What a couple days!

I survived another quarter (just barely)
I just got back from a whirlwind tour of finals week and then 9 days in the Southwest on the annual RedRocks trip in the Carrington Mobile. I won't spend too much time on the whole finals thing other than to say that it worked out the way I though it would... Not too horrible.
On Bryan's trip we spent 4 days biking and climbing in Maob, UT and then spent 4 days in Red Rocks, NV climbing sandstone. The trails in Moab are unrivaled and I suggest you go check them out if you have a mountain bike. I finally got to ride Porcupine Rim and holy crap, that is a technical trail. We also found a climbing area .5 mile away from where we were camped which had the most incredible 5.11 crack. It was a fingerwidth lieback for about 90 feet and the crack was the same thickness the whole way. No foot holds, just friction. I have never been so satisfied in my life after climbing that. It was straight out of Indian Creek. I would give it 6 stars in the guidebook if anyone would let me. Heaven. Red Rocks was a little more mellow of a time. I got to climb the 5.8 test piece for the whole area which is called Crimson Crysalis. 1000 ft of dead vertical climbing on face climbing and a crack system. I was scared shitless while climbing it but now that I am off it, it was wonderful! Also got to do some bouldering and some sport climbing on the other days. Most photos aren't going to be up for a while because I am at home in CA until January. It's so nice here! The weather is actually warmish compared to the high temps of 30-40 in Moab an Red Rocks.
Jesse showing off for the tourists in The Gallery!

Boulders in Calico Basin.

I don't wake up early enough for sunrises typically.

Just a nice California sunrise on the Lost Coast.

What a life!

I have an incredible life. It is wonderful! I hardly have any school work, 4 hrs of class time a week(I am taking online credits in addition to this), I get to sleep in 5 days a week. Some might call that a slacker lifestyle, but I call it ideal. Jealous yet? Those are just my responsibilities; now for the fun part of my life. Lets see here, I just got back last night from climbing Mt Hood, I am going leaving to go climbing at Smith Rock in an hour, I went scuba diving last weekend, and I am doing some trail work, then riding at Blackrock on Sunday. I LOVE MY LIFE! Yet, sadly, responsibility looms. I am creeping nearer and nearer to graduation and with that comes the responsibility of finding a permanent job, a house, and all those other things that most of you reading this already have/do. College only comes once and I am loathe to leave it until I absolutely have to. ...Daaaad, can I have some more moneeeeey?

Ooh! ooh! I got another job! It is working out at the school forest on a operations crew. Not entirely sure what that entails yet, but I am sure you will hear about it eventually.

Mount Hood was gorgeous. Even though we didn't summit, I still would say this was the prettiest mountaineering trip I've ever done. It was a full moon, relatively warm, clear night and the people I was with were great. We didn't need headlamps for 98% of the climb it was so bright. We had to turn around at creater rock because of avalanche danger on the steeper slope but we made it to about 9,000 ft (zoom on the Pearly Gates and you can see a fracture from an avalanche the night before.) Just as we were debating turning around, we witnessed a large icefall on the headwall next to us. That pretty much made up our minds. We stayed up there for the sunrise or "fireworks" as Logan refers to them and got a real treat. The glissade/snowshovel-sledding trip down was just as fun as the way up. Tyler and I did some EXTREME! shoveling and went off a few 2 ft. drops at about 20 mph. As a result of glissading on rime ice and hitting some sweet jumps on the shovel, my ass is now very very sore (Eva had a huge bruise on her cheeks). All in all, a perfect trip. Oh, and crampons make great pillows I've found.
Hood from the Parking lot.

Portland lights

4:30 am

"Fireworks"

Jefferson, Three Sisters, Broken Top and Bachelor(?)

Looking South


If you click a photo to enlarge it, and then right click and "set as wallpaper," you can use any of these as desktop photos for you 'puter. There are more photos on my webspace.

Dev an I were talking about climbing the other day(do we really ever talk about anything else? no.), and the subject of aid climbing came up. Now of course, as free climbers, we are obligated to make fun of those on "the dark side" of climbing as frequently as possible. The main point of aid climbing it seems, is to travel slowly. No one ever talks about the speed-aid ascent of El Cap(because aid climbing is slow) or the world record slowest ascent of Half Dome(because ...AID CLIMBING IS SLOW!). Free climbing is where it is at, fast, fun, daring. Those silly aid climbers and their bling.

I am working on bringing back the lost art of fucking with people for no reason at all. I don't mean that in a maliscious way at all either. Well, not malisciously, but ideally another word which allows for a little leeway in my interpretation of mean. I am going to kick this off with a campout on someone's lawn or porch on a random weekday. That is all. Just a little urban camping. Why do this you ask? Why not! I certainly dont have to bother with schoolwork (or classes for that matter) this term, so I feel the need to mess with people who do. :) Don't laugh; your front yard might be next.

I am leaving to climb Mt. Hood in about a half hour. Wish me luck!

Oh, and scuba in Puget Sound with Jesse was incredible. We got to play with an octopus that was 10 feet long tip to tip! Lots of other col stuff too, but that will be up here later.
Peace.

Cold is upon us

Yep, it is officially cold. Has been for the past week. I am oficially calling this the beginning of the cold, dark season that is Winter. The good news is that snow fell on the mountains. Enough for the resorts to open a week early.

Tomorrow night Jesse Swift and I are driving to Seattle to Scuba dive in Puget Sound for the weekend. It is going to be warmer in the ocean than outside, and that is saying a lot because the water in northern washington is cooooold. Hopefully we will be able to snag some crabs for dinner. I am really excited for this, and especially to see Jesse's face after that first dive (he hasn't ever dove cold water before.)
Speaking of diving, I scanned the underwater photos from Hawaii.
The rest are on my webspace (check link to the right). I got to pet the whitetip on the right; way cool, especially after one tried to bite me the night before. I need to go back to Kauai soon, it is good for the soul.


Beer update: it really does taste like an amber. a really sweet amber. really sweet. oh well, it is tasty and has alcohol in it so I would say my job is done. time to drink it!

Diving or Bust

I have been trying to wrangle people into diving for over a month, I finally get 2 partners to catch crabs, and it all goes to shit. I woke up so damn early (9am) today to go diving in Newport. Brad, Megan, and I drive to Newport, all ready to go diving, get there, and realize that there is serious weather on one of the gnarliest tidal exchanges of the fall. The analogy we got from the dive shop guy was that this will be the eqivelent of diving in a mild hurricane. OK, diving is off. We just wandered around with our shellfish licenses and nothing to do the rest of the day. Oh well, Jesse won't cut out on me next week; we are going to Puget Sound for some real diving.

Oh, also, check out those pics from my dad's plane crash. not so bad really, I thought it was much worse.(they still did crash land though!)

A way fun halloween.

Sadly, I didn't get as trashed as I was planning due to being hung over as fuck from the night before when we were carving pumpkins. One good thing did come out of that night though; my pumpkin kicked ass! What artistry! I know some things aren't quite to scale but I used artistic license to emphasize certain things. Can you believe I did that after 2/3 of a gallon of beer? Almost 2 hrs invested.
Oh, last night I went to a cornfield maze with the neighbors and some friends. I had never been to one before and I found it to be quite fun! It was set up quite well and it really was a maze(we had to ask a monster for help after he scared us for the 5th time while we were backtracking). I think the best scare for the group was actually done by me (I ran ahead and hid in the corn)! Heh, I found my calling next halloween, I am going to be one of the monsters in the maze jumping out at people. Scaring people is what I live for! ...and we still have trick-or-treaters coming tonight!

My current desktop photo (Broken Top and Three Sisters)

OMC

OMC is now a community organization. No longer affiliated with the school. We got dropped after a climbing trip I organized last weekend was misconstrued as an OMC trip (I specifically did not use any club resources in any part of the trip and specified very clearly that this was not related to mountain club). We are reorganizing the listserve and website (the school can not take those away) but we are losing funding, the library, avvy beacons, radios, and GPSs. The nature of this is complete bullshit. The school administration has created enough hoops for the club to jump through so that they would have a politically proper way to eliminate the liability of having to deal with OMC when we couldn't meet their objectives. We can be reinstated as a sports club next year if we demonstrate that we have succeeded in reforming our culture to the point of everything being "safe" and peachy-keen. (If any of you have read Brave New World, think of all OMC participants being on Soma at all outings.) As Bugs Bunny once so eloquently put it, "Of course, you know this means war..."

On another note, Beginner Smith was a smashing success. check my webspace for fotos. I am also stoked to have gotten an interview at the college forest. Hopefully I can get the job!

Halloween is coming! Colleen, Ariel, and I are going as rock, paper, and scissors(I got scissors). Halloween should be good this year, but hopefully the cops won't be involved like last year. As funny as I thought it was, CPD doesn't like exploding pumpkins. I guess I will just have to be more careful, and run away faster this year.

panorama from Kauai

Aeroplanes

Holy Crap! I found out yesterday that my dad was in a plane crash! He was flying out to meet a friend for some duck hunting and the twin engine cessna he was in crashed when the pilot landed without putting the damn wheels down. Honestly people, who the hell forgets to put the wheels down! But everything turned out AOK. The belly landing was as smooth as could be expected and no one was hurt. This was really scary hearing about. I'm glad that pop is still with all of us.

the first post!

ok, so not too many people know about this yet, but for those of you fortunate enough to have the inside scoop, this is my blog. Heh, blog. BLLLLOOOOOOOOOGGG. Kinda rolls off the tongue nicely. Too bad everyone and their mom has a blog. Oh well.
Of the past 9 days, I have been out of Corvallis climbing for 6 days. I like that statistic. It means that I have been having fun. The number of different climbing areas is astounding too. Nick and I went to the Enchantments Wilderness in Washington, Vantage in Washington, Smith Rock in Oregon, and the Menagerie Wilderness spires in Oregon. Round trip: 1300 miles. Awesome.
I think I can get used to a journal. Sounds like fun! Hopefully I can keep up with it. There will be lots of pics from the weekends up here.
I am sleepy, so, peace.
Current Mood/Listening to: Led Zep - Dream On