Climbin

Some thoughts on a sorta recent climbing trip:

Climbing Delecate Arch: What do you think?

I'm not quite sure what to think of it. I guess some were outraged. Most don't care. There is a need to protect national monuments. Does climbing it do any harm? Probably a little, but does it warrant the furor?

One thing is for sure: Patagonia, Dean Potter's sponsor, needs to come clean and stop pretending to be a "green" company. The "green" thing is pure marketing with little substance.

Josh the Wasatch Sasquatch Strikes Again, on telemarktips.com

Yup, Josh is now famous.

-w

Hiking the Gulch With Praying Strangers

Last week Lis and I went down south with a group of about ten folks to do some hikes and backpacking in the Escalante National Monument. The group was a little different that I am used to. It included Lis' father and cousin, and an assemblage of others who, as I came to learn, did not know each other well. Lis' father, Lamar, is an avid backpacker. Aged 69, he can outhike those one-quarter his age. Lamar loves the desert and started backpacking in his forties. He has lead many groups of scouts down there and loves to share with others the wonders of the desert canyons. The others in the group were an odd group of folks whom it seemed were only halfway having any fun. It was odd because many in the group were not very talkative or lively. This is of course relative to myself who could be described as a regular jabermouther who has his own blog and everything. Besides the lack of loquaciousness I found the four-times-a-day prayer gathering a little alienating, but mostly it was the frowns and the stony silence that was a drag. I dont mind thanking god (in lower case) for the food in my bowl, good health, asking for world peace, for ending of human suffering, and compassion. But anyway...

We arrived in the afternoon for a quick hike up to Calf Creek Falls. To the climber's right of the falls there was some very wet and slippery 20-degree slabs. After a quick look-around and obligatory tourist photo-ops I got to work on sending the slabs. Using my chacos, cinched down tight for security, I found small dimples in the rock surface to gain footing. After brushing away moss and dirt I put my tips and finger nails on micro fisures. One slip sent you surfing down the slabs like a slip-n-slide. After many failed attempts I found a line of weakness going to an obvious ledge



I'd give the route a solid 5.7 difficulty rating. Decend the route by surfing down the slope at excessive speed, tripping over a sand bank at the bottom and diving into a somersault, and almost colliding with a tree.

We spent the next two days hiking Coyote gulch by way of crack in the wall to red well. For dinner Lis and I had cous cous with curry powder, shalots, carrots, and cashews. I think the frownypatnsers had those microwave noddle thingys. The scenery was beautiful and all that. I definitely reccomend checking out Escalante if you havent. The canyon was cool and shady, lush and green with numerous arches and interesting formations along the way...





For last day we hiked up brimstone slot, which is next to Peekaboo and Spoky. We didnt make it far up the slot before serious chimneying and wading through sesspools was required. It did not matter though because we had to turn around because team Prozac wanted to leave for home by lunchtime.



All in all it was a good and interesting trip in a naturalistic and anthropological way.

Amen.

NYT article on Doug Coombs

taken down.

west slabs?

Anyone interested in the West slabs of Olympus this weekend? Early start out of the sun. I know nothing about what I'm getting into. It's a long rock route, I think it is pretty easy (5.6?) for Saturday. Sunday is the paddle festival at Little Dell Resivoir. (actually it happens Saturday as well, but I'm only going Sunday) let's see if anyone actually reads this.
Cheers!

New Big Rock Lyrics

Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
all the climbs are ten pitches long,
the approaches all five minutes,
and you're always feelin' strong;
the protection all is solid,
and the jams are bomber hands;
there are bolted slabs
with cans of Pabst --
you can clip the rope,
and then pull the tabs
in the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
the ice is made of beer.
You can stop and take a sip,
it takes away your fear.
The campgrounds all are empty,
the ranger's gone away.
And there's a stout
old Becky route
nobody ever knew about
in the Big Rock Candy Mountains.


And for those of you who haven't heard
What'd'ya do with a Drunken Climber?

Chorus:
Way-ay up she's climbin'
Way-ay up she's climbin'
Way-ay up she's climbin'
Ear-lie in the mornin'

What do you do with a drunken climber?
What do you do with a drunken climber?
What do you do with a drunken climber?
Ear-lie in the mornin'


Put 'im on a boulder 'til he's sober
Put 'im on a boulder 'til he's sober
Put 'im on a boulder 'til he's sober
Ear-lie in the mornin'

Chorus

Make 'im belay your A-four pitch
Make 'im belay your A-four pitch
Make 'im belay your A-four pitch
Ear-lie in the mornin'

Chorus

Throw 'im on lead on a five-twelve arr
Throw 'im on lead on a five-twelve arr
Throw 'im on lead on a five-twelve arr
Ear-lie in the mornin'

Chorus

Rope 'im together with the ranger's daughter
Rope 'im together with the ranger's daughter
Rope 'im together with the ranger's daughter
Ear-lie in the mornin'

Chorus

Vote 'im Prez of the A.A.C.
Vote 'im Prez of the A.A.C.
Vote 'im Prez of the A.A.C.
Ear-lie in the mornin'

Chorus

Fix 'is friends and clean 'is nuts
Fix 'is friends and clean 'is nuts
Fix 'is friends and clean 'is nuts
Ear-lie in the mornin'

Chorus

Logging some miles

Stacey and I had a great tandem-riding day last weekend (April 29). We rode from my parents' farm in New Hampshire to Billy and Katie's house in Biddeford, Maine, where Crowder is living for the time being. We faced a fierce headwind on the 40 mile trip there, but the sun was shining and it felt great to be cruising down the road on the long bike. The scenery was mostly rolling woods and fields. We got to B&K's and hitched Crowder to a leash and led him as we rode down to the bike shop where Billy works, 5 miles down the road. Then we rode into Kennebunkport for lunch, back to the bike shop where I got to try out Billy's new tallbike, and then we reversed our course, five miles back to B&K's with Crowder on the leash again, and back home by way of Durham. I was bonking by the time we got to Durham, so we got some cheese and crackers at the grocery store. Although we had good breakfast and lunch, we neglected to pack enough carbs for the road. We had really hoped for an icecream cone, too, but the dairy bar was closed by the time we got there. A quick 3 miles back home brought the day's odometer reading to 96. We contemplated zooming around the block to get an even century, but that thought did not last long in the face of dinner suggestions.

So this weekend, I decided to keep up the momentum and get in some more road miles. Riding from Boston provides some interesting limitations, not the least of which is that there's no room in the apartment for more than 2 bikes apiece. So for a touring bike, I choose between a singlespeed mountain bike (34x19 on wide 26" knobbies) and my fixed-gear commuter (48x18 on 25mm road tires). For riding down to Providence, RI and back I naturally chose the latter. The bike is not equipped with any sort of "rack system", so I stuffed my commuter bag full of a change of clothes, my bike lock, a quart of water and some trail food. Off I rolled on Saturday at 1pm, after a hearty breakfast. I think I covered about 50 miles, maybe a little more, arriving at Mike's house in Providence around 6pm. The roads were mostly flat and smooth and wind-less, so I blame my routefinding on both ends of the trip (getting out of Boston and into Providence) with some delay. And yesterday (Sunday), Mike and his friend Josie escorted me northwards along the Blackstone river bike path, nearly to the Massachusetts border, before heading back and sending me on my way back home. I was on the road for over six hours yesterday, but I think that way was a bit longer, maybe closer to 60 miles. I was careful to stop for food (and icecream) along the way to avoid the bonk.

On another note, in case anyone is still reading this, there's a guy in Cambridge who looks just like Ben. Same hair and beard, orange messenger bag, rolled up pantcuffs, bike shoes - but we figured it must not be him after we saw that his fixed-gear was blue and he didn't stop to say Hi to us outside the grocery store.

That's all for now. I'm going to go home and take a nap.

Superiority Complex

Robert's job description I think says that he spends most of his time staring longingly at the broad and inspiring face of Mt. Superior while wishing to ski it, and also helping kids off and on the rope tow occasionally. Well, last Wednsday Robert finally got to ski it.

The team: Rob, Ben, John, and Yours Truly.


We woke up early and booted up the 3000+ face, gaining the summit right as the spring corn was softening up. Crampons and ice axes were the order of the day. The skis sat astride our backpacs.

Avalanche debris littered much of the face. Skiing down, we picked our way in between old slide paths to find the untouched sections. The spring corn skied so well it seemed mostly effortless, like on the rope tow where Rob works, but steeper and longer.


All told it was a great day if it wasnt for feeling so gosh darn tired.

Mountaineering: Walking uphill slowly in the snow while not feeling well.

-w

Super skiing!

YEE-HAW! :-)


Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locamotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound it's, . . Closing day at Alta! I went up to hit up the fun with another person who shall only be known as "snow queen". Fun times was had by all, the cape appears to have super mogul-power as I was doing quite well on the many bumps, with only about 3 wipeouts all day which for me is a record low.

Xtreme climbing for an un-Xtreme girl

I know none of you climbing types will be impressed by the recounting my adventures on a 5.7 crack, but indulge me, ok? I’ve only been climbing twice and the last time was nearly two years ago so what may seem an effete sissy boy climb for some is pretty cruxy for me. Xtreme is all a matter of perspective.

Until yesterday, my climbing experience=a day at the Slips and a day at Dogwood with the novice group at Climb for Life. It’s not that I don’t like climbing, but it’s hard to convince experienced climbers to take on a novice, so I just stick to backpacking and road running (and pretty happily, I might add). But I’m always up for the adventure (and perhaps the embarrassment) so I was excited—and a little apprehensive--for the proposed ascent up Beckey’s Wall. Erin and Bobby arrived before me and Will, so they were already up the first pitch. That meant that I was belaying Will. He’s either really trusting or very confident in his climbing skills—I’m guessing the latter. Of course, as soon as I started up, it started raining and the wind started blowing. I was a bit iffy about the whole thing and I was crying from the dust in my eyes (I promise, it was the dust!) but I kept at it.

Since my previous climbing experiences were with other novices, I was used to climbing with lots of verbal encouragement. As I started up the second pitch, I could hear everyone talking above me, but no one was talking to me. I yelled at them, telling them I needed some company and everyone responded with the appropriate climbing affirmations. I think I’m more of a beginner than the climb demands, but with a lot of cursing, I made it up (with horrible technique and the bruised knees to prove it).





Thank goodness Will is such a sensitive, pink-shirt wearing guy, as he made me feel far less incompetent than I actually was.



After the climb, Erin and Bobby graciously filled us up with burritos and brownies and we watched Return2Sender, which provided me with lots of tips for crack climbing. I even learned that I don’t need positive reinforcement from anyone but myself: “Come on Didier, come on.”

Week's excitement

No photos so I'll try to make the prose colorful.

Boston showed some pleasant and unpleasant sides of itself this week. Tuesday night's bike ride on the trails of the Middlesex Fells reacquainted me and Stacey to trails where you're likely to hit trees and then fall on pointy rocks. Or slip on roots and fall on pointy rocks. Or slip on pointy rocks and crash into trees. But in our 40 minutes of exploration before darkness, we also found some very pleasant smooth doubletrack where I could race the dog and win. Sometimes.

On Wednesday night, I volunteered at Bikes Not Bombs down in Roxbury. It is great to get my hands dirty taking apart bikes that have been donated to the organization, and helping out neighborhood kids with their bike projects. Check out their webpage for more information on what they do - www.bikesnotbombs.org. Afterwards, I cruised down the street to Doyle's Pub where Stacey's frisbee league gathers after their Wednesday night games. As I was parking my pink and purple fixed gear with the dinosaur head on the handlebars, a neighborhood kid came up and grabbed my seat and said something about taking my bike. I held on. The kid's friend was riding a bike and told me I should really just give his friend the bike. I held on, keeping the bike between me and him. This lasted a couple of minutes, neither of us letting go of the bike, then some people came out of the pub and the kids took off. I locked up my bike with shaking hands and went inside. I am a bit surprised at myself that I didn't get scared and let him have the bike, but for some reason I didn't feel too threatened - I did't feel like he was going to swing at me or pull a weapon. If he had, I probably would have dropped the bike.

Last night Stacey and I scouted out another popular area for trail biking, the Blue Hills reservation in Milton. That too promises to provide a good selection of biking fun, though it's harder to get to from our side of town, and we had even less time to ride before dark.

Navigation around the big city, whether on foot, bike, subway, or automobile, is a constant source of amusement. It has been as exciting to get to our recreation venues as it has been to recreate once we're there.
That's all for now.

Escalante in the Spring

M. and I decided it was time for some desert hiking. Unlike most of the time, it was pretty cold all day and there was an extra color I'm not used to down in the desert: Green. We hiked up the Gulch, going upstream with blooming plants, green grass, a high flowing stream, and evidence of recent flooding found in the bent down reeds, flattened plant life, and tangled grass hanging at waist-height off of more stout things. The weather could not have been better and the 10-mile hike in was splendid. After droping packs and setting camp we traveled up a side canyon to see an arch and frolic about.


We topped off the trip with a visit to the Hell's Backbone Grill. Its not what you'd call a dirtbag sort of resturant, even though you can definitely dress like one in there and have nobody care, but after a long hike some gormet food is pretty good. My reccomend: Before you drive home, go in for a cup of coffee and a wiskey and black pepper chocolate bread pudding, which will run you about 10 bucks.

-w&m

Ben and Will's Bugaboo trip is planned!

We just arranged the booking for one week in the summer, in the hut at the glacier in the Bugaboo spires. Above is a picture of Snowpatch spire. Stay tuned for the trip report coming in July...

-w

Xtreme Team 2006

Well, I finally put together a trip report from this year's Xpedition. I did it in a blog cuz it seemed like the easiest way to put together a webpage trip report, ..turns out it wasn't the greatest, but it worked, so here it is...
Xtreme Team Xpedition 2006

The Gnar and the Not-So-Gnar

I'm posting this partly to make the point that practically anything can constitiute and adventure. And in making this point, encourage others to post their experiences here, even if they are not skiing or climbing-related.

As the Wasatch dumps what might be the biggest storm of the year, here I sit alone in the Decatur Holiday Inn in Atlanta for an academic meeting on bifurcation routes to bursting in neuronal systems. This three-day planed bivouac is no recreational matter: The schedule starts at 8 am and goes till 22:00 hours for two days. Talks Talks and Talks, and Talks... and then poster presentations, including my own. I am glad its only two days... Anyway, I hope all you are enjoying the new snow...

Atlanta seems like a pretty cool city. The peach trees are budding flowers in the warm and humid spring. The buildings are old here with black streaks about the brick-lined windows from all the rain they get here. Its something you dont see in old buildings in SLC... There is kudzu and swamps and sense of history that is older than the Gateway stripmall, the constitution, or slavery. It feels so good to be in a city where the culture is diverse: Black syntax and southern dialects comingle with golfing tourists for the Augusta masters tournament.
For dinner I went down the street to a little belgan-style brew pub. I had some belgan beers and fish and chips. Note that 3 belgan beers > 3 out-of-state beers > 3 utah beers => Will is loaded.

Have fun with the snow...

-w

How to get on a speeding 'cross bike

Lesson courtesy of Ben. I found this picture on the web one day when feeling sad that I had missed out on cyclocross season and wondering how my friends (and my old bike) had done this year.
The photo begs a discussion of proper technique. Is Andrew McLean's advice apropos in this case - i.e., "try to get all your limbs facing in the same direction"? In any case, it's good to see that the old red steed is still rolling, including the plastic juice-jar fenders.
As for me, I spend about 1/2 hour a day baiting Boston traffic and then trying not to get squashed.

Josh the Wasatch Sasquatch Sighted in Porter Fork

The abomitable snowman himself was seen in porter fork last sunday. Its hard to miss Josh when he is coming right at you as can be seen at this link

The Sasquatch Himself!!!!!

...


Anyway.... Josh, Bobby, and I all headed up to porter fork last sunday. I think this might be one of my favorite places in the Wasatch. It was a lesurely day, plodding along in the warmth of spring in heavy sticky new snow but I'm not complaining. At the start Bobby said he was not feeling well and wanted to turn back. This sort of situation requires subterfuge. I told him that the view of the run "lies just beyond that tree" and "you should decide what you want to do when you get up there". The old carrot and stick tactic... After several iterations of this tactic we all got near the top with a view of the porter fork limstone wall that would make for some great sport climbing in the summer. Splitting the wall was a nice chute on a shady northwest aspect. I pointed the chute out to the team and muttered some passing comment about how it would be cool to someday ski it. Bobby spied chute and the fategue turned to excitement as he piped up "I'll ski it!" I said that I would watch and film. Then Josh said he wanted to do it. "Fuck it" I said, "I guess I'll go up there to". I mean how hard can straightlining be. I mean its kind of defined by what you are not doing: turning, which I've only sort of got down, so not turning wouldnt do any harm. It turned out that I did to some turns and a fair bit of sideslipping but anyway...


What ensued was a great day of skiing. The following links are to films of the event...

1

2

3 (rocket man=josh)

4

5

5

6

-will

Bushwack curse

The Bushwack curse struck again yesterday. For those of you unfamiliar with this curse, beware, the curse strikes Margaret whenever she tries to climb bushwack (it is not currently known whether Bobby has to be present and have driven, but that clearly strengthens the curse). I sit at the base of the climb, put on my harness, someone decides to lead when all of a sudden BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP the Search and Rescue pager goes off with an injured skier in Big Cottonwood. This requires me to do a crazy car shuttle only to get there and find out there is nothing for me to do. (2 weeks ago it was an injured person who was flown on LifeFlight, yesterday it was an out of bounds avalanche by Brighton- see today's avy report)

The curse continues, in fact, the warning signs have been there, yet I chose not to heed them "hmm, it's a bluebird monday with high avy danger, maybe I should drive myself, . . ." The curse appears to be active only on Bushwack, as I have sucessfully climbed the Dam Wall in BCC without such complications.

Maybird in Spring

I'm sorry I have no pictures for this one. The camera never came out of the pack as the clouds prevented any good pictures.

The skin into the pine and maybird canyons is always a bear. All three of these are hanging canyons and it takes a little activation energy to get out of hyway hell and into shangri la. We have all done it and concede that it is worth it. I tend to like little conttonwood drainages better than big for views, besides mill B south of course, and the Broads fork cirque... Ah hell they are all pretty. I take that back. What I do like is the openness of the red pine, maybird, hogum drainages. I love looking up at the phiferhorn above. Today however the phife was in cloud cover. Ben and I got near the pass into hogum but neglected to go there as there wouldn't be much of a view. We stuck to the trees on the east side of the drainage. Up high the powder was not too heavy by spring standards and the underlying crust didn't cause any funnybuisness till we got lower down. Ben and I had a great decent through the trees on moderate angles and out of harm's way as far as avalanches are concerned. I actually felt relatively comfortable on skis for the first time in the backcountry! I thank Rob for the lesson at alta last Saturday. By the end of last Saturday he told me I did not look quite as bad as I did in the morning.

-w