I Didn’t Conquer Kilimanjaro

March 10 2024, Uhuru Point.

THE SUMMIT

I didn’t conquer Kilimanjaro. I paid attention, cooperated with the mountain in optimal conditions. Made the summit on Mar 10 2024; and more importantly, made it back down safely on my own steam.

This was a pilgrimage for my late wife Leslie Sowle, who’d done it in Dec 2003. When I reunited with her in Jan 2022, I repeated my admiration for her accomplishment. She looked at me and said “its just a long walk. You could do it”

Leslie in red parka. Kilimanjaro, 2003. Photographer unknown.

At the time I demurred, because Kili was irrelevant in the face of her oncoming death. I began thinking about it in September 2023.

If not now, then when? 

I started training with her very good 2003 Arcteryx RT25 pack at home in Ventura County, CA. I made no mention of it on the socials. Bad juju.

I’d booked the longest trip possible [11 days Northern Lemosho Route] with Simon Mtuy’s Summit Expeditions to get as much altitude conditioning possible. A shorter trip [5-6 days] would’ve been a brutal pounding; like a tent-peg in the dirt, with a likely non-summit finish. 

We started March 3, taking a good week to get up to Kibo Camp at 15,000′. It was worth every minute.

Summit day started at Mar 10, 0500 with our small group [Megan Woods and Doug Marsh]; the guide Felix Mtuy, the assistant guide Adam P Matem, Said B Mande, and the man carrying the Gamow bag (portable hyperbaric chamber) if shit went wrong. The other 16+ porters would knock down camp, and reassemble it at Barrafo Camp and await our return.

Note: Once in the tent its a one way ticket down the mountain.

I had a panic attack 50 meters from Kibo Camp, but quelled it with the stern memory that Leslie had done it.

Switchbacking up into the dawn. The higher we got to Gilman’s Point, the further away it got. Zeno’s Altitude Paradox. We started seeing the midnight-departure summiters, plus the in extremis clients being fast-walked down the scree between two guides. Glad it wasn’t me.

Made Gilman’s point. Sat down, had a drink, and promptly puked. This was of a piece with my ultra-experience, so I didn’t panic. All I wanted was a cozy dirt nap in the sun. Fuck the summit.

But no. Said, one of the porters, gently took my pack, so I could make it to the top. I shuffled along the rim at 19,000′. When Uhuru Point was now in sight. I burst into tears. A complete catharsis. Now I saw what she’d seen. And I finally realized that she had a deeper strength I’d never realized.

The others came, we took our hero shots in brilliant sunshine, had the sign to ourselves. In twenty minutes we were done, and began our descent out of the Death Zone down to richer elevations.

Which is a whole other story.

Slowly, Slowly

“Pole pole” [Po-lay, po-lay, is Swahili for ‘slowly-slowly]’ You’ll hear that a lot, and see it in every souvenir shop.

I thought I’d seen technical trails in my ultra days. Nope. Kili shit is real.

The Kilimanjaro porters are living gods. Them going uphill was one thing. Watching them going downhill blew me away. That’s where serious danger lives. The mud is grease, and the rocks will break you into shattered bloody pieces, painfully. They’re carrying 20# of their gear and up to 30# of yours, while passing you.

“Babu [Grandfather in Swahili] to airport in one piece” was no joke. I wasn’t going to endanger them having to carry my broken ass to an evacuation lift-off point, or a wheelie gurney. So I moved accordingly.

PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

The Old Bull of Kilimanjaro was later the Downer Calf of Istanbul. On March 19, Kilimanjaro caught up to me and I was flattened completely for 36 hrs. I had the classic massive re-set head cold, drifting in and out of a low-grade hallucinatory fever. And I walked funny for the next ten days.

But I’d done what I set out to do.

Tech notes

Photos were made with the 2013 Panasonic Lumix GM1, and its 14mm lens. The camera rode in a vintage 1991 Ultimate Direction pouch on a beefy sternum strap. Fewest number of moves in and out, which counts at elevation.

Further reading:

Kilimanjaro Trek Photos

Kilimanjaro Card Oracle and Smokes

Kilimanjaro Notes

2024 Kilimanjaro Trek: SENE Guides & Porters [photo project] 

Kilimanjaro Gear Notes

Not For Position Only

Brutally-maimed tree on Fountain Ave, Silver Lake, LA, CA 2015.

Here’s one for you: I know a writer who posted a re-worked photo I’d taken of her. The colors were murky, and nothing like the original. I asked her to take it down, as it wasn’t the photo I took or released.  She said she would, but liked her version better.

WTF?

My response: “Allow me to rephrase this— how would you feel if I took one of your written pieces, carved it up, added words, etc, and reposted it as yours? Then tried to explain to you that I liked my version better?”

<CRICKETS AND TUMBLEWEEDS>

Every Day I Preflight The Book

In 2004 I was the pre-press tech at the legendary Workbook in Los Angeles. My job was to go through every incoming file to make sure all assets were included [fonts, visuals etc], that the colors were to spec, file sizes correct, etc.
Most were, and some were not.
Many terms and referenced technologies here can be revisited at the RennFaire.
Meanwhile, I had time to think about things.

Every Day I Preflight The Book
(With insincere apologies to Elvis Costello)

Don’t tell me you don’t know what art is,
When you’re old enough to know the good look,
When strange hands look you up in the Workbook,
When your 4/c center spread is saved from being an end note,
Thank the man with the bucket in a leaky CTP boat.

And now I’m giving your files the the penetrating look
Everyday,
everyday,
everyday…
Everyday I preflight the book
Chapter One– your files are all wrong
Chapter Two– your tiffs are El-Zee-Double-You
You said you’d lose the Old RGB in the middle of Chapter Three,

But you were up to your Pantone tricks in Chapters Four,
Five and Six
The way you send those weird PDFs
Your layouts suck,
and try to FTP me,
with files improperly Stuffed,
On four or five disks
Four-color hairlines and off-register’d Quark
Are captured here in my Error remarks

And now I’m giving your files the penetrating look
Everyday I preflight the book
Don’t tell me you don’t know the difference
Between designer TruMatch and a in-gamut CMYK
I look at your sad-ass files in my working day
Even in a perfect world where every file good to go,
I’d still be hi-rez and you’d be F-P-O.

And now I’m giving your files the the penetrating look
Everyday,
Everyday,
Everyday…
Everyday I preflight the book
Everyday,
Everyday
everyday…
I preflight the book

I Needed Business Cards

Viet-themed business cards, with Viet money, and a dwindling brandy in the corner.

I’d been stalling on redoing my business cards for a long time. Overthinking the “wtf do I put on it?”

Maybe two weeks before wheels-up on my 2023 Hanoi trip, one of the men in the group posted a Flat Stanley of his trip kit. With business cards and a QR code.

Fuck me. That was it.

Figured out the front. QR Code to my Insta.

Now the back side. Full bleed image. We’ve all seen the usual scooters, rice paddies, conical hats, Viet beauties etc. Most of that gets lost in a small format. I drilled through all my images. And settled on this detail from the Thanh Ha Pottery Village, a remarkable Christmas-adjacent ceramic tree, with ornaments. That, remarkably, resemble women’s breasts.

Imagine.

I got to it, sized the cards to what a local Hanoi printer knows as a standard biz-card size.
That’s 3.54″ x 2.17″ in Freedom Fractions, or 90mm x 55mm metric.

Make it easy for the vendor.

I sent it [the PDFX1A file: crops, bleeds, embedded fonts, the works] to my All Things Possible Goddess in Hanoi, Ms Thu Le. And they were waiting for me when I arrived a week later.

Here’s what the printer got:

Crops, bleeds, old-school MC PDFX1A, print production in the house.

What I’ve Learned About Travel So Far

This started from a friend wanting Cambodia advice. In no particular order.

00/ WhatsApp on your phone. Its cross-platform and universal.

ID & VISA

Color Xerox front page of passport, laminate it. Keep it in a “throw down wallet”, ie something you can toss in the event of a mugging. Real wallet and real passport are safely elsewhere.

E-visas. Now. The official Cambodia Gov website, $37. Other brokers promise fast service, at $75 & up. It may take 10 days. Unless you want to dick around in line at the airport,, filling out forms, slapping passport photos on said forms. Try that arriving at 2030hrs after a long day.

Vietnam visa are single entry. The multiple entry option may or may not be available. You’ll need the multi-entry if you plan on going in and out of VN. Apply online.

PLANNING

Map everything out on a calendar, making sure to note time zones. You’ll start to see holes, overlaps and omissions.

Have itinerary as a text doc w ALL confirmation/booking numbers available on phone or Dropbox/whatever. You’ll be looking up that info, promise

An email acct you can get on her phone. I use gmail because its clear of all the other shit I get on my main email account.

eSIMs vs SIM cards

Depends on your trip length and are you going to cross borders.
I used Airalo eSIM. eSIM on phone unless you fancies swapping out SIM cards. I used Airalo last 3 overseas trips to EU, SE Asia).

Order the Airalo promptly. They run out of packages, then you have to wait for a new batch to drop. And I’d probably do the install at home, then activate it in country, rather than wait at airport etc.

Follow directions patiently. It takes a while for the eSIM to load on phone w a stable internet connection.
Airalo has national, and regional packages. I was a phone hog, and only blew thru 3Gb in 30 days.
Crossing national borders w an eSIM is pretty good. There’s a lag with the handoff. Again, much nicer than swapping out SIM cards.

Finally: be sure to specify your eSIM in your phone settings. Otherwise AT&T [or your carrier] will happily ding you for dick.

LUGGAGE

Carry-on only. When I ran into visa problems in Hanoi, couldn’t re-enter VN on a [pay attention here] SINGLE ENTRY VISA. Since I had carry-on only, I wasn’t separated from checked luggage, which will go on to its destination, with or without you.

Memorize these numbers: 22 x 14 x 9.

After carrying too much thru IT/FR/UK this spring, I came home, went on an online minimum-carryon-size jihad. 22 x 14 x 9″ [Imperial Freedom Fractions] is the go-to size.
That will go into a 2-engine turboprop overhead bin. Because they are small.

I bought this backpack from Varusteleka [“where’s the liquor?”]

PRO: Built like brick shit-house. No zippers to fail. Rugged, durable, sturdy.
CON: Harsh pack-straps, zero padding on the back panel

SOLUTIONS:
0] Don’t whine
1] Bought aftermarket pack-strap pads, from a recommendation.
2] Made some cushion in the pack by inserting a sturdy 2mm thick foam pad cut to size in bladder-pack interior pocket.
3] Compression sacks from Outdoor Research to compress the living shit outta your clothes, whatever.

This pack saved my ass when I came back to Hanoi and discovered I only had a single-entry visa. Which meant I had to leave immediately for Taiwan, Thailand, or my original destination: Laos. If I’d had checked luggage I’d have been shit-outta-luck.
Happy ending: got my 2nd Vietnam visa while in Laos, and lived happy ever after.

I also used a BagSmart camera bag for cameras and laptops. Although smaller and less-padded than my beloved ThinkTank, it fits under tight seats.

CLOTHES

Drip dry tropical synthetics. This means underwear too. Polyester has gotten really good. See Mountain Hardwear, Columbia or 33,000 feet brand. Cotton is great but will never dry in the steam-bath that’s SE Asia. My trousers were ex-officio super lightweight tropical pants, originally impregnated with some mosquito repellant. This was gone after 3 passes thru Viet laundromats.

Laundry pods for hand wash clothes. Then wring out clothes wrapped in a towel, and twist it damp dry.

MONEY

Cambodia is unofficially a dual dollar/riel economy, USD/KHR. The manager of the Siem Reap hotel told me that the govt is trying to discourage dollar usage. Tell that to the vendors at the Siem Reap night market, all prices in USD & Riel.

I used Currency App to guesstimate conversions.

Carry crisp clean $100 bills for sudden cash requirements [ie airline tickets due to visa malfunctions etc]. They won’t accept cards.

CARRYING SHIT, ODDS & ENDS

I used a $30 messenger bag from Amazon as my all purpose wallet holder, etc while traveling. It’s multipurpose and somewhat expandable. I stowed it while plane travel. Perfect for tropical travel. Way less sweaty than a sling-bag, or the tropical vest I wore last year.

Also: Microfilter water bladder from REI. I went to, and came back from SE Asia with a tight asshole. No shit!

MORE SHIT

1a] paper print out of your basic itinerary. I’ll copy paste mine at the end.
1b] duplicates of visas, printed out.
1c] E-Visas for your next countries. Fuck standing in line and learning how to write in block letters all over again. Hello, Laos and Cambodia.

2] at least 5 $100 bills in your wallet. Saved my ass at NoiBan when visa tanked. The airline and customs want cash TYVM.

3] A non-metallic spork, because carryon. Street food is sometimes impossible to eat without one.

4] I carry a throw-down “local wallet”. Inside it is a laminated color Xerox of opening pages of my passport. Home wallet, big money and real passport stay in hotel room safe.

5] I’m Global Entry, which includes TSA KTN. Perhaps Real Clear or other contractors are doing this now. Wasn’t a thing in 2018 when I applied.

6] Hanoi laundry services spoiled me. I didn’t research this in HCMC, and I left Taipei 5 days later with skank-ass laundry. Found a local vendor here in Luang PraBang, but its a longer lag time [24hrs] because air dry.

7] Camera bricking due to moisture. Glenn suggested a hair dryer set to warm and gentle revived a colleagues iPhone that went swimming. Meanwhile, my Plan B camera did all the heavy lifting while it slowly dried out.

8] a stack of SD cards. I don’t delete mine anymore. Learned that from the David Alan Harvey March workshop in Venice.

9] I use DropBox for all my travel docs etc.

I may have more later, will add, and update.

Hanoi Intro & Outro

Pre-dawn, in Hoan Kiem. Hanoi Vietnam

Hanoi is where my trip began and ended. I spent ten days at the start, and then a day and night at the end. With a fuck ton of travel hilarity in-between.

This is a non-linear narrative. “Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn” has insights into the non-linear narrative. If you need an exact chronology, skip to the end for a list.

The X-Peditions photo workshops have plenty for everybody. Hanoi first-timers are experiencing the intense crowding and fun of crossing streets with hordes of scooters. Repeat offenders drill past the things that fascinated us the first time. Or maybe revisit them.

This trip’s takeaway was beginning to understand The Mysterious White Balance. Get in there, cross over the double yellow line of your own limitations. Ignore the hard set-points of Daylight, Incandescent, Shade, Fluorescent and so on. Look through the camera and see what happens when you adjust it.

Fun fact: it works in all kinds of light. You don’t have to be captive to the settings. Also, Average White Balance sometimes is useful.

Enough tech dorking. Unless you’re here to photograph rocks and trees, it’s people. Lots of them.

But wait, it’s really all about me. And Morgan Freeman is Narrating My Shit®™.

Fun shit can happen. Glenn and I were walking to lunch, and we saw a retail remodel underway. Out of the rubble comes this worker, who reaches into his pocket, shakes out a smoke, offers it to me.

I take it. I haven’t smoked regularly in over 40 years, but I remember everything. We’re cracking jokes, my bad Vietnamese is getting spanked, and it’s ha-ha’s all around. We say goodbye, walk off.

Glenn asks “how is it?”
He’s never smoked, good man.
“It’s fucking wonderful…”

So this trip I didnt get the Thuoc Lao [literally Laotian Tobacco] I was looking for. It’s got 8x nicotine than regular cigarettes, and will knock you on your ass. Check out YouTube for comical misadventures.

Exact Chronology For Those That Need That Trope

Nov 13 2023
Saigon/HCMC
https://larrygassanphoto.wordpress.com/2023/12/07/saigon-hcmc/

Nov 14 2023
War Remnants
https://larrygassanphoto.wordpress.com/2023/12/28/nov-14-2023-war-remnants/

Nov 15, 2023
Two Taipei Personalities
https://larrygassanphoto.wordpress.com/2023/12/15/two-taipei-personalities/

Nov 16, 2023
Two Taipei Personalities: I Bao Down
https://larrygassanphoto.wordpress.com/2023/12/21/two-taipei-personalities-i-bao-down/

Nov 19, 2023
Laos, Suddenly.
https://larrygassanphoto.wordpress.com/2023/12/07/laos-suddenly/

Nov 19, 2023
Laos: Day One
https://larrygassanphoto.wordpress.com/2023/12/07/laos-day-one/

Nov 19, 2023
Getting Stupa With It
https://larrygassanphoto.wordpress.com/2023/12/10/nov-19-getting-stupa-with-it/

Nov 22, 2023
I Meet Mr White
https://larrygassanphoto.wordpress.com/2023/12/12/nov-22-i-meet-mr-white/

Nov 25, 2023
Heartskip at Angkor Wat
https://larrygassanphoto.wordpress.com/2023/12/21/nov-25-heart-skip-at-angkor-wat/

Nov 27, 2023
Cambodian Day Tripping
https://larrygassanphoto.wordpress.com/2023/12/13/cambodian-day-tripping/

Nov 28, 2023
Ruins, lunch, then crocodiles
https://larrygassanphoto.wordpress.com/2023/12/08/ruins-lunch-then-crocodiles/
Siem Reap

Dec 31, 2023
What I’ve learned about travel so far
https://larrygassanphoto.wordpress.com/2023/12/31/what-ive-learned-about-travel-so-far/

Hanoi Outro

Nov 14, 2023: War Remnants

Saigon, HCMC Museums

The War Remnants Museum is hard ride. This was a hard and brutal civil war from 1945-75; and also a proxy war with Russia, China and the Warsaw Pact on the North; and the Americans who picked up where the French left off in 1954, on through 1975 in the South.

In 1945 the French wanted their Indochina empire back. The Americans were now caught between the Four Freedoms of World War Two, and obligations to the French. Another fun-fact was at WW2’s end in 1945, all the Japanese armies couldn’t be returned to Japan all at once [war crimes, and no Japanese merchant marine], so they were pressed into “peacekeeping” duties by the French. This was a bitter pill for Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese Communists, and other liberationist groups. This also happened in Indonesia, with similar results.

In addition to the expected images, there is the living evidence of vast defoliation campaign, featuring the best-known Agent Orange.

For those raised and conditioned by fictions of a neat war, it isn’t. The maimed, mutilated, and mutations that survived are shocking.

Bringing the War Back Home

Ron Haeberl My Lai photo P1 Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Nov 1969, War Remnants Museum.

Spring 1969

My father Arnold Gassan, was then an Assistant Photo Prof at Ohio University, [1967-1989]. Ron Haeberle was an Ohio U photo-major, but unable to finish his degree in 1966 due to being drafted. Haeberl visited the campus in spring 1969, and showed his 1968 My Lai photos to Arnold with several other senior faculty, before they ran in the Plain Dealer. Arnold said “there was a dead silence in the room after looking at these photos. It was a sobering wake up to the WW2 generation that US military could commit atrocities.”

Full Ron Haeberle wiki here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_L._Haeberle

In February 1973 Nixon killed the draft, mainly to kneecap the antiwar movement. I was eight months away from my 18th birthday, and was thrilled as all fuck I didn’t have to worry about that. And unlike other later GOP notables [I’m looking at you, Ted Nugent, Tom DeLay, Rush Limbaugh, John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney, Donald Trump] I didn’t prance around with a war-boner when danger passed.

In 1996 I was on a long training run in the San Gabriel Mountains with an acquaintance, who was drafted in Columbus OH, to avoid a drug charge. He was in a US Army transport company tasked with supply runs to Lt Calley’s unit.

“We knew exactly what happened”

Saigon, HCMC Museums

The Workshop Crux-Move

Meeting the vaporetto.

March 2023. Venezia IT

I did a workshop with the venerable David Alan Harvey, Venice Italy. Two nights before the end David and I had a long discussion on using the built-in flash on the Fuji X100F. You can dial it down so its just a kiss-flash, opens up faces, goes all night sort of thing.

I left their lodging. Walking back to my hotel–I need to take an Austin Powers Piss. Bad luck–all the civic pay-pissoirs are locked up tight. I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna hose down a wall somewhere, and have a troop of nuns, tourists, or a bored carabinieri interrupt me.

So I stagger back to the hotel. Thus lightened, but I’m still brain dead, hungry.

I don’t have the flash figured out. Fuck it all. I crash.

Next day head back to the last critique. David has questions.

“Did you get any photos?”
“No”
“Goddamn it, we had this long discussion last night”
“Yeah, and I hadn’t figured it out”
I didn’t feel like telling all and sundry “hey, I had to take a monster piss and blah-fucking-blah”

He railed on. At this point the rest of the group is looking on with a mix of “daddy’s angry/glad its not me/he’s getting his ass kicked/I’m not seeing this”

It dawns on me that he’s channeling past and present assignment editors. Chewing ass like no tomorrow, because as an assigned shooter, I’d fucked him up.

I’m not giving a fuck. I’ve been yelled at by worse. Finally I say “Enough! I get it! When’s the deadline?”

“This afternoon at 5”

“Good! I’ll have work for you then. Dawg out!”

And I head out the muh-fuggin door.

Walking towards the Ponte Vecchio, I’m furiously thinking: “where’s the churn? Where are the visuals?”

Ponte Vecchio. People come over the bridge in waves. A waterfall of opportunities. Is a target-rich environment. I’ve figured out the flash.

I shoot for 90min max. Maybe 100 frames. Walk back to hotel. Edit it down to 8 frames. Low-rez upload to the designated DropBox. By 4pm.

David and Alejandra pick 4. I’d made the slide show assignment.

POSTSCRIPT

David apologized for yelling. I told him what I just told you. No hard feelings. He came from a world where his bosses were a lot of WW2 vets, some in combat, others not. They didn’t have time for your shit. Sometimes a kick in the ass is the best way to show love.

Schoolboys at Ponte Vecchio, Venezia IT.

Nov 25: Heart-skip At Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat temple complexes, Cambodia

Had a heart-skip moment at Angkor Wat: a tall awkward guy with flag patches on his pack [me, at 18] was asking a very pretty fair-complexioned girl to take his photo in front of one of the western sides of the temple. She was fumbling with an umbrella, looked so much like Leslie it hurt.

I saw his pack and said “I had a pack like that when I was 18”

She looked at me, smiled and said “How do you know this isn’t your pack?”
It was a total Leslie comment. I smiled back and said that his was nicer. I couldn’t even make a photo.

I left them to their business, and walked very slowly thru the temple complex. Finally learned that.

That night at the hotel, it was back to weird Chinese whiskey, Oreos, and editing in glorious AC.

I’d made this portrait of Leslie, Washington DC, July 2003. I hadn’t seen her in three years, and wouldn’t again until Jan 2022.

Two Taipei Personalities: I Bao Down

Nov 16 2023:
Camphor, not just for mothballs and consumer goods. After the 1880s it was a strategic asset for smokeless powder in all types of weaponry. The Japanese locked on to that on conquest. I learned this with a stop at the National Taiwan Museum-Nanmen Branch, to see the permanent exhibition on camphor. Afterwards we broke for Taipei 101, and noodles.

Now To The Further Travels of Udon Corleone and MC Congee West

Glenn is the culinary expert, if it was Tokyo, he’d be Udon Corleone. I am and remain MC Congee West. He’d done his homework and I was getting a detailed tour of Taiwanese cuisine.

Imagine being the noodle joint next to a destination noodle joint in the Datong Night market area. As the long line slowly crawls to the Noodle Altar, we pass this wide-open and vacant business. No doubt the weary fall into it. That wasn’t our lot this evening.

Our table-mates are an Indonesian woman and her friend, who are cheerful One Uppah’s.

“That’s nice. But X over there is better. This is a destination famous for being famous” I’m ignorant as all fuck, cheerfully “whatever”.

And the line moves slowly to the cashier, and an eventual table.

Meanwhile, the lines in the night market aisle move slowly through this cornucopia of tastiness.

During our stay we found delights like here.