Greenshit 1995

This tome was born in 1995 as my first attempt to transcribe Pelcil, the diary that I keep on all my expeditions, into a story. Since I’m not a man of few words, this work has ballooned into an epic novel. It’s incredibly boring to anyone who wasn’t on this trip, but it was fun to write and I hope that at least Greenshitters will read it. Greenshitter nexts of kin who want to better understand why we do such things may also be interested.

Since Pelcil is pretty sketchy in spots (I wrote much of it in on the flight home) and my memory fades fast, I’m sure there are inaccuracies, false accusations, exaggerations, and outright fabrications. Tough. I didn’t intentionally lie but I admit to occasional embellishment of a lost detail. Besides, it makes a good story.

Prelude

This is a chronicle of Greenshit #11, one of my nearly annual expeditions to the Wild West since 1982. All but two Greenshits have been jeep-camping trips to Utah, one was a houseboat trip to Lake Powell and one a climb up Mt. Rainier. Greenshit participants include a variety of friends and relatives, usually repeat customers, although sometimes I succeed in coercing a newcomer or two.

Planning for this trip began as early as the fall of 1994, prompted by the unrelenting pressure to use or lose frequent flyer miles. During the following winter and spring, I became fully immersed in the long, slow process of cleaning the gear still piled high in my attic from Greenshit #10, organizing supplies, taking inventories, making reservations, ordering equipment, packing, annotating maps, and planning the complex logistics.

Above all, I made lists: lists of things to do, people to call, items to pack, food shopping, menus, expenses, itineraries, schedules, as well as sublists and nested lists. Using the incredible horsepower of my Macintosh with an occasional assist from a KSR-1 supercomputer, I processed, massaged, collated, sorted, printed, folded, stapled, spindled and mutilated these lists. The packing list alone (not counting food) contained 460 items, organized by category, complete with color coding and cross references.

Headcount this year was a healthy six: Ed Burke, Mark Fazio and Terry Dorschner, computer and engineering-types from the Boston area; Lou Basoli, a computer purchasing-type from Cary, North Carolina; and Lou’s son Chris Basoli, a cop-type from Cary. Mark and Chris were newbies to Greenshit while Ed, Terry and Lou were veterans. Expeditions to Mt. Everest always try to include doctor mountain climbers, so I especially welcomed Chris with his EMT training.

This was the second year that email was the primary means of coordination before the trip. We exchanged thousands of messages during the preceding six months, including a periodic Greenshit Newsletter with up-to-the-minute status. If I did anything other than work on this trip during the spring of 1995, I can’t remember what it was.