Pumpkins and Jello Shots

Saturday night we attended a pumpkin carving extravaganza. A vast variety of beers and wine were consumed as well as roughly 200 jello shots. After reading the above list, one might come to the conclusion that the evening was very unproductive. On the contrary, nearly 25 pumpkins were cleaned and carved with an awards ceremony culminating the event. Ashley won the best "cheater" pumpkin award for her snowflake. Apparently she broke the rules by bringing a stencil of the snowflake she created earlier in the day while sober. I took home the grand prize for my rendition of "paranoid". I attribute this honor to both the unique shape of my pumpkin (very tall and slender - I suppose you could use the word 'gangly' as far as pumpkins go), and the fact that I was around at the end of the party to accept my prize - a mixture of the drinks remaining at the end of the night.

Yahooie! It's Ski Season!

Today Ashley and I drove up to Vail Pass in hopes that we would find enough snow to ski on. As it turned out, the snow cover was much better than expected and the 1 foot of powder was just bonus. Yes, that was 1 foot (12 inches) of pow pow, Colorado backcountry style.

North Dakota - Shift 2

I've been pretty busy this shift, until today that is. We're having the equivilent of a snow day in grade school. The drillers decided not to work, so we are stuck here without much to do. Below is a picture of our field office - a bit snowier than last shift. It's starting to look a little more like that Fargo movie now.

North Dakota - Shift 1

I'm back in Colorado for a few days before heading back for another 10-day shift in Dickinson, ND. It's been a good learning experience so far and I've learned a lot about drilling, installing monitoring wells, and logging soil and rock core. I spent my first shift working with an experienced person, as did Ryan, who is in the same position as me. Next shift, the two of us will be working together without the supervision of experience, which should prove to be more exciting. We're actually working in the town of South Heart, 10 miles west of Dickinson. The population of the town is around 350, and I think we know most of the locals after just 10 days. The people here are pretty friendly in general, however they have a unique cultural quirk that seems to prohibit them from freely sharing their name when you introduce yourself.

Example - typical conversation with a North Dakotan:
Josh "Hi there! I'm Josh." (shake hands)
North Dakotan "Hi."
Josh "And you are?"
North Dakotan "Last July we had a really bad hail storm that destroyed all my crops."

The weather here is always windy, and the temperature this time of year ranges from 20 to 80 degrees. We've had a couple nasty, sideways rain storms which makes it difficult to write and keep paper dry. That's about as exciting as things get up here.

Our last day of work for the shift only required that we work for half a day, so we drove west a few miles to Painted Canyon, aka Bad Lands - a part of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. During a hike here, we saw two buffalo (Les Bouffs, as the French would say), a buck, and an elk - not to mention the cool rock formations that the geologists hiking with me found particularly interesting.



Mt. Field, as viewed from the jobsite.










Rotosonic drillrig setup












Painted Canyon - driving along the freeway, you come over a small rise and much of the gound unexpectedly disappears as seen in this picture



Buffalo 1 - in attempt to get close enough to take a picture, I hiked out a ridge towards the buffalo seen in the bottom right of this picture. On my way there, I looked below me and saw the one in the following picture.











Buffalo 2












Why I don't eat mushrooms

The Matron

As a last fling before heading to North Dakota, Ashley and I climbed yet another of the flat irons above our house. We climbed a 5.6 route on the north face of the Maiden for two pitches before gaining the sloping east face for two more long pitches. The 5.6 pitches challanged my trad leading abilities, and the much easier east face was a fun scramble. Hiking from our house, the round trip hike/climb took about 7 hours. We made it back in time to make it to an Octoberfest party that one of Ashley's friends threw with a keg of Pilsner Urquell and all the brats you could eat. We were once again made aware of what a small world it is when we saw Sara at the party. Sara is the girlfriend of the brother (Jess) of the ex-girlfriend (Emily) of Jake's. Crazy.



The Maiden - the face opposite this view, hidden in the trees.

















The first pitch




























Ashley coming up the east face, pitch 3

North Dakota or Bust!

My work is sending me to the beautiful resort destination of Dickinson, ND beginning Monday. Dickinson is located in southwest North Dakota at least 150 from everything, and I don't even think they have a giant nickel. I don't know much about the project other than the fact that my job up there will be to record the soil and rock profile at each location where we drill 150' vertical holes through the earth. Paying particular attention to the height and depth of the coal seams and the groundwater level. The ultimate purpose being to both discern how much coal exists beneath the site, and gain an understanding of the environmental impacts that operating such a mine would create. I anticipate having access to the internet and phone reception while I'm there, so reaching me should not be a problem. I'll be there from Sept. 25 to Oct. 5, and Oct. 10 to Oct. 21. I'll be sure to watch Fargo this weekend to see what I'm in for.

Devil's Thumb

Yesterday Ashley and I hiked up to the base of the Devil's Thumb, only to be blown off the ridge as we were unprepared for the cool, windy weather. We stashed the climbing gear near the base of the climb, and hiked back to our house - about a 3.5 hour round trip.

Today we bundled up, brought lots of extra warm clothes, and went back up. On the way there, we saw a critter that we were sure was a cross between a chipmunk and a baby mountain lion. It seriously looked like a miniature adult mountain lion - the actual kittens are fuzzy and chubby, so we know it wasn't one of those. If anybody knows what this small, skitterish critter might be, please let me know.

After retrieving the pack from it's hiding place and scampering up some loose class 4 rock, we crested the ridge and made it to the base of the actual climb, which is only 2 pitches long. The start of the climb wasn't easy, probably the hardest trad climbing I've done. Unfortunately, this wasn't the crux of the climb. The second pitch began with a steep overhang, the true crux of this underrated climb. I made several attempts at ascending the bulge before deciding to resort to some unconventional techniques. I was able to throw a nut with some webbing attached to it up above me to the apex of the overhang, where it wedged itself in a constricting crack. A few ugly attempts at climbing the webbing later, I was standing on top of the overhang with screaming forearms. From this point, I was able to scramble the rest of the way to the summit. Ashley was able to follow me to the anticlimactic summit where we took a few quick photos in the sustained 40 mph wind before rappelling back to the ground. The video below serves as a testament to the vicious winds we encountered.



Although this climb was more difficult than any 5.9 I've ever climbed, the guide book gave it a scant 5.7. Several times I was ready to quit, but perseverance and ingenuity got us to the top. I guess you could call it aid climbing, although the throw technique is probably not a frequently practiced maneuver.

Devil's Thumb Pictures

The Devil's Thumb is the prominent, top-heavy spire skylined in the upper right of the picture.
















A closer look at the back side of the Devil's Thumb






















Ashley rappelling the last pitch

The Maiden

Yesterday Jake and I climbed a rock fin/pillar in the flatirons known as The Maiden. Jake, Emily, and I began hiking from our front door. A couple hours later, we were standing at the base of the Maiden. Emily waited for us at the bottom while I led Jake on his first trad climb. The route we chose was a 5 pitch climb that involved a lot of traversing and descending as well as the usual upward climbing. At a rating of 5.7, it was the most difficult trad climb I have completed to date. The route was fantastic, but perhaps the greatest part of the climb was the the rappel from the top, which the guide book referred to as the most famous free rappel in all of Colorado. Dropping over the huge, overhanging face, there was a point during the 120' rappel where we were at least 40 feet from any rock. After a second rappel, we were back on the ground with Emily and ready to hike back to the house. The following pictures say it all.


The Maiden is the narrow edge of rock between the two slabs in the upper left portion of the picture.








This view at the top of the first pitch was one of the best of the whole climb.












Pitch 2 was a long downclimb that led to the Crow's Nest, at the base of the summit pillar.












The third and fourth pitches traversed the exposed north side of the pillar in order to reach easier ground on the east side.













The rope is plumb, the rock is not.

Longs Blizzard

Last weekend Jake and I backpacked up to the campsites at 12,000 feet on Longs Peak with the intentions of climbing at least one route to the top over the course of two days. Late Friday night, after Jake finally arrived in Denver after missing his flight out of Portland, we drove to the trailhead, arriving at 2:00 am. On top of being dark, it was also raining, which led to us spending the night in the car rather than hiking up to meet our other two comrades already on the mountain. By 7:00, the rain became intermittent, so we began hiking. We crossed the snow line somewhere around 11,000 feet, entered a mild blizzard at about 11,500 feet, and set up our camp in a pretty good snowstorm at 13,150 feet. As soon as we had the tent set up (around 11:00 am) we crawled inside and spent the next 20 hours there. We did exit the tent for a brief period at 4:00 pm to find some water, which we had to dig down through the snow to find, but it beat melting snow with the stove. The following morning the snow had stopped, but the visibility was worse. We managed to climb up to the keyhole at 12,500 feet before turning around, packing up the tent, and heading home.

Despite the fact the we encountered what we determined to be the worst case scenario as far as weather conditions went, we had a great time camping out in a heinous storm high up on Colorado's most famous 14er.