Greg - guiding parties? That would sure limit your personal time. One upmanship wasn't the point. I know you've done some tricky shooting yourself, but was trying to be more teasing than bragging. Really early on I used an ice axe attachment to mount my P67. It wasn't very versatile. I moved on to 4x5 for the next several decades, and when I got back into 6x7 again, most of our glaciers here were already gone! Just a handful left in the High Sierra now. And we've just had the hottest March on record which melted 80 to 90% of this winter's snowpack.
Yesterday ran into a fellow on my very modest knee workout ridge up the canyon from me who had seen Chogolisa from a distance from a high pass in Ladakh, but didn't remember the name of the peak. But it's enormous. That's where a climbing companion of my nephew was kidnapped by his own Pakastani Liaison officer and held for ransom.
When he finally managed to escape, he published a book, Dangerous Liaisons (John Climaco). My nephew was on the Chinese side of K2 & Broad Peak at the time.
(Incidentally, Craig, at the time, my nephew was with the man who discovered that remote side of the Karakoram for the very first time, from the summit of Broad Peak on its first ascent - the legendary Kurt Diemberger - also the oldest man to ever climb K2, and sole survivor of its most lethal incident - and also a mountain photographer who's 35mm work is, uh, er, well, let's just say, rather disappointing once you've seen what Sella did in that part of the world). I don't know about Concordes, but Tibetan Geese have been spotted flying higher than the summits of K2 and Everest, and have much better fuel economy, and maybe a little spatter in the wake, but no contrails.
Getting older has its disadvantages. My companion on my last long mtn trek slipped in a motel shower last week and broke his collarbone. Bones get brittle. My finger joints have a lot of pain. No more steep stuff for me - not even a tall extension ladder. (I've improvised a long pole detail sander to reach high trim on the outside of my house - I'm surprised nobody had tried to market one of those).
