Community On Ice, An Additive Adventure Entry

Peter Doucette on Mummy IVIn Conjunction With OutsideTV.com and Osprey Packs

...We chatted for a while. I tried to convince him ice climbing was a good idea—fun even—and he told me he liked to scuba dive. I told him I was afraid of dark water. He said he was afraid of frozen water. We accepted each other’s differences right up until he asked me where I ice climbed.

“This year?” I said, “Bozeman, MT, Ouray, CO, Cody, WY, Munising, MI, North Conway, NH…” I rattled off my winter schedule. “I go for ice, and for the ice festivals,” I said.

He nodded and thought for a while, as if mentally mapping out the locations in his head. “Is that really necessary?” he asked....

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Terminal Effervescence

Returning Home to the Portland, Maine AirportI started skipping winter without knowing it, a few years back. Today, 1.5-inches of rain into the New Hampshire afternoon, I’m making up for what I missed. The poodle has to go outside to go to the bathroom, and I promised him I’d take him once the rain let up. That was three hours ago. I’d let him out to go by himself, but all he’d do is wait for me at the top of the stairs, his back right leg permanently kipped up in protest against the pain.

This dog is teaching me lessons. They likely all do. Three weeks ago, I held all 60-pounds of him on my lap in the vet office in North Conway. The last time we were there was ten months prior, for what turned out to be a floating bone in his neck. When Dr Alfred asked this time how we are, I tried to let the information out gently. In between talking about Osito’s sudden limp and the skiing that day, I let it slip that he was diagnosed with cancer.

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Namibia Video 2: Southern Crossing in Action

A video short from Chris Alstin at www.alstrinfilms.com

Namibia Video 2: Southern Crossing from Majka Burhardt on Vimeo.

Waypoint Namibia: Big Walls, Desert Mirages, and Perseverance in the Darmaland and Beyond. *

Majka Burhardt on Southern Crossing, 5.11+, V. Photo by Peter Doucette.

On June 1st, Peter Doucette, Kate Rutherford and I completed Southern Crossing: a 1300-foot 5.11+, grade 5 rock climbing first ascent on the Brandberg, Namibia’s highest peak. But that’s only part of the story. There’s also a 2,000+ year-old painted giraffe, 108-degree temperatures, eight days at 15km/hour over washboard roads, scorpions, laser sharp granite cracks, crumbling granite faces, and 1.7 meter-long cobra tracks.

Forty-two days ago, I went to Namibia expecting to climb, explore, and push my understanding of how curiosity, ambition, and adventure work vis a vis culture. I knew all of these components would come into play during the month long trip, I just didn’t know the formulation. In the north, where we’d originally planned to climb the most, our best Kate Rutherford, Peter Doucette, and Majka Burhardt. Photo by Chris Alstrin.moments came from sitting in the shade of an Acacia tree with a group of Himba women painted in red ochre and butterfat. They spoke Himba, Afrikaans, and Portuguese; we spoke English and Spanish. Hand gestures and figures drawn in the sand eventually told the story of dirt-track roads, established trails, and unexplored mountains. Further south, on the Brandberg, we scraped through the dirt, bushes, and bird refuse that guarded our prospective line for three days to get to what we hoped would be a way up. Each day, we looked for a way for this country, the “easy Africa,” to give us portals to a higher stance, a greater understanding, or a smooth road. We eventually found all of them.

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Namibia Video 1:

What it Takes to Want a First Ascent

Namibia Movie 1 from Majka Burhardt on Vimeo.