Weekend in Jackson

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

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!

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

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

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

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

Dane took all three of these!

Tuesday Trivia #3

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

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!

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

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

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

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.

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!

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