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Ice climbing is a metaphor for sticking to essentials, prioritizing, not getting lost. Either you cling to the rope, cooperate, mind your business, and do not stray in any way, or all is lost. Black and white, concentration, focus. Contrast this with pictures of Tahiti, paradise, or a plain flat place where any path is as good as another, where you are safe even if you fall down.

Each little piece of the web site is a hologram of the whole. Here is Lookout 2000 (focus on essentials for survival), Personal Caroling (Leo story), Color (extreme natural example), Trips (beside obvious trips, the journal, my writing), Catalog (eventually there will be a CD companion to the Web pages), Access (slide show: auto or manual).

Notes by a visitor to the site (March, 2000):

This is the Balfour face of Mt Tasman. Tasman is the second highest peak after Cook. The Balfour is a classic grade 5-6 ice route. In this film it was climbed from Plateau hut which means climbing over Silberhorn, a satelite peak of Tasman, to get there. Shot 2 is probably a different trip, maybe Sefton, not big enough to be sure where but its looking south with the Tasman sea to the west on the right. Shot 3 is probably climbing Silberhorn, on the way from Plateau hut to the Balfour face. Shots 4-7 are definitely looking north at Tasman and the Balfour (south) face from at or near the top of Silberhorn. Shot 8 is looking the other way at the Linda (north) side of Cook from same place. As you go from the top down to the left the features are Summit ice cap, summit rocks, Linda shelf, then it's too dark to see down where the earliest Cook shot is taken from. The rocks near top left are the summit rocks in the other film (Mt. Cook) and below them in the shade you can just see the distinctive bergschrund which features in the first shot in the other film. Shot 9 is the Balfour face of Tasman again from a slightly different position along the Tasman-Silberhorn-Graham ridge.

Looks like they bivvy'd on top of Silberhorn as 8 and 9 are both sunset shots. There are no shots in the morning descending down the other side of Silberhorn to the bottom of the Balfour. 10 - 18 could be anywhere of course but in the context look very like climbing the Balfour. 16 is looking west late afternoon to the Tasman sea, looks like the top of the Balfour rib in profile. This feature is the left margin of the face and is in shot 7, and left of shot 9. 19 is looking south east at the "Grand Plateau" from somewhere near the top of Tasman, Mt Cook rising on the right, bottom of Linda Glacier lower right, hut out of shot to the left, shadow of Tasman and/or Silberhorn in the foreground.

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