Name = David Chen<\/p>\n
Email = dchen168@stny.rr.com<\/p>\n
File attached = IMG_0368.JPG<\/p>\n
Message =
\nHi, John.<\/p>\n
Some time ago, I placed a SamStone in the Gunks near New Paltz, NY.
\nOne of my best friends, Ryan, was my guide and instructor for that
\nlovely day of rock climbing.\u00a0 Unlike me, he is an avid
\nrock\/ice\/mountain climber.\u00a0 Well, when he told me early last year what
\nhe and two of his friends had planned to do this past December, I
\nasked him to place a SamStone for me.\u00a0 He happily agreed to do so.<\/p>\n
On Dec 23, 2013, Ryan placed a SamStone at the summit of ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/samstones.org\/WordPress1\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0368.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
in
\nthe province of Mendoza, Argentina.\u00a0 The Seven Summits refer to the
\ntallest mountain on each continent.\u00a0 Aconcogua is the second tallest
\non the list.\u00a0 Yes, only Everest is taller!\u00a0 (There are taller
\nmountains in Asia that don’t reach the height of Everest.\u00a0 This claim
\nfor Aconcogua is referring just to the list of the Seven Summits.)\u00a0 I
\ndare say that this may be the highest altitude anyone has ever left a
\nSamStone!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
and here’s more info<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hi, John and Diane.<\/p>\n
I just submitted an entry for a placing a SamStone at samstones.org, but I wanted to share additional details of my friend’s trip.<\/p>\n
In case you haven’t gotten to read the entry yet…During the trip to the Gunks in New Paltz, NY where I placed the SamStone on one of my climbs, my guide and instructor was one of my best friends, Ryan.\u00a0 Ryan loves the outdoors.\u00a0 He goes ice\/rock\/mountain climbing when he can schedule it in.\u00a0 Some time ago, he started talking about going on an epic, once-in-a-lifetime kind of mountain climbing trips.\u00a0 He started making plans with two other friends from Ithaca early last year.\u00a0 When I heard he was actually going to go, I asked him if he would bring a SamStone and place it somewhere for me.\u00a0 He happily agreed to do so, even though he said at the time that he might not make it to the summit.<\/p>\n
Well, on Dec 23, 2013, he reached the summit of Aconcogua in the province of Mendoza, Argentina and placed a SamStone.\u00a0 Aconcogua is in the list of the Seven Summits.\u00a0 If you aren’t familiar with the Seven Summits, it’s a list of the tallest mountain on each continent.\u00a0 Aconcogua is the second tallest mountain on that list!\u00a0 Only Everest is taller.\u00a0 To be fair, there are several taller mountains in Asia.\u00a0 However, since Everest is the tallest mountain in the world and happens to be in Asia, those other mountains are not on the list.\u00a0 As I mentioned in my message via the SamStone.org website, this may be the highest altitude anyone has left a SamStone!<\/p>\n
Ryan came back with some amazing stories and details about his climb that I wanted to share with you.\u00a0 I didn’t include any of these extra details in the message I sent via the SamStone website since it would have made the message very long.\u00a0 Ryan made it to the summit on day 9 of the trip.\u00a0 If people didn’t have to acclimatize to the altitude, it would be much faster.\u00a0 They spent 3 days between moving camps to get used to the altitude.\u00a0 On day 1, they would hike to the next camp and come back down.\u00a0 On day 2, they would gather most of their food and bring that up to the next camp before coming back down.\u00a0 Finally, on day 3 they carried the rest of their gear up to the next camp.\u00a0 On the way up, they hired mules to help lighten the load.\u00a0 Ryan estimated that his pack weighed about 20 pounds on the way up.\u00a0 He said it was closer to 80 pounds on the way back down.\u00a0 Near the end of the return trip, he made up a poem about his pack comprised mainly of expletives!\u00a0 In his group of three, he was the only person to make it to the summit.\u00a0 His two other friends were within 1000 feet of the summit (he guessed maybe closer to 800 feet), but they were feeling the effects of altitude sickness pretty severely.\u00a0 He told me that one reason he wanted to get to the summit was to place the SamStone up there for me.\u00a0 I wouldn’t have been any less happy if he had stopped and turned back with his two friends.\u00a0 After hearing some of the details, maybe he should have turned back with them!<\/p>\n
On the way from high camp to the summit, he said he was out of breath with each step.\u00a0 I think he said it took him hours to walk maybe the equivalent of a mile.\u00a0 It wasn’t a mile vertically, but the total length of the path from the high camp to the summit may have been almost a mile (not quite sure of that distance because he was telling us so many details).\u00a0 Along the route, there were two rocks that he had to climb.\u00a0 Imagine going up two steps on a staircase.\u00a0 Normally, not a big deal.\u00a0 That’s what he was facing, and he said it almost destroyed him when he saw those rocks on the path.\u00a0 But he managed to work up the will power to move on.\u00a0 He needed to take several deep breaths before climbing up those two steps.\u00a0 Then he was hunched over trying to catch his breath when he got to the top of those two steps.\u00a0 After what seemed like forever to him, he saw the top of a cross.\u00a0 He knew then that he had made it.\u00a0 If you look at the two pictures I attached below, you’ll see the cross I’m talking about.\u00a0 Apparently, it’s a place where people leave items of significant sentimental value.\u00a0 For example, in the second picture, you’ll see two pacifiers and rosary beads to the right of the SamStone.\u00a0 Ryan thinks that was left by someone who had lost their babies.\u00a0 There were also flags tied to the cross and other items of personal value at the base of that cross.\u00a0 He thought that was the perfect place to leave the SamStone.<\/p>\n
Now, why would it possibly have been smarter for Ryan to turn back with his friends?\u00a0 First, some additional background about Ryan.\u00a0 He is a former EMT with wilderness first responder training.\u00a0 He currently works as a nurse in the Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca.\u00a0 He brought his stethoscope (which we bought him as a graduation present) with him so he could listen to his own and his friends’ heart and lungs for signs of high-altitude pulmonary edema (fluid buildup in the lungs that can be life-threatening).\u00a0 He also put together a mini trauma kit just in case they had an emergency.\u00a0 So he knows his stuff when dealing with medical issues in the outdoors.\u00a0 Looking back at it now, he knows he was high (not just in altitude, but also as in altered state) because of the low oxygen levels in the air.\u00a0 When you look at the pictures, you’ll see that he was wearing a blue coat.\u00a0 At the time, he would have sworn he was wearing a slightly lighter red coat that he also had brought with him for this climb.\u00a0 He definitely wasn’t seeing things correctly while at the summit.\u00a0 One of his other friends had brought a pulse oximeter.\u00a0 After meeting up with his friends at camp again, he slept for 12 hours and was still tired and groggy.\u00a0 His friend took a pulse ox reading and it was 70!\u00a0 Apparently, in the hospitals, patients with a reading of 90 are given additional oxygen.\u00a0 He was still well below that threshold after 12 hours of resting.\u00a0 Unfortunately, he and his friends had to pack up and leave because the weather was taking a turn for the worse.<\/p>\n
There are so many other stories and details to go with the amazing pictures he took while on this trip.\u00a0 He was high enough (altitude this time) that you can see the curvature of the Earth in the clouds behind him in a couple of pictures at the summit.\u00a0 I thought you would appreciate the effort he went through to get that SamStone to the top of Aconcogua.\u00a0 However, it may be possible that he made it to the summit in some small part because I had asked him to place a SamStone on the mountain for me.\u00a0 He mentioned several times while telling us this about this experience that he really wanted to place the stone at the summit.\u00a0 He didn’t want me to write to you saying that he left a SamStone 800 feet from the top of the mountain.\u00a0 He wanted me to be able to tell you that there is a SamStone on the TOP of the mountain.<\/p>\n
So I have a request for you now.\u00a0 In the entry for the SamStone website, I think it’s best to just use the shorter message that I sent via the website.\u00a0 However, can you include both of these pictures in the entry?\u00a0 I was only able to include one picture via the website.![\"\"](\"http:\/\/samstones.org\/WordPress1\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0378.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n
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Name = David Chen Email = dchen168@stny.rr.com File attached = IMG_0368.JPG Message = Hi, John. Some time ago, I placed a SamStone in the Gunks near New Paltz, NY. One of my best friends, Ryan, was my guide and instructor for that lovely day of rock climbing.\u00a0 Unlike me, he is an avid rock\/ice\/mountain climber.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-placed-samstone"],"geo":{"latitude":-32.6533318,"longitude":-70.0108337,"description":"Aconcagua - Mendoza Province, Argentina"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/samstones.org\/WordPress1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/samstones.org\/WordPress1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/samstones.org\/WordPress1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/samstones.org\/WordPress1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/samstones.org\/WordPress1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2087"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/samstones.org\/WordPress1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2092,"href":"http:\/\/samstones.org\/WordPress1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087\/revisions\/2092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/samstones.org\/WordPress1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/samstones.org\/WordPress1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/samstones.org\/WordPress1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}