Hola desde España, peeps. After 27 hours of travel yesterday, Allison and I got settled into our hotel room in the Hotel Via Augusta in Barcelona. We were pooped! The travel went well save a small screw-up in Madrid where American Airlines apparently didn't have us properly booked on partner airline Iberia's flight to Barcelona. Sadly, I missed the Barcelona Marathon by one week. I probably would have won. Oh well, maybe next year.
After arriving in the hotel we immediately napped for a solid four hours. We dragged ourselves out of the room for a short stroll a few blocks up to a small pizzeria with outdoor seating in a tiny courtyard where we scored some tapas, pizza and beer before retiring back to our room. We slept hard for 10.5 hours. I think we're adjusted now!
Today we walked and rode the excellent city metro all day today seeing many of the more popular sites of Barcelona. With a sunny, clear sky and a high in the low 60s, it was a beautiful day to be out exploring the city. And it's Allison's birthday! A super fine day! Admittedly, though, after our big day of travel I didn't realize it was already April 1st and blew it on the birthday wishes until the late afternoon. Shame on me. But we did have some birthday helado after walking around the cool Park Güell designed by Gaudí in 1900.
Tomorrow we plan to see more of the city including the very popular La Sagrada Familia Church. We tried to get in today but the line wrapped around the block, and then some.
Squeezing in a short blog entry tonight after feverishly packing for our departure for Catalonia, Spain tomorrow. Once we arrive in Spain, Allison and I will be tourists for a few days in Barcelona before renting a car and driving around the Catalonia region of northern Spain mostly rock climbing in the world famous limestone crags of the area. Moderate climbers in the hard sport climbing mecca of the world. Needless to say we won't be hopping on Catxasa but it'll be amazing to see the areas and routes that are making the headlines these days. We bust out tomorrow, March 30, and return on April 13th. A quick trip for sure but we've found a couple of weeks at a time on holiday is generally more than enough for us. We're psyched!
Last weekend we had a super good time with ten fun friends bouldering and climbing at Hueco Tanks State Park, TX for a few days. It was our second visit there but the first time we really sampled the bouldering and tried hard. I didn't send anything harder than a V3 (hey, I admitted in the first paragraph that we're moderate climbers!) but sure had a blast on every problem we got on. My favorite problem of the trip was the last one we did before going home. Not sure what it was rated or even what it was called--we just passed by it while walking between areas and it looked intriguing. It had some tough body-tension crux that felt even more difficult given my tall, lanky stature. So I spent a couple times on it before figuring out some great "tall guy beta" allowing me to work past that crux with a big reach and send the problem. Fun stuff! The day before that, Allison and I climbed an very engaging classic roped route, Sea of Holes. 300 feet of heady, steep hueco pulling resulting in a very satisfying climb.
But, on a much more somber note, today was a tough day for a number of us at work. A great person and co-worker of ours, Cheri, passed away after a three-year battle with ovarian cancer. Cheri was a good friend and mentor to me. I owe her a great deal for where I am in my career at LANL and learned copious amounts of knowledge from her spanning from how to write code to how to deal with irate customers or difficult co-workers. She encouraged me to take the position I now I have at work even when I felt extremely under-qualified for it. Beyond work, Cheri was an honest, open-minded and caring person. I miss her. Cancer is bullshit. It's nasty and indiscriminating.
Sunday night already. The weekend's passed and I'll I got was this lousy stomach flu. Friday morning Fritz and I drove down to Enchanted Tower for what was to be a weekend full of fun climbing and nice camping. We did get in some fun climbing and some nice climbing but only roughly 50 percent of what we had planned on.
We didn't get out of Los Alamos until late morning on Friday due to a server issue at work that I went in to resolve. But we still arrived at the Tower with plenty of time to get wiped out by the steep climbing and rough rock. The weather was clear and toasty down there with a high in the mid-60s. I was psyched to be outside, lounging in the sun in the remote setting of Enchanted Tower. Later in the day Allison and I got on the route she had been thinking about for a long while, Technowitch, and neither of us sent it that afternoon on account of being pretty pumped from other routes we'd climbed already. No worries, Saturday we'd be recovered and ready to rock. We pulled the rope and left the draws on the route, which would save us some work the next day, and retreated to camp for dinner, beer and a campfire.
Allison on Technowitch, April 2011
To give a sense of how steep the climbing on the tower is...
Well, at 2am that night I woke up feeling really bad. Turns out I came down with the stomach bug that Allison had a week or so ago. The rest of the night was no fun with me sitting around a campfire between trips to the bushes to, well, I'll spare you the details. I was able to sleep a few more hours between 4am and 7am but woke up feeling super weak. I didn't feel like eating anything but managed to down some black coffee before strolling up to the tower again to try to climb. That didn't work out but I did have a good morning belaying Allison for a few routes before she did send Technowitch for the first time. She was stoked and I was psyched for her! It's a route that had been giving her a hard time for a long while due to a pretty reachy-for-her move right before the top but after the normal crux. She looked solid, held it together and punched it through her crux using a smaller hold a few inches below the hold most everyone else can use. It was great watching her figure out something that worked for her and then execute it.
With Allison completely satisfied with the trip and me not being strong enough to get up a 5.10 route, we loaded up and came home later that afternoon making, of course, a number of stops at gas stations along the way so I could use the facilities.
Sunday turned out a nasty weather day around New Mexico so it was a good day for chillin' out at home. We did make a shopping trip to Santa Fe to replace our grind 'n brew coffee machine that died Friday. I know, big news right!? OK, in bigger news, for me at least, I bought tickets to go see A Day To Remember (with Rise Against and Title Fight) in April down in Rio Rancho. My brother, Dylan, and Andy will be going with me and I'm psyched. A guilty pleasure of mine is listening to hard-rockin' "cookie monster" music like ADTR. Sam G. came up with that term, "cookie monster music" to describe music with guttural screaming for vocals.
Whoah boy, good times. Last week was a good one around Los Alamos--great weather followed by a couple of small storms late in the week had me running in a t-shirt and shorts after work on Monday, shirtless during my lunch run on Tuesday and then backcountry snowboarding in 6 to 10 inches of new snow on Friday and Saturday. Sunday was spring-like weather again so we got out rock climbing at the Overlook before going to see an up-and-coming band called Electric Guest at a live show at Santa Fe Sol. Now that's a great week!
My evening run last Monday was a speedy new PR for me up my "backyard" trail, Mitchell Trail, to Guaje Ridge. This is a great course to gauge fitness and I was feeling pretty fit and speedy in my new Saucony Peregrine shoes. I ran the 2.45 miles/1,400' vertical gain in 32:52 which was definitely a PR. I descended swiftly too for a RT time of 53:26. I was psyched.
Friday I got out for a 4,000' vertical day of backcountry snowboarding at our favorite local stash in the Jemez with Andy and Sarah. Roughly six inches of new snow on the good base made for some great turns. The turns got even better on Saturday during a big tour in the Sangres near Ski Santa Fe with Aaron, Andy and Bill. We rode some great treed lines in ~10 inches new snow. That outing had to be one of better Sangres backcountry outings ever. A great group of friends and perfect timing with the new snow. New Mexico's backcountry riding may be limited and often short with variable snow but when it's good, it's great.
Andy ripping a turn in our Jemez stash
Super sweet tree riding in the Sangres
Sunday's climbing at the Overlook was surprisingly warm after the two storms Friday and Saturday. It was the last day of climbing we'll have with our good friend Nat for a while. He left Los Alamos yesterday loaded up in his Toyota Sienna minivan for a year of living the climbing life with his first stop being the amazing Red River Gorge. Nat's a great guy and I'm psyched for his adventure.
Later that evening Allison and I met our friends Hunter and Allison for a very intimate (~25 people) music show in Santa Fe. There were three bands playing but we had interest only in the first band, Electric Guest. EG is a new-on-the-scene band that seems to be making some pretty good waves. They were some super cool, humble dudes to chat with and put on a nicely energetic show. Their four-song EP just dropped this week and the full length album is due out on April 24th. And they'll be on the David Letterman show in early May.
And after all this cool shit, now for a rant about some lame-ass shit that spurred the title of this post. Just this past Monday, my friend Brett and I went down to White Rock to descend a canyon called Pajarito Gorge. He's a big canyoneer and he really enjoys training in Pajarito Gorge and taking new partners down the canyon for canyoneering practice. He wanted to install four bolted rappel anchors in the canyon and since I was interesting in checking out the descent and have a lot of experience placing bolts in rock, I went down the canyon with him after work. We took my 36v power drill and bolts/hangers and webbing/quicklines for four bolted anchor stations. The canyon was a fun, deep-but-short romp and I enjoyed going down it and seeing the gorge from the bottom instead of from above. Sadly, though, local kids (and probably some adults) have found entertainment (and probably convenience) in tossing large amounts of household trash into the gorge. We saw tires, bicycles, microwaves, latex paint cans complete with latex paint streaks down the rock and even a snow blower down in there. Brett and some friends had hosted a clean-up day in the canyon last year and piled the big trash objects into nice piles (it would be incredibly difficult to haul most of that stuff out) which helps the atmosphere a bunch. Nonetheless, it's worth checking out the gorge if you like rappeling and canyoneering.
But now for the bullshit and my rant. Brett returned less than 48 hours later to find the third rappel anchor chopped. What the fuck? Some self-righteous MF seems to be pro-latex paint and pro-household trash but feels the need to remove a bolt anchor that actually serves a purpose and wouldn't even been noticeable to anyone walking along the canyon rim? That's just straight up backwards. This bolt chopper needs to get his priorities straight and perhaps do something about the paint on the rock or the trash in the canyon bottom instead of ruining the work of some people trying to make the canyon an enjoyable recreational outing for others to enjoy. Furthermore, the fact that this anchor was removed so soon after we put it means it was highly likely the dude was watching us put it in that night and instead of being open and honest and yelling down to us to state his objection, he chose the cowardly method of return after we finished to anonymously chop the anchor. Boo to anonymous cowards!
I just don't understand people who can view some issues in complete black and white without trying to exercise some reason instead of just saying, "all bolts are bad." I've got news for you...life isn't black and white. Think about it. (And please return our hangers so we can go back in there and put them in again. Because we will.)
The theme of this week was migration. At work we had the big cut-over day yesterday from the long-standing calendaring application, Meeting Maker, to the calendaring application in Exchange. I put in 8 hours Friday afternoon/evening, 16 hours Saturday and 9 hours Sunday working with our talented migration team to get all 7,000 users and 780+ room/equipment calendars migrated into Exchange. It's been a wild weekend for work. At times it sucked, at times it was gratifying and in the end we're all stoked to have it done. Now begins the support...it's going to be a wild few weeks while everyone first hates it because it's different, then actually gives it a chance and then, eventually, realizes it's pretty damn slick. I know that's how it's going to be because that's how it was for me when I first got involved with this migration. Generally speaking, people just hate change for the sake of hating change. But once a person spends time with the new product, the attitude eventually changes. This will be "fun" to watch at work.
So yes, I missed out on a couple of beautiful weather days this weekend while I was holed up in an windowless conference room huddled in front of a laptop eating junk food just because the food was there and what else was I going to do? But I did get out for a nice five mile run in a few inches of new snow on Friday morning before going up to Pajarito Mountain to hike a lap up Townsight for a snowboard run down in ~6 inches of new snow. That was fun. I was the first person hiking up that day despite my leisurely start to the morning and enjoyed first tracks down the run "Hedache". I took my Dad's Hero2 camera up and mounted it on the ski pole for this fun little video:
A solo hike and ride down Pajarito Mountain for my 63rd Pajarito hiked-for lap this season. Six inches of new made it nice.
Earlier in the week Allison and I nailed down a week-long apartment reservation at CampingBeta in Baro, Spain for our upcoming two-week trip there. That was a fun process communicating with the owner, back and forth via email, for a few days before going to our bank to figure out how to transfer money from the U.S. to a bank in Spain. (Hint: you need the bank account number as well as the "swift" (BIC) number for the bank.) So now we've got lodging figured out for all but two nights while we're there. We'll figure that out soon or just once we get there. That's the fun in the adventure.
I had intended to continue my Denali 2003 journal entries this week but I'm pooped and tired of staring at computer screens this weekend so that will have to wait for another post. Stay tuned...the journal entries are about to get meaty and exciting, I promise. :-)
A productive week at work followed by a chilly but nice day of rock climbing at The Dungeon and a short morning of backcountry skiing/boarding in the Jemez again...
There's been much talk amongst Andy, Sarah, Josh, Aaron, Sam and I about our Denali climb/ski trip coming up this summer. Needless to say, we're psyched! So I dug out my old journal from May/June 2003 when I first climbed Denali. I had a great time reading through my notes and conjuring up memories from that amazing trip. At the time it was huge for me. The biggest, baddest thing I'd ever done. And I can feel that coming from the words in the journal. So I took some time to type up the journal notes. I've included the notes from the first ten days of the trip, below.
Thursday, May 15th - A long day. Left Los Alamos at 5:15am and finally arrived in Talkeetna at 8:15pm (which is 10:15pm MST). It’s now 10PM (AK) and it’s still as light outside here as it is at 7pm in Los Alamos. The sun has not set yet. I hope to be able to sleep tonight. We’re at the Swiss Alaska Inn for the next two nights. We took the Talkeetna Shuttle SErvice from ANC. Audrey was on the phones and Stephanie was our driver. Stopped at Safeway in Wasilla for groceries. Drive time from ANC was about three hours (including grocery stop - bad traffic in ANC.) Chris, Bill, David and I are getting along very well. Janet will get in tomorrow. We have a great team--The Green Chile Winds.
Friday, May 16th - No major notes. A day in Talkeetna organizing and getting ready. Local mountain shop is small but has exactly the necessary items one needs for Denali. Buy and rent anything you need. We got 6mm cored, wands, duct tape, nose guards...
Saturday, May 17th - Wow! We left Talkeetna at 9:40am on K2’s Cessna 185 in a drizzle and I was not optimistic about the glacier conditions but I was way wrong! Around 10:30am we landed on the Kahiltna under nearly perfect skies. A view of the summit and no wind! What a beautiful day. I hope we have more like this. The scale of the surrounding terrain is nearly incomprehensible. Looking at Foraker’s norths face shows nearly 10,000 vertical feet but it looks like a day hike from here. No way! It’s 9:30pm now but still as bright as late afternoon in NM. The sun is just now “setting”. The plan is to wake at 4:00am and single carry to 7,900’ camp. We practiced crevasse rescue just north of camp in a small crevassed today. Dined on pizza and chili mac before settling into bed. Listening to 104 KWHALE before bed.
Sunday, May 18th - Awoke at 4am after a good night’s rest. Temp was about 12 degrees outside and about 25 in the tent. At around 7am, we headed out for the base of ski hill, 7,800’. Bill, Janet and I were on one rope with Chris and David on the second rope. The area was foggy with a light snow overnight. The route to ski hill was very well defined with no major hazards. A really cold breeze confronted us once on the Kahiltna main glacier and since I was only wearing my underwear top, I got real cold. But once the sun hit us, man it was nice. Bill, Janet and I arrived at the base of ski hill camp at 10:30am--3.5 hours to ski hill from base camp. It is so warm right now, it’s amazing. We scored a sweet camp, cooked up some pizza and jammed to tunes on the CD! Tonight is dinner followed by cinnamon cake dessert. This life is impossible to beat!
Monday, May 19th - Awoke after another great sleep at about 6:00am. 21 degrees in the tent with 5 degrees outside. It felt very cold and I’m a bit worried about the -35 degree low at 17k as advertised by Lisa at base camp. We carried a cache to 11k today in about 5 hours. The weather was, again, beautiful., The snow condition was so great we were able to sled down unroped and made it back to camp in an hour. Awesome! Th weather was even warmer at camp today and we enjoyed more CD music and some FM radio rock on KWHALE 104 - Anchorage’s rock station. Dinner was some spicy cajun chicken and rice with cinnamon coffee cake for dessert. Tomorrow our plan is to move to 11k camp and rest a day. Our first full rest day of the trip. Snow is in the forecast for Thursday but it does not sound like a major system and should clear by Friday night. So far we’ve been spoiled with wonderful views!
Tuesday, May 20th - Awoke at 5:30am to 18 degress in the tent and 10 degrees outside. Dined on the denver omelette, packed up camp and hit the trail around 7:50am for a move to 11k camp. We traveled unroped to camp satisfied with the stability of snow and route after yesterday. I arrived at 11k 4.5 hours later, 30 minutes faster than yesterday with a heavier load than yesterday. it was another beautiful and warm day. We scored a great two-tent site with full height walls. I, of course, spruced up the kitchen and made a bench for five. The sweetest camp yet. Light snow, light wind and clouds have socked us in now so I’m just chillin’ in the warm, cozy tent (VE25) listening to new rock on the KWHALE, Anchorage. The view down by Kahiltna Pass was awesome before we were engulfed by clouds. We were camped above the cloud deck. I felt like a Care Bear. The yellow one -- sunshine. A system is supposed to be approaching. It’s supposed to be weak but bring wind and snow for the next couple of days. It sounds like we’ll have a window tomorrow for a carry to 13,500’. We were planning a rest day for tomorrow but with the snow coming in two days, we want to try to get a cache up before the storm comes in.
Wednesday, May 21st - We awoke to a mild 12 degrees and began our carry around 10:15am to 13,500’. We roped up as five Oh, for breakfast I cooked pancakes which were messy but very tasty and worth the effort. We moved slowly up Motorcycle Hill but once past the hill our pace quickened a bit. The route was crowded and backed up around Windy Corner but the corner itself was really quite easy. There was a number of crevasses but they were all small and well covered on the route. We cached at 13,500 around 2pm and it was a roasting outside! I found a full 22oz fuel bottle in the ice on the way up. However, I punched it while digging it up. The fuel was salvaged though! We roped up 3 and 2 on the way down and it was much more efficient. We got back to camp around 4 for a nice afternoon. We listened to the NPS weather report and it was not favorable. Wind and six inches new snow. Thursday is to be our rest day so weather is fine. Bill, David and I listened to Loveline on 106.7 KWHALE, our nightly ritual now.
Thursday, May 22nd - We awoke to around 20 degrees at 9:00am. Rest day - great to sleep in! We had blueberry scones for breakfast and the weather was not at all nasty. It was warm and calm all day and very relaxing. We cooked up some delicious BBQ pizza for lunch, banana nut bread for snack and wild west chili for dinner. We plan to move to 14k tomorrow but weather forecast is wind 15-20mph and snow tonight with clearing in the afternoon so I hope we can get up there. We plan to wake at 6am and it’s butt-ass cold at that time. None of this early past 14k though--wait for the sun. This chili is causing some major gas attacks in my sleeping bag. Rumble on the Thermarest. Snowing lightly now but it will hopefully be warm with the clouds here. We met the three young climbers that have been leapfrogging us. Andrew, Brian and Mark from South Dakota. Nice dudes.
Friday, May 23rd - I’m now using David’s pencil as it’s too cold [for a pen] at our new camp at 14k. The low tonight is going to be -15F with a high of 5F tomorrow. This morning we awoke to -1F and it was cold. However, our gradual ascent up is allowing me to adjust to the insane temperatures. I’ve never slept in anything lower than 02F or so, so tonight ought to be interesting. We awoke at 6am today and packed up to leave 11k camp by 8:45am. Going was slow but we arrived at our 13,5’ cache in 3.5 hours which is 30 minutes faster than our previous trip up to 13,5’. David was hurting a bit on the way up to 14k so I slowed the rope pace way down for the last 700 feet to camp. We got into camp around 2pm and built another “super camp”. The kitchen will be completed tomorrow. The weather today was stupendous allowing us views of Foraker, Hunter and much of the Alaska Range. We were above the clouds all day which was awesome. There’s some definite tension among the team members. David and Janet don’t seem to get along well at all. But Bill is the pillar of strength for the team with his constant positive attitude and straight forward thinking. When I being to question why I’m here with these folks, interacting with Bill clears up my thoughts and brightens my spirits. I’m super glad Bill is here. Tomorrow we will sleep in and go retrieve our 13,5k cache. Warm dreams!
Saturday, May 24th - We awoke to -3F in the tent and waited until the sun hit the tent before crawling out of the sack. The weather was again very nice and warm. Bill, Chris and I took the sleds down to 13.5k cache to retrieve our stuff. It took us about 20 minutes to get down there. We underestimated how much shit we had down there so the 3 of us hauled loads of about 50lbs each. it took us about 1:15hr to get back up to camp. We spent the rest of the day hanging around camp and eating more fudge brownies! The evening was capped with some heavy Uno matches between Bill, David, Chris and I. The marathon match went through 3 shuffles and about an hour. Good times.
Allison and I headed up to Moab this past weekend so I could run in the super popular, mega fabulous Red Hot 55k trail race. I hadn't run this race before but it garners huge accolades each year so I registered as fast as I could last fall when registration opened. It's a good thing, too, because it filled up in less than 24 hours, I believe. I hadn't gotten in the amount of training I'd hoped to so I went into the race very relaxed and with no pressure on myself at all. This felt great! In fact, I was so relaxed I forgot to pack running socks (I nabbed a pair at Gearheads though.) It was rad...I packed some shoes, running shorts, gloves, arm sleeves, two gels, a flask of EFS liquid shot, visor, sunglasses and a single hand bottle. No drop bag and no aid station planning. I didn't even pay attention to how many aid stations were on the course nor how far apart they were. I was just going for a training run in a scenic location with 200+ friends.
Saturday morning dawned clear and quite warm, actually. At the Gemini Bridges TH, the start line for the race, it was in the upper 20s and the sun was out. No wind. Stellar. The race started at 8:00am and enjoyed running up to about mile 12 with Ryan and Susan as well as chatting with a couple of other friends along the way. The pace was pretty relaxed and I was trying to save my legs and feet for later in the race. However, at mile 8 the ball of my right foot starting aching pretty severely. I had worn my La Sportiva X-Country shoes and that was a bad idea for this course. I love those shoes but on a course with lots of rocks and slickrock running, the lack of real cushion on those shoes did me in. I managed to grit it out the rest of the race but I had to stop a few times to massage my foot and toes to get the blood flowing again. I ran a few miles in the middle of the race with Steve Bremner. It was great to converse with him for a bit before I started feeling the miles a bit and had to just zone out with my iPod for the rest of the race.
The slickrock running from miles 21 to 25ish were really tough on my feet and legs. Off-camber running that just didn't allow me to get into a groove or any real running cadence. My quads were feeling it. I felt pretty good otherwise, though, taking a pull of my EFS every now and then and washing it down with plain water.
I finished in 5:25:17 (39th of 200), reaching my goal of sub-5:30 with some good padding. I was damn beat by the finish, though, and it took me a good 30 minutes of sitting down and drinking chocolate milk before I felt ready to be conversational and jovial again. I guess that means I really did leave it all out there on the course, though, so I'm pleased with that. The post-race scene was great! Soup in bread bowls, music, lots of conversation and beer were in high supply. The afternoon was gorgeous making it great for just hanging out under the sun. I hope to return to this race next year but with some more adequate shoes!
While the race was a blast and I met my goal, the true highlight of the weekend was the tower climb Allison and I did on Friday before the race. We drove up north of Dove Creek, CO, to a camp on Thursday night so we could climb Psycho Tower on Friday. Psycho Tower is a wildly exposed but very moderate desert tower climb and I was psyched to climb it with Allison. So much so, I thoroughly documented it.
The climbing was just plain fun. Not scary, not difficult and way airy. Such a cool little summit way back in the middle of nowhere. Take a look at the movie and let me know what you think if you'd like.
