Half-Baked

As my wife and a few select friends know, I'm a serial obsessionalist. My latest obsession is baking good bread and making good pizza. Turns out it's harder than you might think. I had a bread breakthrough today, so I'm writing to gloat. I made a 100 percent whole-wheat loaf that turned out light, tender, and tasty. All my previous attempts at 100 percent whole-wheat had been what Laurel Robertson (Laurel's Kitchen, Laurel's Bread Book) has smirkingly called "bricks."

I'm not entirely sure what variable or variables are responsible for the tremendous improvement, but I can nominate a few likely candidates. I used an organic high-protein whole-wheat flour that may have had higher gluten content than the previous Safeway-bought commercial flour I'd used in earlier loaves. I kneaded today's dough longer as well, and checked for gluten development several times until I was pretty sure that the dough was as elastic as it was going to get before I turned off the Kitchenaid for good. This recipe contained both honey and oil, ingriedients that were missing from earlier loaves and theoretically should contribute tenderness to the finished loaf. The honey's sugars allowed the yeast to work much more effectively. At least that's the conclusion I came to after noting the tremendous volume gain in the bulk fermentation and proofing. Unlike some of the lean (read: no oil, no sugar/honey, no egg) recipes I'd made in the past, however, today's whole-wheat didn't spring much in the oven. I do not know what to attribute this to, unless it was because the dough had already risen as much as it could rise in the proofing stage. The lack of ovenspring may also be related to the significantly lower baking temperature of the whole-wheat loaf as compared to the high heat of the hearth-baked artisan breads.

Moving on to pizza...My wife and I celebrated our second anniverary tonight at a new-to-us restaurant in our neighborhood that features a wood-fired brick pizza oven. Of course I was eager to try their offering and compare their pizzaiolo's work with my own. They served up a great pizza, particularly excellent were the toppings. I had BBQ chicken with carmelized onions, several varieties of cheese, and slivers of blistered jalapeno. Definitely not a traditional pizza, and not something I would have considered ordering a year ago. It was unarguably a tasty pizza. The crust, while very good, was not equal to some of my best efforts at home, despite the restaurant's much-touted high-temperature pizza oven. It's true that a really hot oven makes better crust. It's the only way I know to create a crust that is both crisp and chewy, properly browned and done at the same time the cheese is beginning to blister. I'm lucky for a home cook in that my oven is old school (circa 1920) and, though tiny, features a huge bottom broiler/burner that can heat a pizza stone on the bottom shelf to around 700 degrees (I don't know for sure it gets this hot, because my oven thermometer only goes up to 550!). Many electrics and newer gas ovens will only heat to 500 or 550 which is not hot enough to make first-rate pizza.

Tomorrow's project is my latest attempt at a Chicago stuffed pizza. I've got the sausage, the 6-in-1 tomatoes, and the sliced provolone ready to go. The dough is cold-fermenting as I write. If all goes well, you'll find me here tomorrow night with more gloating to do.

Shasta Revisited

We arrived at Bunny Flat on Friday afternoon at about 4:30. We spent an hour getting our gear prepared, wilderness permits and summits passes paid, and boots laced up nice and tight. I noticed the extra weight in my pack as soon as I shouldered it; we were carrying overnight gear this time and our loads were five or more pounds heavier for it. I estimate that our packs were in the neighborhood of forty-five pounds each. Chris carried the tent, which made his pack perhaps a pound or two heavier than mine.

I was amazed at how little snow remained at Bunny Flat. Just three weeks ago when I made my first attempt at the summit with Graham, the entire area was covered with a foot of snow. No snow cover remained, and when we set out on the trail to Horse Camp at about five-thirty in the afternoon, it was over a dry and dusty trail.

The hike to horse camp took about an hour. There was a large group of teenagers milling around the cabin and drinking from the spring. We drank one liter of spring water each and filled our water bottles (four liters each). This would be our last chance for water for the remainder of the climb, as we were not carrying a stove for melting snow. We chatted with a few other climbers who were setting up their camps near the cabin. They seemed skeptical when I told them we were heading on up to fifty-fifty flat or possibly to Lake Helen if we got ambitious. It must have been ten minutes to seven when we strapped on our crampons and went stomping out over the snowfield leading to the entrance to Avalanche Gulch.

The snow was wet and sloppy from the intense solar radiation that had been striking it all day long. The air temperature was a balmy seventy-five degrees and we walked in shorts and t-shirts. As we climbed out into the Climber’s Gully above Horse Camp, I realized that Chris was having a hard time keeping up with me. I stopped several times to wait for him, and as we ascended higher and higher into thinner and thinner air, he began to fall further behind. By the time we reached fifty-fifty flat two hours later, the sun had ducked behind Casaval Ridge and was quickly making for the horizon. The air temperature remained comfortable, but we donned our outerwear in anticipation of falling temperatures after sunset. Chris was tired and his shoulders hurt from the backpack. I waited fifteen minutes for him to catch up at the campsites at fifty-fifty flat. Due to his exhaustion and the coming darkness, we considered camping here for the night, but in the end we decided to press on for Lake Helen. The campsites at fifty-fifty flat are not nearly as nice as at Lake Helen, and no one else was camping in the vicinity. We did not have a snow shovel and would have been unable to dig ourselves in very well, though there were some improvised rock shelters left by previous climbers that would have afforded us some protection from the wind.

We donned our headlamps and trudged on uphill toward Lake Helen. I was feeling strong and climbed quickly as darkness fell around us. Having never climbed this high on the mountain by headlamp alone I felt some trepidation, but I knew the route well and I could clearly see the snowy ledge hundreds of feet above where Lake Helen—and my bed for the night—waited. Using my ski poles for balance in the boot track I made my way up the final pitch to Lake Helen. I found the snow on the moraine quite soft and deep, and I immediately began to posthole to my knees. Not wanting to waste any of what little remained of my stamina, I quickly located a likely spot for our tent. Fortunately, I was able to borrow a snow shovel from one of our neighbors, but I would definitely not climb the mountain again without one of my own. Many tents have blown right off the side of the mountain when sudden gusts of wind have caught them unanchored. The best defense against the wind is to dig in. I set myself this task as I waited for my climbing partner to reach the moraine. After about a half an hour—by this time it was past ten o’clock and completely dark—I’d excavated a two-foot deep fosse for our tent, but there was still no sign of Christopher. I began to get a little worried. What was taking him so long? Had he become lost, or worse? I was certain he couldn’t climb past me without my seeing the bright beam of his LED headlamp (which was several times brighter than my incandescent), and I knew there was no chance he could stray too far from the correct route, because he’d have found himself climbing either Sargent’s Ridge to the south, or Casaval Ridge to the north—neither of which could be done without realizing that something was seriously wrong with one’s orienteering. Curious what had become of him, I made my way through the knee-deep snow to the edge of the moraine to take a look downslope.

I was relieved to see the sweep of Chris’s blue headlamp on the snowfield just below the moraine. He arrived a few minutes later, looking haggard. We quickly set up our tent, ate a hasty meal of bagels, cream cheese, energy bars, and apples, then went to bed. I seldom sleep well in a sleeping bag. I find it constricting, particularly in the way it limits the range of motion of my legs. That night was particularly long, owing to the fact that my climbing partner snores loudly. I lay awake most of the night, and about three in the morning I began to hear climbers in the neighboring tents begin their preparations to ascend to the summit.

I saw no reason to get started that early in the morning. The snow would still be plenty firm in a few hours’ time. By waiting I also increased my chances of making a glissade descent; the snow would be soft enough by around noon to permit a safe, controlled butt slide. I watched as the early-bird climbers got their “alpine start,” thinking all the while that they were making life unnecessarily difficult on themselves. Then again, what was mountaineering if not making life unnecessarily difficult?

At five o’clock I rousted my sleeping climbing partner and asked if he intended to climb to the summit or not. He decided he didn’t feel up to climbing any higher. He had an altitude headache, and his shoulders and hips were sore from carrying the backpack. Remembering how worn-out I’d felt my first time up the mountain, I didn’t argue. I prepared my gear and made my way outside into the predawn light.

As I began to ascend above Lake Helen toward the Heart, I quickly discovered that the bellows tongue on my boots was pinching painfully on my ankles. After the ordeal I’d gone through with blisters on my previous climb, I resolved to take action early rather than wait until the condition became so painful that I couldn’t continue. I also noticed that my calf muscles were becoming tired very quickly—more quickly than I remembered from my first ascent, even though the boots I was wearing were much lighter today than they had been then. I determined that the lack of stiffness in my boot soles was to blame. At each step, as my boots flexed, my calves were obliged to take the full weight of my step. I remembered reading that one element of proper climbing technique is to allow the maximum load possible to be borne by the boot and by the bones of your legs, rather than by muscle power. I solved this problem by changing my angle of approach to the mountain. I adopted a modified French Step, working my way up the hill slowly and steadily by crossing one foot over the other in a traverse. This method proved very helpful, and I noticed several other climbers imitating my style as I passed them on my way to the Red Banks.

I reached the Red Banks at about eight o’clock; it had taken me two and half hours to climb from 10,400 feet at Lake Helen to just under 13,000 feet at Thumb Rock. This spot marked the turnaround point of my previous attempt three weeks earlier. Every step I would take from here on would be on new terrain. I paused to catch my breath, take in the view of Shastina and the little blue jewel of Sisson Lake to the north. I could see a fracture line—called a Bergschrund—where the wall of the Whitney glacier was beginning to pull away from the east flank of Shastina. After my brief rest, I began to trudge up the next pitch, Misery Hill.

Misery Hill would be more aptly named Misery Hills because there are three distinct slopes that must be climbed, each cruelly creating a false horizon, and with it a false hope that the summit plateau lies just over the next rise. The first hill is of moderate steepness and was somewhat less windy, while the two higher hills were somewhat less steep but scoured by high winds. The gusts were reaching forty miles per hour and were plenty strong to knock me off balance a number of times as I climbed. There is virtually no shelter from the wind and it can quickly chill a climber to the bone, making Misery Hill a lousy place to stop and rest. As long as I kept climbing I maintained an adequate temperature inside my longjohns and my shells. I was able to make a brief stop for rest and water on the upper reaches of Misery Hill were some rocks jutted out of the snow and provided some relief from the relentless wind. I found it difficult to drink from my Nalgene bottle: the time it took to swallow the water was too much time spent away from the critical task of breathing in that thin air. I had to coordinate my breathing and swallowing so that I didn’t become winded.

I soon reached the summit plateau and the wind abated. This was my favorite part of the climb. The sky was perfectly clear and deep blue. To the west the snow-capped Trinity mountains—they’d seemed so high from the car yesterday—appeared to lie beneath my feet. To the north, Big Valley extended for thirty miles on into Oregon. To the south, Lassen Peak and the Siskiyou range, and beyond that a thick mantle of brown smog hanging over the northern Sacramento valley. I could see the Clear Creek climbing route ascending the mountain to my south, but I saw no climbers there. On the north flank lay the twisted piles of ice known as the Hotlum and Bolam glaciers.

The summit plateau is broad and several hundred yards long. At its east end are two rocky pinnacles, the first of which is the true summit. As I crossed the plateau, the smell of sulphur reached me on the wind and I remembered that John Muir had once spent a freezing, snow-blind night up here, huddled next to the suphrous fumaroles to stay alive. I wasn’t too concerned about freezing to death, since the temperature was in the upper fifties, but I could imagine how terrifying it would be to be caught up here in a sudden storm. I scrambled up through loose scree and patchy snow to the summit, reaching my destination at nine-thirty. It had taken me four hours from Lake Helen, and the best news was that it was all downhill from there. I wrote my name in the logbook and spent a few minutes taking in the vista, then began to make my way down.

More Reasons to Travel

For anyone who needs another reason to take a vacation, consider visiting this quaint Austrian hamlet.

(Bitte--nicht so schell: "Please, not so fast!")

(Almost) Climbing Mt. Shasta

Last Saturday morning at three A.M., under a night sky of brilliant stars, Graham and I set out from the parking lot at Bunny Flat (elevation 6500 feet), for the summit of Mt. Shasta. The snow was firm from the cool overnight temperatures, but the night had not been as cold as I’d expected. I’d guess it was in the mid-forties at the parking lot. Higher up on the mountain, as we would soon discover, the temperature had fallen much lower. For the moment, however, we walked in comfort.

I wore my crampons from the start. Without the benefit of snowshoes, I’d say the crampons were necessary right away. We’d decided not to make the summit attempt into a two-day outing by hiking to Lake Helen the first day, camping there, and then pushing for the summit on the second morning. Instead, we’d try for the top straight from the parking lot in a single day. It was a decision I would come to regret. In retrospect, given my poor condition and lack of acclimation to the thin air on the mountain, camping the night at Lake Helen would have been a wiser strategy. This approach would have also gone easier on my feet, because the hiking could have been broken up into two days and I’d have been less likely to develop the painful heel blisters that bothered me on the upper reaches of the mountain.

We crossed the low divide that forms the very bottom of Green Butte Ridge and followed a path of foot-worn snow toward the Sierra Club Cabin at Horse Camp. The stars burned brightly and there was no moon. We used our headlamps, but the snow is so highly reflective that we only really needed the artificial light of the lamps while in the shade of the forest. Once we broke out onto the open snow slopes above treeline, we could see well enough to walk by starlight.

I walked with my ice axe in hand; Graham walked with ski poles. In retrospect, I believe that ski poles are a good idea. I found myself wasting energy trying to compensate for missed foot placements in the heavily-tracked snow; Graham used his poles to steady his gait. He soon outpaced me. It only took me an hour to develop painful blisters on my heels. I stopped and pasted moleskins on them, but the moleskins quickly tore away from the skin and were useless.

We wended our way up through the Climber’s Gully, past 50-50 flat and finally up Stand-Still Hill to base camp at Lake Helen. It was seven-fifteen when we arrived, and by now my heels were bleeding and I was desperately short of breath. I was feeling the altitude much more than I expected I would. As we sat down to rest, eat some energy bars and drink a little water on the edge of the moraine, I stared up at Red Banks three thousand feet above. How would I ever make it up there? I wondered.

Ten minutes later we were ready to begin our ascent of the next pitch, a three thousand vertical foot climb to the top of the Red Banks. It was then that Graham discovered that he’d lost his ice axe. It may have fallen out of the loop he’d secured it to on his backpack. We’ll never know for sure, because we never found it. There was no way that he could climb safely above Lake Helen without an ice axe; he’d have no means to self-arrest if he were to stumble and fall on the steep icy snow slope above.

We considered our situation. Graham was intent on making a bid for the summit. Taking into account my altitude exhaustion and the painful condition of my heels, I decided that Graham had a greater chance of making the summit than I did. I offered him my ice axe, and told him that I would wait at Lake Helen while he climbed. He protested at first, but eventually took my axe and headed off up the hill. Just as he was setting out the first rays of the morning sun crested Sargent’s Ridge to the south and spilled yellow sunlight on the north end of the moraine. Graham appeared smaller and smaller as he climbed higher into upper Avalanche Gulch, toward the prominent snowfield known as The Heart. I sat down in the snow and removed my boots. My heels were bleeding and the moleskins I’d applied a couple of hours earlier were useless. I cut some new moleskins, but this time I held them in place with a full wrap of athletic training tape. This solution would prove to be much more sound; this dressing held up for the rest of the day.

As I finished ministering to my feet, a climbing party of two men and one woman arrived at Lake Helen. The woman was sick with altitude effects and could not climb any higher. When she discovered that I was without an ice axe, she offered me hers. Now I had no excuse! I struggled with my ambivalence for a few minutes, then took my new ice axe in hand and set off up the mountain.

I did not anticipate how difficult and how long would be the climb from Lake Helen to the Red Banks. It took me over three hours to make the ascent of about three thousand feet. The snow fields are steep—steepest, cruelly, near the top, where the pitch approaches thirty-five degrees—and there is no place to rest. Near the top of the pitch I was down to a cycle of twenty steps, then rest. Twenty more steps, rest. My progress was agonizingly slow. There were moments of dizziness where I fought to keep from closing my eyes. I nearly lost my balance several times. When finally I reached the top of Red Banks, I was so exhausted that my legs were quivering uncontrollably. I knew I could go no higher, at least not without rest. I planned to rest on the saddle between Thumb Rock and the base of Misery Hill. Perhaps I could eat a snack, rehydrate, and gather enough strength to continue on to the summit, which I knew to lie only an hour’s climb away.

As I hauled myself up onto the little saddle between Thumb Rock and the base of Misery Hill, where I’d planned to rest, I was greeted by a bone-chilling thirty mile-per-hour wind. I’d been too warm in my long underwear and fleece layers just moments before, but here in the saddle exposed to the cold winds, I was shivering within minutes. There was no shelter from the wind and it became immediately clear that I had only two options: I could either press on higher toward the summit, or I could save the summit for another day and begin down the mountain, out of the wind. Given the state of my legs, there was really no consideration of climbing higher. The difficulty was that I didn’t really trust myself to descend, either. The Red Banks—the steepest part of the entire climb—were just below where I stood and I doubted whether my shaky legs could take me down through them safely. One missed step and I could slide all the way back to Lake Helen. Most of me, anyway—minus the flesh I’d leave on the mountain as I fell.

Providence, apparently, had not scheduled me for a long fall over icy slopes. I successfully negotiated the descent of Red Banks and found a precarious perch—a small boulder sticking a foot or two out of the snow—where I sat down, removed my pack, and rested. I ate a combination of foods—beef jerky, jack cheese, and Tiger’s Milk bars—that would have made me puke on any other day. But at thirteen thousand feet, after eight straight hours of climbing, it was alpine gourmet. I waited there on my rock and tried to assess the conditions for a glissade descent. Glissade is a fancy French term that means sliding down on your ass. It’s much faster and a whole lot less work than traversing down using plunge steps. It takes a surprising amount of muscles strength to descend by traversing—more muscle strength than my tired legs could muster. I watched a few other climbers attempt glissades, and they seemed to be able to control their speed safely. I nervously removed my crampons, slung my pack on my back, and eased myself into a glissade chute, ice axe at the ready.

I quickly learned to control my speed and as I became bolder, my glissade descent toward Lake Helen became faster and faster. I learned that I could use my the spike of my ice axe not only as a brake, but as a rudder. The controls were crude, but I was able to maintain the velocity and line that I wanted—more or less—all the way down to the moraine, where I dusted the excess snow off my shell and out of my boot-tops and waited for Graham to return from the summit.

Graham arrived twenty minutes later, and we descended to the truck. The descent through lower avalanche gulch was slowed somewhat by the snow’s softening in the afternoon sun. I did not envy the climbers who were ascending, each footstep sinking them knee-deep in the slush. I made a note that if I ever climbed this lower reach in the afternoon to certainly bring snowshoes.

We reached the parking lot quickly. I estimate that the entire ascent took about nine hours and the descent took maybe two hours. When I return to try for the summit, I will certainly be in better shape, and I will definitely camp at Lake Helen for the first night. Breaking the climb into two days ought to make it much easier on the legs, and give the cardiopulmonary system more time to acclimate to the elevation.

Finally, Incontrovertible Evidence that Women are Nuts

My latest read is a good one, and you should read it, too. It's called Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, who has one of the indisputably coolest jobs in America: he thinks about things, talks to cool people, and writes about it for the New Yorker. Well, I guess it depends on your idea of cool, but to a geek like me, that's pretty much the top.

Blink is about the unconscious mind. It's about the part of our brain that can take in information from the environment, analyze it, and whisper intuitions in our ears--all without us being consciously aware that this is taking place. How does this prove that women are nuts? One of the studies that Gladwell writes about in Blink was done on a group of young men and women engaged in speed-dating.

To grossly simplify: the researchers ask a woman, prior to the experiment, what she's looking for in a man. She gives a reply, say, that she's after an intelligent, caring guy who will treat her well and be dependable. Okay, fine. Now on to the dating! The woman is paired with a number of men and she has chemistry with one of them. They exchange numbers, and so forth. Turns out this guy is tall and handsome, wealthy, and very self-confident. In the exit interview, the researchers ask the woman what she's looking for in a relationship once again, except now she says, "I'm really looking for a man who's tall, handsome, and very sure of himself. And it would really help if he was well off." Hmmm. And here's the kicker: they followed up with her several months later and asked the same question a third time. What do you think she responded? "I'm looking for a man who is intelligent, caring, and will treat me well."

That's not a fair representation of the study, but it captures the basic idea: that we (it's not just women) don't really consciously know what will attract us to another person. If we're asked to give a verbal accounting of our attraction, it's likely to be wrong. It's also likely to unstable and to be greatly affected by the current circumstance (e.g. if we've just had a connection with someone, that person's characteristics are likely to be cited as attractive). We're unlikely to learn from our experience.

What do we take away from all of this nonsense? Well, clearly women are nuts. But I guess men are nuts, too. So if you happen to stumble your way into a decent relationship, in spite of your ignorance of what you actually want, you better realize you've got a good thing going.

Everyone Loves a Good Psych Post

Due to the overwhelming interest in my last offering, I've decided to indulge in another psychology-related post. This one has to do with reading books. Books, on the whole, are not of great use to me because I tend to forget nearly everything that I read. Yet I keep on reading. Why?

One theory is that I feel guilty not reading because it's what smart people do. If I don't do it, I guess that means I'm not smart. If I don't like it, I guess that means I'm not an intellectual.

Another theory is that I really don't forget everything. Maybe I remember a thing of two, and maybe the things I do remember are the really important ones. Maybe.

So the latest book is a trade psychology book written by Control-Mastery oriented therapists. The title's Imaginary Crimes. Yes, cheesy--I know. It's not really all that great. The clinical examples are boring and not particularly memorable. But he did drop one thought in there that's really stuck with me. It's simple.

You ready?

The best thing we can do for our children is to lead happy lives.

You see? Simple. And I remembered it!

Another Psych Post...

Warning: this post is likely to be lethal to anyone who is not either pathologically introspective, a psychology student, or involved in a severely dysfunctional relationship. Come to think of it, that probably includes lots of people, so read on!

So here's an interesting thing about being a therapist: as you begin to clue in to what drives your clients to do the fascinating and painful things that they do, you begin also to notice parallels in your own life, relationships, etc. This can be enlightening, humbling, and threatening. It's always interesting.

Example: in the theory that I've been working with lately, there's the idea that much of the misunderstanding and pain that happens in relationships involves unconscious tests that are presented by one party and failed by the other. I got into an argument with my wife the other day--I don't remember exactly what it was about--and in the end I felt angry, misunderstood, and rejected. We came to some kind of intermediate resolution and began to get ready to leave town for the weekend, to go visit with her family. I suddenly became aware that I didn't want to go. I didn't want to get packed; I didn't want to get into the car and drive with her; and I didn't want to spend the weekend with her family. So I told her, "I don't think I'm going to come along this time. I'd really rather just stay home."

"I thought you might say that," she said with a defeated tone in her voice. She stomped off into the bathroom and I could tell by the way she was slinging her makeup around that she was really pissed off.

I lay there on the bed and thought about what was going on for a moment and it occurred to me that if a client were describing this interchange to me I would probably be interpreting it in terms of a rejection test. It would work something like this: I was feeling hurt and rejected by my wife from the earlier argument, and I unconsciously conclude that I did something blameworthy to merit the rejection. I take on the belief that I deserve to be rejected. Now, that's not a very pleasant thing to believe about oneself, so I'd be motivated to disprove it. Unconsciously I test that belief by tentatively rejecting her ("I'd rather just stay home") with the hope that she will not take my statement at face value.

"Did it occur to you that I might want you to disagree with me?" I called.

"What do you mean? No, it didn't occur to me. How the hell am I supposed to know that?" she asked. She's got a good point there. Rejection tests are tough to pass, because it's so easy to take them personally and to feel hurt. But to do that is to fail the test.

My wife is very patient with all of this psychology crap, and I'm grateful for it. We talked over the rejection test idea a little while, and soon we decided that there was really no problem. It wasn't that I didn't want to go with her for the weekend, but that I was irrationally feeling guilty for an imaginary crime--the crime that had caused her to "reject" me during our argument. Once she could show me that being "rejected" isn't really such a dire, dreadful and serious thing (at least when it's in the form of a test and not a real abandonment) then I could relax and stop feeling guilty.

We made up and had a fun weekend.