Scott Trauner

Freelance writer and founding editor of The Connecticut Outdoor News (www.connecticutoutdoornews.com) "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." -Benjamin Franklin

My Photo
Name:
Location: Connecticut, United States

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Lebanese Spirit is Unshakable

I landed at Rafik Hariri International Airport just before dawn on Good Friday. It was the day after the 31st anniversary of the start of the Lebanese Civil War.
From the same tarmac where Hezbollah shot and killed an American sailor during the 1985 hijacking of TWA 847, I looked up at the glittering hills hanging over Beirut and believed all the things I had told friends and family to convince them that it was safe to come here.
That afternoon, I picked up The Daily Star, Lebanon’s English language newspaper that I had been reading online for months in preparation for my trip. I finally held its print version in my hands and read stories about the previous day’s memorial events around the country. There were old file photos of wounded children, draped corpses, bombed buses and little girls armed with AK-47's. Above the layout was a headline- in hindsight, a painfully ironic one-, borrowed from the words of an unnamed national figure remembering the devastation of those years: "‘Don’t do it again- ever.’"
I went to Lebanon to learn more about a trip my late mother took in 1965 to visit family in Beirut. By choice, I went alone, and while I have no contact with any Lebanese family, I skipped registering with the U.S. Embassy, as the State Department’s travel warnings for Lebanon hadn’t really changed much since a car bomb killed Rafik Hariri over a year earlier. Besides, a nun I met months before departing had told me that my mother’s spirit would accompany me on this journey.
To be honest, I took the nun’s offering as something her calling required her to say. That is, until strange things began to happen. It seemed that whenever my two semesters of Arabic didn’t work, whenever I was as lost as the street cats that wander Beirut in search of their mothers, someone would swoop in to help.
Strange, at least, to an American.
There was Nala, the business student who questioned a cab driver when he tried to rip me off for an extra two dollars.
There was Mohamed, a more noble cab driver whose ring tone played "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and who bought me a Turkish coffee and shook my hand to wish me a Happy Easter.
There was Anthony, the apple farmer who brought me into his home on Easter for homemade ma’muul.
There was Jan, the registered nurse who saw that I was lost and insisted I cram into the back of her tiny car with her two brothers. In the front seat, her mother was concerned about my plan to travel alone to Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold in the east.
Three months later, Baalbek has been bombed. So have several other cities I visited, including Jbeil, Tripoli, Zahle, and of course, Beirut. There are eery similarities in my twelve week-old issue of The Daily Star and current newspapers’ photos of dead children, hastily constructed caskets and weeping evacuees.
Maybe I was a fool that peaceful morning at Beirut’s airport. Or maybe I was right on mark when I told my wife that "Now is as good a time as any." Because it did, in fact, turn out to be a final window of opportunity, framed by the Cedar Revolution of 2005 and this new war of 2006, a last chance to learn about that trip taken ten years before I was even born.
But something occurred to me just this week while reflecting on the 400 dead Lebanese apple farmers, nurses, cab drivers, students and children: the nun was wrong. It wasn’t necessarily the spirit of my mother that accompanied me, but the spirit of the Lebanese that accompanied my mother and made her the person I’ve missed all these years, and whom I found in Lebanon.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Discovering Dinosaur State Park

On August 25, 1966, the front page of The New Britain Herald showed a professor from Willimantic State College examining an 18" dinosaur track uncovered two days earlier at a construction site in Rocky Hill.
Three weeks later, The Herald reported that Governor John N. Dempsey had decided to turn the site of the would-be state building into a state park because of its "educational and scientific potential."
This summer, Dinosaur State Park celebrates the 40th anniversary of this discovery, and while the 200 million year-old tracks have certainly lived up to the potential that Governor Dempsey predicted, some of the park’s most attractive features are outside of that space-aged exhibit center.
The park in Rocky Hill is one of the most family-friendly resources in the state and was even the place where Governor M. Jodi Rell’s "Great Park Pursuit" began its eight-week competition, a part of the new "No Child Left Inside" initiative. While it may be late to join that competition, Dinosaur State Park is an ideal place to bring kids for a scavenger hunt or to simply learn the value of a walk in the woods.
Between 1970 and 1975, the park added a small coil of nature trails that are so rich with animal and plant life that you could spend hours exploring the boggy grounds. While the two-mile system may be small compared to those of our other state parks, Dinosaur State Park maintains and protects a wide range of habitats, including swamp, meadow and forest.
The four blazes (red, blue, orange and yellow) are all relatively easy trails accessible to most hikers. Their surfaces consist of planked swamp walks, crushed stone, rocky paths and even old, crumbling pavement. Last October, the park was awarded a federal grant of $26,630.74 to help with its Mesozoic Trail Project. With this money, trails will be re-graveled and 28 new signs will be installed throughout the park.
I began my own walk on the red path by the trail information cabin, where you can pick up a map and learn a little about some of the species you may encounter. Having your own field guide with you can be handy when you come across the many distinctive plants and birds along the paths. Mosquitos can be a nuisance in these damp woods, so bug spray is necessary for a comfortable walk, no matter what the length.
I kept my eyes open for painted turtles in the wet flanks of the trail, but instead spotted a woodpecker deep in the brush. I soon hooked up with the yellow path until beginning a loop on the orange which brought me to the park’s deepest point. Here, the woods open up to a small colorful field, bright with sumac and aster. Butterflies tumbled through the air as the more agile jewelwings landed among the cow vetch. I sampled some dark, ripe blackberries and knew by the seed-filled droppings on the path that I wasn’t the only one who’s enjoyed them recently.
Following the park’s blue trail toward the arboretum, you’ll find a small bat shelter. Bees have also found this structure useful as you’ll see their large nests beneath the roof. The arboretum also includes a butterfly garden, a native plant garden and a vernal pool.
One of the most interesting attractions in the trail system, however, is the red maple swamp walkway. Here, a well-constructed boardwalk cuts through the densest part of the park, where frogs croak back and forth, leaving you stuck in the middle of their conversation. Bees crawl on the buttonbush below while swamp roses rise from the muck.
These trails are maintained by the Friends of Dinosaur State Park and Arboretum, an organization that is also celebrating an anniversary after having spent the last thirty years supporting and protecting the resources of the park (www.dinosaurstatepark.org). Weather permitting, the FDPA also leads guided nature walks Tuesdays through Sundays at 1:00 and 2:30 p.m. until August 27.
Family events will be held throughout the summer in celebration of the discovery that made this park possible. "Ask a Geologist," for example, is held every Friday and allows you to bring rocks or fossils for identification by an expert. Saturday, August 19th is Dinosaur State Park Day and will feature live animals, music, crafts and other educational programs. An outside area allows kids to make casts of dinosaur prints while the real ones are inside waiting to be rediscovered.
When you do get to this important state park, of course you should enjoy its museum, but also be sure to make some of your own tracks on its nature trails. And along the way, some of your own discoveries, too.

Suffield Climber Eyes K2

Exploit your opponent’s vulnerabilities- it’s a strategy common to all sports, and was probably best demonstrated by coaching legend John Heisman who once led his Georgia Tech football team to a 222-0 victory. He is also the man who best put the tactic into words: "When you find your opponent’s weak spot, hammer it."
According to Chuck Boyd, this works for climbing big mountains, too.
"There’s usually a way that’s not the most difficult way to get up a mountain," said Boyd, known in the climbing community as one of the region’s most experienced and talented mountaineers. "Sometimes what people look for are the easiest ways to get up these things. You’re looking for the weakness."
The word "weakness" can be misleading, though, especially when we consider the level at which Boyd climbs. It would be like saying George Foreman was weak when Mohamed Ali rope-a-doped him in Zaire.
Weakness is especially relative when we’re talking about a mountain like K2, the infamously difficult- and deadly- Himalayan peak that Boyd will attempt in 2008.
"It’s more technical climbing, more difficult," said the 52 year-old Boyd, comparing it to Mt. Everest, which he summited in 2004. "There’s no easy way up it so to speak."
The one weakness that climbers have capitalized on most often on K2 is The Abruzzi Spur and is the route Boyd plans on following as well. Also known as the South East Ridge, the route was pioneered by the 1954 Italian expedition that first conquered K2. It involves both technical rock and ice climbing, a steep, kilometer-long section of loose debris and, of course, intense weather.
"It’s basically the easiest route on the mountain," said Boyd.
He pointed out, though, that the route you choose and the decisions you make on that route are the only things you have control over. Outside risks such as avalanches, on the other hand, are always present.
"The trouble with K2 is there are a lot of objective dangers," said Boyd, who is trained in avalanche safety and outdoor emergency care. "It sticks up higher than anything else there, so it funnels the weather around it."
Second in height only to Everest, the 28,251-foot K2 is the third deadliest mountain in the world behind Annapurna and Nanga Parbat, also in the Himalayas. Since 1978, the year of the first American team to summit K2, the mountain has claimed the lives of one in seven climbers. As of 2004, the 50th anniversary of that first successful Italian expedition, only around 240 people had repeated the feat while over 50 had died trying, a record that Boyd is certainly aware of.
"I think that people that aren’t scared are kind of lying about it," said Boyd. "You have to have a certain amount of anxiety. You should be serious about those fears. It can happen to anybody. It happens to the best."
In preparing for K2, climbers must first dress the route with their ropes, a process that brings them up and down parts of the mountain several times before the actual summit push, increasing the risk for disaster with each ascent and descent.
"You’re certainly taking your chances, but you’ve got to know when to turn back," said Boyd. "If you’re totally focused on ‘I want K2,’ ‘I want Everest,’ you can die getting there. That’s not what I’m looking for."
In fact, Boyd has been satisfied with pushing himself on more technical climbs, whether they are here in New England or on the other side of the globe.
"I don’t need to be at the highest altitude to do that," he said.
According to Boyd, there are between 800 and 1,000 seven thousand-meter peaks in the world that haven’t been climbed yet.
"Never been climbed," said Boyd. "But they’re not big enough. Everybody really focuses on these 14 eight thousand-meter peaks."
And while five of these fourteen peaks are in Pakistan, with K2 being the highest, Boyd has already immortalized himself on some of these "smaller," lesser-known mountains, pioneering his own routes. He has laid claim to the first ascent of Shipton Spire in Pakistan, a project that took six years to complete. In 1983, Boyd and his team pioneered the East Face of Nevado Cayash in the Corillera Blanca of Peru, which wasn’t repeated for another nineteen years.
But again, it’s the climbing itself that Boyd loves and he feels lucky to be making a living at it with his guide service out of Suffield, Vertical Realms (www.verticalrealms.com). He teaches mountain skills to climbers ranging from doctors to children and just recently helped a client prepare to reach his goal of Mt. Ranier.
"There’s a certain amount of excitement about [first ascents], the whole adventure part of it," said Boyd. "But just climbing in general, just being out there and doing it, the movement. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. I’m having just as much fun with the kids climbing easy routes as I am pushing myself on a project."
These projects, however, are obviously still important to Boyd. He likes to plan these trips two years in advance and will so far take on K2 with climbing partner Dave Watson, 29, of Southington.
"He’s a great partner to have," said Boyd.
The team will eventually consist of four members. This 2008 expedition will cost approximately $50,000 for the entire team, which will require outside sponsorship. As a member of the 2004 Connecticut Everest Expedition, Boyd sold tee-shirts to raise funds and was sponsored by Eastern Mountain Sports. Pictures on his web site show Chuck at the summit holding items related to various other sponsors, including a patch from Ski Sundown, where he also works as ski patrol.
Unless someone signs onto the team with more Himalayan experience than Boyd has, he will likely be the expedition’s leader. Boyd already has records on file with the Ministry of Tourism in Pakistan, not to mention his thirty three years of climbing experience.
As prepared as he may be for K2, Boyd knows not to let the mountain capitalize on his own weakness: living at near sea-level. Part of the strategy is to spend the whole climbing season near K2, getting acclimatized and waiting for the perfect opportunity to push for the summit.
"We’re talking about climbing another 8,000 meter peak first to acclimatize for [K2]," said Boyd.
This is similar to 2004's initial plan.
"Originally, the expedition was going to go from Everest to K2, but we couldn’t get the funding for that," said Boyd.
Funding is the major obstacle at this point, as Boyd is confident in his own abilities since his business keeps him in climbing shape year round. Mentally he’s ready, too, as he shrugged off the question of whether or not he’s a superstitious climber.
"Not really," said Boyd. Then he thought back to Everest.
"The sherpas are," he said. "That’s how they believe you climb the mountain. The mountain tells you when it’s time to climb."
If all goes well, K2 will speak up in 2008.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Heart in the Clouds: Anne Parmenter Summits Everest

It’s hard to imagine that at 22,000 feet you could look up at anything other than the stratosphere. Back in 1999, though, when Anne Parmenter stood atop a peak nicknamed the Matterhorn of the Himalayas, she craned her neck and sized up her next big mountain.
"You stand on Ama Dablam and you’re looking right at Everest," she said. "You want to reach out and touch it."
The highest mountain on earth may have been seven miles across the Khumbu, but it certainly wasn’t out of Parmenter’s reach. The Bristol resident had already climbed Aconcagua twice and Denali once, respectively the second and third most topographically prominent mountains in the world. To round out the top three with an Everest summit, she would have to draw deep into this cache of experience, which also includes the volcanoes of Ecuador and numerous ascents as a climbing guide in the Grand Tetons of Wyoming.
What complimented this resume best, though, was when Parmenter had asked if the restaurant we were meeting at was showing the World Cup- proof, I thought, that she truly does come from that land across the pond not only known for loving its soccer, but for producing great mountaineers, too.
"After seeing Everest for the first time when we went to Ama Dablam, especially as a kid growing up in England, with the history of Chris Bonington and the British explorers, I was like, ‘Wow, that’s Everest,’" she recalled. "That evoked something in me."
Brazil was playing Ghana on the corner TV while Anne talked about her first climbs as an eleven year-old in the Lake District. I had been to Grasmere myself during college and we agreed upon the beauty of the place better known for Wordsworth and his daffodils than the harsh moonscapes that these early climbs would lead to decades later.
Parmenter, the Head Field Hockey Coach at Trinity College, turned forty seven on the Fourth of July, a date, she says, that made her destined to become an American.
Not to mention the twentieth American woman to reach the top of Everest.
Stacy Allison was the first back in 1988, but not before Junko Tabei of Japan smoothed the snow for all women in 1975. If there is a name that inspired Parmenter at all, however, it was Alison Hargreaves.
"She was really pushing the barrier for women mountaineers," said Parmenter.
Hargreaves was the second person to climb Everest both solo and without supplemental oxygen. In 1995, Hargreaves reached the summit of K2, but died on her descent, an event Parmenter remembers like yesterday.
I asked Anne if she had any interest in climbing K2, second only to Everest in height, but certainly more difficult- and deadlier.
Anne paused then looked up suddenly.
"Yeah," she said. "I would like to say that I’m not interested. Will I ever climb it? It’s just such a. . ." Her words again get lost somewhere on that summit, which only six women have reached. Just one of them is still alive today. The other five have either died on the way down K2 or on subsequent climbs on other Himalayan mountains.
"I’m not superstitious, but I would say I’m calculating," she explained. "I hope that I’m now mature enough that I don’t have this ‘summit or die’ mentality."
Parmenter proved this discipline in 2004 as a member of the Connecticut Everest Expedition that was full of team tension and that became a captivating story in the media. At 26,000 feet, Parmenter had a gut feeling, paid attention to it, and turned back.
In contrast, this year’s team was a better fit and that made all the difference.
"I knew them and I trusted them," she said. "I trusted them with my life."
As a result, Parmenter came down from the summit six weeks ago with relatively little physical harm. In that time, a small wound from her oxygen mask has healed into a faint, pink smudge on the bridge of her nose.
The possibility of serious injury or even death is not lost on Parmenter, though. She witnessed what frostbite had done to the second South African to ever summit. The distinction, however, may cost him part of his hand.
Nine people died on Everest this season, with five in just one week. Parmenter walked by the British climber Dave Sharp just ten days after he died, while she had to step over other bodies that have been there for decades, preserved in the cold Himalayan air, still in the outdated gear of their times.
Such reminders of these risks make the boredom of base camp even more difficult. Aside from completing countless Sudokus and trying to stay healthy, there’s not much to do but wait for your chance to summit. While Parmenter’s team had planned for a late-May summit push, watching other teams summit as early as May 14 made them anxious. But that waiting, of course, doesn’t last forever.
"You know you’re going to have four days of hell," explained Parmenter. "North Col, Camp Two, Camp Three, summit. Each day, you’re getting progressively higher, progressively more tired and your body is breaking down more quickly. Can you hang in there? It’s like hitting mile 18 in a marathon."
She should know. She’s run eight of them.
But there’s only one Everest, so when the summit becomes a reality and dreams come true, the feeling of accomplishment is intense.
"When you’re very close to the summit you have to do this bizarre rock scramble and I literally got off the rocks, turned right and there’s the summit," she said. "There was a thump in my chest and I was just completely overwhelmed with emotion and started to cry."
She wasn’t there yet, though, and she had to remind herself that people have gotten even this far and died.
"‘You’re going to make it to the top of Everest,’" Parmenter told herself. She refocused her sights, and at 7:19 on the morning of May 25, she reached the top of the world. For fifty minutes, Parmenter looked out through the perfect window of weather, at the curvature of the earth and at peak after peak, some named, some not. One of them looked really familiar and this one did have a name: Ama Dablam.
"It was pretty neat to be on Everest and to look down on Ama Dablam," she said. "You’re looking at the panorama and you can just see all these peaks and you say, ‘I was on that summit.’"
For now, all Parmenter knew about her next climb was that it would be later this afternoon with a friend at Pinnacle Rock, that weekend crag in Plainville.
What she has learned on each of her bigger ascents, though, she has brought back and applied to this ordinary world at sea level. She even related it to soccer.
"I think so often nowadays people look for excuses," she explained. "Why didn’t the U.S. team win in soccer? ‘Well, it’s Bruce Arena’s fault.’ No, it isn’t. You need to be willing to accept the consequences in the same way that two years ago, I turned around."
The real lesson is in that she tried again.
"Truly set your sights," she said, "and you can do anything you want."

Notes:
1. Photo of Anne on summit was taken by Scott Woolum.
2. Anne Parmenter is available for slideshow presentations at schools, corporations and community groups. Contact her at anne.parmenter@trincoll.edu.

Monday, July 03, 2006

Book Review: Mountain Bike Maintenance

As UConn students ten years ago, my friend Mike and I went for a late-night mountain bike ride. Climbing over the crest of one of the University’s farms, we began a fast downhill when we found ourselves adopted by a herd of deer. Whitetail were on each side of us, in front of us, and I don’t know but I can guess that they were behind us, too. Just like we’re not meant to live among chimps or grizzlies, we’re not meant to run among deer. By pure chance, though, Mike and I did. This is still one of my favorite experiences in nature, and despite having worked in a bike shop all throughout college, I had never heard of such a thing.
Then I read Guy Andrews’ Mountain Bike Maintenance (Falcon Guides, $19.95). Right in a chapter he calls "The Basics," Andrews warns, "don’t race deer- they’re fast and unpredictable."
Despite ruining my Jane Goodall experience, the down-to-earth advice in Andrews’ new guide is as entertaining as his repair instruction is practical. His is not the poorly translated language of owners’ manuals. It is a fun to read, sometimes blunt, but always knowing voice that you can trust.
Take, for instance, his down-home flat tire remedy: "Stuffing your tires with twigs and trail debris is an okay idea if home isn’t too far away and you’re on smooth terrain. And you have a sense of humor."
The sport of mountain biking, however, can be just as fast and unpredictable as the deer Andrews describes. Therefore, mountain bikers routinely face complicated repairs, sometimes in remote places, so they need to be even more self-reliant than road riders.
"This is how it is and how it’s always been," writes Gary Fisher in the book’s foreword. "It’s about self-sufficiency, your own power and your machine."
This machine has come a long way since Fisher introduced the "Klunker" to the world of cycling, but Andrews covers all the mutations that have taken place since the 1970's. With his assume-nothing language, Andrews reaches all readers, without excluding those with prior knowledge, and starts with the basic anatomy of the modern mountain bike by using a highly visual "Bike Map."
Andrews then takes a quick detour to your basement and offers an inventory of tools you’ll need for your home bike shop. These range from household tools like screwdrivers and pliers to more specialized equipment like spoke wrenches and a truing stand. Andrews also gives a list of on-trail tools that will prevent you from having to wing it in the woods, though his inclusion of zip-ties on this list allows for some creativity.
The body of this guide, however, is comprised of instructions for the major areas of the bike, dedicating entire chapters to gears, brakes, contact points, wheels, suspension and steering and, finally, the frame. Not all repairs are simple so these chapters bring you step by step through each of them, from troubleshooting to fixing the problem. With a color photograph to compliment each of Andrews’ steps, Mountain Bike Maintenance makes the most intimidating repair accessible to all.
Installing a new front derailleur, for example, is a process that you may rather leave to the local bike shop. Even then, as Andrews writes, "for many mechanics, the front derailleur is their biggest headache." But with the nine-step process outlined by Andrews, it doesn’t have to be.
From angling the derailleur to adjusting it, this section clearly demonstrates one of the toughest repairs and covers all possible curve balls in the process. Andrews takes into consideration the awkward setup of full-suspension frames and tells the reader how to handle it. He discusses the difference between a top and bottom-pull front derailleur and gives troubleshooting tips for future maintenance of this device both on and off the trail.
The beauty of all outdoor sports is the self-reliance involved. But as the outdoor industry works to make these experiences more enjoyable, new technology often leaves us relying on experts even more. Having Mountain Bike Maintenance will make you a more independent rider, a "free bird" as Fisher puts it. It will get you as far as you want to go, but more importantly, it will get you back home at the end of the day.