Adventures

South Fork Salmon

2010-06-04T20:56:00.007-06:00

The beautiful South Fork Salmon canyon with the great sandbar we camped on near the center of the photo. A few hours after this photo was taken it started pouring down rain.

Phil looking at Devil's Creek rapid on the South Salmon. We were incredibly tempted by the meat line on this one at 5.5'. It was huge, but it looked like it would go. That breaking wave at the right of the photo was dwarfed by some of the features just over the horizon line.

Boats pulled up on the beach! This was the best night of my whole Idaho vacation! Great beach, great weather, beautiful canyon, two of my favorite people in the whole world, burgers and bourbon! It simply doesn't get any better!

This baby elk couldn't have been more than a day old! It could still barely walk.

Hummingbird coming into feed at Jerri Kelly's feeder. She puts out a gallon of sugar water a day for these little guys and boy are there a bunch of them!

All of our stuff (except my cat frame and Phil's creek boat) next to Mike Dorris' Cessna 206 back in McCall.

A grand adventure all the way around! Where to start? Ted has been taking the spring off boating after getting some bone spurs removed from inside his vertebra, but he was a great sport and came to Yellowpine a day after us to camp out, take pictures and be our shuttle bunny. I mention Ted's presence because he put in a pretty solid effort trying to talk us out of running the S. Salmon at the healthy flow of 5.5'. The primary basis of his persuasion was a hair raising trip down the S. Salmon a decade previous at a slightly lesser level. It turns out that when a local long-time Class V boater that just happens to also be a hydrologist drives all the way out to the middle of nowhere to talk you out of putting on a river, it may be worth heeding the advice.

We put on the S. Salmon and proceeded to have a great day running some huge whitewater in one of the most beautiful canyons any of us have ever been down. 5.5' was a really big level and some of the rapids had gigantic Grand Canyon sized features, but with fast technical moves and lots of gradient. However, we felt that everything was pretty manageable and didn't regret our decision to launch one bit. We camped on a great beach river left above a couple of the named Class Vs, Surprise and Elk Creek. The afternoon was spent hiking downstream to scout the rapids and enjoy a beautiful sunny afternoon. We had some burgers for dinner and passed the bourbon around the campfire until late. Truly a wonderful evening!

Then it rained. It rained a lot and the already high river came up a bunch. The gauge went to 6.2', but so much of the water was coming in from tributaries downstream of the gauge and upstream of us that it was really quite a bit higher. Our beautiful beach from the night before was under water. We were cold and wet so we did the only logical thing, we put on our dry suits and went boating. The first rapid, Surprise, looked a fair bit different than it had the day before. The line I had picked out the previous afternoon had been to start center then move to the right behind a rock and run a fairly clean line down through a dozen or so big waves and holes right of center. Now, the marker rock was a hole and I was a little lost going into a huge Class V.

I got my bearings just in time to make the pull right into the alley between features that all seemed capable of flipping my cat. Just as I was starting to feel better about my position in the world, a huge lateral just kind of levitated me to the left about 40' and right into the meat of the rapid. I was perfectly lined up on one of the biggest holes I have ever seen. Bus sized, sometimes pile, sometimes 15-20' breaking wave. I pointed it straight and pushed as hard as I could on the oars. To no avail. I got surfed hard. I was highsiding to the front, to the back, to the side. I was airborn. It was definitely the biggest hole ride I have ever taken and I have no idea how I emerged right side up.

I flushed out just in time to straighten up and push into the next one! Same result. That one flushed me straight, but still a third hole was just downstream. Same thing. I took the three biggest thrashings of my life in quick succession and emerged unscathed and exhausted only to look upstream and see Jake's boat heading toward me upside down. He was swimming strong for shore and made it. Signaling that he was ok, I chased his boat and Phil followed. After keeping tabs on it through Elk Cr. I quickly got it to shore about a mile later.

Phil and I found Jake and looked at each other with wide eyes. We decided to evaluate our options and headed to Elk Creek Ranch which we had seen the day before while hiking around. Al answered the door and told us all the passes were snowed in and we couldn't drive out, if we wanted out we would have to fly. He and his wife Shauna graciously took us to the Kelly's place a few miles down the road because they had internet and phone and lived near the airstrip.

Jim and Jerri Kelly are wonderful people and took great care of us! Phil hopped on the Mail plane that afternoon, but Jake and I had to wait until morning to get a flight out on Mike Dorris' Cessna 206. In the mean time we had a great time watching Jerri's hummingbird feeders and swapping stories with the retired couple. Jerri fed us a great elk taco dinner and put us up with warm showers and comfy beds. After a quick flight in the morning it was all over. Jake and Phil headed home and I picked up Amanda for trips on the Middle Fork and Selway.

Why do they always send me first?

2010-05-12T23:52:00.005-06:00

Surveying Dragon Tail Couloir before dropping in (Great shot Dane! Kyle, I know that's your hat).

Dragon Tail skied pretty well on Saturday! I had never skied this obvious line above Emerald Lake in it's entirety. We had a nice big crew consisting of Graham, Edyn, Josh, Dane, Eva and Mark. We had nice weather. We had nice snow. An all around nice day.

Tomorrow I leave for Idaho. I have 18 days off and plan to boat for 17 consecutive days. Back on June 1.

3:17:57!!!

2010-05-03T22:37:00.002-06:00

I ran my first marathon on Sunday! The Eugene Marathon was awesome and I can't wait to do another. As you can see from the title, I ran a solid race and am pleased with my time. All things considered, I actually think it was a great time. I only trained for two months after coming off the couch with no base, I was sick for ten days leading up to the race with a hacking cough and I puked three times before and during the race.

After having a funky stomach and puking 15 minutes before the race (It wasn't nerves, I promise) I decided to just run my plan anyway and see how well I could do. I ran a bunch of 7:00 miles for the first 14, then had to stop and puke a couple more times. I never quite got my pace back after that point and spent the rest of the race trying to minimize time loss. Graham and Jake came and found me between miles 24 and 25 to pace me into the finish and couldn't believe it when I came around the corner. I think Jake checked his watch three times in disbelief when he saw me.

It was totally magical to finish on the track at Hayward Field (especially after watching the movie PRE! the night before)! I got goosebumps as soon as I saw the wrought iron arch and the entrance to the stadium. What a cool place to run my first marathon. Beautiful course, well organized, perfect weather, perfect size race, and tons of great support! I had an incredible weekend and loved seeing family, old friends and making new friends.

Solar Dynamic Observatory Powered Up

2010-04-23T11:57:00.002-06:00

Back in February we Launched the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) aboard an Atlas V. I spent a bunch of time over the past two years working on this mission, so it is really cool to see some of the science that it is now doing. The first images came back from SDO yesterday. Never before have we had so much data for helio science.

SDO has a suite of three state of the art instruments that will rewrite heliophysics theory. Imagery from Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (above) shows surface eruptions emitting strings of plasma into the solar atmosphere and sending powerful shock waves across the sun. The AIA features four telescopes designed to be sensitive at different temperatures, producing information on solar heat flux. Another instrument, the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager, will probe the Sun's interior to track developing solar storms from their origins deep inside the Sun to the violent eruptions at the surface. Finally, The EVE ultraviolet instrument studies space weather, the link between the Sun and the Earth that can affect communications and navigation signals. While the satellite's other two instruments study the formation of storms on the sun, EVE directly measures how they impact Earth.

World Pond Skimming Championships

2010-04-22T23:46:00.002-06:00

This was a pretty spectacular event up at Vail on Sunday! I am featured briefly at around a minute into this video. Look for the cowboy getup. Tyler Hamilton, Olympic gold medal bike racer, is two skiers after me in the Captain America pants.

X-37B to Launch

2010-04-22T09:33:00.005-06:00

The X-37B ready to be encapsulated in the Atlas V fairing at KSC. Credit: U.S. Air Force

The X-37B is basically a 1/4 size, fully-autonomous shuttle, including a cargo bay the size of my Tacoma's bed, that will hitch a ride to space later today aboard a ULA Atlas V-501 rocket. Launch is scheduled for 7:52 EDT and can be viewed on the ULA website. A bunch of different agencies have sponsored the X-37B over the years, first it was a NASA project, then DARPA, now it is run out of the USAF's Rapid Capabilities shop. Boeing Phantom Works built it.

While the payload and mission are tightly kept secrets, a lot is known about the X-37B itself. The super cool things about this mission from an engineering standpoint are the spacecraft's advanced silica thermal protection tiles and autonomous guidance system. At the end of the flight that guidance system has to fire the craft's main engine to drop the ship from orbit. The spaceplane will re-enter the atmosphere and make a high-speed landing at nearly 300 mph on the three mile long runway at Vandenberg Air Force Base. To do this it will be relying entirely on it's own autopilot, which gets input only from on-board gyroscopes, a GPS receiver, and an altimeter. How cool is that?

Feel free to speculate wildly about what the Air Force might do with the capability to release and capture satellites, stay on orbit for up to a year and land anywhere in the world within hours...

Marathon Training

2010-03-21T19:14:00.004-06:00

I went for the longest run of my life this morning. Hell, I went for the (then) longest run of my life last Sunday too. Why all of this long running? I signed up for the Eugene Marathon and plan to be ready to go for the May 2nd race day. Just six weeks from today. I haven't had a ton of time to prepare for this puppy since I signed up less than a month ago, but my body seems to be responding well to the training. I got in 16 muddy miles this morning and felt really good until the last two when I started running uphill in ankle deep mud. That sucked a bit, but was ultimately very satisfying when I got back to the truck and couldn't see my running tights below the knee. Wish I had a picture. It was spectacular.

In other news, I love my life! I had my heart broken by a girl over the weekend, and I am already feeling great again because I am constantly surrounded by so many awesome people. I am sitting on the couch rocking out to the Gipsy Kings while Jeff is downstairs getting his gear together for a 40 mile nordic race next weekend. He and his girlfriend Sarah are racing from Crested Butte to Aspen across the Elk Range with over 7,000 ft of elevation gain. Lesley is in the kitchen cooking meatloaf while wearing her roller skates. Mel sat me down this morning and made me tell all over coffee. She had me laughing and smiling within 15 minutes and even managed to get some food in my stomach before the run. I feel so fortunate that she and I are at a place where that is an acceptable conversation topic. Melanie really is one of my best friends and a totally positive force in my life.

I have had some other awesome life events recently as well, incarceration and promotion, but I will save those for another post...

New Tubes

2010-03-11T13:54:00.002-06:00

I just ordered another set of cat tubes from Sotar! Didn't I order a cat last year? Yes. If you know of anyone who is in the market for a set of yellow cat tubes, put them in touch. I rather like the new color scheme.

Fairy Meadows

2010-02-07T00:18:00.022-06:00

It turns out loading a heli is a lot like packing a Uhaul, but way more fun.

The Fairy Meadows Hut, our home for the week. The snow on the roof gives some indication of how awesome the pillows are in the area.

Heading up the skin-track into the crisp morning air.

Graham Jackson on the king of all pillow lines. I styled this one the day before and Graham just had to go back and ski it.

Looking across to the Rockies. The Colombia River is under all of those clouds.

Yep, we skied that Couloir. Beam Me Up Scotty is a 2000' fifty five degree couloir of awesomeness.

The money shot. Thank you Andreas.

The Adamants at night.

The group in the skin track headed up Colossal.

Icefall on the Granite Glacier.

Filling everyone's thermoses each morning.

Sentinel in the morning light.

Even with the camera strap this is a great shot.

Black Diamond really has excellent logo placement.

Check out our previous day's work on the East face of Sentinel.

Graham Jackson won the "Best Skier" award.

The group with Unicorn Peak in the background.

Ski Season!

2010-01-17T22:49:00.003-06:00

Holly demonstrates the Mexican Poinsettia.

I love to ski! This year has been a bit of a bummer, but I already have over a dozen days in with lots more to come!

I discovered Silverton Mountain Resort a few weeks back. I only got one run in before they closed the chairlift due to high winds, but it forever changed my perception of what a ski area should be. One slow double chair with 2000' of vert, no groomers, hell no runs, $50 lift tix (it seems cheap compared to the $97 at Vail), mellowest terrain is a rowdy 34 deg, and best of all they check your beacon when you load.

I had one great morning of skiing at Meadows with Jake before it started to rain. One notable thing about that morning was the fact that I was breaking in a new pair of skis, or maybe they were breaking me in? I got a pair of BD Zealots this year and at 192 and mounted tele they sure are a handful! The learning curve was rough, but I think I have them figured out now. They sure do like to mash me headfirst into the snow at 45 mph.

Yesterday was the best day of backcountry so far this year. I have to admit my expectations contributed to the greatness of this particular day. You see, the base at some local ski areas is a paltry 15" and it hasn't snowed in weeks, so I was mostly expecting a workout and some pretty vistas. Boy was I surprised when we found a sweet 32 deg NE facing gully above Brainard lake filled boot high with recycled sugar pow! We also had an extremely funny group of six that hit it off instantly. We spent most of the day doubled over laughing, so how we made four laps is totally beyond me. Days like this are why I ski, I love hanging out with friends outside.

Back from Vacation

2010-01-17T22:22:00.002-06:00

I have been taking a little break from the whole blog thing, which didn't go over too well with many folks and they let me know about it over the holidays. I miss it too, so I am going to do a better job updating this page. The evils of FB and my whirling dervish of a social life make finding time to sit in front of a computer, which quite frankly is the last thing I want to do when not at work, a bit challenging. Anyway, I'm back.

What have I been up to for the past four months? Not boating. Lots of time with friends and family over the holidays which was spectacular! I have gotten back into climbing, particularly ice. My rotator cuff seems to be fairly well healed from one of the swims I took on Gore this summer. I am trying to make the most of a ski season that has been sub-par on all accounts. I hosted a friends Thanksgiving here in Boulder. Dated a wonderful woman by the name of Edyn for a couple of months. Went on a run with my sister, rafted with Jake, skied with Josh, paddled with Phil, and climbed ice in Ouray with Brad, Dane, Rainbow and many new friends. Worked a bunch, and am still loving my job. More or less the same old, same old.

Upcoming, I have a couple of awesome trips in the works. On Thursday I am headed up to British Colombia for a two week ski trip. The first week will be spent at the Fairy Meadows Hut in the Adamant group of the Selkirk range. We get dropped of in a heli for a week of backcountry skiing, then it hopefully comes and gets us the following Saturday, or maybe they will just be able to drop food? I am stoked on the group for this trip. Graham and Edyn are joining from Boulder, Andreas is flying in from Germany, Brad is coming up from Salt Lake, Ted Day is cruising up from Boise, and Jake and Graham Melvin are making the trek from Oregon. November of this year will be spent on the Grand Canyon! I couldn't be happier!

Gore Race 2009

2009-09-26T12:06:00.006-06:00

The Gore Race takes dirking to a whole new level. Everyone is a Class V boater so they can take care of themselves, but any time you get that many people together things go slow.

I set safety for the Gore Race this year. I saw a lot of this sort of thing.

I bring you... Behind the 8 Ball... the best R4 in the world...in all black.

Who doesn't want to paddle long boats down Gore in 18 min?

Pretty colors!

THE North Fork

2009-09-25T14:51:00.004-06:00

Dropping into one of the easier Vs followed by Morgan from WA, Mike Reid Photo.

I have to admit, this section of river has been at the very top of my tick list for a few years. Deep inside I knew my skills were up to the task, but still I have been hesitant to run this classic test piece. I definitely wanted it to go well when I finally did commit. Labor Day weekend I finally took the plunge and experienced first hand the rapids I had been visualizing for a long time. It went great and I couldn't be more excited. On Friday I just ran the lower seven miles, which contains some of the easier Class Vs like Jaws I to III, Hound's Tooth, Juicer and Crunch. It went great and gave me a chance to get used to a borrowed set of tubes and frame. Although, I did end up in a rather large hole on river right in Jaws II. I battled my way out without incident and swore I would never go in there again, because the odds of a repeat performance ending as well are not in my favor.

Saturday and Sunday I ran the whole 15 miles of Class V from top to bottom and it went perfect both times. Nutcracker is the real deal, then the next bunch of read-and-run Vs are great fun with nothing too serious in the way of consequnces. Then there's Jacob's Ladder followed immediately by Golf Course (named for it's 18 boat eating holes). This whole deal constitutes almost two miles of continuous Class V with awful consequences for blowing a line or getting upside down. Undoubtedly, I was a bit intimidated dropping into this one both times and probably will be every time in the future (wonder about me if this stops being the case), but I totally nailed the line both times.

All told, my third Idaho trip of the year was just as good if not better than the previous two outings. It was so nice to fly and not have to do the drive. This would not have been possible without the generosity of the incredible Idaho catbaoters that drove me around and let me borrow gear. Thanks Al for the tubes and Craig for the frame. You guys are the best.

Gore Canyon

2009-08-07T00:17:00.003-06:00

Gore Falls. You can see that the swim sucks if you screw up the 8 footer.

I rowed Gore Canyon on the Colorado for the first time on Sunday. It was a beautiful sunny day on one of the most classic Class V runs in the country, but things turned a little epic so all you get in the public domain is a pretty picture and a promise for a good river story the next time we have a beer together.

An Idaho 4th of July

2009-07-12T21:54:00.003-06:00

Beautiful scenery on the South Salmon

For the 4th of July weekend I was able to escape for a whopping six days and take another trip out to the great state of Idaho. Phil was once again able to join me for a long weekend and I picked him and his kayak up at the Boise airport on Thursday morning and headed for destination Yellow Pine, ID. On the way up there we had the pleasure of seeing the ultra-classic North Fork Payette for the first time in either of our lives. The North Fork is one impressive piece of whitewater and it quickly becomes clear that the numero uno rule of road scouting does not necessarily apply. For those interested, the numero uno rule of road scouting is, gIf you can't see it from the road, it's easy.h Eventually we stopped road scouting the most awesome river I have ever seen, killed my iPhone by submerging it in water, made it to Yellow Pine, ID and were on the water by two pm.

We had the pleasure of boating the East Fork of the South Fork of the Salmon River with a crew of three WA catboaters and the very solid R2 of David and Laura. David was Val Shaull's R2 partner the day they showed Dana and I down the Truss and had the infamous flat wrap. Anyhow, I promptly proceeded to make a complete fool of myself by popping an oar in the long complicated Class V that is Flight Simulator and my troubles didn't exactly end there. I managed to row a pretty good section of whitewater with one oar while trying to get my other oar back in until this large double fin rock blocked my downstream progress. My left tube popped up over the first fin and dropped into the slot between the two and pinned before unceremoniously dumping me head first into the river in a downstream flip. Fortunately the only injury was to my ego and that was the only section of Flight Sim that was not being watched from the road.

The next couple of days we repeated with same run with different boating partners and better results, except for the Phil's Rock incident. We were actually in Yellow Pine to meet up with our new Idaho catboater friends Jerry Kiser, Craig King, Steve Rich and Ted Day. The latter two were to be our partners in a three day wilderness trip down the South Salmon.

Phil came to have a rock named after him on our second day of boating the EFSF. He paddled over this wave/hole thing to find a surprise pyramid rock hiding right behind the pillow. His bow dropped between the pillow and the rock he pinned horizontally with his head downstream. I was ahead of him at this point and quickly alerted our boating partners to the developing situation. From my vantage, I could see that Phil was able to get breaths intermittently, but had no idea how long he could sustain the effort to do so. It turns out he had pinned in such a way that the pyramid rock was directly against his cockpit (lap) and precluded any chance of pulling his spray deck and swimming. After a minute and forty seconds of this heinous situation, Phil was able to extricate himself by climbing out the tunnel on his spray skirt. I have never been so happy to see a kayaker swim in my life.

It turns out that Independence Day in Yellow Pine is a pretty fun albeit redneck experience. We had some great fireworks, potato gun duels in Main Street, and a pretty good band on the porch of the Corner Bar singing the classic rock anthems. Later in the evening I had consumed enough whiskey to dance with the local ladies and sing karaoke in the Corner Bar. We didn't get a particularly early start the next morning for our South Salmon trip.

I am not really at liberty to discuss the South Salmon trip in the public domain. All I can say is that the South Fork of the Salmon really sucks. The whitewater is sub-par, the canyon is all burnt, the bugs are awful, no fishing, no good campsites, well you get the picture (above). Skip this trip and boat your local roadside commercial run instead.

Log Video

2009-06-23T12:52:00.000-06:00

Upper Animas Weekend

2009-06-22T22:29:00.004-06:00

Roger making the meat line at No Name Falls look easy.

Phil flew in from Vancouver, BC for the weekend and we drove down to Durango to fun the Upper Animas. Coolest raft trip in Colorado. On the way down we stopped and ran the Numbers section of the Arkansas with Kyle Dickman and his ladyfriend Turin. It was great to see them both, but I'm still not sure how we were unable to convince them to join us on the Upper A.

After a sleep deprived wrong turn and much dirking Saturday morning we finally arrived at the put-in caffinated, fed, carrying freshly sliced deli meats and a great bottle of Rum from the Montanya distillery in Silverton, CO. We met a crew of 10 others including Dana and randomly enough, Josh Mack, a guy I guided with back in the day. I just showed up at the put-in and he was like, Keith? Yep, that's me. Great to spend time with an old friend that just randomly happened to be on the same river trip.

The Upper A is rad! I can't go on enough about how much I love this section of river. We had a great crew, great whitewater, great food, we ran the Rockwood Box, made new friends, hung out with old friends, told stories, and slept next to the river. Dana had to drink booty for flipping his paddle boat in Mandatory Thrashing and Mark took a little swim in Red Wall which led to his consumption of the unknown bottle of whiskey I found in the eddy below. Awesome weekend!

2009-06-08T16:27:00.003-06:00

Huge Loss of Wade, Micah and Jonny in Sichuan Mountains China. from Renan Ozturk.

The Epic Story of the Log in Dagger Falls

2009-06-05T09:12:00.003-06:00

The first big river on this Spring's Idaho trip was the Middle Fork Salmon. Five of us launched on 5/19 and took off on 5/22, perfect to hit this year’s peak of 7.3 ft. Phil and Adam paddled their playboats, Jake and I were in our cats, and Amanda rowed a 14’ round boat with incredible style. The weather was perfect, the food was great, the group dynamic was as good as it gets, the hotsprings were the ideal temp, we met cool people, and the whitewater was awesome!!! All told, this was one of the best river trips I have ever been on.

In order to run the Middle Fork in the spring you have to start on one of it's tributaries, Marsh Cr. This is necessary because the road to the normal put-in is blocked by snow until early June most years. Marsh Cr. has a reputation for being full of wood and has been the site of many epic adventures in the past. This year Marsh was relatively free of wood and was actually enjoyable instead of just being a necessary evil for the rest of the trip to happen. The last drop before the normal put-in for the Middle Fork is Dagger Falls, a giant Class V monster of a rapid with a brutal portage.

We arrived at Dagger Falls to find the bank lined by freaked out paddlers with whistles and throwbags waving at like crazy fools to eddy out. My first reaction was, ‘Shit, someone died! Hopefully they just have ropes in the river or there is wood in the falls.’ The Dagger scout is pretty hard to miss. Bridge over river. Check. Giant eddy with stairs leading to it. Check. Thundering Class V clearly audible around the corner. Check. Why people were offering to throw me bags as I made the easy pull into the eddy is beyond me. Anyway, I looked at the first competent seeming person and asked what was wrong and if our assistance was needed. “Nothing is wrong we just wanted to make sure you guys knew this is the portage.” Portage?

I had a quick look at the falls to make sure it was wood free and to get my bearings. Jake and Amanda both decided they didn’t feel up to funning the falls. We had met three extremely competent Boise catboaters earlier in the day and they agreed to run Blue Angel style with me for safety and off we went. Four cats four clean lines. The three Boise cats agreed to set safety while I ran Amanda's raft through and Phil and Adam decided to fire it up in their kayaks. Raft and two kayaks, three more clean lines. At this point our group has just one more cat at the top of the falls and the Boise crew graciously agreed to set safety for me while I ran the final cat through the falls.

I jogged back to the top of the falls and took a breather for a second to get my game face on for round three then hopped in Jake's cat and pulled out of the eddy. I was in the swirly room above the falls getting boiled and swirled around similarly to my previous two runs when all of a sudden I experienced what can only be described as whiplash. It took a split second to realize that something totally unexpected was going on and I turned around to see the two foot diameter butt end of a 60’ pine tree between my tubes and pushing on my cat frame. At this instant the thing was lined up perfectly behind me and pushing me off line and sideways into a part of Dagger falls I had no interest in investigating. My first instinct was to get ahead of the thing so I started pushing on the oars like a crazy fool, but I quickly realized the insanity of dropping into Dagger Falls with a tree chasing me. My second instinct was, ‘Get me out of here before I die.’ I pushed harder than I ever have for the fish ladder on river left and abandoned ship in one magnificent leap. I mantled up onto the concrete of the fish ladder and turned around just in time to see the log mash Jake’s cat into the boulder that forms the lip of the falls. The log then released and chundered on through the falls followed closely by another huge tree trunk and a full tree with attached limbs and greenery.

All three trees disappeared around the corner and I turned my attention back to Jake's pinned cat. His boat was pinned, bow upstream, right at the lip of the falls with the only damage being a mangled oarlock and a broken oar shaft. Realizing that I would only be rowing with one oar over the falls backward I hopped back in the cat and bounced it a couple of times so it would release. I promptly flipped in the hole at the bottom of the falls and climbed into the cockpit of the upside down cat. My safety chased and we herded the cat into the eddy at Boundary Cr. We reflipped, replaced the oar and oarlock and proceeded to have the best MFS trip ever.

All told, I feel incredibly fortunate to have escaped the nightmare situation of being pushed around by wood above a big Class V with only a broken oar and oarlock. This could have turned out very badly! I learned this lesson and learned it well, I will always look upstream before pulling out of an eddy!

Sorry For Another Teaser, I Really Will Write About My Trip Soon.

2009-06-03T20:34:00.001-06:00

Dagger Falls on the Middle Fork Salmon at 7ft.

Lochsa Carnage

2009-05-31T22:51:00.002-06:00

Jake is in the Orange cat, I'm yellow. We are each featured a couple of times. More Idaho stories to come.

2009-04-20T23:24:00.006-06:00

New York Times photographer Damon Winter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize today for his coverage of President Obama's (I still love typing that, President Obama) 2008 campaign.

There is a great montage of his work here...

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/4/20/722464/-Im-in-Love-with-My-Country

Red Rock Canyon... Again

2009-04-07T14:52:00.003-06:00

Yes, I went climbing in Vegas again. Without me implicitly saying so, you may be noticing that this is one of my favorite places to climb. This trip I flew in and met up with Dane for four days of awesome climbing. I scored a free plane ticket on my way out for getting bumped a mere five minutes, how inconvenient. I would have spent that time waiting at baggage claim anyhow. The first route we did was Sour Mash (600', 5.10a) in Black Velvet canyon. This climb is awesome! A highly recommended must do Red Rock classic.

The next day we had big plans to link up Black Orpheus (1500', 5.9+) with Rainbow Buttress (1200', 5.8), but the weather was less than cooperative. The guy in the entrance booth at 6am informed us that 60mph winds were in the forecast and he was right on. What he failed to mention was the snow. We were about half way up Black Orpheus when the wind picked up and a couple of pitches higher we were in a full blown storm. I got a wee bit of the hypothermia at the hanging belay for pitch seven with freezing gale force winds pelting me in the back with snow. If we could have bailed on fixed raps, we would have. We were pretty close to using our whole rack to get off that one, but the easiest way off was up. We repeatedly had to hit the deck on the flat summit to avoid being blown off. Needless to say we didn't get the link up with Rainbow Buttress.

Day three was leisurely, mostly we were recovering from the excitement of the previous day. We did three single pitch climbs, all great fun. We ate a bunch and we prepared for our big objective of the trip.

The East face of Mt. Wilson with our route shown in red.

The fourth day was the big one! Dane and I linked Inti Watana (2000',IV,5.10c) with the upper nine pitches of Resolution Arete (2800',V,5.10+,A1) up the Aeolian Wall on the NE face of Mt. Wilson. This is one big radical sandstone face! We spent about 2 hrs. on the approach, got to the top of Inti Watana at about 1pm, a few more hours to the summit, a nice nap on top, and three hours walking down First Creek Canyon in time to make it back to the car before dark. I have never done 21 pitches up a Grade V in a day and it was so fun! We even had daylight to spare! One highlight of the day came on the descent when Dane rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a mountain lion. It took off and Dane's reaction was to do the same. I was like, "I want to see the kitty, where did it go?" I got my wish about a minute later when the cat started back down the slot canyon towards us. This was one big cougar! My best guess, and no exaggeration, is 140 lb. We decided that sharing a slot canyon with a 140 lb cat stalking us was a bit intimate for our taste and boogied on out of there.

Cat Frame

2009-03-18T01:05:00.003-06:00

Check out my totally radical new cataraft frame! Powdercoated aluminum construction by the Madcatr in Washington.

Tuesday Trivia #7

2009-03-17T11:38:00.002-06:00

We have a launch this evening. It can be viewed here at 9:42pm EDT.

AV-016 rolling out of the VIF to the launch pad Monday morning. Have I mentioned that I think what we do is so freaking cool! Plus, that is one sexy rocket.

Since it is a launch day an Atlas related trivia question seems appropriate. In the early days of Atlas, one awesome rocket scientist is credited with two innovations (both were very controversial at the time) that carried on to the later Atlas program. Namely, monocoque pressurized tanks that also served as part of the external airframe and gimballing the entire engine thrust chambers for flight control. Name the rocket scientist.

Thanks for playing Trivia Tuesday. Please put you answers in the comments. I will try to post these weekly at noon mountain time. Answer three trivia questions correctly and I will mail you two dozen cookies of your choice anywhere in the world.

Weekend in Jackson

2009-02-24T20:55:00.006-06:00

It was a little tough going, but I made it. After leaving work late on Thursday I managed to run out of gas in middle of nowhere Wyoming, lose control of the truck about 30 times on the windy, icy crapper of a winter drive that is I-80, and get pulled over sans ticket at 2am just as I was rolling into Jackson. Upon arrival I discovered two very drunk Melvin brothers rolling in their vomit and peeing on themselves. Just great!

Thankfully, Garrett was quite sober and was able to ski the next morning. We skied inbounds and side country on Friday and I was favorably impressed by Jackson Hole. There is enough awesome skiing to be done in the Tetons to keep one busy for a lifetime. The next two days were bluebird backcountry in the park and we got the goods. Saturday we skied Turkey Chute off the back side of 25 Short down into Avalanche canyon where we made a late day lap in beautiful mountain splendor. Sunday we skied some great north facing couloirs and fun pitches off the north side of Wimpy's. Everything was deep, stable, and so much fun! I have really been getting some amazing days in the backcountry this season and these were two of the best!

Garrett getting the pop out of his turn in the Jackson Hole gate access backcountry.

Garrett points out the line to Minor Melvin.

This skin track redefines "earn your turns." There is a definite one to one correlation.

Did I mention that I think the Tetons are gorgeous!

Passing the skis down to the entrance of Turkey Chute.

Graham gettin' his fix while Garrett and Brian look on.

Even the hard part is freakin' awesome!

Graham playing the little spoon next to my tracks on the last lap of the day.

Me, Brian Melvin, Garrett and Graham after a wonderful day in the Tetons.

Tuesday Trivia #6

2009-02-24T13:29:00.002-06:00

It's pretty exciting when space debris reenters and is recovered. There is lots of good science to be done and reentry models to be updated. In October of 2007 ULA launched the WGS SV-1 satellite and the Centaur upper stage that carried it to it's final orbit has subsequently reentered. One part of the Centaur survived its fiery descent through the atmosphere and was recovered. When did it reenter? What part? Where did it land? Link in a picture of the part. Happy internet researching!

Thanks for playing Trivia Tuesday. Please put you answers in the comments. I will try to post these weekly at noon mountain time. Answer three trivia questions correctly and I will mail you two dozen cookies of your choice anywhere in the world.

Tride Rocks!

2009-02-16T19:36:00.003-06:00

I met up with Kyle Dickman and friends at the amazing Lexi's house in Telluride on Friday night. We had a little comped tour of the inbounds action at Telluride on Saturday and hit up the backcountry on Mustang Ridge above Ophir on Sunday. Kyle and I had zero beta on where to go backcountry near Telluride, but we managed to stumble on one of the best spots I have skied yet in Colorado. Got to love having a good nose for the pow!

Kyle Dickman got this great shot of me in the backcountry near Ophir on Sunday.

Kyle sussing out the line in the beautiful San Juan range.

Kyle seems to be enjoying his turns, 'cause darn it if he didn't earn 'em!

Tuesday Trivia #5

2009-02-10T12:55:00.003-06:00

Black holes have been the subject of much hoopla in the astronomy community lately. Earlier this year, two embryonic stars were discovered just a few light years away from the super massive black hole that lies at the Milky Way's center. It is thought that these stars were born in place rather than forming elsewhere and being "sucked in" by the black hole's gravitational field. Theoretically it is possible for the stars to have formed in more traditional stellar nurseries and moved toward the center of the galaxy, but this theory has been discounted. Why?

Thanks for playing Trivia Tuesday. Please put you answers in the comments. I will try to post these weekly at noon mountain time. Answer three trivia questions correctly and I will mail you two dozen cookies of your choice anywhere in the world.

Tuesday Trivia #4

2009-02-03T13:23:00.005-06:00

Sorry about the lack of a trivia question last week. I have been super busy.

We are launching a rocket tonight with a satellite that has an interesting event in it's past. What is this event? I know this sounds super cryptic, but when you figure it out it will be obvious.

Thanks for playing Trivia Tuesday. Please put you answers in the comments. I will try to post these weekly at noon mountain time. Answer three trivia questions correctly and I will mail you two dozen cookies of your choice anywhere in the world.

Jason: Your cookies will be along shortly. I am still working on gluten-free-high-altitude baking. I am loathe to release a substandard product from my kitchen.

The aforementioned event:

Yep, thats a $500,000 satellite that got dropped.

Vail Ice

2009-02-01T22:25:00.003-06:00

I always think frozen water is so aesthetic.

Dane climbing.

Me Climbing.

Went up to Vail on Saturday and climbed some ice. It was a beautiful bluebird day and definitely in the realm of "type one" fun. We hung some topropes on some super fun ice and dirked around with the whole place to ourselves.

Recent Ski Pictures

2009-01-29T21:51:00.005-06:00

Dane took all three of these!

Tuesday Trivia #3

2009-01-20T13:16:00.001-06:00

The invocation by Rick Warren at Barack Obama's inauguration was the subject of much controversy. What is the history of the invocation? Who was the first president to have one? What religions have been represented in the invocation/benediction? Has this traditionally been a contentious event?

Thanks for playing Trivia Tuesday. Please put you answers in the comments. I will try to post these weekly at noon mountain time. Answer three trivia questions correctly and I will mail you two dozen cookies of your choice anywhere in the world. Jason has correctly answered the first two editions of Tuesday Trivia.

Trivia Tuesday #2

2009-01-13T13:13:00.003-06:00

On this day in history a very iconic peak was climbed for the first time. The previous statement has been the subject of intense debate amongst climbers for decades. What mountain am I speaking of and why the conflict? Do you agree with my opening statement?

Thanks for playing Trivia Tuesday. Please put you answers in the comments. I will try to post these weekly at noon mountain time. Answer three trivia questions correctly and I will mail you two dozen cookies of your choice anywhere in the world.

Delta IV Heavy Night Launch!

2009-01-12T15:40:00.006-06:00

Check out our next launch tomorrow, Tuesday 7:49 p.m. EST. A live simulcast of the TV broadcast of the launch begins at 7:25 p.m. EST, on the ULA Web site: http://www.ulalaunch.com/index_webcast.html. The Delta IV Heavy is spectacular to watch, especially at night, with three all liquid boosters generating nearly two million pounds of thrust off the pad.

UPDATE: This launch has been postponed 24hrs to Wednesday at 7:45 p.m. EST.

Trivia Tuesday #1

2009-01-06T17:12:00.005-06:00

What mission is this and what caused the anomaly?

Thanks for playing Trivia Tuesday. Please put you answers in the comments. I will try to post these weekly at noon mountain time. Answer three trivia questions correctly and I will mail you two dozen cookies of your choice anywhere in the world.

All Mixed Up

2008-12-09T21:03:00.004-06:00

All Mixed Up is the obvious line angling up and left out of the cirque. Conditions were not nearly so fat on Sunday.

Saturday night it seemed that all motivation was lacking for an alpine adventure the following morning, but somehow Josh and I rallied in the morning and headed up to Glacier Gorge in the park to get on All Mixed Up (600', III, WI4 M4 R). This is one of the most classic moderate ice routes in RMNP and it follows an obvious line out of the cirque on the NE face of Thatchtop. After a fair slog we discovered, not to our suprise, a party ahead of us. To avoid the icy debris cascading down from the other party we chose a route slightly to the right for the inital pitches. All Mixed Up is currently quite lean and our chosen line made the ice even more sparse, but no matter, we were excited to try a little mixed climbing. In the end our climb proved to be a bit more difficult than expectations, but the challenge was good for both of us.

November Madness

2008-12-04T21:09:00.045-06:00

I haven't posted about the last few weeks yet because they were kind of overwhelming! Honestly I am still recovering!

Three weeks ago today, Jake arrived in Boulder for some Pre-Thanksgiving shenanigans. For a week we laughed, played cards, climbed, told jokes, danced, chased elk, smiled, drank, swapped stories and so on. Then we went to Vegas. There Garrett and Graham joined the party. We promptly headed for the desert and aided by a couple small pieces of fiberboard were able to drive the loop backwards, camp for free and be the first ones on our routes in the morning. On Saturday Graham and Garrett did Black Orpheus (1500’, III, 5.9+) while Jake and I climbed the parallel line of Johnny Vegas (500’, II, 5.7) to Solar Slab (1500’, III, 5.7) and we all met at the top before noon and navigated the walk off as four. Later that evening, we went into town to meet up with Lou, Jaz and Pete. Jake and I loose in Las Vegas may not be the best of ideas, but we didn't get into too much trouble. Actually, we each won a hundred bucks on the Beavers and quite a bit more at the tables. Jake was feeling lucky enough; he even bought some elf shoes. I have to admit that Vegas really gets on my nerves with the totally overt sexploitation of women and the fake glam aimed straight at your wallet.

Sunday wasn't the most motivated of mornings, but we did manage to clip a few bolts. Later in the day we had an some amusing moments when first the rental car got high centered (I think I will pay for the insurance from now on) and later the six of us realized that we only had two ropes and we were all planning to do long climbs the next day. Luckily Mikey lives in Vegas and loaned us a rope. Graham was nice enough to do the driving.

In the morning, Graham and I set out for Epinephrine (1600’, IV, 5.9). What an awesome climb! We were behind a slow party to begin with, but they were nice enough to let us pass in the chimneys and once free we blasted to the top. The exposure was awesome and we were looking way down the sweep of the Black Velvet wall to parties six pitches up and still way below us. We saw the sun for 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes of sunset when we topped out, other than that we were on the shady north face. We made it back to the car just before headlamp time.

The final highlight of Vegas was seeing Cirque du Soleil. We saw the Ka show at the MGM grand which was awesome! This one has a bit more of a plot than the others and the coolest stage ever. Highly recommended.

But wait, I’m not done yet. The next morning Jake, Lou, Jaz and I loaded up into the Jetta and returned to Boulder. Here we found Al, Josh, Ashley, Bro, and Mel and proceeded to have an impromptu ‘80s dance party while celebrating Wild Turkey Wednesday (lots of gobbling and said bourbon). The next day we all pitched in and made a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat. The dinner was somewhat complicated by the fact that we weighed ourselves before and after dinner. This turned out to be a really bad idea. I gained 5.5 pounds in three hours and didn’t even come close to winning. The rest of the weekend was spent on the usual combination of Boulder activities. We laughed, played cards, climbed, told jokes, danced, chased elk, smiled, drank, and swapped stories until the California crew had to hit the road.

This definitely ranks as one of the most fun and exhausting Thanksgivings ever.

2008-11-10T18:26:00.004-06:00

Corey belays me through the crux on the third pitch of the classic Green Slab Direct. It is really quite nice to have such awesome climbing 15 min from home.

Great Read!

2008-11-07T09:08:00.002-06:00

Really cool article on measuring glacial recession from space. Make sure you get past the findings to how the study was conducted, pretty amazing!

2008-10-30T15:29:00.025-06:00

New friends searching for motivation after a rambunctious Saturday night.

Bro on rap at Shelf Road.

It is so nice to have a great desert crag nearby in the fall. This was my first trip to Shelf Road and I was quite impressed by the quality and quantity of routes. Corey and I met up with a dozen other folks we didn't know and proceeded to have a blast getting to know everyone and pulling down hard. Saturday night we told some good ones around the campfire and polished off a couple bottles of Makers. Sunday, everyone was surprisingly able to climb, although motivation may have waned a bit from the previous day.

Fall Weekend in Oregon

2008-10-29T12:16:00.024-06:00

The Fall colors were beautiful and I truly miss the ocean living in Colorado.

We all know who taught me the J-stroke.

Bean also knows what to do when you put a paddle in her hands.

They sure look like they love each other.

Ian and Colleen know that making apple cider is one of the better ways to spend a Fall Sunday.

Now this is a good ad!

2008-10-02T12:22:00.002-06:00

Now this is a good political ad. A true sign of the times and exactly what I want all of Appalachia hearing on the way to work in the morning. Obama is running a rock solid campaign with a message that is spot on.

City of Rocks

2008-09-29T06:18:00.004-06:00

I took the week of Labor day off to do some climbing in Wyoming's Wind River Range with Dane. Saturday was spent loading up a ton of food, climbing gear and base camp luxury for our extended wilderness climbing. On Sunday, we shouldered our very heavy packs for a hike up over the continental divide to the Cirque of the Towers. We settled into a nice alpine meadow and scanned the guidebook and peaks in anticipation of a eight days worth of awesome granite cracks in a beautiful alpine environment. Monday morning we awoke to a blizzard and 4" of snow. Reluctantly we shouldered our heavy packs and retreated to the truck in total sneaker post-hole misery.

Warbonnet in a cloak of not-so-beautiful-to-the-climber snow.

Next stop: City of Rocks. It was sunny. We ate well, climbed hard and drank beer. I had never been before and my expectations were far exceeded. I will definitely be living here for a good bit when I quit my job and live out of my truck.

The oh, so pleasantness of City of Rocks

While paying for camping at the city I was idly reading the message board when I came across a hastily scrawled note that read, "Looking for a partner. I climb 11s sport/trad. In campsite 44. Look for the silver Porsche. - darrell." I asked Dane how many Darrells there are that climb 11s and drive Porsches down 40 miles of gravel road to City of Rocks. "One." We didn't manage to find him for a couple of days because he had vacated site 44 for some free BLM camping, but find him we did.

Darrell captured this way-more-extreme-looking-than-it-really-was photo of me on Z-crack.

Top Ten Palin Nicknames

2008-09-22T15:59:00.003-06:00

Sarah Palin has accumulated quite a few monikers over recent weeks. I have scoured the web and gotten a little creative myself to come up with my ten favorites. I offer these with the caveat that I know calling people names is not nice, some are offensive, but when nicknames enter the public consciousness they can reveal a politician for who they are (think "Tricky Dick").

10. Sarah Quaylin
9. Wicked Witch of Wasilla
8. Dickless Cheney
7. Falin' Palin
6. Snowjob Squareglasses
5. Gov. Mooselini
4. The Paliban
3. The Drilla' from Wasilla
2. Caribou Barbie
1. The Alaska Disasta'

Oh, and if you haven't seen it yet check out the Sarah Palin baby namer.

Best Ad Ever!

2008-09-17T08:14:00.002-06:00

Those of you not in Colorado may not see quite as many of these as I do. We are getting positively slammed with campaigning from both parties right now. I have never lived in a swing state on an election year before. All those dollars you gave the Obama campaign are hard at work here. Many polls show Colorado as the current tipping point, which is really scary in this historically red state.

Vote, give money, phone bank, canvass, whatever you can do to help!

Matt Damon on Sarah Palin

2008-09-11T13:44:00.001-06:00

Happy 72nd Birthday John McSame

2008-08-29T11:33:00.002-06:00

He sure does like those beauty queens. But seriously, Sarah Palin? Who goes from mayor of a pop. 7,000 town in Alaska to VP of the US in less than two years? She makes Obama look experienced like Robert Byrd and Edward Kennedy. Her Credentials are a BA from Idaho State, Miss Congeniality in a Wasilla, AK beauty pageant, mother of five, a few years as mayor of a town 2% the size of Obama's Illinois Congressional district and less than two years as Governor of Alaska. In those two years she has managed to start a scandal by using her office to fire an Alaska State Trooper that happened to be her sister's ex. When that didn't work, she fired his boss. Perfect fit for the Republicans.

She definitely fits the bill as a Washington outsider, but does McSame really think that Hillary supporters will vote for her just because she is a woman? Last time I checked, Hillary and her supporters were pro-choice. Certainly not many will be wooed by a pro-life ultra conservative christian just because she wears a pantsuit. Even the PUMA crowd has to see right through this one. This blatant pandering is an insult to the intelligence of all women.

The Republican presidential nominee is now 72 years old with a history of deadly skin cancer. He then hires Miss Congeniality with zero foreign policy experience to be just a heartbeat away from Commander in Chief. This shows us the type of judgment we can expect from John McCain. It won't work.

The Biden - Palin debate should be interesting...

I was about ready to post this when I got this crazy flash forward from a parallel universe where McCain/Palin win this election. History is made when John McCain dies of a heart attack while adulterously boning his vice-president making her Commander in Chief.

WOW!

2008-08-29T11:13:00.002-06:00

Last night at Mile High was AMAZING! The energy of the place was fantastic and it truly felt like we were part of history being made. We arrived around 3pm to find a mile long line at the South entrance, so we embarked on a circuitous hike around to the East side where there were no lines and we just walked right in. Some people waited on the South side for four hours. Udall (CO Rep. running for Senate), Richardson and Gore were some of my favorite speakers early on. They all had some great zings for McSame. Seeing/hearing Stevie Wonder sing Signed, Sealed and Delivered was super cool as well. I'm sure you all watched Obama give his speech last night so I don't have to tell you how incredible it was. One thing that most folks aren't aware of is that he wrote the speech himself. I think that is so impressive in today's world of speech writing teams and campaign coordinators. All told, my hands and throat are sore from so much clapping and cheering, but I am "Fired Up, Ready To Go!"

After we made it out of there last night we picked up Dane at the airport. He and I are off to the Wind River mountains of Wyoming for the next week for some alpine climbing in the Cirque of the Towers. Awesome granite here I come!

Obama/Biden - 2008!

I Got Tickets!

2008-08-14T20:07:00.003-06:00

Looks like Mel and I will be going to Obama's acceptance speech on the 28th. Unless of course we are tempted by the hundreds of dollars folks are offering on Craig's List.

2008-08-12T16:07:00.000-06:00

Summer in the High Country

2008-07-29T13:35:00.003-06:00

Me on the third class section of Ellingwood Ledges.

Josh and I were both able to get Friday off so Thursday night we headed down South to the Sangre de Cristo range for some backcountry alpine climbing. We bounced our way up a bumpy 4WD road for a few miles to reach the trailhead followed by a headlamp approach to Upper Colony Lake. In the morning we were up at first light and roped up for the Ellingwood Ledges route on Crestone Needle (III 5.7, 2000'). This is one of the 50 crowded climbs in North America which we observed firsthand with four other parties on route, on a Friday no less. The climbing was fun on a bomber welded conglomerate and we moved quickly staying ahead of the other groups. Josh put in a great lead up the crux pitch in a right facing dihedral just below the summit.

Ellingwood Ledges route with Upper Colony Lake in the foreground.

From the top of Crestone Needle we headed to nearby Crestone Peak. This is one of the classic fourth class 14er traverses in Colorado. We opted to down climb the Needle instead of rappelling. this was a bit exposed with challenging route finding, but it went off without a hitch. The down climbing completed it was another fun scramble up more conglomerate to the summit of the Peak. We descended the Peak via the NE Couloir to Bear's Playground just as the skies opened up. By the time we made our tent we were soaked to the bone.

Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep that liked the salt in Josh's pee.

Saturday we intended to climb the Prow on Kit Carson but were feeling a lack of motivation so instead opted for a leisurely hike up Humboldt Peak. The highlight of this fun grassy ridge was all the baby animals. We saw lots of baby marmots, pikas and some baby ptarmigan. On the way down I took a slight detour to do a wonderful mile long ridge traverse to recover some gear we had cached the day before in anticipation of our Kit Carson climb. Josh had a nice warm lunch ready for me when I made it back to camp and we spent the afternoon swimming in the lake, bouldering, napping, eating, playing with sheep, and generally having a great time. Somehow the rain showers avoided us for the majority of the afternoon.

First Raft Descent of the Big South Fork of the Cache de la Poudre

2008-07-16T10:16:00.008-06:00

Adrian Matthew Glasenapp put together this series photo of Sean and I on Double Trouble. Thanks Adrian!

Sunday morning I picked up Sean Davis nice and early for a mission to the headwaters of the Poudre. To the best of our collective knowledge, this Colorado kayaking classic had never been rafted. The Big South is an absolutely beautiful creek with steep 200 fpm gradients and tons of III and IV between the numerous class V drops. We put on early to allow ample time for our exploratory descent, but were soon caught up by the 50 or so kayakers that ventured down Big South that day. We had unwitting chosen the busiest day of the year on Big South. The extra encouragement, beta and safety from the numerous kayakers was most appreciated.

All told we had a pretty great day. We missed a line in one of the first drops, Starter Fluid, and I swam a short waterfall. Then we had to carry or line the boat a few times in the first gorge because the slots were just too narrow for our wide selves. At this point we were feeling like rafting Big South may not have been the best idea. Things turned in our favor really quick with Prime Time gorge and Double Trouble. This section was awesome and our lines were spot on. We arrived at Double Trouble just as Leif Embertson and crew finished pulling a log out of the line. It took a little convincing to get Sean on board, but we hit it perfect and had a great line. We had quite the gallery of carnagavoirs expecting to see some swimmers, but I believe they were equally entertained by our clean line.

Slideways is the final big rapid on the run. Here the creek plunges through a quarter mile of boulder choked class V+. The raft crux here is a boof between two boulders on the right, but before we even got there we got bounced left and completely missed our line. The left is extremely nasty and flipped us instantly. Fortunately neither of us had a bad swim. The remainder of the day was uneventful albeit a bit slow due to some wood, around which we were quite careful.

Another highlight of the day came when I was running shuttle. I saw two moose. I previously had no clue that there are moose in Colorado, so needless to say I was quite shocked when I rounded the corner and there were two of the gangly big nosed creatures standing in an alpine meadow.

Leif Embertson got this pic of Sean Davis and I cleaning Double Trouble. I know my position looks funny, but it is an anticipatory highside.

Maroon Bells

2008-07-01T19:31:00.006-06:00

The classic picture of the Maroon Bells from Maroon Lake.

Josh making photogenic turns in the Y couloir. Crater lake, where we set basecamp, is the close one.

Josh fixed this one up to show our route. He also has a really cool video of me skiing on his blog that I couldn't steal. Hit the link in the right panel for more pics. From the top of the Y couloir I actually skied the sick cliffed out line skiers right of the route shown.

Last weekend, Josh and I escaped on Thursday to head out to the Maroon Peaks near Aspen. After sleeping in until 4 Friday morning and much dirking around (mostly my fault) we finally managed to climb Maroon Peak via the Bell Cord couloir. We then had a sweet ski down the Y couloir after carrying our skis over the top. It was a long day, but one of the most fun I have had in the mountains in quite some time. It was neat climbing in a simply beautiful setting. Friday night we ate and drank as much as possible before passing out under the stars in a lush meadow right on the shore of the lake. When we woke up Saturday morning we didn't even attempt to climb Pyramid Peak per the original plan. We were too whooped, so we just soaked up the view until the tourist-day-hikers came in.

Hoosier State Swing?

2008-06-24T13:19:00.003-06:00

A new SurveyUSA poll came out today with results from Indiana (11 EC votes). They showed Obama leading McCain 48 - 47 percent among 627 likely Hoosier voters. While this is a statistical tie it is still an amazing result from a state that went Bush by more than 20 points in '04.

In conjunction with the Quinnipiac poll released last week this is good news for Obama. Quinnipiac University polls are historically the most accurate of the major pollsters. The most recent release shows Obama leading McCain in all three of the big swing states. In Florida Obama edges McCain 47 - 43 percent, in Ohio Obama tops McCain 48 - 42 percent, and in Pennsylvania Obama leads McCain 52 - 40 percent.

Water on Mars!

2008-06-20T08:19:00.002-06:00

It has been confirmed, there is ice on Mars. When the Phoenix first landed, any old Joe could look at the photos and say "That sure does look a lot like ice." But then no water showed up in the soil when it was baked in the oven. It seems that it took so long to get the soil in there that any ice had sublimated. Now, bright chunks of material that were excavated by the robotic arm four days ago have disappeared! The only explanation that I or anyone else can think of is that they were chunks of ice that sublimated.

Also on the topic of water, we launched the Jason II satellite this morning aboard a Delta II. Jason monitors ocean surface levels around the globe to the nearest inch. This is an amazing instrument for updating ocean current models and tidal data in addition to answering the obvious question.

Business Trip

2008-06-08T23:15:00.003-06:00

This series is me running the meat of Boulder Drop on the Skykomish at 8,000

Buried in the hole next to House Rock

Keith vs. Ledge Hole

About this time I thought I was going swimming...

To be included in highsideing 101 instruction manual

I have been in Seattle for the past week testing rocket engines. We use a small maneuvering thruster to steer the upper stage and the mission I am working on requires additional lab analysis. The work has been interesting and I am learning a ton about a side of the business I have not yet seen. It is really cool stuff. The highlight of the trip has been seeing friends and family.

I got a chance to go down and see Bill and my Mom in Portland. Pa was 24 hours post-op after having his prostate removed and now appears to be a cancer survivor. This has been really stressful for me and I am so relieved to hear the good news. Wednesday night he was recovering well and hadn't lost his humor or the twinkle in his eyes, so I think he will be just fine.

Thursday night, I had a wonderful dinner downtown with my aunt Nancy, uncle Mike and two cousins Evelyn and Rachel. I haven't seen them in such a long time and the girls have really grown up. They are both so articulate and are growing up to be fabulous young ladies.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Patrick Hower, Kelly and Jason's three week old son. He is a real cutie and I even held him for a few minutes without being too awkward. I don't have the cable to get those pictures off my camera just yet, but they will be coming. The conversation is always so good and it seems that we just pick up like no time has passed.

Saturday morning I took Mel's rolly luggage and went rafting. I met Franz and Aaron on the Middle Fork and they offered to take me boating while I was out here. I took them up on their offer and made three runs in three different cats over the course of two days. Sunday, Franz and I decided to step up and run Boulder Drop down the gut. That was some big water but neither of us swam, but I did get worked by Ledge Hole.

One final note, the rental car company decided to bestow upon me a 2008 cherry red Ford Mustang. Amazingly enough, I have managed to drive this thing for a full week without a speeding ticket. It's not my style at all, but still kind of fun.

2008-06-06T09:42:00.003-06:00

I think this NASA image of Phoenix coming in for a landing on Mars is really cool. That is the lander hanging from it's parachutes in the inset. The photo was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is an amazing mission and it got so much cooler with the excavation of what appears to be ice when Phoenix landed.

Middle Fork Salmon

2008-06-02T22:34:00.002-06:00

Beautiful Frank Church Wilderness from a hill above Sheep Creek camp.

Camping out on the way to the put-in

Me and my extra-cute girlfriend

The whole crew happy to be out of harm's way

The Middle Fork at 6' was a bit more intense than any of us anticipated. Overall, we were a bit outside of our comfort zone with only a two boat trip. Luckily there were numerous other parties also feeling a bit taxed and they were more than happy at the suggestion to team up and go for some safety in numbers. The only problem was the other groups were having a more difficult time on a whole than we were. Granted, we flipped both of our boats during the course of the trip, but other groups were getting stuck on logs, wrapping boats, flipping numerous times, getting stuck under their boats, sustaining injury and flying out of the canyon. There was a fair bit of carnage, but it really seemed to up the camradery between the various parties on the river.

Oh, the Middle Fork is awesome! 120 miles of wilderness boating through an incredible canyon with lots of hot springs. I can't wait to do this trip again. The sooner the better. Maybe next time I will go a bit later in the season with slightly lower water and a bit more sunshine.

Audubon

2008-06-02T22:19:00.002-06:00

A couple of weeks ago Josh, Andy and I went into the Inidan Peaks wilderness to ski a couloir on Audubon. It was quite a fun day and Andy took some pics that are worth sharing.

Finally France

2008-05-12T20:30:00.006-06:00

Stall at the beautiful famer's market in Annecy.

Sausage is way better in France!

Flower shop in Annecy.

Volnay from WWI and WWII era! Anyone want to guess a price?

Ready to be bottled in the coolest wine cellar ever.

Can't leave France without a picture of a bicycle leaning agains a wall.

I have been back from France for a couple of weeks and still no blog post. My apologies. I do finally have my photos up at http://picasaweb.google.com/pearen/France

France was great! Having a car was key to a successful trip. Maybe not quite as good as two months and a bike with panniers, but driving all the back roads through tiny towns was definitely a highlight of the trip. Becca and I started by heading down to Montpellier where she has been studying for the past year. On the way we stopped by the Roquefort cheese caves for a pretty cheesy tour. After a day checking out Montpellier and visiting the market we were off again to the Alps. This ended up being quite a long day in the car, mostly because it was so beautiful and we kept wanting to check out new stuff.

In the Alps we had a small chalet reserved for 6 nights. It served as a perfect base for relaxing, hiking, eating cheese and exploring the surrounding villages. We were in the small town of Combloux down the valley from Chamonix. One of our most impressive side trips was to Annecy. This small city had a fabulous market and was right on the outlet of a beautiful glacial lake with crystal clear streams running right through town. I don't say this often while travelling, but I actually think I could live in this area.

After leaving the Alps with sore bellies from all the cheese, we moved onto wine country. We started with wonderful Pinot and Chardonnay on the Cote d' Or in Burgogna. We had quite a fun day checking out wine cellars and tasting tons of wines. Every vintner has a couple of acres of grapes and there are literally hundreds of small family operations in about a 50km strip of hillside. Most make amazing wine. After a night in a wonderful small town bead and breakfast, we decided to get closer to Paris and check out Champagna. Again, we found tons of little family wineries making incredible bubbly wine. I ended up bringing a few bottles back.

France

2008-04-21T04:03:00.005-06:00

France is gorgeous! I love all the beautiful old houses, stonework and vibrant green meadows.

Becca posing at the cheese stall in her local famer's market in Montpellier. We are basically on a cheese tour of France. Notice the kid in the back stealing the piece of cheese.

Yesterday, as I sat on a big granite boulder beneath the Dru (Super famous alpine crag near Chamonix) eating the best cheese I have ever had with some of the best bread and sausage, while looking out over the alps... Yeah, it's pretty storybook France, but it's a way fun vacation.

Polar Star Inn

2008-04-08T16:21:00.008-06:00

This past weekend Josh and I joined a dozen or so other friends for a couple of nights at the 10th Mountain Division's Polar Star Inn. This deluxe hut is located at 11,000' on the North Ridge of New York Mountain and has some great terrain within a mile ski of the hut. We knocked off work early on Friday and started the 7 mile ski in around 5pm.

We built a bobsled course that started at the crest of the roof. The crux was this first turn off the roof.

The bag game is infinitely entertaining and is somewhat akin to the limbo. Contestants must pick up a paper bag in their mouth while balancing on one foot. Each round the bag gets an inch shorter. Here, Josh is attempting a winning bag grab. It is pertinent to add that while I introduced this game to the group, I was by far the worst contestant of the lot. I can scarcely pick up a full height bag.

Josh getting spiritual Sunday morning.

Me cooking Sunday morning breakfast for the crew.

Alaska Teaser

2008-03-31T00:34:00.003-06:00

Seanski and a very sodden Bald Eagle size each other up. If the eagle's feathers are too wet it can't take-off from the water and must swim to shore. Bald Eagles are far more graceful in the air.

Pete, Sean and I earning our turns at Tincup backcountry area on Turnagain pass. That upper bowl was oooh-sooo-sweeeet!

Unloading the skis from the boat, that's so cool.

The newlyweds on the ski into their wedding ceremony.

FL and MI

2008-03-14T15:27:00.003-06:00

It seems from the news that re-votes in Florida and Michigan are becoming increasingly likely. This seems to be a good thing, because it is simply preposterous to seat the delegates from those states based on their January primaries. Since Clinton is so fair, maybe she will agree to have her name taken off the ballot in Michigan this time around, that way she and Obama each have their names on the ballot the same number of times.

Punditry aside, here's what happens to the math when FL and MI delegates are added back into the mix. Combined, the two states have 313 pledged delegates and 54 super delegates. Some of these superdelegates have already endorsed a candidate, otherwise I will assume that all new delegates are up for grabs. This makes 4,415 total delegates and the goal for party nomination increases to 2,208.

My current estimate has Obama with 1,624 delegates compared to Clinton's 1,509. To reach the new goal of 2,208 delegates, Obama needs 584 more while Clinton needs 699. Percentage wise, these numbers make Hillary's job much easier with Obama needing 46.5% of the 1,256 delegates remaining on the table. Meanwhile, Clinton needs to secure 55.6% of all remaining pledged and super delegates to secure the party nomination.

The upshot, if FL and MI are reinstated then Hillary has more votes to contest with her newfound 'momentum'. Her chances go from nearly impossible to somewhat possible. In all reality the two states will produce a draw, MI will go to Obama and FL will go to Clinton with any gains in delegates for either candidate virtually canceling each other.

Update: Florida re-vote won't happen so this post is meaningless. Michigan is looking 50/50ish.

Launch This Morning

2008-03-13T12:22:00.003-06:00

We flew the first Atlas V off the west coast this morning. It launched from Vandenberg AFB at 3am PDT.

Photo credit: Gene Blevins - LA Daily News

The Math

2008-03-12T15:16:00.007-06:00

It is increasingly difficult to get a clear and unbiased picture of what is going on in the Democratic Party Primary. Everyone's delegate totals are different and in most cases they don't even add up to the number of delegates already decided. To get a clear picture, I did a little research on my own and came up with some numbers that make sense. I compiled totals of pledged delegates for each state based on CNN, NY Times, AP and candidate estimates. I averaged superdelegate estimates from AP, DCW, and CNN.

My current estimate, including yesterday's Mississippi delegates, has Obama with 1,619 delegates compared to Clinton's 1,493. To reach the current goal of 2,025 delegates, Obama needs 406 more while Clinton needs 532. In terms of percentage, this is a significant difference with Obama needing 44.6% of the 911 delegates remaining on the table. Meanwhile, Clinton needs to secure 58.4% of all remaining pledged and super delegates to secure the party nomination. History is not on her side. Hillary currently has 46.6% of the pledged delegates allocated and has only exceeded 60% of pledged delegates in AR, OK, RI and American Samoa.

I believe that the superdelegates will not overrule the will of the people if one candidate leads by more than 100 pledged delegates going into the convention. To close within 100 pledged delegates of Obama, Clinton needs 314 of the remaining 566 pledged delegates or 55.5%.

Here are some more complete numbers:


	Pledged Delegates					Superdelegates
	Primary	Caucus	Current	DCW	CNN	AP	Average	Total	Needed	% Needed
Obama	1099	312	1411	207	206	211	208	1,619	406	44.58%
Clinton	1078	172	1250	245	238	247	243	1,493	532	58.38%
Edwards	12	14	26	0	0	0	0	26
Total	2189	498	2687	452	444	458	451	3,138

	Total	Allocated	Remaining
Pledged Delegates	3,253	2,687	566
Superdelegates	796	451	345
Total Delegates	4,049	3,138	911
Goal	2,025

Let me add that none of my numbers include any provision for delegates of FL and MI being reinstated. This would put 313 pledged and 46 super delegates back on the table. For an even more detailed look at my analysis including a state-by-state breakdown of delegates look here.

Avalanche on Mars

2008-03-04T12:51:00.006-06:00

The super high resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter happened to capture this image of an avalanche near the North pole of Mars. I just think it is so cool to see something dynamic in a place we think of as unchanged for millions of years.

Speaking of high-resolution images, there will be a new digital SLR waiting when I get home today! Mel and I decided on a Nikon D80 with the Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens.

Attn: Oregon Readers

2008-03-02T10:07:00.003-06:00

One of my favorite new bands, The Hackensaw Boys, is playing The Goodfoot Lounge in Portland on March 13th. If you appreciate good Americana, this will be your thing.

Update:

Another one of my favorite bands, The Wood Brothers, is playing two shows in Oregon. First they will be at the Doug Fir in Portland on 4/18 and in Eugene at the WOW on the 19th.

Louie's Bachelor Party

2008-02-25T21:45:00.005-06:00

Garrett, Josh and Graham in the skin track.

Last weekend was Lou's surprise bachelor party at Alta. It was awesome! Josh and I picked Lane up at DIA Thursday afternoon and started the drive to Utah. We had the little subi packed to the max with the three of us, our gear, and 10 gallons of quality Colorado 9% beer. All necessities for a fun weekend with a dozen dudes in a state with 3.2 beer and awesome skiing.

Garrett spooning my tracks

Friday, everyone that had made it surprised Lou and made lap after lap of leg burning turns until the lifts closed and we started partying. Every day I have ever spent at Alta ranks among the best ski days of my life and this day was no exception.

Me, can you see my smile?

On Saturday, Josh, Graham, Garrett and I headed into the amazing Wasatch backcountry for some exercise and giddy shriek inducing skiing. It was mostly sunny, stable and deep. We toured four bowls and found awesome untracked powder stashes on north facing slopes. 4000' of vert later we were back at the car and barely able to move, so we just sat around, drank beer and watched the sun go down. From there we moved to the bar and from the bar to the hottubs at the Peruvian lodge where we weren't staying. Somehow we managed to clear out all the paying guests and make some great snow angels in the process. It kept on like this until 4am, but I crashed out early with a migraine.

Most of the crew minus Louie, he is taking the picture. Someone in this picture needs to get married every year for the next 50 years so we can keep having awesome ski weekends.

Sunday it was a little rainy up at the mountain since a warm front had moved in so we went out to brunch and played cards until it was time for us all to head off to our respective states.

Keith Pearen Endorses Barack Obama for President

2008-01-30T16:25:00.001-06:00

I went to see Barack Obama at his rally in University of Denver this morning. The place was packed! The official estimate was 14,000 - 18,000 with almost half in overflow auditoriums. I managed to get great seats in the main auditorium right behind all of the media. It was by far the rowdiest political rally I have been to and I was quite impressed by seeing Obama in person. Obama was introduced by none other than Caroline Kennedy who invoked the memory of her father as a unifier for the America. Obama's speech stayed pretty much along the lines I have come to expect from seeing him debate and stump on TV.

Change and unification continued to be the primary themes. There were a couple of things about today's speech that stood out to me. First, Edwards withdrew from the race today and Obama had nothing but praise for his former rival. He devoted a significant amount of time saying that he will carry out the primary foundation of the Edwards platform, including education and health care for poor working class Americans as well and getting corporate lobbyists out of Washington. This was a blatant attempt to lure former Edwards supporters and it was great to hear some of my favorite aspects of Edwards' platform included in Obama's.

Second, Obama clearly made two cases for his cause over Hillary's without mentioning her by name. His argument that we need a candidate that will not unify the Republican party against us particularly appealed to me. The Bush/Cheney administration has unified a majority of the country firmly against them and the next Democratic administration can learn from this mistake.

"That's how Democrats will win in November and build a majority in Congress," he said. "Not by nominating a candidate who will unite the other party against us, but choosing one who can unite this country around a movement for change."

Obama also came back to the fact that he was against the second Iraq war back in 2002 and outlined a plan to end the war. he was clearly referring to Hillary when he said, "It is time for new leadership that understands that the way to win a debate with John McCain, or any Republican who is nominated, is not by nominating someone who agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq, who agreed with him in voting to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran,"

Obama finished by blasting the current administration for being, "Strong and Wrong" and pledged to be "Strong and Right." I am pretty excited that the Democratic National Convention will be held here this summer.

Next Sport

2008-01-15T00:23:00.000-06:00

I know what sport Melvin is going to buy gear for next.

More Pics

2008-01-14T20:48:00.000-06:00

Cota was acting a little cold so I threw him in my pack.

He really seemed to know that this arrangement was for the best.

Breakin' trail for the dog. I personally think this is a gear catalog worthy picture. Thanks to Ben Hayes for capturing all of these great images!

New Assignment

2008-01-14T14:54:00.000-06:00

I got assigned to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and LCROSS missions today. This image is taken from the NASA website. As you can see, we are going to crash a Centaur upper stage into the moon! How cool is that? The plume of polar moon material is expected to reach 30 miles in altitude. Check out more info here.

Weekend Fun

2008-01-14T10:37:00.001-06:00

Cota gets a little chilly when we go skiing, so I have developed a number of methods to keep the little guy warm. On Saturday he was fine as long as we were moving, but when we stopped he started shivering, so he wore my jacket while I froze. We also did the backpack trick for a while, except this time I dropped him in while wearing the DAS parka. I think he really liked that.

I just completed one of my wonderful three day weekends. Dane was in Summit County staying at his parents place in Frisco while on break from teaching NOLS courses. The Sherstads were kind enough to share their beautiful home with me for the weekend. I headed up Thursday evening straight from work. In order to accomplish this I took Cota to work with me for the day on Thursday. He was a big hit at work and quite well behaved.

On Friday, Dane and I skied at A-Basin for the grand opening of their new Zuma chair. At 11 o'clock there was a line about 100 wide and five deep waiting to drop into the new lift-serviced bowl. When the patrol cut the rope, the ensuing Chinese downhill was quite entertaining. Picture hundreds of skiers varying in ability level trying to get to the powder first. I did fairly well and my prize was waist deep freshies in the trees near the bottom of the run. Everything was completely tracked out in about ten minutes. A-basin is by far the best ski area I have visited in Colorado, it has a nice gritty feel to it, slow lifts, good skiers, and solid terrain. I bought a ticket Friday, but since it never got scanned I have another day there at any point before the season ends.

Saturday, Josh and Ashley joined us for some backcountry skiing on Mt. Baldy. It was a really mellow area with deep powder and no risk of avalanche. After a couple of laps, we decided to build a kicker over a cabin. Initially Josh and Dane favored a minimal construction effort jump, but I set in motion my plans for a slightly more elaborate kicker. Once they saw the light in my visionary plan, a few minutes of work created the best jump I have ever had the pleasure of hitting.

On Saturday, we built a real nice booter over this cabin. Here I am mid-back-flip. The landing was a little on the flat side, but it didn't really matter because the snow was so deep.

Sunday Josh, Dane and I returned to Lincoln Falls for more ice climbing. We did the two pitch central gully. I lead the first pitch, my first ice lead, at a moderate WI3 and Dane did a great job leading the vertical upper pitch. later in the day, I made the mistake of leaving my wallet on the roof of the car when we drove away. Some other ice climbers found it and of all the ways they could have contacted me, they latched onto Boulder Rock Club membership card to track down my number. I had some cash in my wallet to cover postage and it should arrive in the mail tomorrow. I am really happy that there are still nice people in the world.

Ski Pics

2008-01-08T22:14:00.000-06:00

For once I wasn't the one with the camera! Ben Hayes takes great photos and skied with the Dickman brotheres and myself on this pow day at Tumalo. Look how far apart those Oregon trees are!

2007 Wrap Up

2008-01-02T14:48:00.000-06:00

Last year finished nicely with two weeks of not working. My company is kind enough to close it's doors and send everyone home for the holidays. I like my job for sure, but I enjoy not working way more. To celebrate, Mel and I drove out to Oregon.

The drive out was smooth and we arrived in Corvallis a full six days before Christmas with a majority of our holiday shopping completed. We filled this time eating to train for Christmas day and working out so we could eat more. We also had an EPIC ski day at Meadows with 13" of new, sunny skies and minimal wind. I had a new pair of fatties that absolutely rip although I don't recall making too many tele turns. Josh and I made liberal use of the kleenex trick and kept befriending the folks 3-5 spots up in line to keep the waits short. We finished a great day with a couple of pints and about 20 friends at the Laurelwood brewery in Portland.

Christmas was wonderful! I got a pair of beautiful bookshelves crafted by my parents. They look gorgeous in our bedroom and I am totally jazzed to have somewhere to put my books. The next day, Mel had to return to Boulder for work, so I picked up Phil and we went skiing. Another EPIC day, only 10" of new this time around, but it snowed another 8" or so while we were there and the ample wind insured that we got fresh tracks every run. We found a couple of great lines in the trees and made laps until we could take no more.

On my return trip to Colorado I stopped through Bend and visited with Josh and Cate. Their new house is spectacular and it was great to catch up. The brothers Dickman were also in town and we had a BC ski day on Tumalo and some midnight sledding to keep us entertained. I then began the long drive back to Boulder. The roads were pretty bad everywhere except Idaho and I saw a lot of vehicles in the ditch. I had the immense pleasure of driving I-80 east of Laramie in full conditions.

Just for the record I want to include the daily snowfall history for Meadows during the period I was in Oregon. It simply does not snow like this in Colorado. Thats 12 feet of new in 13 days. Snowfall is represented in inches.

17-Dec 14
18-Dec 15
19-Dec 9
20-Dec 20
21-Dec 7
22-Dec 4
23-Dec 4
24-Dec 13
25-Dec 11
26-Dec 14
27-Dec 6
28-Dec 10
29-Dec 18

AV-015 Blowdown

2007-12-12T16:54:00.000-06:00

Monday night people from Florida to Canada got an interesting view as our Centaur upper stage completed it's first orbit after a launch two hours prior. After the Centaur separates from the payload, extra fuel is jettisoned at the end of the mission. We empty all of the hydrogen and oxygen so that the Centaur does not turn into a space bomb if it is struck by a meteor. The space explosion itself wouldn't be so bad, but it would make thousands of little pieces of space debris that could interfere with operational satellites.

Colonoscopy

2007-11-30T21:38:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures or a video to include with this post.

I had my colon examined today. The actual examination was slightly uncomfortable, but painless. The hard part for me was cleaning everything out the night before. It really reminded me of travelling. The preliminary diagnosis is irritable bowel syndrome likely caused by an infection I picked up who knows where. My stomach hasn't been quite right for a few years now and I have mostly just tolerated it. This has given me some really good shit stories, but I finally decided to have it checked out. Apparently, colonoscopies are all the rage these days. I also had some blood work done to see if I am allergic to gluten and I am not eating dairy for two weeks.

2007-11-30T21:27:00.000-06:00

This Hubble image is of two merging galaxies. The shapes of both galaxies have been distorted by their gravitational interaction with one another. Interacting galaxies often exhibit high rates of star formation. This particular merging galaxy is in the constellation Leo approximately 300 million light-years away from Earth. Click on the image to see a big view.

Image Credit: NASA

2007-11-24T09:20:00.000-06:00

Bryson, Mel's godbrother, wanted his picture on the internet.

Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-24T08:16:00.000-06:00

Patrick and Maranda join us a Barley's Taproom in Rutherfordton aka 'Roughton'

I am in North Carolina and man do I love the South. The only drawback, nobody can understand a single thing I am saying. I talk and folks just scrunch up their faces and say, 'Whut?' Mel and I drove out here in a single push. It took us over 25 hours. I know it seems crazy, but we actually had a really great time doing it. We listened to music, talked about fun stuff, saw some country we had never seen before and generally enjoyed ourselves. That said, we are flying next time.

Mel's mom, June, had no idea we were coming and it was pretty fun to surprise her. She was totally floored when we showed up Thursday morning. Since we neglected to tell her we were coming, we couldn't very well expect her to cook for us, so I made a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. Y'all would a been real proud o me. It is hard to cook a 5 course meal in someone else's kitchen with limited preparation. We had a turkey, stuffin, gravy, mashed taters, cranberry, grean beans, squash and a spinach salad. No mac-n-chz til Friday, when we ate another Thanksgiving at Mel's grandmothers.

Old Crow Medicine Show

2007-11-16T12:44:00.000-06:00

If you ever get a chance to see OCMS live, DO IT! Their albums are pretty darn good, but they absolutely rock at a live show. We had a full tilt hoedown at the Boulder Theatre last night. Whiskey, criminally awesome bluegrass, front-row dancing, disintegrating fiddle bows, lots of hollerin', and the beautiful people of Boulder were just a few of the things that made last night so special.

Delta IV Heavy

2007-11-09T17:35:00.000-06:00

We are launching a pretty cool rocket tomorrow night. The 230 ft tall Delta IV Heavy is basically three hydrogen boosters strapped together for a total thrust of nearly 2,000,000 lbs at liftoff. Despite the two million pounds of thrust, the thrust ratio is only 1.2:1 making this heavy pretty slow off the pad. That should give plenty of time to check out the three massive pillars of flame. This will be the most spectacular night launch since Saturn V launched Apollo 17 in 1972.

The massive rocket scheduled for liftoff from Cape Canaveral's Complex 37 at 8:39 p.m. EST. The evening's launch window will extend 122 minutes to 10:41 p.m. EST. You can view the launch here.

Tahoe

2007-11-08T12:08:00.000-06:00

Lou and Jaz invited us to join them in Tahoe when we last saw them at Graham and Greta's wedding and we readily accepted. Jasmine's family has a time-share in Tahoe and uses it as a good excuse to escape the beginnings of the cold Alaskan winter. Melanie is the Crocs account manager for California and was extended the offer to use one of here co-workers condos at Tahoe for the weekend. My reaction to this news was, "Cool, maybe we should make sure both condos are at least in the same town, Tahoe is a pretty big lake." To make a long story short, the two houses ended up being two blocks apart in Incline Village at the North end of the lake.

Thursday evening Mel, Alison, Sean and I flew to Reno where we rented a car, a first for me, and drove to Incline village to meet up with Louie and Jasmine. One thing led to another, and before we knew it, it was 4am and there were a lot of empty bottles of wine. Jasmine's parents own a winery in Alaska so we had an ample supply all weekend.

At this point I would usually say what we did each day, but all of our days in Tahoe were basically the same. We slept in until 8 because we stayed up way too late the night before. Ate a giant brunch. This was followed by an fairly successful attempt to be active. Post activity, we ate a giant and excellent dinner then stayed up way too late playing cards and talking. Highlights, I won $40 off the Ducks and lost it playing Blackjack. Mel and I climbed an excellent route at Lovers Leap with Mel and I swapping trad leads for the first time. Skinny-dipping in the lake was definitely a highlight with almost everyone joining in the fun.

New Car

2007-10-28T19:33:00.000-06:00

So, Mel and I decided to get a new car. After much debate, I wanted a Mini for my commute, we decided on a Subaru Impreza. We got a white '99 that is great shape and quite fun to drive. Well, after a week, I have already crashed it. Yep, I was in my first automobile accident ever, unless you count those times when Phil was driving, or that time I drove my dad's truck through the neighbor's fence and busted open that yellowjacket nest. Anyway, It was my first collision with another vehicle at highway speeds. I was on my way to work Thursday morning and using one of the rare passing lanes on 93 when this black Audi TT passed on the right going like 87.24 mph. Since the passing lane had already ended, the Audi merged in front of the Toyota truck I was following. The Toyota had to lock up his wheels to keep from colliding with the Audi and that sucked for me. I swerved into the empty oncoming passing lane to keep from rear-ending the Toyota, which was great except for the oncoming traffic and the fact that the Toyota chased me over there and hit me anyway. The Audi started to pull over, then flipped us off and sped away. Colorado plate 070-EBB. I am fine and the new Subi did surprisingly well. A new front quarterpanel and two new passenger side doors and it will be good as new. I wonder what would have happened in a Mini?

Great American Beer Fest

2007-10-23T20:42:00.000-06:00

This is from last weekend. It was my birthday and I wanted to go to the GABF. It was pretty darn cool. They had thousands of beers on tap and thousands of people there to enjoy them. The only drawback was the scarcity of brewers to talk to. Mostly the beer was just served by blokes that had no knowledge of the beer they were serving.

Awesome day

2007-09-21T17:17:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday I had the most fun I have had in a very long time. I woke up early and headed to the famous Gore canyon on the Colorado for some good class V boating. Gore is basically Colorado's only late season class V and attracts boaters from all over the state. Dana and some friends drove up from Durango for the fun. We had one raft of 6 and about a dozen kayakers along for the fun. The crux of the run is definitely the 3 mile flatwater paddle into the canyon, but once that was out of the way the fun began in earnest with half a dozen quality drops. One of the kayakers, Maria, proved herself to be quite hard when she broke her finger in one of the first class Vs. She didn't swim, just flipped and mashed her finger on a rock. Once she rolled up she realized that another boater (not with our group) was swimming and helped him to shore. Afer the rescue effort Maria gritted her teeth, buddy taped her finger, and paddled the other burl. I was impressed.

After some beers at the take-out, consumed from booties for some, I hit the road to meet up with Mel at Red Rocks. For those of you that are unfamiliar, Red Rocks is one of those super famous venues that artists love. This often means a great performance. Couple that with the fact that we were there to see The Flaming Lips and I knew we were in for an incredible evening. It turns out that I was right. It was everything I expected and way more. Definitely the coolest show ever. Very visually stimulating and they played a great set. For those of you unfamiliar with the music of The Flaming Lips, I have included a song.

Pikes Peak Marathon

2007-09-10T15:32:00.000-06:00

A while back Josh suggested an interesting adventure and I readily agreed, mostly because it sounded like a fair bit of suffering would be involved. Josh's proposal was to hike/run the Barr trail (7,000+ ft. of vertical in 13 miles - one way) to the summit of Pikes Peak. The trail was actually quite beautiful and made for a good day out.

My prediction of suffering was fairly accurate. I am accustomed to early starts of the three to four AM variety, but 1:30, that's pushing it. I developed a cool new technique for sleeping while hiking. I call it "sleepwalking." Once I woke up my body performed fairly well until the next day when it refused to move. Maybe I am getting old or maybe I am out of shape, but I can't remember the last time I was this sore. Josh is largely unaffected by the effort and seems to be quite amused by my robot-esque shuffling about the house.

The highlight for me definitely came on the descent when we decided to run the first six miles back to the car. We randomly picked the same day for our outing as the Pikes Peak Challenge, which only ascends the peak. Not only was running down the trail really fun, everyone coming up thought Josh and I were really hardcore for running back down.

Jeepers Creepers

2007-09-03T21:46:00.000-06:00

View from the summit of Little Bear. On the right is Blanca and the left is Ellingwood. We traversed all the ridges connecting the peaks and the shadow delineated ridge descending left from Ellingwood.

Three day weekends are great! This time all the roomies plus a random guy, that I think Josh works with, headed down to the Sangre de Cristo range for some backpacking and peak bagging. The backpacking was less than spectacular. The valley we hiked into was beautiful, but we hiked in along "the toughest 4WD road in Colorado." The jeepers really weren't very annoying, but their presence definitely detracted from the wilderness feel of the place. The road/trail into the valley was heinous to hike because of all the boulders strewn about and I kept finding myself thinking, "I can't believe that people drive up this." Not the greatest hiking thought. We did get free cookies though.

Ridge leading up to Blanca.

Climbing on Saturday made the weekend. Josh and I headed out early to climb three fourteeners in a day. A nice class IV route lead to the top of Little Bear. Then we followed a mile long knife edge ridge to the top of Blanca, where we met Ashley and Ryan (the random guy). Ryan joined us for Ellingwood and the descent down the equally precipitous SW ridge back to camp. Meanwhile Mel had a nice ride with some friendly jeepers and hung out with her dog. Back at camp we enjoyed the numerous bottles of wine and beers we had slogged up to camp.

Little Bear Peak with Crater Lake in the foreground.

Date Nite

2007-08-31T14:29:00.000-06:00

The Kitchen's wonderful mussels.

Mel and I have started going out to dinner every Thursday. Boulder has an amazing restaurant scene and being new to town we wanted a good excuse to check out some new places. We have been doing this for about a month now and last night we finally made it to The Kitchen. This place is amazing. Apparently Organic magazine voted it one of the 10 best restaurants in America. We were equally impressed. It was definitely one of the best meals I have had in my life. We started the evening with the mussels and a bottle of Côtes du Rhône Rosé. Mel enjoyed the grilled Hawaiian Ahi and I had some amazing scallops for dinner. We finished off with a chocolate torte that surpassed my mom's and Mel tried the 20 year tawny port. I was the driver and elected not to go for dessert wine, instead a nice espresso finished well with the amazing chocolate. I think y'all should come to Boulder so we can go do fun active stuff by day and eat scrumptious food in the evenings.

The Coon

2007-08-14T09:23:00.000-06:00

I woke up at 4am this morning, which is not entirely unusual. Today Mel woke me up with an alarmed sounding "KEITH!!!" I immediately assumed the naked kung-fu position on the bed prepared for all-out burglar self-defense. Meanwhile, it sounds as if Cota has the burglar by the jugular in the living room. There is definitely a fight going on out there. Mel is out of the bedroom and I follow behind turning out all the lights she just turned on. I come into the dining room to find Cota in a standoff with a big ol' raccoon next to his food bowl. Food is spread everywhere and it is obvious that Cota and the coon had just been going at it pretty seriously. I wish I had seen and taken video of Cota attacking the raccoon to try and protect his food. Next, Mel grabbed the dog and I watched dumbly as the devious animal retreated out the hole in the screen door. I'm really happy it was a raccoon and not a skunk. That would have sucked.

First Launch

2007-08-04T10:53:00.000-06:00

Delta II rocket lifts off carrying Phoenix Mars explorer

This morning ULA launched their first rocket since I started there on Monday. The Delta II rocket left Cape Canaveral carrying the Phoenix Mars Explorer. The mission is to land near the North Pole of Mars and look for water ice below the soil. The Phoenix is scheduled to land on Mars in May of next year. It will survive there for the Martian summer before it freezes in a solid shell of carbon-dioxide ice during the brutal winter.

The first week of work was pretty slow, but now I am moved in and have stuff set up. The highlight was taking a two day class on the Atlas V rocket. I learned lots of neat stuff like; the Atlas V 551 generates the power of 13 Hoover dams for the 4 minutes following takeoff. Unfortunately, I can't share most of the cool stuff I learn at work, because my blog is public and some N. Korean rocket scientist could be reading.

First Day!

2007-07-31T05:35:00.000-06:00

I had my first day of work yesterday. It was pretty uneventful. I spent all morning in a new-hire orientation and the afternoon was filled with meeting co-workers and trying to log on to my computer. They left a hyphen out of my password. The rest of the week I will be taking the "Atlas Rocket Familiarization Course." Just like being a student, except I get paid. Cool.

In other news, the tumultuous tour has concluded and I have chosen my favorite crash. Casar (the guy in white) went on to get the stage win from this break away of four. Check it out:

Old Friends

2007-07-20T15:05:00.000-06:00

For the past week my old friends Kelly and Jason have been visiting from Seattle. This was the first significant chance we have had to spend time together since before Korea. We picked up right where we left off and had a great time. We went rafting, hiking, biking, tubing, climbing and rounded out the indoor time with watching the tour, eating, playing cards and joking around. Pretty fun stuff. I picked up a bit of a stomach bug last Saturday along with some heat exhaustion, but seem to be doing better now.

One more week until I start work. I am super excited.

backpackin'

2007-07-09T15:59:00.000-06:00

Colorado has beautiful places too.

Mel and I went backpacking this past weekend. Mel was pretty much shocked when I asked her if she wanted to go. Usually I suggest a boating trip or some climbing, but this weekend it sounded like fun to get out and see if there are mines in the wilderness areas too. I am pleased to report that we did not see a single mine in the Holy Cross wilderness. We did see tons of beautiful alpine lakes, granite peaks, and big fat marmots. Cota was especially fond of the big fat marmots. We passed the time drinking Oregon Pinot, eating stinky cheese and swimming in the lakes, it was totally relaxing.

On the return trip I came to the conclusion that resort towns are a lot like casinos. They have all the glitz and glam and each town has it's own theme just like the casinos. Replace the tables with some chairlifts, horseback-riding and whitewater rafting and you are almost there. The only discernable difference I can make out is while Vegas gives away free lodging to encourage people to come, resort towns sell realestate for absurd prices so people feel obligated to come and spend money more often.

Month Off

2007-07-02T16:12:00.000-06:00

I got a job offer from United Launch Alliance. ULA is a newly-formed joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing that is in the business of launching rockets. I will be a Dynamics and Controls Engineer on the Atlas V project. My official job title is super awesome, "Mechanical Engineer II" I am so excited about this and can't wait for my start date on July 30th. In the mean time, I plan to fully enjoy my unemployment for one last month. The generous signing bonus supplied by ULA should make that all the easier. The term, "It's not rocket science" no longer applies.

Upper Animas

2007-07-02T15:16:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, Mel and I had the chance to run one of the top whitewater rivers in the world with friend Dana Kopf and many others. We had a big trip with three rafts and 8 kayaks. I unfortunately managed to forget the camera, so there are no photos, but suffice it to say we had a wonderful time with beautiful weather and classic boating. The gorge is granite, unspoiled except by a narrow gauge railroad, and surrounded by 4,000m peaks. We even extended the trip by running the Rockwood Box, a seldom rafted class V gorge that may be the most spectacular portion of the trip. Rockwood was the only place our group experienced any carnage with one kayaker taking a swim in Mandatory Thrashing. The trip concludes with a mile-long uphill hike, especially fun with rafts.

Arkansas

2007-06-13T16:25:00.000-06:00

Flat water in Brown's Canyon.

Big Horn Sheep.

Melanie's Aunt and Uncle are in town for a few days, so we went rafting on the Arkansas. The river has a reputation for being the busiest and most commercialized in the world, but we were pleasantly surprised to find Brown's Canyon relatively unoccupied on a June Sunday. Despite the sparse humanoid population, we still managed to have a user conflict. A ghetto-fabulous raft pulled into our lunch beach and asked if they could share. I was about to point out the vacant beach just downstream when Karen (Mel's aunt) busted out the Southern hospitality and told them it would be no problem at all. This didn't bother me in the slightest until the rest of their party landed on our beach. They had four rafts and numerous kayaks, about 30 people including some yelling children. I took a cue from my mom, and told the leader that we were misinformed as to the size of their party and no longer wished to share our lunch beach. After some smart remarks, rude comments, and lots of stink eye they moved on downstream. Even so, I was totally impressed by the Ark's great scenery and top-notch rapids. Monday, we moved a bit further upstream and made a couple of laps on the Numbers section. Again, I was pleased by some great read-and-run class IV.

The highlight of the trip for me was seeing 12 yr. old Dane Jackson and 13 yr. old Jason Craig tear it up in the Salida play park. These kids are some of the best playboaters I have ever seen. They were throwing down loops three at a time and doing some crazy stuff I had never seen before. What a good life, sponsored kayaker at age 12.

Recent Events

2007-05-31T11:19:00.000-06:00

I realize that I have not been doing a particularly good job of updating my blog lately. I have neither been too busy, nor lacked in exciting adventures. I have two roommates that blog and hang out with me. Three posts about climbing a mountain in a dress is a little excessive in my book.

Anyway, life is good. I take Cota on a kick-ass hike every day and ride my bike a lot. Baking cookies has slowed down since the students have left town and I have redoubled my efforts to find a good engineering job. I have quite a few great prospects right now so hopefully something will pan out.

On Monday the whole city came out for the Bolder Boulder. This is the biggest 10k race in the world with over 50,000 runners. I thought it was a really impressive event. There are bands playing all along the course and I rode my bike around to see Mel at various points along the course. My favorite stop was next to a band of middle school boys. It was an interesting study in what happens if you give a 14 year old boy an electric guitar and thousands of screaming fans. The middle schoolers had great taste in music, covering Metallica, AC/DC, Def Leppard, Kiss, GnR, and Ozzy Osbourne.
The middle schoolers play some GnR.

Jake was in town for a day last week on his way to New York. It was great to see him and we did some awesome backcountry skiing in Rocky Mountain NP. I have been continuing my exploration of Colorado's rivers and creeks.
Jake and Mel ready to make some turns.