E-mail from my friend Rock Climbing in C hina.

“Got an e-mail from my friend today who is off in China doing some rock climbing. He does some teaching/instructing/guiding in rock climbing and mountaineering. Tough job... I know. Thought some of oyu might find it interesting.

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Hello everyone,

I'm writing from a little bar/cafe in the small town of Rilong northeast of Chengdu. We arrived safe and sound in Chendu, Sichuan Province, China on the 21st of Sept after a lot of flying. The subsequent days have been interesting and fun trying to figure out, well, everything. Our studying Mandarin has been invaluable, since there are only a few well educated people here and there that can say more than a few words in English.

We spent the first few days in Chengdu figuring out transportation, costs, visa extensions and, heaven help us, food shopping. I got my first intestinal invasion just prior to the grocery battle, so I didn't take part in the decision making. But shopping for 3 weeks of food for use in the backcountry was a real chore and my comrades did great (Erik, Misty and Anitra). It has been interesting figuring out how to cook things that have directions written in chinese, and surprisingly after 8 days in the backcountry we actually didn't starve to death. There were a few things that we ate but still didn't know what we were eating.

Our original plan was to come here to the Qionglai Mountains, hire horses, and stay out for 14 to 16 days camping and climbing. But after 8 days basecamping, acclimatizing, and scouting routes, plus one attempt on an unclimbed peak, we are going to leave this area because of weather. It has either stormed, rained or snowed every night we have been here, but the afternoons and evenings are absolutely wonderful for the most part and we have gotten some amazing photos. the mountains here range from slate banded, snowy peaks to HUGE granite spires. One side of the valley we were in looked like the Canadian Rockies, while you turn your head to the other side and it looks like Patagonia. One peak has a 5000 foot sheer granite face, almost 2 times the size of El Capitan.

It's no wonder people haven't climbed much here, I think the weather prevents a lot. Although very few Chinese people climb, and those who do are national climbing "teams" from different places in China and they only care about the highest peak called Siguniang. In all our travels so far, we have only seen 4 non-Asians, and Chengdu is a city of 11 million.

Our biggest concern while camping was yaks. They are domesticated, but roam freely inthe valleys. the first night we arrived, a local Tibetan named Mr. Tsao, told us through miming and lots of phrasebook pointing, that the yaks would try to come lick us to death at night because they lack salt. This was the first thing he told us after introducing each other by name, so we knew it was important. sure enough, just after dark and after getting in our tents, a stick brushed against our tent and Misty looked out to find a huge pair of glowing eyes staring back at her! you get rid of them by merely throwing rocks, which we eventually found to be important to have a ready stack next to the tent at night. Our next few days of rain included making a string/stick baracade around our little basecamp, which luckily for us, the yaks aren't intelligent enough to know that they couldn't just step right through it.

The local Tibetans have been wonderful and, even from our basecamp, we were able to "eat out" by going to the local Tibetan food shack and get potatoes and goat or yak meat which is quite good. As for the rest of the food in Sichuan (also spelled Szechuan) it is wonderful, but also very hot. they have a peppercorn that is covertly added to certain dishes and you don't know it until your tongue goes numb, literally. I've never had anything like it, although I can't wait to come home and covertly show this pepper to some friends.

Our only attempt on a mountain was last saturday the 2nd of Oct. The peak is called "duo qi shan" which roughly translates to "life-force-energy-of-a-yak mountain". It is about 16,100 feet tall and we thought would be a good warm up of sorts since most other peaks are around 17,000 to 19,000 feet. Plus the name of the peak would have been a spawning ground for great route names like "Yak Attack" or "Yak Check" (which is a play on a route with the same name in British Columbia). We woke up to 8 inches of new snow, but tried it anyway. Since we were outfitted for rock climbing, the snow basically stopped us after a half a rope length of snowy 5.8 loose rock.

The attempt had to be made without Erik who had to hike out due to a preexisting medical problem. It wasn't too threatening, but he had to go all the way back to Chengdu 6 hours away. We are in touch with him and will be heading back to the city to regroup, reshop, and then come back out west to try some more trekking and climbing near a Tibetan town called Kangding, and another called Litang.

So that's it for now, hopefully I'll be able to write again from there, or earlier if something funny happens and I can't wait to tell you about it. I certainly can't wait to share photos.

Anyway, I hope all is well with each of you. I might not be able to respond to every email, but if you have the chance to write, I'd certainly appreciate hearing what you are up to and what's new in the election. (yes, we will be voting absentee ballot via fax in late Oct).

Talk to you soon,
Andy”

“Very cool. Thanks for sharing. I'll bet the pictures are spectacular.”

“I'll be sure to post some pics if he send them out!”

“Chengdu is where I lived for a year. The prickly ash "pepper" he speaks of is used for just that purpose - as you would make sweet and sour dishes, you can make hot (chili pepper) and numb (prickly ash) as a flavor combination. It is the fourth flavor in Sichuan cooking, behind the main trio -- chili, garlic and ginger. Numb is a taste hard to acclimatize to, lol. Just say, Bu yao (I don't want). Also, yak meat was the one form of "beef" we were able to get on a regular basis in Chengdu, though there was lots of pork (this was 10 years ago and meat rationing had only ended in the previous year.)”