Need to contact me? hwstock AT alum dot mit point edu.

I turned age 70 in 2024. I started this site ~2002, partly as a way to regain use of my right hand through typing. The site had to be simple to acommodate my limited dexterity.

I’ve been outdoorsy since my pre-teen years, but college, grad school, and gainful employment muted my adventures. I lived 14 years in upstate NY, 13 years in MA, 16 years in NM, and 26 in NV (as of 2024, my current home), and hiked the mountains of each state and its neighbors.

My life has changed a lot since 2002. I had a stroke when I was 47, most likely due to a neck injury and the subsequent tearing of a vertebral artery and formation of a clot on an arterial dissection. The MDs gave me 50-50 chance of survival. The stroke destroyed the right-side cerebellar SCA territory and part of my brainstem; I had no balance, and couldn’t really speak or walk. I am partly paralyzed on my entire right side, including my voicebox and tongue, and have no true proprioception in my right hand and foot. To this day, I simulate the balance that would normally be supplied by my cerebellum, through use of my vision and intellectual cues.  My voice is fairly normal, except when I am tired, and I mumble some. In 2002, I walked 200 miles on curbs, and regained functional balance, but my balance disappears if I am in dark too long, since I have to know where the horizon is for the intellectual cues to work. I was offered the chance to be declared disabled, which I turned down, because I had no intention of acting disabled.

And above all, I now need more sleep, because my cerebrum gets so very tired with this inefficeint substitution.

Please understand I must really concentrate to do simple things, because I must use my upper brain (cerebrum) to stead for my missing cerebellum.  People tend to talk a lot in tense climbing situations, and I have to ignore them or risk making a bad mistake. I am not being impolite, I am trying to survive. Many people say, "well, if I'm asking too many questions, you should tell me to stop!" That's the problem -- my brain gets locked and I can't talk. The lock happens very quickly once I get saturated.

I’ve had lots of trying medical conditions since 2002; but the most significant was a whiplash injury from mountaineering in 2018. The accident tore an artery as it went through my skull and into my brain, creating a dAVF as a short-circuit for blood to reflux in my cortical veins. This condition left me at a high risk for hemorrhagic stroke (I also had intense vertigo at times, and loud pulsatile tinnitus). I had two endovascular brain surgeries in 2018, and the first one went a bit awry, so that a branch of the left-side middle meningeal artery had to be blocked. This artery has part of the blood supply for the left eye, and I lost peripheral vision and part of my balance. I had expressive aphasia, and though intellectually sharp, I was occasionally unable to understand people or make coherent sentences, and could not tell you who I was. And I began to have frequent scintillating scotomas (fortification spectra) that greatly disrupted my vision. I learned to deal with these while climbing, but not while driving. The visual effects have subsided somewhat, and in April 2021 I drove more than 150 miles in a day for the first time since 2018. I’ve learned which conditions bring on the aphasia; I didn't have another episode for 2 years, then had two in 2022, when I was hiking solo. However, I seem to know how to recover from the aphasia, and the recent episodes lasted just minutes.

In 2019, I had a fairly routine prostate operation, but got a very bad abdominal infection as a consequence. For my age group and this particularly nasty pathogen strain, the mortality is 9%. I went through 3 courses of antbiotics, and at one point thought death would be OK just to end the pain. The cure took 3.5 months, and even though I forced myself to eat and exercise, I lost 8 lbs.

My last notable condition was severe COVID-19 (possibly alpha) in 2020-2021, which put me on serious meds and supplemental oxygen. During that time I lost 17 lbs, from 142 to 125. I was already very lean, and medical consensus was that my good physical condition saved my life. There is good evidence (from peer-reviewed animal studies) that the intensity of COVID is related to the initial dose; my initial dose was very high, from a young adult who coughed spittle into my face.

During COVID, I started passing a kidney stone, but the pain elsewhere in my body was so bad I put concerns about the stone on hold. By May 2021, the pain was becoming bad, and was intolerable by August 2021, when the stone was removed surgically.

And the latest: As of June 2023, I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea, another challenge. As usual, I figured it out myself, after buying and using recording SpO2 monitors during sleep.  Then I brought the results to my PCP, who ordered an official sleep test. This diagnosis has been in the cards since the brainstem damage in 2002. The accident in 2018 pushed me over the edge, with further injury to my brainstem (the dAVF connected to the marginal sinus at the base of the foramen magnum). I could tell something was wromg, as I was getting very cold at night, and each night woke up 10x as if I had just received a shot of adrenaline (which I did in a sense, as my brain tried to wake my body back into breathing). And COVID cemented it; people with bad COVID tend to have lower brain O2 levels long after "recovery". I just have to figure new ways to camp, maybe even backpack. But first it will be awhile before I can plan any day.

Many people seem to want to compete with me; I ask them to understand who I am. I compete with myself. While I can still do very intense trips, I prefer social interactions, and will often moderate what I do so my friends can enjoy themselves; they have done the same for me.

[I received a Ph.D. in geochemistry from MIT in 1982, but my thesis was primarily in the development of analytical techniques, principally radiochemical methods.  My work career was mostly at a national lab, where I programmed, did analytical chemistry, thermodynamic and radiation-scattering/sorption calculations, set up analytical equipment, and wrote peer-reviewed papers on a very wide variety of matters, including: programming techniques, flow and transport, volcanology, and biomechanics. About half my funding was obtained by writing proposals to solicit government grants. While I believe in the scientific method, I am skeptical of the scientific community; scientists are people, and many use ultra-Machiavellian methods to secure funding.]