Little bit of everything..

[MattCaspermeyer]

Wow, Impy! You get around!

The Grand Canyon is gorgeous - I've hiked down Kaibab and up Bright Angel (17 miles, down 5000 feet in elevation change and back up) in 8 hours back in my younger days!

I simply love the place as it is so beautiful!

I not sure if you remember, but if you were driving towards the Grand Canyon from East to West then if you looked south you might have seen Humprey's Peak towards Flagstaff. The peak's elevation is 12,633 feet (highest in AZ) and I hiked to the peak a couple of years ago - one of the toughest hikes I've ever done!

You start at about 9300 feet and then it is about 4.6 miles and 3,333 feet to the top.

/C\/C\

[impy]

That is some serious hike right there Matt. Was it technical or oxygen struggle kicked in due to altitude or both?
I don't have such high mountains in England or Slovakia. I love mountains, but my performance is mediocre, since I have way too many fast twitch fibres, and get tired quicker than normal person. So I always excelled in explosive sports instead but have to do tons of cardio.
My ultimate dream is to climb Kilimanjaro one day. 19340ft, the highest mountain on earth not requiring any technical climbing.

[MattCaspermeyer]

The first 3.6 miles are through Pine forest and so not too bad. At the end of that you'll be at the saddle (11,800 feet) that either takes you to Humphrey's or Agazzis Peak (12,356 feet).

To Humphrey's from the saddle it is essentially just 1 mile and only (ha!) 800 feet left, but I tell you it was one of the hardest things I've done in my life as you are essentially climbing up the side of a slightly gravelly mountain top. There is a trail, but it is steep and you're above the tree line, which pretty much ends at the saddle.

In fact I got so tired that I stopped for about 15 minutes before I had reached the top and I thought I was done. I wasn't even going to summit, and everyone kept telling me how close I was, but I didn't want to listen. After the rest, I actually got up to go back down, but then thought "let's just do it!" and so it was only about 10 more minutes and I was at the summit - whew! I took the requisite photos and reveled in my victory for a bit with some fellow hikers and then back down I went.

It was hard as I was fighting nausea on the way down until I had gotten below about 11,000 feet as a guess.

I've been back once, but only to the saddle, but I'll probably do it again in the future. My problem is that I don't eat enough during a really long hike like that and so I need to get better at eating and keeping my energy up.

By the way, both times I've gone have been in June, which is probably the best month to hike because the monsoon hasn't started yet (it starts in July) and most of the snow should be melted by then and the weather should be just perfect! The first time was in 2008 and the second I think was two years ago in 2012.

Kilimanjaro sounds crazy! 19,340 feet! Yikes! That is up there! Good luck with preparing for that one as that sounds incredibly difficult!

/C\/C\

[Dword]

Originally Posted by impy View Post
1) tell us what funny, plain odd or even highly embarrassing you've done during your first playthrough. The internets, they can take it.
2) tell us what you do not like about the game, not necessarily gamebreaking or illogical, maybe just personal preference. You never know, devs might act upon it.
3) tell us something about yourself. (have we not done this before?)
4) interesting observations?

I just tried to update my profile and couldn't, so this is a start, although short:

1) After capturing Martin, I swore Neoline's chest was bigger on the splash screen so I actually got a ruler and measured it/them.

2) Too hard for new players in the beginning with any hero and any difficulty. Immense armies that display as Weak.

3) I live in Maryland in the USA, I'm 65, and retired. I worked menial low paying jobs until I lucked into becoming a programmer trainee. That was COBOL and IBM 360 Assembly language on keypunch cards, hence dword (double word) which is a 32 bit chunk of memory. It also works with my name, Edward.

I finally have time to play the games I missed while working and raising a family. Ah, but kids come back home with their kids and I have a full house again. Alas, there still isn't enough time, or money on a fixed income, to play them all.

Unlike most of the posters here, I play Normal and just relax and enjoy the scenery so I mostly post in the Steam forum. I run the scanner occasionally in midgame to see if it's possible to complete a set. Give me a few more years and I'll be using everyone's excellent advice to do no loss impossible.

4) Something I like about DS that hasn't been mentioned: My PCs are old and would CTD when bright flashes appeared in CW and WotN. It hasn't happened yet in DS although it locks up during battles occasionally, but Saving before each battle solves that.

It's good to learn a bit about the folks I've been reading for the last couple of years. Good topic, impy.

[Dword]

Dang, did I just kill this thread? It was interesting while it lasted.