible spots for the next season.

Picture above: I’m approaching “Hourglass” fall.

Under the fall, there’s quite long and steep approach on the snow. At the bottom snow wasn’t too hard, but once we got closer to the fall, it got harder. Eventually we almost had to put our crampons on to reach the fall. So we got there, had some tea and bread, put up the gear and my friend Jari did a short probing climb just to see what to expect later on. He came down successfully and we wrapped up our gear and started our descent.

At Korouoma, which is much smaller and never has such a hard snow, we have had habit to slide down the hill by our foot with a great speed and fun. Because it’s fast and because it’s fun we decided to slide there as well. I’ve done the fast sliding fun thing couple of times successfully in Sweden at Kebnekaise as well, again with a lot softer snow. Jari took the first ride and he went down really fast, but managed to slow down with his axe. So I jumped on. Unfortunately my speed got too fast and once I tried to slow down, I just couldn’t. The slide was out of control.

I tried to turn on so that I could hit my axe on the snow, and hit it couple of times, but without luck. This was mostly because the fact that at the point I started the slide, I had grasped my axe from the middle, not appropriately from the handle. In other words I wasn’t able to get enough strength to the swing and I wasn’t able to hold my axe tight enough to stop the speed either. At this point I did my fourth mistake; I tried to use my foot to slow down. This resulted an uncontroled rolling effect. So there I was rumbling down with astonishing speed. Fastest descent I’ve ever made, and roughest. Axes were flying, my backpack was flying, and equipment tied on the backpack was flying. I couldn’t do anything.

Fortunately once snow got softer and slope less steep, speed slowed down, just few meters away from large pile of stones. In case pile would have been located higher on the slope, it would have turned me in to a bag of broken bones. I was fortunate to have just a twisted arm and equally fortunate to have a friend with heavy duty pain killers. Later on in the evening I noticed that my chest was bleeding a bit as well. It was due the small puncture that my axe had done. Fortunately there was no any serious damage what so ever (though I guess I was lucky also with the axe).

Lessons learned:

• Ascents and descents can pose risks, so one has to pay attention. Don’t play if you’re not 100% sure about the conditions and the place. Since people tend to be more careful while climbing than while doing their ascents and descents, I could almost claim that those “easier” situations can pose greater risk due carelessness.
• Be prepared to use axes efficiently also during ascents and descents. Have a good tight grasp on the axe.
• Don’t use your crampons or foot to slow down, if the speed is too fast, you’ve probably already built enough momentum to throw you rolling if you do, use the axe instead. Try to use the axe as a rudder and keep them against the snow to gradually slow down your speed.
• Helmet is a good thing, also on ascents and descents. I had mine on. The only thing I did right there.

Location details:

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Few images from the spot below:

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