Still in the Game

I spent the previous two weeks teaching a rock climbing course in Leavenworth, WA!  It was great being able to continue working for The NOLS even though I have a full time engineering job.  I totally felt like I was getting paid to take a vacation.  Nothing super exciting to report from the course; students were great, weather was almost perfect.  Things went so smoothly it was actually pretty uneventful.  I did get to learn the climbing out there much better, so next time I go back it won't seem like such a mystery.  A highlight for me was climbing Condorphamine Addiction, a 7-pitch 5.10b sport climb.  I highly recommend it due to it's well-bolted nature and varied climbing (steeper face, lots of slab, and even an occasional crack).  Most of the climbing is in the 5.8-5.9 range, with a couple of harder moves that are both on well-bolted slabby sections.

The weather here is finally starting to get better, so hopefully I'll have some first class adventuring to report soon!

Leavenworth Classic

Last weekend Ava held the annual spring campout for the UW Climbing Club.  She enticed me to tag along by proposing that we climb Outer Space on the Snow Creek Wall on Saturday (followed by cragging with the big group on Sunday).  After the 1.5 hour approach, we geared up and were just about ready to begin the first pitch when it started to drizzle.  We proceeded to spend the next hour in the presence of goats trying to reach a mutual decision on if we should climb or not.  Meanwhile, the overcast skies stopped drizzling but remained menacing.  We finally decided to go for it.

Snow Creek Wall in the rain: Outer Space begins near the lower right of this photo and finishes in the top center.

Goat intently watching the party in front of us

We got off to a bad start as I somehow managed to turn Pitch 1 (easy 5th class) into a 5.10+ wanderfest.  Pitch 2 (easy 5th class traverse) went much more smoothly, and then the business end of the climb began.  Pitch 3 (the traverse pitch, and my favorite pitch of the climb) involved interesting and sustained 5.8 - 5.9 moves in an exposed and well-protected environment.  Pitch 4 (the dihedral pitch) takes you left from the top of Pitch 3 over to the bottom of the famous 300' hand crack.  This was an enjoyable pitch in its own right, yet overshadowed by what lie ahead.  A tricky start to Pitch 5 (the money pitch) finds you at the beginning of a splitter hand crack on an 80 degree face littered with chicken heads.  Simply enjoyable climbing in a sporadic and light drizzle.

Ava working her way up the money pitch

Pitch 6 (the final pitch) again starts with some tricky moves.  It's supposedly 5.9, but I found this to be the most difficult part of the climb and I'm not ashamed to admit that I pulled on a piece of gear to get through an obnoxiously thin section 15 feet up from the belay.  After that it was a crack and chicken head romp for 65 meters to the top.  As I was belaying Ava up the final pitch, the drizzle returned and intensified.  As she reached the top, the drizzle turned to rain.  Perfect timing?  I'd say it could have been worse, but the fact that we now had to descend the 4th class descent route in the rain was less than desirable.  The following video summarizes the difficulties of our descent.

We eventually made it down safely and had a fantastic day rock climbing in the rain.  We did some cragging at Playground Point the following day before heading back to the cluster of traffic known as Seattle.

Mountains and Skiers and Bears (oh my)

Last week we had spring for a couple days and Ava and I managed to capitalize on it.  (Side Note: the forecast for this Wednesday calls for another foot of snow in the mountains). We took Thursday off and left Wednesday night to go camp as far up as we could drive on the Cascade River Road.  On the drive up, we saw a black bear wandering across the road, the first I'd ever seen in Washington.

The next day we got up early in attempt to climb and ski Sahale Peak.  We encountered numerous obstacles on our way up the road to where you can normally park this time of year.  The first obstacle was the second bear of the trip.  Then there was ample avalanche carnage.

Road covered in avy debris from a heinous avy cycle this winter

It took us far longer to walk up the last three miles of road than we expected, then we were yet again bogged down in avalanche chunder as we ascended to Cascade Pass.

Cascade Pass

We managed to gain about 4,000 of the 6,000 ambitious feet we hoped to gain to reach Sahale's summit.  We had fantastic weather and views and a great ski down!

J-Burg and the beautiful North Cascades

Sahale Peak

As we were retracing our route back down the road, over and under the multitude of trees, we saw yet another bear!  Apparently they're just out of hibernation and, hence, very active right now.

Bear #3

Fish

Last weekend Molly, Phil, Ava, and I went down to Portland to visit our dad and try our luck at fishing for spring Chinook salmon.  Between the ages of about 8 and 15 I did this a lot, but it had now been years since I had been fishing with my dad and I decided this was too long.

Molly, Ava, and I went out on Saturday with a medium early start (fishing by about 6:45).  We met up with Dad's fishing buddy, Jared, so we had five of us in two boats.  Ten minutes after getting our lines in the water, we had doubles on.  Ava and I each reeled one in.  Half way through the process, the reel separated from the rod that Ava was using, which happened to be Jared's.  The end result was that Jared took over after the kerfuffle and we got the fish.  We didn't see any more action for a couple hours, until we hooked another fish, which Molly reeled in.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be a native salmon so we couldn't eat it and had to let it go.  After a few more hours we hooked another one, and it was Ava's turn to reel it in.  After a minute of reeling, it spit the hook so we didn't get to eat that one either.

Ava wasn't planning to go out the next day, so I really wanted her to have a chance to reel in and land a salmon.  As the day was coming to an end, we hooked one last fish.  We experienced no equipment malfunctions and Ava landed the biggest fish of the day.

Saturday's Loot

The following day, after a salmon dinner and a night spent in Portland at a Joe Pug show, we traded Ava for Phil and went out to get some more.  The weather was positively nasty, with cool temperatures joining forces with a stiff breeze and steady rain for the entire morning.  We fished from 7am to 11am and didn't get a bite.  At this point, Phil (who didn't bring any rain pants and was wearing jeans) and Molly rationalized that the misery was not being matched with reward, so we dropped them off at shore.  Dad and I were determined to get something to show for our efforts, so we decided to keep at it for another hour.  By noon, we still hadn't gotten a bite.  We began packing things up and getting ready to pull the anchor, with the last part of this process being to reel our lines in.  As Dad worked his way to the front of the boat to deal with the anchor rope, my rod bent down in that unmistakable, "fish on" kind of way.  I lifted it out of the rod holder with a gentle tug to set the hook.  At this point, Dad was facing into the rain (coming down at about a 45 degree angle) and working his way to the the bow of the boat, so he didn't even see what was going on 2.5 feet away.  Using an artfully combined tone of casualness and surprise, I said, "I got one!", at which point Dad turned around to see me fighting what turned out to be the biggest fish we landed that weekend.

Sunday's hard-earned catch

Phase Next

I started a new job yesterday!  After a few months of searching, I finally found an engineering company to take me in.  I'm working as a Senior Staff Engineer for Icicle Creek Engineers.  It's a small company (less than 10 employees) and is owned and run by a married couple.  My office is currently in the basement of their house in Carnation, WA, so it's a bit of a commute but seems manageable so far.  The work we do is centered around geology, geologic engineering, hydrogeology, and geotechnical engineering.  The projects I will be working on are much smaller than I'm used to and have nothing to do with mining!  Okay, some projects might be mining reclamation related, but that's cleaning up the mess rather than making it.  I'm still hoping to teach the occasional NOLS course, and my new employers seem like they'll be willing to work with on that when the time comes.

Lots of Little Stuffs

Nothing crazy or super fun to report, but I've decided that several slightly important things have happened that cumulatively warrant a blog post.

I sold Quatra, my 4-Runner, over a month ago.  I'm now trying to bike as much as possible and share Ava's car only when it's absolutely necessary.  It's going well so far.  Time will tell how long I can last without a vehicle, but it really doesn't make sense for us to have two cars when we seldom use one.

I went on another mission with Seattle Mountain Rescue to help two skiers down the mountain who were injured in an avalanche.  http://www.komonews.com/news/local/119359894.html?tab=video  This mission was more technical in nature than the previous one and, consequently, more fun.

A few days later, when avalanche conditions were lower, I went up to the same area with Dane as he passed through town on his way to Conway, WA.  At about the same elevation the skiers triggered the avalanche, we encountered increasingly unstable conditions.  We turned around here and got some decent powder turns in.

I went climbing with a bunch of friends at Vantage on Saturday.  I'll be teaching a weekend climbing course there for The Overlake School in about a month, so it was good for me to learn the area a bit since I'd never climbed there before.  A few weeks ago I taught my first course for Overlake, taking six students snow camping for a weekend up on Stevens Pass with one other instructor.  This was my first non-NOLS outdoor education experience, and although quite different, it was equally fun and fantastically short.

I'm still in the job market for an engineering job, but in the meantime I will be an employee at Recreational Equipment, Inc., selling gear to people out of the Alderwood Mall location.  I start training on Saturday.
 It's 15.5 miles each way, mostly on the Interurban Trail, so it's a pretty good ride considering it's through the city.  So, starting on Saturday, I'll technically have three employers: NOLS, The Overlake School, and REI.  We'll see how the juggling act goes.

Seattle Mountain Rescue

About a year ago I joined Seattle Mountain Rescue (SMR), the King County search and rescue organization specializing in high angle and other technical rescues.  Until last weekend, I had been quite inactive in SMR.  This was largely due to the fact that I didn't live in Washington for most of that time as well as having some motivational challenges.

I spent last weekend (Friday night, all day Saturday and all day Sunday) participating in SMR's rigging for rescue training.  It seems that most SMR training is focused on technical rigging systems for high angle rescue, yet most missions that we respond to are of a non-technical nature.  On Sunday, after training in the field from 0730 to 1700, we were notified of a mission nearby.  Someone had reportedly sustained a knee injury on top of Mt. Si, the trailhead for which was only about a mile away from where about 30 SMR members had just finished training.

We regrouped, shuttled over to the trailhead, and began heading up the trail in groups of 3-5 as soon as rescuers were ready.  A few minutes after getting the initial call, I found myself hiking up the Mt. Si tail in the second group of SMR responders on my first mission.  An hour and a half after that, we had hiked 4 miles and gained almost 4,000 vertical feet to our patient.  The first group arrived at the subject's location a few minutes earlier and was well on their way to getting the patient packaged in the litter we had carried up.

After the subject was packaged, the real work began.  We started by sledding the litter down the snowy/icy trail with a series of belays.  Once we got below the snow, we added a wheel to the litter and continued down the trail with four people attending to the litter and about as many tending to the tag line (break) attached to the uphill side of the litter.  As we descended, additional groups (some from SMR, and some from other King County search and rescue organizations) joined us.  Eventually we had upwards of 35 rescuers switching out regularly as we transported the subject back to the trailhead, which we eventually reached at 2315.

I was super impressed with the SMR response as well as the blistering pace at which most of them walk, especially considering the long day we had already put in!  I'm looking forward to joining more missions as the summer and "mission season" approaches.

Deep Pow

This is what I remember winter in the Pacific Northwest being like.  Jake came up to visit for a good part of this week.  Avy danger was high the whole time but we did get out on Wednesday for some mellow turns up on Snoqualmie Pass.

Jake is in there somewhere

New Stuffs

I officially now live in Seattle (the north part of the University District, to be more precise).  Ava and I are renting the lower level of a giant, old house.  The owners, who bought the place only a few months ago, live upstairs and are remodeling the entire house.  Luckily for us, they remodeled the basement first so we essentially live in a brand new apartment.  It feels great to have all my stuff in one place.  The efficient design makes the scant 570 square feet seem much bigger.  Add efficient appliances and radiant heating to the efficient space, and this is about as "green" as its location is awesome.  Much thanks to Ava's parents for helping us furnish the new place!

We had a great ski day up on Snoqualmie Pass a couple days ago.  The snow was about as good as it gets in Washington, and we miraculously had an entire backcountry slope all to ourselves.  We skied three laps on a north facing slope about two miles from I-90 and never saw another person or another set of tracks.

Yay for soft snow to land in!

In other news, I cleaned up Quatra yesterday and posted her on Craigslist, asking Kelley Blue Book value.  People are now fighting over my 4Runner, so I'm guessing I won't have a car by the end of the week.  The plan is to see how long I can handle getting around on a bike before getting another oil guzzler.

NOLS in Winter with R2D2

Bleep bleep bloop blap!

I spent the later half of January and a few days of February in an intensive NOLS training seminar.  And by intensive, I mean skiing powder in the Tetons most every day for three weeks.  The first week was a professional level 1 avalanche training which I found extremely useful and learned a lot from.  The final two weeks was spent ski touring a loop in Grand Teton National Park (GTNP) where we were provided ample time to practice what we had learned during the previous week.

During the avy 1, we skied every day.  Most days were good, but one day was great!  We spent most days skiing on and around Teton Pass as the NOLS base is in Driggs, ID.  One day we went to GTNP, which happened to be the day it snowed about 14 inches.  My group skied a popular route known as Maverick and had some of the best snow I've ever skied.

Skiing Maverick in GTNP. Three cheers for Teton cold smoke!

Oh yeah, we learned a lot too.  The instruction was focused around how to assess terrain and assess and document the snow conditions found in the backcountry.  In only five days, I feel like I went from a beginner/intermediate to advanced/expert in my ability to assess snowpack stability.  In the words of Borat, "Great success!"

In preparing for the next section (the WIS, or winter instructor seminar), we decided that our team name would be the Rocketships.  With two groups of four and a group of three comprising the Rocketships, we naturally needed names for all the groups.  I ended up in the Millennium Falcon, after the famous Star Wars ship.  Coincidentally, Ava and I had just finished watching all six Star Wars episodes shortly before I left.  This started a theme for the trip that would pervade the remaining 12 days.

The first day of the next section was spent at Grand Targee Ski Resort, where we spent the first half of the day learning how to teach both alpine and telemark skiing progressions and spent the second half of the day learning how to make ourselves better skiers/teach more advanced telemark students.  The day was beautiful and I was pretty impressed with the 'Gee, as some locals call it.

Grand Teton from Grand Targee

The following 11 days were spent on a backcountry trip through the national park.  We spent a total of three nights in tents and seven nights in snow shelters as we traveled up Berry Creek and down Owl Creek in a ~24 mile loop.  After two days of travel we built our first snow shelter, which we spent three nights in.  There were 4 people in my group, so the snow cave/quinzee ended up being quite sizable.  A quinzee, for those who don't know, is basically a snow cave dug out of snow that has been piled up and allowed to harden.  This is quite useful in areas with shallow snowpacks.  A snow cave is simply a hole dug into the existing snowpack, so we did a little of both to build this one.

Inside our first quinzee/cave

We had beautiful weather the entire time at this first dig-in spot and skied every day.  It hadn't snowed since the epic day at Maverick, but it remained cold enough that the powder from that last storm was well preserved on some aspects.

Sledding loads from our first base camp to our second

We moved and dug in a second and final time on a broad ridge separating Berry Creek from Owl Creek.  This time the snowpack was about three meters deep, so we simply dug a snowcave.  That night, the temperature started to plummet.  I think it bottomed out at a chilly -30 degrees Celsius.  This was good experience because as an instructor on a winter course, you not only have to keep yourself warm in such conditions, but must also deal with students.  It wasn't a big deal, and a few of us went on an all-day ski tour when the high for the day was -22.

On the last day of the trip before heading out, we skied enjoyable powder on northern aspects, which was quite amazing considering it hadn't snowed measurably in two weeks.

Sweet north facing lines in 2-week old powder (mine are the furthest right :)

Continuing with the Star Wars theme:
On January 28th, after several days of overdoing the whole theme (my name was Chewie and the other three members in my group were Leia, Han, and Luke), we all woke up inside the snow cave to the sound of the Star Wars theme song.  After several seconds of thinking we were crazy, I realized that the sound was coming from my bag of papers/notes/etc.  Turns out the birthday card Ava had me bring along got set off inside of its envelope and happened to be a musical Star Wars card with a light up light saber on the front.  Best and most unlikely coincidence of my life.  After opening the card on my birthday the following morning, it was played nearly constantly as well as used to light up the inside of the snow cave in a beautiful shade of light saber green.

Prior to leaving our final dig-in location, several models were created including a death star, star destroyer, millennium falcon, and a life-size R2D2.  I can proudly claim the R2D2 as my own.  Hopefully the first picture now makes since to all who managed to read this far.

We skied out without incident, completing a riotous time in the backcountry with a fantastic group of people.  I'm now cleared to teach winter courses for NOLS, but perhaps more importantly, I feel compelled to spend at least one winter in the Tetons at some point in the future.