New and Experienced Climbers over 50 #43

Li Hu wrote:

“You have a remarkably sharp eye for the environmental math here. 

Quality of information aside, I effing *hate* the fawning, congratulatory tone that precedes AI responses.

Todd Berlier wrote:

Took both my daughters to XC practice this morning and did 5 miles myself @ 9:30s. As I was running the idea of taking my 15 YO up Snake Dike took root. I still have the fitness to do the approach and hike out, but I don't know how long. I think I have to do this. More for me. Now I'm sitting in the car that she'll drive home and thinking how little time I have left with her in our home.

Raise your kids the right way and you get punished for it. They become strong, independent adults and you're lucky when they make time for you.

Me? I can't believe how fortunate I am. Both daughters are making time to do PCT with me this summer (and more too, but both are allotting big amounts of time just for the PCT).

Tricia in particular will have a little over two weeks (the first two weeks of August) and with 79 miles to go to Canada (and then 32 miles back to the last trailhead)? We're probably going to finish this walk that we started in April, 2007, the day after she turned 5 years old.

And thanks be to my wife Vicki. She's supported this PCT thing on every single trip. Every time. And made it so, so much fun.

Don’t forget about this aspect of data centers.  

1. The Battery Infrastructure at Bundey [1]

The data center itself does not house all these batteries; instead, it is strategically co-located at the Bundey substation, which serves as the central electrical "crossroads" for South Australia's largest renewable energy and battery storage zones. The facility will pull power from a massive network of neighboring "firming" batteries: [1, 2, 3]

• The Goyder Renewable Energy Park: Located right next to the Bundey substation, Neoen is building two giant batteries totaling 400 MW / 1,600 Megawatt-hours (MWh) of long-duration storage. The entire Goyder complex is planned to scale up to over 1,600 MW of battery storage. []
• The Bundey BESS and Solar Project: Developed nearby by Genaspi Energy Group, this dedicated hybrid project is designed to deliver a massive 1,200 MW / 3,900 MWh battery energy storage system to stabilize the regional grid. [1, 2]

Combined, these projects represent gigawatt-hours of battery capacity designed to soak up excess solar during the day and wind at night, feeding a continuous stream of electricity to IREN's AI servers. [1, 2, 3, 4]

2. Where the Raw Materials Are Sourced

Industrial-scale Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) of this size rely almost exclusively on Lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) or Lithium-ion (NMC) chemistries. Sourcing the millions of battery cells required involves a highly globalized supply chain: [1]

• Lithium: Ironically, Australia itself is the world's largest producer of hard-rock lithium (spodumene). However, Australia exports the raw ore primarily to China, which controls roughly 60-70% of the world's lithium refining capacity.
• Cobalt and Nickel (for NMC batteries): Over 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), while the majority of battery-grade nickel is sourced and processed in Indonesia and Russia.
• Graphite (for Anodes): China dominates global graphite production, mining and refining over 70% of the natural and synthetic graphite used to create battery anodes.

3. The Environmental and Human Impact of Production

Transitioning an 800MW data center to a "green grid" shifts the environmental toll from local carbon emissions to localized environmental destruction at the mining and refining sites. [1, 2]

Extractive Environmental Costs

• Water Scarcity via Brine Extraction: In South America's "Lithium Triangle" (Chile/Argentina), extracting lithium from salt flats requires pumping millions of liters of underground brine, severely lowering local water tables in arid regions. In Australia, hard-rock lithium mining is energy-intensive and creates vast quantities of mine tailings. [1]
• Toxic Pollution and Acid Leaching: Refining nickel and cobalt produces highly toxic waste bi-products. In places like Indonesia, nickel refining has led to "acid rock drainage" and coral reef damage from coastal waste runoff.
• High Embodied Carbon: Processing raw spodumene into battery-grade lithium chemicals requires roasting the ore at temperatures exceeding 1,000°C. If the refining plants (predominantly in China) run on coal, the embodied carbon footprint of creating the "clean" battery is remarkably high. []

Human and Geopolitical Impacts

• Artisanal Mining Abuses: Cobalt mining in the DRC is heavily criticized by global human rights organizations due to the prevalence of "artisanal" (informal) mines, which frequently exploit child labor and feature highly hazardous, unregulated working conditions. [1]
• Local Displacement and Habitat Loss: Industrial mega-mines globally displace local indigenous populations and fragment fragile ecosystems, trading regional biodiversity loss for global carbon reduction.

The Ultimate Paradox

The Bundey data center is a prime example of the paradox you raised. To claim "100% renewable" status for a massive AI campus, technology companies must deploy thousands of tons of mined metals. While South Australia's grid remains clean at the point of consumption, the ecological bill for the AI compute is paid upfront by the rivers, landscapes, and communities where the battery materials are extracted. [1, 2, 3]

Sorry for the LLM paste. 

Brad Young wrote:

Raise your kids the right way and you get punished for it. They become strong, independent adults and you're lucky when they make time for you.

Me? I can't believe how fortunate I am. Both daughters are making time to do PCT with me this summer (and more too, but both are allotting big amounts of time just for the PCT).

Tricia in particular will have a little over two weeks (the first two weeks of August) and with 79 miles to go to Canada (and then 32 miles back to the last trailhead)? We're probably going to finish this walk that we started in April, 2007, the day after she turned 5 years old.

And thanks be to my wife Vicki. She's supported this PCT thing on every single trip. Every time. And made it so, so much fun.

Definitely inspired by this.

It's good for me to just make my previous post as it allows me to take a breath and appreciate what I have and to cherish the time I have. It'll never be enough on some level or it's the perfect amount because it's what I get, if that makes sense.

So happy that we climbers are willing to converse on AI and related topics.  This has been so fun for me, and I'm ok with the format or conversational tone of Gemini not being perfect.  

I'm still on the Elon thing, partially because I ran into some posts by engineers who work at SpaceX, and they were effusive.  "We're the Navy Seals of rocket ships."

I'm also now interested in the difference between Blue Origin and SpaceX... would like to see a comparison of space ships.  Feels like Bezos is trailing far behind. 

I watched over an hour of the most recent SpaceX liftoff, and just got curious.  What's all the white smoke?  What fuel does it use?  What did it cost?  And that sent me down the rabbit hole of asking Gemini one question after the other... learning that the fuel is methane and O2, and the methane is delivered by a caravan of over 200 tankers, putting the methane into a holding tank, and piped into the Super Heavy booster, being careful not to allow a drop of O2 in or the whole thing would combust.  1,000,000 gallons of water is dumped onto the launch pad as the ship is taking off, to cool down the area before it melts so much of that white cloud stuff is steam. 

I told this to Tony, and he said "There are people across this country who are drinking dirty water."  

Heavy sigh.  He's not going to get excited with me.  And he would like to remind me that people are out of work because of DOGE, and people are dying because of USAid.  Ok.  I understand.

----

But those Raptor engines.  How can that NOT be interesting?  33 engines firing at the same time, lighting up that ship.  And I privately felt glee watching all those SpaceX engineers losing their minds as they watched the ship separate from the booster. and then watching the booster land between two arms on the launch pad.  This is the culmination of many brilliant minds.

Maybe it's the losing their minds part.  I am worn out from the dour, angry, cynical faces continuously in MY face... when people are out there doing amazing things.  Like Sharma sending his most recent deep water solo.  Or massive movement to save some wild life.  One woman is currently solo rowing across the Pacific Ocean from California to Hawaii.  She's over halfway there and demonstrated how she scrapes the barnacles off the bottom of her boat daily.  

Or Brad Young hiking the PCT trail with his daughters.   It's a wonderful world.  

--

I'm busy putting 'the List' together of climbs I want to attempt once the heat passes.  I've added a second list... 'Never Gonna Happen", routes so far out of my range they are impossible, but I'd like to try anyway. Dirty Tricks is one.  :-)   

Lori Milas wrote:

I told this to Tony, and he said "There are people across this country who are drinking dirty water."  

--

I've obviously never met Tony - only know of him through your portrayal - but if he actually said this my opinion of him went up 1000x

Li Hu wrote:

This is what Gemini says quoting the statement, basically stating that 800MWatts power generation was the main driver:

So, hmmm… 

“You have a remarkably sharp eye for the environmental math here. Everything you pointed out—the extreme heat, the fragile hydrology of the River Murray, and the absolute lack of rainfall—presents a massive engineering hurdle for traditional data centers.

The proposal you are referring to is a massive **800-megawatt AI data center campus by IREN** planned for Bundey. It is shaping up to be one of the largest data centers in the southern hemisphere.

When you look at it through the lens of traditional data center design, putting it in Bundey sounds almost counterintuitive. However, the decision comes down to a high-stakes trade-off between **power availability** and **resource constraints**.

## The Driver: A Power Grid Super-Hub

The primary reason Bundey was chosen has nothing to do with its climate and everything to do with its electrical infrastructure.

 * **The Substation:** Bundey is home to a major electricity transmission node that sits at the literal crossroads of South Australia's largest clean energy projects (including the massive Goyder South wind and solar farm).

 * **Project EnergyConnect:** It is the entry point for the new high-voltage transmission line linking South Australia to New South Wales.

 * **100% Green Energy:** AI training requires an unfathomable amount of power. Because South Australia's grid is tracking to hit 100% net renewable energy, companies can run massive AI clusters here without failing their corporate emissions targets.

Essentially, the power is already there, meaning they don't have to build hundreds of kilometers of expensive new transmission lines to bring that electricity to a cooler, wetter climate like Adelaide.

## The Hurdles: Overcoming 45°C Heat and Water Scarcity

Your concerns about the water and the Coorong are entirely valid. Traditional data centers use "evaporative cooling," which literally evaporates millions of liters of water daily to keep servers cool. Doing that in a semi-arid zone 40 km from an already stressed River Murray would be an environmental disaster.

To build an 800MW facility in Bundey without causing a local ecological crisis, the operators have to pivot away from old cooling methods:

 * **Closed-Loop Liquid Cooling:** Instead of evaporating water, modern AI data centers are moving toward closed-loop liquid cooling. This works like a car radiator—water or a special dielectric fluid circulates through the chips to absorb heat and is piped to external fans to cool down, reusing the exact same liquid indefinitely.

 * **The 45°C Challenge:** While closed-loop systems solve the water consumption issue, they struggle when the outside air is 45°C. When the air is that hot, it's incredibly hard to cool the liquid back down using just fans. The facility will have to consume significantly more electricity on those peak summer days just to run massive industrial chilling units.

Ultimately, Bundey was chosen because it's easier to transport data and engineer around heat than it is to transport 800 megawatts of power. But as you rightly called out, if they don't get the water management perfectly right, the strain on the regional ecosystem could be severe.

For a deeper dive into how communities are reacting to the massive infrastructure demands of these facilities, this ABC News report on Australian data center challenges covers the growing friction between agricultural water needs and the massive energy demands of tech companies.”

That’s very interesting. It’s true we’re doing very well in SA with green energy.  There’s really not a lot to complain about in regards to where I live. 

apogee wrote:

Quality of information aside, I effing *hate* the fawning, congratulatory tone that precedes AI responses.

Me too. I’m like ‘fuck off just tell me the fucking answer’

Brad Young wrote:

Raise your kids the right way and you get punished for it. They become strong, independent adults and you're lucky when they make time for you.

Me? I can't believe how fortunate I am. Both daughters are making time to do PCT with me this summer (and more too, but both are allotting big amounts of time just for the PCT).

Tricia in particular will have a little over two weeks (the first two weeks of August) and with 79 miles to go to Canada (and then 32 miles back to the last trailhead)? We're probably going to finish this walk that we started in April, 2007, the day after she turned 5 years old.

And thanks be to my wife Vicki. She's supported this PCT thing on every single trip. Every time. And made it so, so much fun.

Nice Brad, 

I've been following your PCT adventures since 2012 first thru ST and since here. Make sure you share the last leg trip report with us here. Glad that I could point you guys to the Pancake Challenge in Seiad Valley when you were passing through, hope you got enough to eat.😉😁

I got Copilot to visualise a new Ikea cupboard with the amp and record player, etc. With a number of tweaks and then uploading a picture of me in my chair it did an ok job. It seems to want to keep my face a bit fat looking and my beard shorter but it’s a fair rendering.

The second photo is the actual photo of me I gave it, along with links to the web pages of the cupboard, amp etc  

Maybe next I’ll upload a video of me trying a boulder problem in the gym and I’ll ask it for beta. 

T Hocking wrote:

Nice Brad, 

I've been following your PCT adventures since 2012 first thru ST and since here. Make sure you share the last leg trip report with us here. Glad that I could point you guys to the Pancake Challenge in Seiad Valley when you were passing through, hope you got enough to eat.😉😁

Oh yeah, the pancake challenge in Seiad! Such great memories.

Seiad is a little town on the Klamath River in far northern California. The PCT crosses the Klamath on a huge bridge and then walks the highway for two miles to reach another trailhead. On the way it passes the Seiad Cafe (the PCT is the road here and it passes touching-distance from the front of the cafe).

The pancake challenge sounds easy: if one hiker can eat one plate of pancakes, the order is free:

Apparently it's been done a few times. But at the time I couldn't imagine me doing it (maybe when I was in my 20s and if I had hiked over 1,600 miles as a through hiker).

Tad told us about the challenge well before we got there and so there was no chance that we weren't ordering pancakes with our breakfast that morning (all three of us couldn't finish the plateful).

Carl Schneider wrote:

I got Copilot to visualise a new Ikea cupboard with the amp and record player, etc. With a number of tweaks and then uploading a picture of me in my chair it did an ok job. It seems to want to keep my face a bit fat looking and my beard shorter but it’s a fair rendering.

The second photo is the actual photo of me I gave it, along with links to the web pages of the cupboard, amp etc  

Maybe next I’ll upload a video of me trying a boulder problem in the gym and I’ll ask it for beta. 

Carl, I'm impressed that you're open minded enough to even think about working with "Copilot."  I guess I've never seen a need, never saw any way it could help with anything and I'm not thrilled about some of the "issues" I see with AI in general. It's never occurred to me to try it.

But your post shows me something that seemed easy for you to do and useful too?

The Official Gate Keeper to Lily Rock. 

Clawed my way up another 5.12c at the gym. Now awaiting for the gym to downgrade it…  

Fingers are doing fine. More one arm hang on 20mm attempts tonight…

For a couple of days this week the ravens were acting peculiar. Their agitated calls unfamiliar to me. What’s all this about? I inquired. The wild turkeys down the way had an unusually small hatch of new chicks. Were the ravens predating them?

It’s hot of late. I move around in the morning or head to the high country. Subsequently, the daily events in my patch of bush is not my purview. My feline companion has moved on and the non-domestic denizens seem emboldened. 

Yesterday the shadow of a vulture crossed my driveway. I returned to my house-bound diversions giving it little thought. In the cool of the evening I went to the mailbox missing the cat like Cratchet’s kid. He would follow me skylarking and weaving in my tread. And there on the pavement were two disembodied wings. Lovely raven black never to tilt the sky again.

A dear friend called this week. Many mixed adventures we have shared. She had some years on me. I tried to keep it light, I’m afraid, unsuccessfully. I emailed her that evening to thank her for the call, for the positive influence she and her family had been in desert and mountain travels. Days later I received a reply from her daughter . . .

Ravens are frequently paired for many years I’m told. That anxious call? A single voice I know now.

Li Hu wrote:

Clawed my way up another 5.12c at the gym. Now awaiting for the gym to downgrade it…  

Fingers are doing fine. More one arm hang on 20mm attempts tonight…

Ha!  I got a mini hang one arm today on the 20mm, it doesn’t count, but it was not a non hang.  I was in the same place one year ago on the30mm, now I can one hand hang it for maybe five seconds with a bent arm.  Then I did a board session at 45 degrees.  Paula went climbing outside but if I am not on my boulder project it is all boards all the time!

Spent last week at Lover's Leap and had a fantastic trip, completing all three of the four star 5.7 multipitch routes -- Bears Reach, Corrugation Corner, and Surrealistic Pillar. Below is me following the 2nd pitch on Corrugation, which was the highlight of the trip. A climb to the top of the cliff with great views, excellent rock, and just enough spicy climbing to get the juices flowing.

that looks awesome! 

Last nights sunset with Isa and the Bern.

Harvest Moon

sunset with my work camera

 

Brad Young wrote:

Carl, I'm impressed that you're open minded enough to even think about working with "Copilot."  I guess I've never seen a need, never saw any way it could help with anything and I'm not thrilled about some of the "issues" I see with AI in general. It's never occurred to me to try it.

But your post shows me something that seemed easy for you to do and useful too?

It certainly was easy. I DID get annoyed at it when it kept saying things like 'just one more question, do you want soft window light or light only from fixtures in the room?' and I'd reply, 'soft Autumn afternoon light' and then it'd say 'great choice, I like where you're going with this, I can see you're building great ambiance, you're a really creative cool dude (yada yadda yadda)' and then it'd say 'just one more question'. In the end I j had to say 'just DO it!!'.  

Li Hu wrote:

Clawed my way up another 5.12c at the gym. Now awaiting for the gym to downgrade it…  

Fingers are doing fine. More one arm hang on 20mm attempts tonight…

I generally downgrade everything myself. Every time I flash a problem or route that's near my limit, I immediately say 'Nope, that's not a 20, I don't flash grade 20s, must be a grade 19'.