Jeffrey J. Hebert

Adventure - Red Rocks Reprise

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 22:01:43 GMT

March 9-17, 2012

After an awesome trip in January and a bunch of long weeks at work, a trip back to sunny Las Vegas was in order. Jake, Jen, Joe, and I headed down and had a blast.

We climbed sport for 4 days until our pads and tendons were smoked, then Jake and I pressed on to climb 2 days of trad and one more day of sport. After a full week of going vertical, we were seriously ready to spend some quality horizontal time.

Highlights for me were onsighting some 5.11 climbs I'd never done in the Black Corridor and on the Sweet Pain Wall, getting on my first 5.13 outside and working out all of the moves, redpointing a 5.12b, working on a bunch of new 5.12 climbs, and getting some more trad experience in on Birdland and Lotta Balls. I didn't send the 5.13, but was getting close by the end.

It was a great trip, complete with copious campfires and marshmallow roasting. It was a sign that we're getting old when we opted to cash in Starwood points for some hotel nights at the end to 'clean up' and get a good night's sleep. I guess we'll just have to accept it.

Adventure - Red Rocks

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:46:37 GMT

January 12-15, 2012

This year's Red Rocks trip during the post-CES weekend was a no-brainer. Warm temperatures, a big crew, and glorious sandstone awaited us in fabulous Las Vegas.

A larger Synapse crew combined with college friends and folks from previous trips made for a group big enough to rent a house for. We grabbed a VRBO about 20 minutes from the canyon and spent 4 days cranking in the sun, stuffing ourselves with food, and generally having a great time.

Day 1 involved an insanely early start from Seattle, but rewarded us with a pretty full day of climbing at the Second Pullout. After some warmups on the Magic Bus, we headed over to the Tsunami Wall for a bit of the business. I got up Abandon Ship (12a) and Aftershock (12b) with some work and had a blast.

Day 2 started at the First Pullout where a group hit the Panty Wall and myself and others headed over to the Dog Wall for slightly harder stuff. After warming up on the 10a and 10b, I hit K-9 (12b) and then a fun 11b. From there, we busted up to the Second Pullout and a group of us hit the Sweet Pain Wall. It was unfortunately in the shade, but we got on a classic 11a and 11b there to finish off the day. Despite pretty pumped forearms, I was able to manage an onsight of the 11b to finish the day.

Day 3 brought the whole crew to The Gallery, where we warmed up on the array from 5.9 trough 5.10c and then I moved on to A Day in the Life (11c) and then Minstrel in the Gallery (12b). They were both awesome, overhanging crimp-fests. Way too much fun. After that, a few of us headed up to the Stratocaster wall where we finished the day in the low sun on an 11a and 11b. I finished the day with the 11b onsight again and was pretty stoked. We capped off the day with a bit of a pool party and a rousing game of Round-Rossi (passing jug wine and seeing who can finish it). Solid.

Everyone was pretty spent on Day 4 and we were all flying out in the evening, so we hit the easy-access Calico Basin. I started the day with a little 5.4 trad lead to put up a rope on a 5.8+ for the rest of the crew. From there, it was on to one of my favorites--Caustic (11b). I've climbed this aesthetic arete every one of the last few years and had a nice time redpointing it. It took some time to motivate, but I finally headed over to the spicy stuff and got on New Wave Hookers (12c) and then Wonderstuff (12d). Both went quite well--I was able to get a couple of bolts at a time on my first tries and was super-happy with how strong I felt on hard twelves. We moved back into the sun in the Moderate Mecca to finish the day and I put up a rope on Side Effects (10d), a great free-standing pillar climb, then headed up the hill and led Valentines Day (5.8+), an awesome trad dihedral line.

After 4 days of hard climbing, we were all completely beat and ready for a massive Fatburger meal and a flight home.

Adventure - Hyalite Canyon

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 23:02:40 GMT

December 31 - January 2, 2011

A little deliberation with Dale before the Christmas break about what to do over New Years resulted in an easy decision--Hyalite Canyon. He'd never been and I spent New Years last year there with great, cold conditions.

I picked him up from Seatac on Friday evening and we started the drive. Unfortunately, snow on Snoqualmie Pass resulted in chain patrol and a 45-minute wait on the lower slopes. We were a little bummed, but hunkered down for a long drive after making it over the pass. We had the option of a few hours in a motel on Friday night and half day of climbing Saturday or driving straight through the night and a full day Saturday. The choice was clear. I got some coffee and went for it.

We decided to hit the Mummy Cooler area on our first day in the canyon. With Mummy II and The Scepter, we knew some awesome ice was in store. We hiked up to Mummy II and had a blast running laps on the nearly 60m of near-vertical ice. Another group came up to the crag and got on The Scepter, so we stayed put for much of the afternoon. On our way down, I fired up my first lead on Fat Chance, a WI3 route back towards the parking lot. It went quite smoothly.

We hoped to make it out to Twin Falls and Cleopatra's Needle on Day 2. Unfortunately, recent snow and no good beaten path would have resulted in hours of post-holing. We bailed and headed back to the Mummy Cooler to hit climbs we'd drooled over the day before. We started with Thin Chance, then hiked back up and did The Scepter. It didn't disappoint. We each did a couple of laps before calling it good.

For our last day, we decided the Unnamed Wall would be a great way to get a bunch of climbing in quickly. We hiked straight to The Elevator Shaft and each put a lead in on the WI3+ column. It was awesome. We then headed straight for The Fat One and were treated to WI3 climbing in the sun and above-freezing temps. Sunglasses were on and it was glorious. We each put a lead in there.

We hoped to try out The Thrill is Gone, but super-thin conditions and warm temperatures made the route pretty dangerous and hard to protect. We had lunch in the sun and then hiked across to do Genesis I and II. We picked a steep line on Genesis I that felt like WI4+ or 5- and had a blast. Genesis II was much easier, but a solid 35m of fun climbing. By the time we rapped off the route and hiked down, it was getting dark and time for a big meal.

A 14oz ribeye at the Montana Ale Works and oatmeal stout on nitro was just the ticket to cap off a great weekend of ice climbing with Dale.

Adventure - Chair Peak

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 21:10:36 GMT

December 17, 2011

With Dale in town for a conference, the natural thing to do over the weekend was hit the mountains. We got an alpine start from Capitol Hill on Saturday morning, headed up to Alpental, and started the approach for Chair Peak in the dark.

Things went pretty well despite neither of us ever having been there before and we were quickly above Source Lake, on our way to the start of Chair's North Face. Conditions weren't ideal throughout the approach--wet slides were present in a bunch of places and we worked our way up some gullies which we were only comfortable on in the early morning.

The route consists of a technical ice/mixed pitch, then a steep snow pitch, then another snow/ice pitch. For us, the first pitch was desperately thin and with the prospect of only pounding in pins and placing infrequent small rock pro to protect the first pitch, we decided to bail.

A small conciliation prize was an ice flow we encountered on the way down. It had some fun, albeit brief, WI3 moves up to a tree anchor. We ran some laps and then headed out to chill out, drink some beers, and celebrate a friends 30th birthday. Sometimes it's good to live and climb another day.

Adventure - Hong Kong

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:58:19 GMT

December 3-10, 2011

During another business trip to China, a couple Synapsters and I decided to check out a new climbing area in Hong Kong on an island called Tung Lung Chow. A quick ferry ride from Kowloon brought us to the uninhabited island where we explored and climbed at a few different crags.

The scenery was gorgeous, with huge waves crashing on the Eastern shore of the island and cliffs rising just above the surf. We hit up the most popular crag first and enjoyed everything from French grade 5+ through 7a sport climbs set to the soundtrack of crashing waves. The salt air was palpable and our hands had a film of salt covering them by the end of the day.

We ran into some locals and chatted them up about climbing in the area and beta at the crag. They were super-nice and seemed interested in chatting us up.

After exhausting ourselves at the main crag, we hiked up the ridge-line to a high-point with a large boulder on it. The boulder had a few bolted routes and we climbed an arete with fabulous views of Hong Kong before hiking back down and catching the ferry.

The next weekend, we decided the climbing was too good to pass up again, so we returned to Tung Lung. The weather was slightly colder, but we stayed in the sun for the most part and enjoyed a handful of great climbs at two different crags. Our last climb was about 25 meters of 5.10a right above the crashing waves. It was awesome.

Adventure - Rock Mountain

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:46:42 GMT

November 19, 2011

I was worried that this shoulder season would result in a few weekends without much to do. Thankfully, Cam did a little research and found that there was a bunch of new snow up near Stevens Pass. We headed out early on Saturday morning and were skinning up the trail to Rock Mountain at about 3,000 feet by about 9am.

The lower section of the trail was pretty steep and not fully covered with snow, but we soon got higher up on the ridge and found plenty of snow cover. We continued following the ridge until we got to an open area with some phenomenal snow and easy slopes...and nearly no visibility. At about 6,400 feet, we decided the summit about 400 feet above us wasn't going to be terribly interesting, so we turned around and enjoyed some awesome powder skiing.

I've never been a big alpine skier, so there were plenty of times on the descent where I was way over my head. Copious face-planting ensued.

The mildly harrowing descent eventually brought us back to the highway around dusk and we quickly switched into street clothes and booked it to Gold Bar for some well-deserved burgers.

Cam's writeup is here: http://cameroncharles.blogspot.com/2011/11/rock-mountain.html

Adventure - Hong Kong

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 03:44:18 GMT

October 15, 2011

While over in China for another business trip, Joe, Kate, and I decided to hit up another local crag in Hong Kong. We took a cab from our hotel on Kowloon out to the closest cross street to the Beacon Hill crag and then hiked the 20 minutes or so up to the crag.

We were all alone the last time we went climbing in Hong Kong. This time was quite different--we met some other foreigners as well as a few groups of locals. One group in particular had two guys and a girl who were getting on some of the harder lines at the crag (7a and 7b routes). We shared ropes and a little beta and had a great time.

There were some fun dihedral routes and a few more overhanging face climbs at the crag. The tops of the routes all had pretty awesome views out on Hong Kong. It was a great day.

Adventure - Vantage

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:03:32 GMT

October 8, 2011

It wasn't hard to talk Jake and Bret into a day trip to Vantage this weekend. Weather on the East side was looking delightful--sunny in the upper 60s, so we hit the road early after fueling up on coffee at Stumptown. The uneventful drive brought us to the parking lot at Vantage before 10am and we quickly suited up for a day of Basalt climbing in the sun.

The Sunshine Wall was packed by the time we hiked in, so after one climb surrounded by newbie stress, we busted out of there and hiked down to The Powerhouse. I'd been reading the book the night before and was interested in checking out the overhanging wall with harder routes on it. As we finished the approach, we were greeted by a vacant wall and one, almost humorously quiet older couple around the corner. It was perfect.

I fired up a 10d in the middle of the wall which was awesome, then did the 11a to the left, which was even better. Jake and Bret seemed to be having fun despite me throwing them into the deep end. The next climb smoked me. King of the Ruins is a 12a that fires straight through the dark roof of the wall. It had some tough moves and harder clips, but I made it up eventually.

From there, we toned it down and did a 9, 10a, 9, and 10d. On the last climb of the day, my forearms were going into complete failure. It was awesome. With shirts still off and a bit of sun on our skin, we hiked out victoriously. Dinner and beers at the Issaquah brew pub were stellar.

Adventure - Castle Rock and The Enchantments

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 02:27:43 GMT

September 23-25, 2011

For months after Joe's friend Miah won a permit, a group of us had been planning a backpacking trip through The Enchantments. The weekend finally arrived and we decided to take all of Friday off to maximize our time on the East Side. Kate, Bret, Jake, and I headed to Leavenworth on Thursday night with climbing gear in-tow. After a nice night in Tumwater Canyon, we headed for Rattlesnake Rock.

I've been to Leavenworth a few times now and it's almost always been the same...try to figure out where to park, what trail to take, and inevitably do some bushwhacking. Success rate is about 50% in finding what you're looking for. Friday was no different. We walked along the road where the trail was supposed to be for a while and finally decided that the trail must have been a slightly trampled embankment...after immediately losing the trail and making our way through some brush, we decided to bail on Rattlesnake and head over to the much easier to find Castle Rock.

We thankfully still had a bunch of time before needing to hike, so we did a classic multi-pitch 5.8 called Canary and then I jumped on the only sport climb at the crag--Das Muzak. Canary was a fun combination of technical stemming and exposed face climbing. The protection was great. Das Muzak didn't mess around--my forearms immediately flash-pumped on the overhanging, technical climb. Just about the time we rapped off, it was time to meet the rest of the crew.

We shuttled a car and got started hiking around 4pm, which was actually a perfect time to go. The temperature had dropped off quite a bit, but we still had plenty of daylight left and made it to Colchuck Lake well before dark. Our dinner by the lake with a view of Asgard Pass and Dragontail Peak was nothing short of awesome. Big thanks to Joe for orchestrating some delicious meals.

A leisurely start the following morning had us on Asgard pass before the sun was peeking over the top. Bret and I got into a rhythm and made it up the entire pass in just over an hour. The trail is reasonably steep, but was a fun experience to go up, with constant views back down toward the lake and over at the neighboring mountains. I was glad we went up and not down the pass, though...a guy hiking the other way brushed by my with scrapes and blood all over his face. Oops!

We had lunch and a quick bouldering session on the pass before hiking down into The Enchantments. I was blown away by the landscape--it's absolutely gorgeous there. We saw a few goat families, lots of perfectly blue lakes, hiked over some snow, saw larches turning yellow, and made it to our lake of choice in the late afternoon. We ended up just hanging out there and lounging in the sun, which was incredible. It was even warm enough to warrant a couple of highly refreshing 'swims' in the lake.

Dinner with a view of Prussik Peak, right on the lake was also awesome. We finished up both our planned meal and our mac and cheese back-up, then sat around drinking whiskey as the clouds and wind rolled in. Our beautiful day quickly turned a bit nasty. That night wasn't restful for any of us--the wind was so strong and incessant that we were all covered by a thin film of dust and never fell asleep for long.

Thankfully it didn't rain on us and we were able to break camp and get on the trail quickly, The hike out was quite a ways since our Saturday was relatively short, but the temperature was good for hiking and we made good progress, passing some more lakes and the famed Snow Creek Wall with classic climbs on it. After making it back to the trailhead and eating most of the rest of the food, we headed into Leavenworth for a celebratory fake-bavarian meal, complete with tasty brews. Solid.

Adventure - Index

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 22:22:45 GMT

September 16-17, 2011

After a perfect Sunday at Index last week, I couldn't resist the temptation to return and was successful in recruiting Jake to join me. Our hope was to leave work a little early on Friday and get a climb or two in before dark. Turns out the traffic towards Index is much worse than the traffic towards Exit 32...oh well. We arrived late, rushed up to the Great Northern Slab area, and immediately jumped on Aries since we knew we could bail at any time.

The first 5.8 crack pitch was surprisingly hard, but protected beautifully with a #3. From there, I continued up through the 5.8 finger crack dihedral which felt much easier and was lots of fun. I stopped at the bottom of the chimney pitch and brought Jake up. It was already getting pretty dark and was well after 7pm. I decided to give the chimney a quick try and it didn't take very long at all to see why people call it infamous. Wow. I was totally baffled. We decided to call it there and go have a burger and some beers before camping along the river. The Prospector's Steak and Ale in Gold Bar was surprisingly awesome, with cowboy karaoke in full swing as we downed frosty brews. Pretty OK.

Upon entering the camping parking lot, we ran into an amazing redneck blaring sweet tunes out of his pickup, stumbling around with a glow-in-the-dark cup filled with 100-proof vodka. We chatted him up briefly before heading down next to the river which drowned out even noise of passing trains.

The weather forecast was touch-and-go and we planned to head down the road to Leavenworth if things got nasty, but were greeted by pretty nice fall weather. After a quick stop in Gold Bar for breakfast and espresso, we hit up the climbing.

After our tough intro the night before, I decided to start with a known entity--The Great Northern Slab. It didn't disappoint and brought us within a short walk from some climbs above, so we decided to hit them up just as the rain started to fall gently. Thankfully things stayed dry enough to climb and we fired Gorilla My Dreams 5.10a and Timberjack 5.8+. They were both layback-style and we ate them up.

After rapping down and scarfing some lunch, we hiked around to find something else to get on. Godzilla was on the top of my list, but had some folks top-roping it, so we hiked back and decided to do Roger's Corner 5.9. It didn't disappoint! We did it in two pitches, the first with some fun 5.8 dihedral blocky moves and the second with some trickier dihedral and layback moves. It was fully raining at that point, but the climb stayed dry as it was protected by the roof above. Huge win.

We hit milkshakes on the way home. Great success.

Adventure - Seattle Local Trifecta

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 21:41:20 GMT

September 9-11, 2011

With Allie coming to town and perfect Northwest summer weather forecast, the decision was made to bust out to Exit 32 after work on Friday, hit up Exit 38 on Saturday, and then try out Index for the first time on Sunday. We exacted the plan and it was glorious.

Friday evening didn't hold much time before dark, but we were able to do a classic 5.9 warm-up, classic 5.10d, and classic 5.12a before things were completely pitch black. It was a trifecta in and of itself, followed by dinner at Quinn's. Boom.

Saturday morning was a little lazier than planned, but we still made it to Amazonia before lunchtime and proceeded to crush the wall. We did two 5.10b climbs in the center, a 5.10c and 5.9 on the right, and the 5.11a and 5.10a on the left. They were all pretty good, though the 11a was especially fun, with a great roof pull. From there, we hiked up to the top of Bob's area and tried out a 5.10c at the Lost Resort, then hiked down to the Actual Cave where I got on Mr. Big - a 5.12a extension on Giant. It was sweet.

While Saturday was jam-packed with sweet sport climbing, Sunday was the weekend winner. Allie and I headed to Index for some multi-pitch trad, not knowing exactly what to expect. I'd read about Valley-esque sandbagged grades and slabby granite. Our first route was The Great Northern Slab - a 5.7+ with two real pitches of climbing after a 5.0 scramble. It was surprisingly fun with great protection. After some exploring above the cliff and a shared double-rope rap with another party, we looked around for another route to do. I'd read about Princely Ambitions before and decided to fire it up. Wow. The first pitch is over 30 meters of awesome flake, face, traverse, and dihedral. I felt really confident on lead and enjoyed it thoroughly, then took some sweet photos of Allie coming up after me. The second pitch at 5.8 was graded easier, but felt harder to me since it had some hand jamming sections...still not my forte.

By the time we rapped off the route, things were starting to get dark and we decided to head back to Seattle to have a quick driving tour for Allie since she'd never been there before. We headed through Westlake on our way to Ballard, where we caught the sunset at Golden Gardens before heading back to the hill. Solid.

Adventure - Smith Rock

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 04:47:53 GMT

August 29-30, 2011

Following our adventures on Mount Hood, Kate and I busted down to meet Eric and Becca at Smith Rock for a couple days of PTO on technical face climbing. Some massive forest fires were raging on the East side of the Cascades and the entire plain was thick with smoke.

We rolled into Smith on Sunday afternoon, exhausted from climbing most of Hood in the morning, so we crashed hard in the tent in perfect time for a rain storm to hit. After naps, dinner, beers, and more sleep, Monday morning rolled around to a far from alpine start. I was totally fine with it.

Objective of the day was the Monkey Face, so we all hiked over Asterisk Pass and the girls set up shop at Mesa Verde while Eric and I headed farther up the trail to the Monkey. Two pitches of 5.7 trad brought us to the classic Bonn Street ledge where we briefly discussed who would lead the money exposed pitch. Eric offered it up and I didn't think twice. I geared up and started the traverse. It's quite airy up there and the 5.11a crux felt more like hard 11 climbing with some flash-pump involved. I worked my way through it, made it to the cave at the back of the neck, and belayed Eric up. There were some pretty tenuous moves at one point in the crux and I remember doing a quick glance down at one point to really take in the exposure. Whew!

From the back of the cave, Eric fired up the 5.11b overhanging crux. It was pretty spicy, with potential for a fall on the ledge if he blew the second clip. After the crux, it was smooth sailing to the summit, where we took a quick picture and then set up the raps to get back down. A quick 40 foot rap brought us to the nose where a full 50+ meter free-hanging rap then brought us back to the ground. It was awesome!

We met up with the rest of the crew and headed over the pass back into the shade for some climbing in the Dihedrals. Eric and I did Heinous Cling, the most classic 5.12a in the park, and were totally spent. Thankfully, we recharged with grilled cheese, tomato soup, and more beers. Glorious.

Our last day started at Morning Glory with some bucket climbing, followed by the classic 5.11a called Light on the Path. From there, we went back to the Dihedrals and climbed Latin Lover, then Latest Rage; two classic 5.12 climbs which were somewhat shaded from the intense August sun.

My pads were completely toast at that point and Kate and I needed to make it back to Seattle that night, so we said our goodbyes and piled into the car for the 7-hour marathon drive. Good times!

Adventure - Synapse Mountain Madness

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 04:00:42 GMT

August 26-28, 2011

Mountain Madness on Mount Hood is a yearly affirmation that Synapse is a very special place to work. We had 70 Synapsters and family members join the festivities this year, including copious porch-sitting, sunset viewing, hiking, crevasse ice climbing, kite boarding, rock climbing, and more. It was awesome.

After Saturday up on the Elliott Glacier, Kate and I woke early on Sunday to make an attempt on the Sunshine Route. Very late-season conditions were found on the glacier and snow dome. We found especially sketchy loose rock above the snow dome and some massive crevasses with hollow-sounding snow bridges above Anderson Rock. It was an easy decision to turn around and glissade down and tons of fun and great practice regardless.

Adventure - SW Face on Liberty Bell

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 04:45:58 GMT

August 14, 2011

After pumping ourselves silly at Mazama Saturday, Jake and I decided to hit up some easy alpine trad at Washington Pass. The route of choice was the SW Face of Liberty Bell a.k.a. "The Beckey Route". The drive up from the East was pretty quick and we were on the trail by 8am. It was cold in the parking lot and pretty quiet, so we thought we might be alone up there. That sounds comical in retrospect.

The hike was quite easy until the climber's trail peeled off and headed straight up the scree-filled gully. As we got closer to the base of the route, it was clear we weren't alone--there was a party high on the route, another just starting, and two more waiting at the base. It was dark and pretty chilly in the gully--I had brought my puffy jacket, but was wearing shorts and Jake didn't even have that much. We hunkered down and waited for things to clear out.

The first pitch barely required roping up, so the other parties flew right up and gave us a chance to head up to the large, sunny belay ledge. We took the opportunity and had fun pulling through a tunnel and onto easier terrain. I think I placed 2 or 3 pieces in the pitch.

Things were much slower at the belay ledge. The second pitch was the 'crux' and 3 parties were ahead of us. We hung out in the sun and nearly drowsed off for a bit while waiting for the pitch to clear out. A couple of fun moves down low led to a wide chimney up top with good gear throughout, including a bomber nut at the top. Once we pulled over the lip, there was an easy slab up to the anchor on another sunny ledge.

After some more waiting and chatting with the other parties, we got to do the third pitch, which had some fun layback moves around a big dome. Gear was easy again--this was truly a great beginner route. We finished up that pitch and soloed the rest of the way to the summit, past one 5.7 slab move with little exposure.

The summit was worth all of the waiting. Wow. I think I said that more than a few times out loud. We had the place to ourselves and had a regular photo shoot before scrambling back down, rapping with another group and retrieving our gear. It was a great day with fun, easy climbing and some phenomenal views. We'll be back for some of the tougher stuff (and thinner crowds) next time.

Adventure - Mazama

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 04:27:56 GMT

August 13, 2011

With a free weekend due to poor planning on my part, I talked Jake (easily) into a short road trip to Mazama and Washington Pass. Our early Saturday departure and now-standard Stumptown Coffee brought us to Mazama shortly after noon. We immediately hit the general store and feasted on egg salad sandwiches while basking in the sun--a far cry from the cloudy morning we'd left in Seattle.

We hit up the Rhino Zone after lunch and packed in a classic 10a and 10b before hitting a one-move-wonder 11b. From there, we headed over to the main Fun Rock area and I jumped on the classic 12a "An Arapilesian Dog." I read the 11d bottom section right and got into a near no-hands rest in the middle. After de-pumping for a few minutes, I shifted my weight slightly and a foot popped off a buttered-up hold. Stinker! After getting back on in the same spot, I pulled through the upper crux with no problems and clipped the chains. Doesn't count as an onsight, but that's about as close as you can get. Ugh.

Things were pretty damn hot in the sun, so we packed up shop, got ice cream at the general store, and chilled out for an hour or so. After the rest, we went back and hit the K-9 crag where we did a 10d, 5.8, 5.12a, and 5.10c. That made it eight climbs on the day for me and a low sun on the horizon. We packed up shop, washed off in the creek, and headed down to Winthrop for some brew pub food, then dirt-bagged it at the climbing trailhead. Solid day.

Adventure - Hong Kong

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 06:29:37 GMT

July 24, 2011

While in China for work, Kate, Joe, and I decided to take a weekend day and get out climbing on the fabled granit cliffs of Hong Kong. We took a cab to the trailhead of Lion Rock and made the 40-minute approach, snaking our way through the jungle and up to a ridge line where we could see the cliff near the top.

As we walked along the base of the cliff past overgrown vines and trees, we came upon an arete that made me immediately stop and say that we had to climb it. With an apparent 6a French grade, it was well within our range and was supposed to be a great warm-up. I headed up with all the draws we had brought and the sharp end of a 60m rope.

Things got spicy quickly and I soon realized that I was on a different bolt line than I thought. I made some desperate moves to clip the 3rd bolt, weaved past massive stinging insects at the 4th and 5th, and then continued up on exposed arete climbing to a thrilling stem finish at just over 30 meters with 1 more quickdraw on my harness. It was a great climb and much more in the 6b to 6c range...a great adventure!

Adventure - Sunshine Route on Mount Hood

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 04:43:20 GMT

July 9-10, 2011

Ever since my first visit to Mount Hood last summer, I've been thinking about heading up the North face of the mountain via the Sunshine Route. With a free weekend and awesome weather in the forecast, Jake, Bret, Kate, and I drove out of Seattle on Saturday morning, headed for glacier travel, steep snow climbing, and corn skiing.

We made the more scenic drove down via Ellensburg, Yakima, and Hood River. It was a perfect day and we started to get pretty excited when Hood came into view. We stopped in Hood River and asked around about road conditions. The report was that the road to Cloud Cap was in early April shape and that we would have to hike a ways in. Upon reaching the access road, we realized that the gate to the road was down, so we had to start at the Tilly Jane trailhead at about 3,800 ft. An older guy was just getting back from a car-to-car up Cooper Spur and told us that it was quite a slog to get to snow.

Regardless, we geared up for the hike in and donned ~70lb packs with our camping, climbing, and skiing gear. It was a solid 3+ miles and 2,000 ft up to Cloud Cap where we set up camp on the porch and enjoyed an amazing sunset. Bed time at 10pm only gave us about 5 hours of restless sleep before we woke up early for the ascent.

Thankfully, we left our camping gear at Cloud Cap, but we were still lugging a ton of gear up the mountain. It took about 2 more miles until we reached the glacier and donned our skis. Unfortunately, the early-morning spring conditions were quite icy and we quickly realized that skinning wasn't going to be the most efficient way to go. We strapped the skis back on and started back up with crampons.

It was slow-going with lots of weight and a pretty steep aspect across the glacier and up the snow dome. We reached the top of the dome at about 9,600 ft and took a breather. At this point, the Sunshine Route headed up a steep section above some crevasses, so we roped up and then continued up the face. We switch-backed up and then made a somewhat sketchy crevasse-crossing before traversing over to the ridge line. There were two options at that point for pressing on--a 60+ degree icy slope on the ridge or a thin snow-bridge spanning a crevasse and reaching the top of a large cornice. Neither one sat well with the rest of the crew, so we decided that would be our top elevation (10,300 ft).

The descent was incredibly fast and tons of fun. Things had softened up significantly and we thoroughly enjoyed our turns down the snow dome, across the glacier, and back to our gear stash. The rest of the hike out was pretty monotonous, but we cruised along at a good pace before staggering to the cars and stuffing our faces with day-old pizza and gatorade. It was a pretty big day, with 14 miles of distance and 6,900 feet of elevation change. Whew.

Adventure - Squamish

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 05:25:10 GMT

July 2-4, 2011

While off in China, I tried to push for a little climbing trip over the long weekend of July 4th. After getting back and feeling the effects of jet lag and a nasty cold, I was a little slow getting things together, but was successful in convincing Jake to join me on a trip to Squamish. We finally dragged ourselves out of bed and left Seattle around 8:45am. With about 4 hours driving and an hour at the border, we were finally up in Canada's outdoor capital after lunch.

We hit the supermarket and stopped in at the local climbing shop to ask for advice on where to go and pick up a guidebook. The suggestion didn't disappoint--we hit up Smoke Bluffs and did some great single-pitch trad climbing for the entire afternoon, finishing up around 8pm and heading straight to the brew pub for dinner.

It rained that night. It really rained. I was totally zonked out on Nyquil and finally emerged at 11:30am when the sun was just starting to show up. Thankfully, we found a sweet sport climbing area just North of town called Chek and had an awesome day, ticking off 6 sport routes. I had a ton of fun on The Circus wall, doing a fun 12a and 11c there. The highlight of the day for me was a hard-fought onsight of The Mutuation (5.11c) on the Toxic Lichen wall. It had some tenuous balance moves and small crimpers down low, then a juggy overhanging section in the middle, and then some heartbreaking crimp moves again up top. The final throw to a jug was right on the edge for me, especially with the cold. I was psyched.

We got some awesome views of The Chief during our drive back and then celebrated with more delicious brewpub food and beers before passing out again in our tent which had dried out.

We got an early start Monday morning and headed straight up from camp to The Bulletheads where I led a two-pitch 5.8 with some diagonally traversing cracks and a bit of a roof pull. We finished off the day with a two-pitch 5.10c slab route called Xenolith Dance. It was mildly scary, given the possible cheese-grater falls, but was actually surprisingly fun.

We busted back to Seattle victorious and had plenty of time to enjoy the evening in town before heading out to a houseboat on Lake Union to watch the fireworks with some of Jake's friends. Solid.

Adventure - Leavenworth

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 05:10:27 GMT

June 19, 2011

Bret and I decided to head over to the East Side for some sunshine and granite cragging at Leavenworth after a rainy Saturday in Seattle. The rain shadow didn't disappoint, with brilliant, sunburn-inducing skies and an utter lack of moisture.

We climbed for the day in Tumwater Canyon at Clem's Holler, The Nuthouse, and Puzzle Palace, ticking off some great climbs, including Gun Rack (5.9), Poultry in Motion (5.10c), Perils of Pauline (5.11c), and the highlight for me, Halcyon Daze (5.11d). The last climb in that list was an aesthetic line through multiple roof pulls and including a significant runout at the top on easy 5.9 climbing. It was an endurance-fest and I was pretty happy to one-hang it after breaking a small crimper at the crux (not the right hold to be using at all).

Adventure - Smith Rock Spring 2011

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 04:14:43 GMT

May 27-30, 2011

Following a business trip to Bend, OR, a group from work met up at Smith Rock for a long weekend of climbing. Weather reports were iffy and crowds were likely, but we decided to fire it up regardless.

Over our three-and-a-half days of climbing, we hit up a bunch of routes and areas we hadn't yet explored, ticking off just under 20 routes, all told. My favorites were Crack Babies 5.12b, Sole Survivor 5.11b, Ride The Lightning 5.11b, and Woman In The Meadow 5.11a. Sole Survivor had some committing, unprotected moves between the first couple bolts which seem to deter most people, but the movement above and position all alone in the center of the Red Wall was pretty awesome. Ride the Lightning, just around the corner from Sole Survivor, had some incredibly thin, balance-intensive moves which were tricky, but a lot of fun.

We had an awesome time off the rock camping at Skull Hollow, passing around the jug of Carlo, hitting brew pubs in Bend, and frequenting the Terrebonne Depot. Food and beer have a way of tasting incredible after a few nights in a tent.

I'm psyched to make it back to Smith on a less-crowded weekend to hit some of the classic 12s which I haven't done yet.

Adventure - Tieton River

Sun, 15 May 2011 02:33:23 GMT

May 7-8, 2011

With the prospect of another rainy weekend in Seattle, we decided to head over to the East side and give Tieton River a try. Kate, Bret, Jake, and I had never been there before, so we were psyched to check out the basalt climbing there. With weather forecasts calling for upwards of 40% chance of rain, we waited until Saturday morning and then headed out of town.

Things cleared up as we got closer to Ellensburg, but clouded over as we got through Yakima and then it started sprinkling as we drove up the forest road toward Lava Point. Having driven 3 hours, we weren't about to bail, so we geared up and hiked in. Thankfully, the cliff had a small overhang on top which kept much of the routes dry. We started out on some easier terrain and made do with a few wet holds here and there.

It wasn't long before the rain stopped and we even saw some sunshine--the routes dried up nicely. It turned out to be a full day for me, with 6 climbs and 4 of which in the 5.11 range. The rock quality was great and the climbing quite fun. We were smoked by the end of the day and decided to drive to Yakima for dinner where we were greeted with tasty burgers and brews. From there, we made a stop in Naches at a bar with country karaoke. Some grizzled locals really crushed it on the open mic. After a couple of pitchers of porter, we were all ready for some rest and hit up a camping area by a lake on highway 12.

Our second day was much cloudier and colder, but we made do by climbing at The Oasis on some fun climbs there, as protected from the wind as we could be. Onsighting a really fun 5.11a out of a cave was the highlight for me. I don't think I'd go back to the Oasis, but Lava Point was certainly worth returning for.

Adventure - Mount Shuksan

Sun, 15 May 2011 01:38:06 GMT

May 12-13, 2011

With the promise of good weather and sufficient snow-cover, Redwood, Cameron, and I extricated ourselves from the office around 4pm on Thursday and made our way towards Shuksan in Redwood's orange VW Bus. We made a requisite stop at the Co-Op in Mt. Vernon for some snacks and, with our late start, we finished driving as far as we could up the access road around 7pm. We geared up with skis, ice axes, harnesses, crampons, helmets, crevasse and camping gear and started off on the trail.

We had parked about a half-mile from the turn-off from road 1152 to the 014 branch at 2,200', so we skinned and hiked bare spots about 2 miles to the trailhead at 2,500'. From there, a few stream crossings and more bare spots brought us to consistent snow around 3,000'. We kept chugging along, with much of the trail lit by the half-full moon. The trail brought us to a clearing at about 3,500'. The trail kicked steeply up at this point and we switch-backed our way up, slipping often on the steep, frozen slope with heavy packs not helping matters.

The slope eased somewhat as we moved from the clearing to a wooded area and we continued to make good progress. It was nearing 11pm at this point and we decided that the next good flat spot would be our home for the night. The dense woods eventually yielded to an open ridge with sparse trees and an amazing view of Mount Baker, lit by the moon. We all had huge grins on despite being quite tired.

The ridge continued along for a little ways and we decided to set up camp just below a steep headwall that we would take in the morning to gain a pass. We worked pretty efficiently to set up the tent and cook dinner, but by the time we had each eaten two rounds of pesto pasta, it was after 2am. The three of us packed into the tent and agreed on a 4:15am alarm...it was hard to get much sleep knowing that we would wake up so early, but I quickly passed out in my new 0-degree down bag.

The alarm sounded and each of us lay silent for a few moments, not wanting to exit the glorious comfort of our sleeping bags. Cam sat up and that was enough motivation for Redwood and I to follow suit, put our boots on, and pack up. Having eaten dinner only a couple of hours before, none of us were very hungry, so we made a very quick exit from camp and started up the headwall.

Cam stopped to put on his ski-crampons, which I soon learned were an amazing idea. The slope was completely frozen, with just a little bit of powder on top of it. I kept switch-backing up the face, getting more and more comfortable with switching directions (I'd never done that before while skinning) and we eventually got up near the top of a gully. There were a bunch of snow chunks in the way to make things difficult and the angle was steep enough that we boot-packed the last bit.

Just over the ridge, we ran into a large group of tents from a guided snowshoe trip. A few of them were awake and greeted us, joking and asking if we had brought them coffee. Just past their camp at about 5400', we stopped to take a few pictures as the sun was just coming up and also figure out where our route went. Looking at the GPS and reading the route description, we agreed that we needed to traverse a pretty steep, frozen slope under some rocky cliffs. We took the skis off, strapped them to our packs, took out the ice axes, and boot-packed across the traverse. It wasn't all that steep, but the frozen crust made things a bit tricky.

Once we were past the traverse, we skinned though a large field of avalanche debris in the form of huge snow chunks, and then began going straight up the Sulphide Glacier. The angle to straight up was about all our skins could take, but Cam set a very efficient course. It was at this point that we could see the summit pyramid. From that angle, it looked incredibly steep and technical. We all muttered that it looked a bit sketchy and kept moving.

By the time we were on the glacier section, the sun was rising up higher and illuminated the whole open face. The route took us over some small ribs and then left us on a massive expanse of snow that led all the way to the summit pyramid. We got into a rhythm and kept pushing one ski in front of the other. Mount Baker was visible on our left for much of this section and we passed a secondary peak. The last pitch toward the summit was pretty steep again and we were all feeling the altitude. Cam and I topped out a little shy of the summit ridge at about 8,800'.

The wind was howling and we were wearing every layer we had at that point, so we quickly took the skins off and began our descent. I hadn't spent much time on skis at all recently, so it took me a few turns to get it back, but I was soon really enjoying the skiing. Recent snowfall and warming temperatures (it was about 10am when we began descending) made for some awesome ski conditions. We kept moving down the open expanse of snow-covered glacier and couldn't stop talking about how great it was.

The avalanche debris section was a bit tricky, but coming back across the ridge was a breeze now that the snow had softened. Even the very steep section down from the pass was not terribly difficult. Once back at camp, we immediately took our boots off and basked in the sun. It was a perfect day, with an amazing view of Baker and no need to move any faster on the descent, so we ate lunch and took naps. The climbing and skiing had thrashed my legs, so I was glad to take a little time to recover.

In our early-morning daze and quick start, we had neglected to anchor our tent and, despite it's protected location under a tree and dug into the snow, the wind must have picked up and pushed it a ways down the hillside while we were climbing. After lunch and naps, we rigged up a pull-rope and post-holed down to the tent to get our gear back. Redwood was able to pull everything up with our rope and Cam and I slowly made our way back up in the deep, now quite soft snow.

The rest of the descent was fast and without incident, though I did find the super-steep tree section a little above my head, so I boot-packed about 100' of it. The lower elevations were much warmer and we had to take the skis off constantly to cross bare spots on the trail. The last few miles were pretty brutal with wet feet and tired legs, but we made it back to the bus and celebrated with a PBR, followed by dinner at a brew-pub in Mount Vernon. Such an awesome adventure. We had covered close to 30 kilometers and about 6,600 feet of elevation.

Adventure - Vantage

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 04:31:54 GMT

April 16-17, 2011

In dire need of escape from Seattle and some sunshine, Jake and I left the city on Saturday morning, Eastward bound. Neither of us had ever climbed at Vantage (aka Frenchman Coulee) and knew only what we'd read in the guidebook.

The sun was shining as we drove in and we decided to climb the first climb we set our eyes on. It was an easy 5.8 up a freestanding pillar of rock. Nothing special, but we were able to do it with our shirts off and bask in the glory and vitamin D.

From there, we hiked over the mesa and down a cool slot canyon to the aptly named Sunshine Area. We hit some moderate sport climbs there while chatting up some college kids from Walla Walla and then hiked around to a very easy trad climb to get the gear-placing legs back. It was a great route to critique placements and use no-hands stances to place gear.

We finished the day on a 15-bolt 10a called Sunshine Buttress. It was a blast and great cap to an awesome day back in the saddle. We celebrated over beers in George and passed out early, then slept late through the Vantage gusts in our tent.

Day 2 saw us hike around looking for something open--it was incredibly crowded due to the phenomenal weather. We eventually settled on waiting for a dual-crack, dual-dihedral trad climb called "Party in Your Pants". I found the name to be highly accurate and thoroughly enjoyed sinking a #12 nut in at one point. 10 placements and 30 meters later, I was all done and had some tired calves from stemming so much. Jake seconded. High fives were had.

We finished the short day with a multi-pitch climb up a Basalt column (go figure--everything in Vantage looks identical). It had great position and exposure as well as an amble belay ledge. What more could you want?

Adventure - Thailand

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 01:55:17 GMT

February 12-26, 2011

This trip was over a year in the making and was my first international climbing trip in what will hopefully become a long list.

Seven of us good friends met in Bangkok on Sunday night with tickets to fly down to Krabi in the morning. Joe, Jake, and I got in early enough on Sunday to spend a little time in Bangkok. Between the crazy cab rides, bustling markets, and tourists everywhere, we were all glad to be leaving in the morning. Nevertheless, it was exciting to be somewhere new and be without a cell phone or laptop for the first time in a while.

Getting to Tonsai Beach was easier than expected--the flight to Krabi was easy and we quickly boarded a bus for Ao Nang. Long boats were waiting there and took us directly to Tonsai. We made it in early enough to check in to our bungalows, stow our gear, and head out for a few hours on the rock. We climbed until sunset on the Fire wall and got on the classic Groove Tube route there. The view of Tonsai and Railay were absurd and we constantly flashed giddy smiles to each other. None of us could believe that we were finally there and would have the next two weeks to play in this paradise.

We met some Americans from Oregon that first day and had dinner with them to learn everything we could about our new home. They had already been there for a month and had lots to say. We ate amazing Thai food, drank Singha, and then crawled into our bungalows.

Eric, Owen, Joe, and I got an early start on our second day to get on Humanalty--a mega-classic multi-pitch climb right off Tonsai Beach. We climbed in two groups, each with one rope so we could rappel together. The rock was incredible and the third pitch had an incredible move involving a transfer to and from a stalactite about 200 feet off the ground. I was psyched to lead all of the pitches. We finished up, had lunch, and then went over to the Cobra wall for the afternoon where we got on a couple of awesome 5.11 routes.

Fired up from our previous day's multi-pitch adventure, Eric and I decided to do Heart of Darkness the next day. We warmed up on the ladder routes on Tonsai early in the morning and then had lunch while we waited for our route to get in the shade. The first pitch was 5.11d and looked pretty intimidating. Eric fired it up on lead and was able to get a bat hang rest on the super-steep portion. I followed and met him at the belay, covered in sweat but with a huge smile. We swung leads and I headed up pitch two at 5.11b/c. There were tons of tufas and an awesome roof pull to gain the anchor. I belayed Eric up and took some pictures of him near the massive stalactites that hung in space behind us. After two more pitches, we were together at the top of pitch 4, having just climbed through a tunnel in the rock. Daylight was rapidly evaporating, so we decided to begin the descent, which was overhanging enough that it required back-clipping. After three rappels, including a 50-meter free-hanging rap to the ground, we were incredibly psyched.

Our next day included some awesome deep-water soloing on Koh Po Da. We had a boat, kayak, and entire wall to ourselves and played around for the entire morning and early afternoon. I climbed a massive stalactite to a traverse to a transfer onto another stalactite before deciding to jump at around 45 feet off the ground. Even doing a pencil dive was a bit painful. After a late lunch, a group of us hit up Tonsai at sunset and did the awesome route Babes in Thailand. I was one move from on-sighting.

We spent the next couple days on Koh Phi Phi Don where we had made reservations before coming out to Thailand. While the climbing was good, the island was much more built-up and overrun by tourists than Tonsai. We quickly decided to cut our reservation short so we could head back. Nevertheless, our days on Tonsai Tower and the Drinking Wall were great. Highlights for me were Gladiator (5.11a), The Severed Garden (5.12b), Spanish Caravan (5.11d), Ozaphft (5.11a), and Luis Trinker (5.11c). We stayed in nice bungalows at PP Casita and found a quiet spot on the beach for dinner and beers both nights. Our trip back on a long tail boat to save time was mildly harrowing, but quite fun in the end.

After six days of climbing in a row and some gastrointestinal issues the night before, I decided to take the next day easy and only did The Smoking Room on the Melting Wall. It was an amazing 5.11b up a number of stalactites on the far right end of the wall.

Still not feeling 100%, I headed out with the rest of the crew to Dum's Kitchen the next morning where we warmed up on Rod Yaak (5.10c) and then did Jumping for Jugs (5.11b). Both were great. We then made the trek across to Railay and further on to the Thaiwand wall where Eric and I worked on Out of the Sticks (5.12a), which was quite stiff and had a couple of cruxes on very steep ground. I took an amazing nap, did the classic first pitch of Lord of the Thais, and then called it a day as some rain came in.

I was finally feeling better the next morning and, after a fun warm up at Tonsai called On the Terrace (5.10d), we headed over to do Wake and Bake at Dum's Kitchen. It's a perfect overhanging dihedral climb with a crux crack section in the middle. I hung the draws and two or three hung the route, having a lot of fun in the process. Half of the group took off after lunch to head up to Cha Am for kitesurfing. Jake, Eric, Owen and I were all that was left. We headed to the Fire Wall in the afternoon to get on Burnt Offerings (5.12a), an incredible cave route with a tough pull out of the cave and onto the face above. I felt great on the lower section, but tweaked my shoulder on the crux move when my feet popped off. I (somewhat unwisely) finished the climb and the rest of the group spent a while playing on it. Jake cleaned the first half and had a blast. It was hard to take a bad picture. We finished the day on Tonsai wall where I nearly onsighted Stalagasaurus (5.11d), but my shoulder gave out.

I took a full rest day to see if my shoulder would tighten back up. It was the first day on the trip after 9 days in a row that I hadn't done at least one climb and I was happy to rest up on the beach with a bunch of tropical shakes.

My shoulder still wasn't feeling great, but I really wanted to climb on my last full day, so we headed over to Dum's kitchen where I got on The Sit Spins (5.10d) and The Lion King (5.11c). Both were incredibly fun routes, but my shoulder held me back. After leading the first 3/4 of Tonsai Playboy (5.12a), my shoulder hurt too much to do just about anything and I called it quits.

After one more half-day on the beach, I took a long tail to Ao Nang, taxi to the Krabi airport, and flight to Bangkok, where I met back up with the kite surfing crew, spent the night, and flew out with Joe in the morning.

Adventure - Red Rocks 2011

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 19:52:10 GMT

January 8-11, 2011

A bunch of us from Synapse decided to make a quick trip to Red Rocks following the CES show in Vegas. Despite colder temperatures and a smaller group than normal, we had a great time in the canyon for four days.

We hit climbs all over the place, including the Black Corridor, Magic Bus, Gallery, Wall of Confusion, James Brown, Holiday, Panty, and Dog areas. Jake and I also had a little trip to the Juniper Canyon where we played around with Unimpeachable Groping on the Ginger Buttress. Good times all around.

Highlights for me were a couple of 5.12 climbs on the Wall of Confusion and the multi-pitch climb with Jake, but everything was categorically awesome.

This was our most plush trip to Red Rocks so far and included a little spa time at the Red Rock Casino, which was glorious and well worth the extra chunk of change. Even though our rooms were classing it up a bit more than usual, we still made the mandatory In-n-Out, Fatburger, and mexican food runs. It was a great trip.

Adventure - Hyalite Canyon Ice

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 22:38:44 GMT

December 30 - January 2, 2010

Ryan, Kate, Bret, and I piled into the car on Wednesday night and began our drive for Bozeman, MT. Things were off to a characteristically epic start as we drove into a massive snowstorm on Snoqualmie Pass. The storm continued for most of our way to Bozeman and made for some pretty slow sections going over Fourth of July Pass and Lookout Pass as well. We finally rolled into town around 2pm on Thursday (we had spent the night in Spokane).

The local climbing shop suggested we check out either the Genesis area or a couple of climbs called Fat Chance and Thin Chance, given the fast-approaching dusk. We booked it the 45 minutes into the canyon and quickly hiked the 15 minutes up to the Genesis area. While it was incredibly cold and getting dark, we were all psyched to finally be in the presence of ice. Not just any ice, either. This was 20-25 meters of dead-vertical glory. We climbed well past dark and hiked out with headlamps and wide grins.

Friday was amazing. After fueling up on waffles at the hotel, we made it into the canyon by 8:30am. It was -9 degrees Fahrenheit. We had gotten enough of a taste of the Genesis area that we decided to return and top-rope pretty much every line in the place. We did 5 or 6 climbs in between waving our arms around like crazy to warm up our hands. Late in the afternoon, an older climber mentioned to me that he worked for Black Diamond and offered a test-drive of his carbon fiber tools. Ryan recognized and bluntly asked him his name, to which he replied "Conrad." It was pretty cool to meet such an influential American mountaineer who was also such a nice guy. The tools were pretty sweet too.

With even larger grins, we left the canyon before dark and feasted on amazing pizza on Main Street before making the short trek to Big Sky to meet up with good friends from college for New Years Eve.

Saturday was our last day in the canyon and we decided to hit up Fat Chance and Thin Chance. They each had a couple of different lines that could be top-roped, with one really fun mixed line up an overhanging section of Thin Chance. The relatively tame Fat Chance was a perfect mock-lead for me and Ryan to get our bearings a bit better on the sharp end. I definitely learned some things and a bit of what not to do, though the experience went quite smoothly.

While we were all tired by the end of the day on Saturday, we were all sad to be leaving for home in the morning. If the drive had been any shorter, we would have stayed and climbed Sunday as well. Unfortunately our trip totaled at over 1,200 miles in the Subaru. We'll fly next time...

Adventure - Blewett Pass Backcountry

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 07:57:15 GMT

December 19, 2010

After our skunked weekend at Whistler, the crew decided to head out past Snoqualmie for some skinning and skiing up near Blewett Pass. We geared up and got a pretty early start with a decent drive ahead of us.

Once there, we quickly decided to skin up Diamond Head, which was a solid handful of miles up and away from the saddle of the pass. Our trek took us through some beautiful sections of backcountry and eventually to the "summit" where we took a victory photo and then looked for a relatively safe descent.

While we did get some powder turns in, we quickly discovered that the only real way down was back the way we had come. The skin track and trail were quite thin and we did our best to control our descent. Thankfully nothing was too steep. It took quite a long time to make it out and back, so we actually finished the ski down in the dark with headlamps on. Good times and quite epic.

The following burgers and beers at The Brick in Roslyn were glorious, as was the sleep.

Adventure - Alpental Ice

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:26:42 GMT

December 26, 2010

With recent temperatures across the Northwest well above freezing, we decided that a longer road trip with the potential for getting skunked again didn't sound like a lot of fun. It was decided that the most likely location for close-proximity ice was near the Alpental ski area on Snoqualmie Pass.

Kate, Bret, and I got an early start and made it to Alpental by 9:00am to begin our search for elusive WA ice. There was evidence of something in the "Practice Gully" but everything was covered in quite a bit of snow. We continued to hike along to the North and eventually made it to the series of Alpental Falls. Alpental I was pretty thin and would have required top-roping. I made a half-hearted attempt to get to the top for setting up an anchor, but quickly realized that it wasn't worth trudging my way up a sketchy ridge.

We continued North and made it to Alpental IV, which was questionable, but possible to climb. We set up the belay and I traversed my way into the start. After placing three screws and continuing up the gully, I quickly discovered that the ice thinned out and all I could do was run it out up a steep snow section to a small tree. Our belay was right at the base of the falls, so Kate and Bret couldn't hear me when I hollered "off-belay". It took a little while to pull the rope and set up a top-rope anchor, but I was eventually successful.

Kate made her way up the short ice section and then discovered that she had to top it out since I could only take slack in and couldn't lower her off due to some frozen rope issues. We decided it wasn't worth sending Bret up.

The two of them headed over to Central to ski for the rest of the afternoon. I hung out by the fire with a coffee and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Despite a ton of post-holing and not much climbing, it was still a good time and a beautiful setting.

Adventure - Whistler Ice

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 06:55:39 GMT

December 10-12, 2010

After much deliberation and discussion, a group of us decided to make the shorter trek from Seattle up to Whistler instead of heading all the way to Bozeman for some ice climbing. A trip report we had read suggested that there was ice in BC. On our Friday evening drive up, the temperatures hung in the high 30s even as we approached Whistler Village.

Saturday morning investigation at Cal Cheek confirmed our suspicion--the ice was nowhere to be found. We did some searching in hopes that we were looking at the wrong crag, but soon realized that nothing at our current elevation was frozen. After contemplating our options back at the condo, we decided to head up 99 a little farther North and see if anything was in at Suicide Bluffs.

We found the place to park, geared up, and began the approach. We soon discovered that the stream crossing was a full-on tyrolean traverse on a fixed cable. It was a ton of fun and, ironically, was the closest to climbing we got during the trip. After ferrying ourselves and our gear across, we hiked along the river a ways and found the most promising crag yet. Unfortunately, most of the ice was in a pile on the ground and the little bit that remained was quite wet and sketchy.

We messed around for a while more, trying to find something to climb, but eventually gave up and drowned our sorrows with beers, steak, and some hot tub time. Not the end of the world.

Adventure - Rumney

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 04:06:50 GMT

November 7, 2009

Late fall climbing at Rumney is hit or miss, but we got a big hit in early November with this weekend. Temperatures were chilly and long-johns were plentiful, but the climbing was awesome and so was the low-angle lighting.

Eric, Owen, Hannah and I hit Main Cliff, Bonsai, Apocalypse, and New Wave in the span of two days. Solid, to say the least.

Adventure - Rumney

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 03:52:31 GMT

August 1, 2009

Eric and I headed up to Rumney with Keith for a solid weekend and had the benefit of staying with Kelsey while we were up North. I didn't know Keith well and was pretty blown away when he got on the Predator. The least I could do was photograph the awesomeness.

Sunday was unfortunately rainy and buggy. After a soggy day at The Hinterlands, I had so many bug bites on my feet that my toes swelled up like sausages for the next few days. Fun.

Adventure - Rumney

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 03:34:56 GMT

September 19, 2009

There are few things finer than hitting Rumney with friends on a beautiful fall weekend. J-5, Joe, Kelsey, Eric, and I all made it up for a glorious day. This was my first time getting on Giant Man and it resulted in some of the best photos I've taken or had taken of me while climbing.

Adventure - SPAC Ice

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 01:10:35 GMT

January 31, 2010

With a solid two days of ice climbing under my belt, Owen easily talked me into heading up near Hanover, NH with him to climb at SPAC. It was especially cold--I remember changing from my jeans into winter pants at the car was a 'brisk' experience.

Eric and Allie met up with us before hiking in and we all set up a couple of top-rope lines that looked fun. There was an incredible chandelier route on the far right of the wall that wasn't that hard, but had very delicate features and looked incredible. There was also a tougher route up a free-hanging icicle that required some fancy leash-less tooling.

After a bunch of ice climbing, we set up a couple of lines on a mixed portion of the wall. My first mixed climb was spicy to say the least, but I sent the thing and was incredibly psyched. Lots of delicate footwork with crampons, thin ice tool placement, and luck were involved. It was a long day out in the cold, but we all had a blast.

Adventure - Farley

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:59:44 GMT

May 13, 2010

Allie and I played hooky on a Thursday to check out the climbing area in central Mass that everyone seemed to be talking about. With no guidebook, we missed the turn, but eventually found the parking lot and were able to ask a local for beta on some of the routes.

The area was very reminiscent of Rumney and had a high concentration of fun sport routes. We did some moderates to warm up and then I thrashed myself on a 12a roof route that had a really hard move to pull the roof. I must have fallen 5 times out into space until I finally manned up and got it. We finished the day with an awesome 11. Not a bad day to escape the office!

Adventure - Rumney Rock and Ice

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:45:18 GMT

February 20, 2010

By an amazing stroke of luck, we experienced rock and ice climbing at Rumney during the same day...with our shirts off. The temperature was well into the fifties, and after a winter of much colder ice climbing, this felt downright strange, but awesome.

Eric, Owen, and I climbed at the Apocalypse area on ice as well as at Main Cliff on rock. The combination elicited unabashed joy from all of us as well as a lot of high-fives.

Adventure - Exit 32 and 38

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 04:23:08 GMT

October 16-17, 2010

After some rainy weekends, we weren't about to pass up the opportunity to get outside and climb on this one.

Ryan and I (along with his new dog) hit exit 32 on Saturday and got on some climbs neither of us had done yet. The temperature was a bit chilly, but not too painful on the hands. We made our way up a warm-up and then did Slaborigine, some of the Aborigine extension, and a fun 5.11a on the far right of the World Wall. Good times.

Bret, Kate, Ryan, and I all made it out to exit 38 on Sunday. We decided to climb at the Far Side and did some fun climbing in the sun. We hit the Neverland area and did climbs on both the Hook and Lost Boys walls. There are great moderates there. The best part for me was doing a 5.11c called I Can Fly, which is an extension to a fun 5.10c. The route was slightly overhung and technical, with lots of fun footwork and body position, finishing with a wild layback at the top to clip the anchors.

Adventure - Little Si

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 04:14:21 GMT

September 18, 2010

On another rainy Saturday, I headed out to Exit 32 on I-90 for some climbing at Little Si's World Wall I. Once again, the climbing didn't disappoint and we capped it all off with some really fun climbing on Aborigine and some of the extension on the top of that awesome 11b. Combine some great climbing with Ro Ro barbeque back in Seattle and you've got one solid rainy Saturday.

Adventure - Smith Rock 2010

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:25:19 GMT

September 26-27, 2010

Since we were already at Mount Hood on Saturday, it made perfect sense to escape some bad weather on the mountain and head out to the desert for a couple of days at Smith. The weather was perfect and we thrashed our fingertips over two days on the volcanic tuff.

The highlight for me was linking two climbs on the 4th Horseman for a solid 35-meter pitch of 5.10d climbing. The exposure was glorious and the arete climbing was top-notch. A close second for the highlight was the chocolate milk and fried chicken breast in Terrebonne, immediately following our last climbs on Monday.

Hopefully the weather will keep holding up this fall, since I didn't have a chance to get on the Monkey Face and still have some unfinished business all over the bark.

Adventure - Mount Hood

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:17:21 GMT

September 25, 2010

It's easy to say you work at the right company when the weekend retreat involves staying in a hundred year-old cabin on Mount Hood and ice climbing on Elliott Glacier with 15 of your co-workers and their families.

We had absolutely perfect weather and an awesome time top-roping crevasse ice climbs high up on the glacier. Fueled by bacon and beer, everyone did well and even avoided some scary rock fall during our glacier travel.

Adventure - Little Si

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 03:43:39 GMT

August 28, 2010

After an amazing omelet and coffee at Kling's we headed out to Exit 32 / Little Si for a sport climbing day trip. We wisely chose to make the full hike up the World Wall 1, where we found a very high concentration of classics.

After warming up on a great, juggy 5.9 (Reptiles and Amphetamines), we did a great dihedral 5.10b, then an even better dihedral 5.10c, then an ok 5.9, and then the crown jewel, Aborigine - 5.11b. I was psyched to onsight all the climbs that day, but was especially happy about the Aborigine send. It was a great climb, with lots of reaches and high-steps. It even had an amazing 2-finger lock that I used to clip and shake off for a while. Way too much fun.

As if the climbing wasn't enough, we hit the XXX Root Beer Drive In off I-90 on the way home and had the largest shakes of our lives.

Adventure - Leavenworth

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:44:09 GMT

August 21-22, 2010

My first real weekend adventure from Seattle was to the faux-Bavarian town of Leavenworth. Luckily, we camped up Icicle Creek and only spent a little time in this crazy little town with its funny murals of children in lederhosen and men drinking beers.

After some solid dirtbag camping due to every campsite being full, we hiked up to Veteran's Club and did a few warmups. Then the 'fun' began as we decided to hike up to the Smorgasbord. Bad idea. We hiked straight up scree slopes and sketchy trails, following cairns, for nearly an hour before deciding to send Joe as a scout to see if he could even see the crags. He could not. We turned around, made camp, and drank some cold Rainiers by the creek, then ate brats, drank more beers, and made s'mores. That was better.

Our next day was significantly better, but still involved some seriously steep approach hiking. We hiked up to the Puzzle Palace and got on some really long, fun moderates on perfect, grippy granite. The views were awesome and so was the climbing.

Adventure - Boston to Old Saybrook, CT

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:16:50 GMT

August 2, 2010

128 miles
7 hours 30 minutes
17 miles per hour
5,700 calories

After years of driving back and forth between Boston and Old Saybrook, CT to our family's cottage there, I finally decided to give it a try on the bike. I used MapMyRide and Google Maps to figure out a relatively direct route that would keep me on smaller back-roads. I settled on a 128-mile route through Dover, Bellingham, Woonsocket, Chepatchet, Jewett City, Norwich, and Old Lyme.

It was a great ride and actually felt shorter than I thought it would. I stopped once to fix a flat tire and another time to grab some Gatorade and food. I didn't miss any turns and arrived at the beach around 3pm. The best part was riding through the Nehantic State Forest, North of Old Lyme, CT on Grassy Hill Road. It was gorgeous and had lots of great terrain.

Boston to Old Saybrook, CT

Project - Scenario4 - Online Sports Stock Market

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:32:34 GMT

May 2010 to Jun 2010

This client was looking to finish development of their platform and integrate a number of social networking features on a tight timeframe. A group of us at Scenario4 worked with the client to identify the specs necessary for launch alongside the World Cup and then worked both as developers and consultants to successfully launch the platform on time.

Work included both integration of the new Facebook Graph API for user sign-up, log-in, sharing, liking, and inviting friends as well as technical development for the trading platform to enhance scalability and stability of the system.

Adventure - Cathedral Ledge

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:58:32 GMT

July 18-19, 2010

Eric and I headed up on Saturday morning to North Conway to get a couple of days of multi-pitch trad in on the awesome granite of Cathedral Ledge. We hiked up to the bottom of Recompense to find a group of three about to start and another group of two at the first belay ledge. We decided to hang out and, after a couple of hours shooting the breeze at the base, we were able to get on this awesome climb.

It was good for me to lead the combined first two pitches at 5.7 and get my trad legs back a bit. From there, Eric fired up the Beast Flake variation, which was a wildly exposed, beautiful feature. We met back in with Recompense in the dihedral and finished the climb up with some awesome layback technique up the long dihedral.

We capped off the awesome afternoon with a great dinner at Flatbread and some rogue camping. With the threat of rain, we got an early start Monday and were the only people at the Thin Air face. We decided to do Turner's Flake since it looked so awesome. It did not disappoint. Super-fun 5.8 moves up a left-arching flake brought us to the top of the pitch, where we decided to quickly finish the face via the last two pitches of Thin Air. Despite the easy difficulty level, this climb was quite fun and varied. We beat the rain by a matter of minutes to the walk-off at the Airation Buttress.

Adventure - Penitente Canyon

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:22:55 GMT

June 30, 2010

As our last stop before hitting the ranch, Dale and I camped and climbed in Penitente Canyon. It has a highly concentrated 100+ climbs in a short volcanic canyon on the West side of the San Luis Valley. We'd climbed here before and this was my first chance in over four years at redemption on a couple of climbs.

After warming up on some old favorites, we tried out a really tough 5.10b mixed route and then I jumped on a climb that had bested me before - Los Hermanos de la Weenie Way 5.11c. It was stiff for the grade and tough to move past the traverse, but I got it this time and was totally psyched.

We had a great day, followed by a phenomenal meal at Charlie's ranch with the rest of the boys. It was a solid outing.

Adventure - Rifle

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:10:41 GMT

June 27-28, 2010

Welcome to the land of 5.hard climbing on limestone. This was my first visit and I'm 100% confident that I'll be back. It felt more like an outdoor climbing gym than anything else--over 200 highly concentrated climbs on 1.5 miles of a dirt road with the longest approaches around 3 minutes, and sun aspects so that one side of the canyon is always in the shade. It's a sport climber's paradise.

We got in after mid-day on Sunday and immediately fired a classic 5.10a warmup, then its classic 5.11a neighbor called Feline. I was totally psyched to onsight the 11a and later found that it used to be rated 11c...who knew? After our 'warm up' climbs, we hit the Ruckman Cave to try some harder stuff. It was there we found the crowds, complete with screaming babies, belay chairs, and fixed draws.

Despite the distractions, the climbing was excellent, but we pumped out quickly on the Choss Family Robinson, a solid 5.11c. With our tails mildly between our legs, we commandeered the best campsite, cracked some beers, and played some horseshoes. We met the caretakers and had a great conversation with them for a bit before developing an immense hunger and throwing down heavily salted pasta.

We were both totally smoked from climbing so many days in a row, but we had to try some more climbs out before leaving Rifle, so in the morning, we hit the Ruckman Cave again and did the two awesome warmups on the right side at 5.10c and 5.10d. Then, at the suggestion of the caretaker, I gave Cardinal Sin 5.12a a try and really enjoyed it. The whole thing went surprisingly well despite aching forearms. It was a great highpoint to leave on.

I celebrated with yet another quart of my favorite recovery drink - chocolate milk.

Adventure - Castleton Tower

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:33:47 GMT

June 26, 2010

Neither Dale nor I had climbed a desert tower before and we were both itching to tick one off the list during our road trip. While in Moab, the perfect opportunity presented itself--Castleton Tower. One of the 50 classic climbs of North America goes up the South face for four pitches at 5.9 and is called the Kor-Ingalls Route.

Anticipating a crowd on Saturday morning, we got an early start and made it to the parking lot in Castleton by 7am to find no one there. A beautiful hike brought us up the scree slope to the base of the first pitch where we began our morning of offwidth crack climbing with lots of chimneying thrown in.

Dale led the first two pitches and I decided to man up and lead the third pitch, which included some seriously funky and heady climbing, but was quite fun. We hit the summit by noon and didn't spend too much time up there on the massive lightning rod because we saw some clouds moving in.

We could both see why it's a classic climb and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves for the whole adventure. The rest of the day only built on the morning as we succeeded in swimming in the Colorado to cool off, drinking some delicious beers, passing out in a park, and watching a sweet cover band.

Adventure - Moab

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:14:24 GMT

June 24-25, 2010

Moab is an awesome town with tons of things to keep an outdoor enthusiast occupied for quite a while. We only had a few days to spend here, but we made the most of them.

After driving from Saint George and before the sun set, we hit Potash Road and a classic 5.8 trad climb on Wall Street. It was awesome and nothing like anything I'd ever climbed before. Hand jams, laybacks, smears - it had it all.

We set up camp along the Colorado River and then worked through the morning at the awesome Moab Library. The mission for that afternoon was to hit as much climbing on Wall Street as possible and we succeeded.

Things started out with Flakes of Wrath 5.9, a classic trad flake. Then I led a slabby 5.8+ trad dihedral to get my trad legs back after years of avoiding that side of the sport. It went well even tough it was slabby and run-out.

From there, we hit Knapping with the Alien 5.11d/5.12a and I was beyond psyched to onsight it. The climb consisted of a number of hard moves separated by good rests. I made a good read at the crux sequence near the top and came away with the onsight. Sweet!

We also did Nervous in Suburbia 5.10a and I finished up the day two- or three-hanging Black Horse 5.12b/c. We were pumped in all senses of the word and celebrated with smooth brews and Mexican food.

Adventure - Saint George

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:55:13 GMT

June 23, 2010

On our way from the Owens River Gorge to Moab, Dale and I decided to take a day to explore Saint George, UT. There are a number of local crags and we decided to check out the Prophesy Wall, just beyond Snow Canyon on the way out of town. We did a multi-pitch 5.9 called Past Lives that was moderate and quite fun.

We didn't make it to the cliff until late in the day and it was a good thing since the temperature was still close to 100 degrees and the setting sun was still baking the cliff. We had a solid climb, headed down and proceeded to get tipsy on Lobotomy Bock 10.8% beers while watching the sun set. Good times.

We eventually made our way down to Snow Canyon and camped the night in the beautiful canyon reminiscent of Calico Hills at Red Rocks.

Adventure - Owens River Gorge

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:25:51 GMT

June 22, 2010

As a sport climber, I'd heard of the Owens River Gorge before, but didn't realize its geographical context of the beautiful Eastern Sierra or the fact that the climbing would be incredibly similar to Smith Rock.

Having done a lot of trad and multi-pitch climbing on granite with Dale, it was especially fun to get back into my comfort zone on steep, technical sport climbing. We spent one afternoon at the Upper Gorge on the Gorgeous Towers and then another afternoon in the Central Gorge at the Faulty Towers.

Highlights were Sea Cow 5.11a - a second pitch on top of the fun arete climb Giveaway 5.9, C'Mon Knucko 5.11b, Perched 5.10d, and Desert Storm 5.12a. The climbing was varied and fun, with flakes, jugs, pockets, and crimps on faces, aretes, roofs, and dihedrals. In short, I loved it and will be back.

Adventure - Fishhook Arete on Mt. Russell

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:19:46 GMT

June 19-21, 2010

First, let me point out Dale's comprehensive trip report on SuperTopo.

After picking up our permit at the Lone Pine Ranger Station, Dale and I drove out to the Mount Whitney Portal (8,360 ft.) and began sorting our gear for the climb. It took quite a while to organize and pack, but we only needed to reach Upper Boyscout Lake (11,200 ft.) by sundown to set up our base camp. We were on the trail around 2pm with a pair of packs weighing in north of 54 pounds each. The gorgeous hike (facing Mount Whitney the whole way) took us a few hours and we decided to set up our camp there rather than continue up to Iceberg Lake.

After ravenously devouring dinner, we both passed out early in anticipation of our alpine start. At 4am when our alarm went off, we both decided to wait for the sun to come up and warm things up--neither of us wanted to be climbing with freezing hands. At 5am, the sun just started peeking over the hills to the East and we packed up in the alpenglow.

The approach from Upper Boyscout wasn't trivial--there was a significant climb on snow up to Iceberg Lake (12,700 ft.), where we chipped through the ice and filled our water bottles. No need for treating that water! From Iceberg, we followed a set of steps worn into the snow up and over the Whitney-Russell Pass (13,040 ft.). It was quite steep and we were glad to have ice axes for self-arresting, if necessary.

From the top of the pass, we could see that the first few pitches of our climb were still in the shade, so we made ourselves comfortable and waited for the sun to track around and begin baking the granite. Our climb was estimated to take about 6 hours, so we didn't want to wait too long. We split the difference and finished the hike, getting to the base of the first pitch while things were still pretty cold.

The first pitch felt a little soft for 5.9, but I was happy to not be pulling really hard on cold, achy fingers. The first four pitches took us through the 'hook' part of the arete and brought us to a great belay ledge. Things were finally starting to feel warmer at this point and we didn't waste any time heading up the rest of the climb.

There was one short, cruxy section of hand crack that both Dale and I laybacked in true sport-climber form. Other than that, the climbing was very straightforward and fun. We made it to the summit of Mount Russell (14,094 ft.) in the mid-afternoon, added our names to the register, took some victory photos, and began our descent down a 3rd and 4th class gully, back toward the base of the climb.

On the summit, I started feeling a bit woozy and had a solid altitude headache. By the end of the 3rd class scramble descent I threw up a few times. Dale and I put the pedal down at that point and cruised the rest of the way down to base camp. I was pretty out of it by the time we made it down and immediately stripped all my gear off and jumped into my sleeping bag to sleep it off.

I thankfully felt much better when I got up just after sundown and anxiously waited the 20 minutes for my spanish rice to cook. It was delicious.

In the morning, we hiked back down to the Whitney Portal and then drove down to the hostel for some beers, showers, and pizza. It was an amazing adventure.

Adventure - Red River Gorge

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:15:44 GMT

June 6-8, 2010

Having left the New in the early afternoon, we made it to Miguel's Pizza around dinner time and immediately experienced why The Red has such a vibrant climbing community. Miguel's is the perfect climber hangout--food, gear, camping, showers, bathrooms, picnic tables, slackline, basketball, and refreshing local soda. Solid. We were really happy that we decided to make the trek.

After a night in the field behind Miguel's (and a serious chorus of frogs), we headed over to the Muir Valley to see what The Red was all about. We quickly discovered incredibly fun, juggy, well-protected sport climbs. After hitting some warmp-ups at the Bruise Brothers wall, we did a long hike along many of the crags to get to the Solarium, where we got on Manifest Destiny 5.12a and Air Ride Equipped 5.11a. Both climbs were classic and super-fun. I one-hung Manifest and had a blast doing it. After pumping ourselves out there, we hiked back to the Hideout and did Boltergeist 5.10b. It was super fun and a great way to finish the day.

We yet again dined on Miguel's pizza, drank a number of frosty adult beverages, and had a surprisingly heated game of HORSE. I was not victorious. Nevertheless, I felt like a winner after taking my first shower in about a week. Such a great feeling.

We had met some guys from Georgia the evening before and, on our last day, one of them came with us to the Roadside Crag to do some fun warmups and then get on Ro Shampo--a super-fun, overhanging, juggy 5.12a. I took two burns on it but couldn't quite send it. A difficult clip halfway up after the crux had its way with me and I took a fun whipper. Regardless, the climb was awesome and we all took a couple of burns.

It was sad to leave the Red after only two days, but Allie and I were both toast after climbing hard 4 out of 5 days, so we hit the road early to make a dent in the drive. We made it to Cumberland, MD late that night and camped in the rain at Rocky Gap State Park. The following day, we made it back to Boston around dinner time and said our goodbyes. It was an amazing trip!

Adventure - New River Gorge

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:07:00 GMT

June 4-6, 2010

Allie and I headed out of Boston on the morning of the 3rd and cranked the 14.5 hour drive down to Fayetteville, WV. We had 14 hours of beautiful weather and great views of the southern countryside followed by a half hour of the most intense thunderstorm I've seen in a while. We drove into Roger's Rocky Top Retreat in the pouring rain and set up Allie's bombproof tent. It was hot despite the rain and we tried to think positively, laughing a lot at ourselves and the situation at hand.

Contrary to the forecast, the weather in the morning was perfect. We drove to Summersville Lake and got on a ton of awesome climbs. The highlight for me was an onsight of Satisfaction Guaranteed 5.11a. It was hot and humid, but not oppressive and we had the lake right there to jump in. We followed up our awesome day with some great bbq.

We camped out at a different place that night and then drove up to Kaymoor on the South Side of the gorge. Our initial plans were shot when we found the Butcher's Branch climbs were soaked. We worked our way along the gorge for the rest of the day and had a blast on climbs at the White Wall, the Rico Suave Buttress, and the First Buttress. We met some cool guys from North Carolina and followed their tip to check out the local pizza joint. It did not disappoint.

We spent our last night in Fayetteville at the dam and hung out a bit with our friends from NC. The next morning, we got a late start and drove to the North side of the gorge to hit Bubba City. Shortly after making the approach and getting on a classic 5.8 warmup, the skies opened up and it started pouring. I finished the climb and rapped off. We hiked out and started the drive toward the Red. It was actually a great enforced rest day and we were glad to do the drive in the daytime to be able to see the scenery.

All in all, The New was a lot of fun. The climbs felt hard for the grade and the humidity and temperatures certainly weren't helping. The town of Fayetteville was really cool and had some great local shops and restaurants.

Adventure - Yosemite

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:15:19 GMT

June 16-17, 2010

Driving into the valley was a breathtaking experience both times I'd been to Yosemite and this third time was no different. Dale and I drove down 395 from Tahoe and then went up and over Tioga Pass. On our way into the park, we saw a sign that read "All Campsites Full" and we had a brief moment of panic before deciding that we'd make something happen.

After a number of "let's get out of the car" moments to take in the sights, we arrived in the valley as the sun was setting and confirmed the worst-case scenario that mid-June in Yosemite means everything is booked. We drove from campsite to campsite until deciding to pull into the Curry Village parking lot, make some dinner, and pass out in the car. Needless to say, it wasn't terribly restful between worrying about bears and rangers assaulting our vehicle.

Despite an early, achy wake-up, I jumped on the Yosemite Falls Trail as Dale started work at 7am. I reached the falls and then Yosemite Point having seen as many deer as people (2 each) by 10am and then booked it back down to the valley after taking in the sights. I made it to the Yosemite Lodge where Dale was working by noon and, with 9.2 miles of hiking done, we then hit the rock.

This was my third time to Yosemite, but the first time I was able to climb there. We hit the Church Bowl and did the classic 5.8 multipitch called Bishops Terrace. It was wonderful--fun face moves, some hand jams and lay-backs. After that, we hiked down a little bit and somehow decided to try Energizer, an 11b sport climb. It was the most humbling climbing experience I've ever had. I practically went bolt-to-bolt on the thing and had a number of full-body sewing machine moves and clips. Thankfully, I got up the thing and didn't have to bail.

After our climbs, we drove back over Tioga and found a campsite near Lee Vining with a beautiful view of the mountains to our West.

Adventure - Lover's Leap

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:47:39 GMT

June 15, 2010

After a day in Tahoe with Dale, climbing at Castle Rock and hanging out at his place near Heavenly, we did a day trip to Lover's Leap. Our mission was to climb "The Line" - a three-pitch 5.9 up a beautiful vertical seam in the granite cliff.

There was no wait and the climbing was superb. No real crack moves despite the fact that we were climbing a seam in the rock. We did the climb in two pitches with a 60 meter rope and finished it up with a really fun roof pull. The approach and walk-off were both really nice. A great day of climbing and a solid introduction to western granite.

Adventure - Gold Coast Show

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:14:38 GMT

April 27, 2002

Adventure - Collis Show

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:49:04 GMT

January 18, 2003

This was our first big show after recording Eternity, Defenseless, and Traffic and we had a great time playing our new songs. We had also invested in some more serious equipment and were able to get a really good sound going for this one.

Adventure - BEMA Show

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 01:47:31 GMT

August 3, 2002

One of our larger shows, we had the opportunity to open for Georgia Avenue and had a great time playing for friends in the BEMA at Dartmouth during our sophomore summer. Fred was invited to sing along with Georgia Avenue for their cover of 'Meet Virginia' by Train after we had covered another Train song during our set.

Project - Full-Time Machine Shop Job

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:31:19 GMT

Jan 2002 to Mar 2002

During my winter off-term in my sophomore year at Dartmouth, I was hired to work in the machine shop full-time. This was a great opportunity to hone my machining skills and also learn a lot about design for manufacturability.

Most of my time was spent instructing students in the shop, but a significant portion was spent building parts for research projects run by professors. After working on a few projects, it became very obvious which professors had actually built parts or had parts manufactured before and which ones hadn't. Many designs could be banged out in an afternoon, and others would take an afternoon to plan the series of operations to machine them.

I worked the most on our Bridgeport mills with digital readouts, but also spent lots of time on the lathes and running the CNC equipment.

Adventure - 2003 Spring Break Sessions

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 02:50:45 GMT

March 14-20, 2003

Fred, Evan, and I spent the spring break of 2003 in the recording studio at Dartmouth, living in the library of SAE and eating pasta in order to record a few songs we had recently written. After our previous experience in the studio, we were able to get a much better overall sound out of this session, partly driven by using live drums.

We recorded "Traffic" "Eternity" and "Defenseless" in a three-song EP and produced all of the tracks ourselves. Many of the days went long and we found ourselves getting a little loopy after 20+ hours straight in that tiny room. It was tons of fun, though.

Adventure - Red Rocks 2010

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:32:31 GMT

March 27 - April 4, 2010

This year's trip increased in size significantly up to 26 people and we succeeded in having an awesome time again out in Las Vegas. Eric and I had trained pretty hard this winter and both hoped to be able to get on some hard climbs. By the end of the trip, I had done four 5.12b and two 5.12c climbs. No sends, but some of them felt pretty close and I almost onsighted one of the 5.12b climbs.

It was a great trip and awesome to meet so many new people as well!

Project - Runway Tailor - Online Product Fitting

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:36:52 GMT

Nov 2009 to Feb 2010

It's always been hard for me to buy clothes that fit well. I'm 6'4" and 190lbs with size 13 feet and very long arms. As online shopping has grown more prevalent, I've been able to find more options for buying clothing that fits me well. Nevertheless, it's often a crapshoot.

This perspective drove me to build a web application for online shoppers to help understand how specific products and brands fit them before buying. The utility of the application is twofold--it serves as a place where users can post photos and fit notes for products and also serves as a search engine for consumers to find new products, brands, and models best suited to them.

I created the application from scratch, completely on my own, partly as a gut check to see if I could cover all of the bases myself. The current site is set up to run in private beta mode and I plan to devote time to getting it up and running for the general public in the coming months.

Project - Digital Weather Station

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:26:41 GMT

Apr 2004 to Jun 2004

For my course in digital electronics, I worked in a group with Joe Horrell and Sean Furey to design and build a digital weather station from scratch. Much of the project's difficulty was in the analog to digital conversions for pressure and temperature sensing. We were able to calibrate these inputs and perform logic on them by programming our own chip and saving data in RAM.

The final device worked quite well and could detect changes in pressure and temperature over time as well as display the current conditions.

Project - Fletcher Spaght - Vascular Robotics

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:29:13 GMT

Jul 2007 to Aug 2007

A client with a robotic system for helping doctors insert and maneuver catheters hired Fletcher Spaght to better understand their market and help prepare the pitch deck necessary for them to raise venture capital. The case involved primary research interviews with physicians to understand the potential benefits and cost trade-offs of the device.

I needed to get up to speed on the catheterization process quickly and be able to probe doctors effectively, thinking on my feet. I was able to pull valuable information from my interviews and presented my findings to the client who eventually was able to raise $10M in venture capital.

Project - Scenario4 - Email Chain Management Platform

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 21:08:14 GMT

Feb 2010 to Feb 2010

Our client had their application built very cheaply by another development firm, but the code was not functioning properly and needed to be transitioned to a new hosting service as well as tweaked to eliminate bugs. The purpose of the service was to eliminate large email CC trains by allowing users to forward an existing conversation and then maintain it online, selecting whatever frequency of notifications they wished.

I performed the work necessary to get the application on a scalable hosting provider and fixed the bugs to get the application ready for users to test.

Project - Scenario4 - Asynchronous Video Recruiting Platform

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 21:04:32 GMT

Feb 2010 to Mar 2010

We were engaged to provide a face-lift for a website in the online recruiting space. I performed all of the CSS, HTML, Javascript and minor .NET tweaks necessary to update the website look and feel. The result was a cross-browser and cross-platform compliant website the client could leverage to help fund raise and approach new clients.

Project - Fletcher Spaght - Automated File Backup

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:55:55 GMT

Mar 2008 to Apr 2008

In this competitive landscape case, I was tasked with analyzing a number of competitors for our client in the automated file backup space. Much of the work included usability testing and feature mapping to understand where the client stood within the landscape in terms of ease of use as well as positioning and functionality.

I performed a significant amount of the research and presented my findings to the client directly. Upon project completion, I was offered a product management position at the company.

Project - Fletcher Spaght - Parallel Technical Computing

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:50:47 GMT

Sep 2006 to May 2008

A parallel technical computing company worked with us to better understand the market for their software, which simplifies and eases the process of parallelizing technical computing code. Their first market was the MATLAB language and platform and we performed a wide-spread user survey and in-depth interviews with potential users. We were able to help define the optimal messaging and positioning for the company as well as potential pitfalls.

After this successful project, we were hired on again to investigate the market for Python and then again for R. We were again able to deliver meaningful and actionable results for the company. I was highly involved with the project and administered the surveys, performed interviews, and helped present findings to the client.

Project - Fletcher Spaght - Facilities Management

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:41:27 GMT

Sep 2007 to Dec 2007

In this growth strategy case, we were tasked with understanding the landscape for a facilities capital planning and management company and then proposing an effective growth strategy.

We performed primary research, interviewed the executive team, customers, and competitors, attended the company's conference, and researched the market. The business was split into facility assessment, management software, and consulting services. Our recommendations helped the company to prioritize efforts and funding for each of these functions as well as adjust their client acquisition process and pricing schemes.

Through a number of progress presentations as well as a full-day final presentation off-site meeting, I spent a significant amount of time working directly with the client management team and engaging them in discussions.

Project - Fletcher Spaght - Quality Lifecycle Management

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:34:52 GMT

May 2008 to Jul 2008

I was part of a case team that worked with a client in the Quality Lifecycle Management space to better understand how to work with and sell to contract manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers.

The products and services provided by the client helped highlight issues in the supply chain and served as a form of watch dog for CMs. We performed primary research and talked with a number of OEMs as well as CMs. We were able to highlight a real need for OEMs to monitor operations within CM factories. We were also able to find an angle to be able to sell into CMs directly in order for them to use quality and efficiency as points of differentiation.

I was given the opportunity to present my findings directly to the client management team.

Project - Boston Road Club Website Application

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:43:57 GMT

Feb 2009 to Apr 2010

I was elected as the webmaster for my cycling team, the Boston Road Club, and built a new web application in Ruby on Rails for the team. The application includes member profiles, automatic result tracking, management for our weekly race that we run, forums for race reports, Twitter integration, and more.

Project - Scenario4 - Healthcare Patient Management System

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:38:55 GMT

Jan 2010 to Feb 2010

I worked on a number of aspects of a patient management system that allows patients, physicians, and healthcare organizations to track patient progress in programs defined by their physician such as weight loss or hypertension reduction.

The majority of my work focused on the graphing interface for progress tracking. These graphs include goal and measurement data to help patients stay on track and visually see how well or poorly they are progressing.

I also developed an interface and back-end that enables health care providers to brand and skin the portals for their physicians and patients.

Project - Scenario4 - Facebook Connect Friend Networking App

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:35:06 GMT

Mar 2010 to Apr 2010

The client wished to create a web application leveraging Facebook Connect to enable users to extend their friend network one level to friends-of-friends. The application includes one-click login and account creation via Facebook, geo-aware searching for users based on demographic data, posting of information to the extended friend network, availability matching to schedule meet-ups with friends-of-friends and an instantaneous geo-lookup for people near you.

Future work will include the creation of an iPhone app to fully enable geo-aware features.

Project - Scenario4 - 3D Motion Capture and Signal Processing

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:30:46 GMT

Apr 2009 to Apr 2010

This project encompassed signal processing and user interface work for a multi-sensor system attached to horses to help identify lameness. The system consists of a number of nodes, placed at strategic locations on a horse (hooves, fetlocks, withers, head, and rump) with accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers in each axis.

We were provided with raw data from the sensors and needed to build the MATLAB algorithms to condition the data as well as process it to translate between sensor, horse, and global reference frames and integrate for velocity and position data.

We also built a user interface in MATLAB, implementing a full model-view-controller framework and ability for researchers to browse, process, and make sense of data.

I also worked on the calibration code that sets bias and gain valies for each sensor in each axis based on a specific routine of rotations and orientations of the sensor. I used the publishing capabilities of MATLAB to print out detailed information on each node's oise characteristics, gain and bias valies.

The goal of the first phase of the project was to validate that the system could be used to accurately re-produce the motion of all elements of the horse being monitored. This validation was performed using high-speed video capture alongside the sensor system.

Project - YouCastr

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:25:49 GMT

Feb 2007 to Mar 2010

YouCastr began as a simple idea to bring then nascent live streaming technology to the masses in order to enable sports fans to provide their own color commentary to friends around the globe. I began working on the idea as a fun side-project with friends Ariel Diaz and Matt Hodgson. When it became apparent that we could build the technology platform, we got more serious and worked with my friend Brad Johnson to create a business out of the technology.

Over the coming months, the project steadily grew until we were struggling to find enough time outside our consulting jobs to devote to it. It was about this time that we were able to secure some significant angel investment and be able to give the idea a real shot. We quit our consulting jobs in early July of 2008 and moved into an office on the outskirts of Kendall Square in Cambridge.

From that point on, we rode the entrepreneurial roller coaster, landing a number of key partnerships and lots of usage, but also realizing that our business model wouldn't work unless we achieved a huge scale. Our original platform was all audio and we knew the entire time that video was much more compelling. We introduced video to the service and began focusing more on un-televised events in the sports arena. This brought us to high school sports, youth sports, and tournaments. Our platform worked well for this, but we were making a small amount of money charging broadcasters a monthly fee.

More recently, we changed the platform to a revenue shared pay-per-view model. This business has generated enough cash to reach gross profitability, but not enough money to be really interesting for venture capital investors.

All along, my main role has been product management. I began the project with relatively little experience writing code--I knew some Java, Javascript, XML, and SQL, but the platform we chose, Ruby on Rails, was completely foreign to me. Along with Matt Hodgson, I learned the system and became more and more proficient over the years. During our peak, we employed a full time designer and marketing manager. I learned a lot from our designer about how to construct the interfaces I had in my head.

I've performed usability analyses, optimized the site based on analytical data, managed some of our customer support system, and overseen the prioritization and planning for our product development. It's been a wild ride and I've learned so much about writing code, managing a massive project, innovating with a technical product, entrepreneurship, and working closely with a team of very talented people.

Adventure - Working Man's Stage Race

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:56:40 GMT

July 14-16, 2009

Time Trial:
I was really hoping to win the TT this year. My previous TT finishes here were 3rd and 9th and I had done a bunch of practice leading up to this one, including a 35-mile not-so-flat ride at over 23mph. I warmed up for an hour beforehand and put in some efforts during the warmup that I hoped would get my lactic acid recovery systems firing. I was sandwiched between two very strong riders in the starting order and had an unfortunate start (my chain kept rolling off my chainring when I pedaled backwards to set up for the start, so I left the gate a second or two late). The awkward start got my heart pumping and I immediately tried to settle down into a groove. The front third of the course was mostly downhill, but into a headwind and with one small climb. I kept the cadence high and maintained about 26mph during this section (which was my target speed). I think I lost some time in the next third of the course as I just couldn’t seem to pull over the top of my pedal stroke with much power. I was pretty happy with how I climbed the only real hill, maintaining good speed through the steep section. On the false flat after that, I couldn’t seem to accelerate and lost more time before hitting the descent. At that point, the 30" rider behind me caught up. I only lost 5 seconds to him over the rest of the course, but that was enough to slip me down to 7th overall.

Road Race:
This was one of the most fun road races I’ve ever participated in. After a few years of riding with team tactics and plans never playing out, everything went right on this day. The legs felt great and I watched for Starvish to throw an attack early on. When he made a promising move, I got up into the top few wheels and interrupted the rotation. The only motivated teams were Cambridge (4 guys), Threshold (2 guys), and Colvativa (1 guy). Nobody else would do much work and it made it very easy for me to keep blocking effectively. It didn’t take long for the break to get out of sight and we weren’t given any time checks for the rest of the race. The same few guys from those teams kept hitting the front and pulling for a while before looking over their shoulder to see me and the other BRC guys. They completely cooked themselves in the process as John mentioned. I’ve never felt better for a sprint and avoided getting boxed in on the inside of the turn to come around a bunch of people for 3rd in the bunch sprint. 6th place for the road race put me in 4th overall.

Points Race:
I wanted to try and sprint for points during the first half to see if that was working for me. If it wasn’t, I planned to go off the front as I’d done in the previous year’s race to pick up some points. Starvish was an animal during this race and yelled for me to grab his wheel a number of times. We were pretty successful and I picked up a number of points in the first half of the race. The legs felt increasingly like wood as we went on and I didn’t do the best job of saving my efforts for 100% committed sprints—this was a killer and zapped much of the energy I had left. Nevertheless, I picked up 7th by the end of the race and maintained my GC position of 4th (3 points away from a podium).

It was an awesome race with excellent results for BRC.

Adventure - Dartmouth Cycling Spring Break

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:41:07 GMT

March 17-28, 2005
After a winter spent on the trainers and a couple of early-season races, the cycling team drove down to Asheville, NC to enjoy some warmer weather and hilly training terrain. This was early in my cycling career and I was completely exhausted every day from the long rides we were all on. It was a great trip!

Adventure - Club Electra Battle of the Bands

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:06:05 GMT

May 6, 2003
My band made it through the Dartmouth battle of the bands in 2003 and won a spot to compete at a local West Lebanon night club for glory and some small prizes. We had a great time performing our own original music and a couple of covers. In the end, the judges proposed a tie between us and another local band. I'll chalk it up as a win...

Project - Broadacres Ranch River Restoration

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:56:49 GMT

Jun 2006 to Sep 2006

I had the opportunity to work on the ranch owned by Charlie Nearburg (a Dartmouth alum) with some great friends during my last summer break in graduate school. The only problem was that I needed to spend that summer working on a large-scale engineering project to complete my MEM degree. Thankfully, we were able to find this river restoration project and it turned into quite the undertaking.

A specific river on his land, Traut Creek, was experiencing lots of bank erosion every spring when the snow melt caused raging volumes of water to rush through his land. Charlie had plans to turn this river into a pristine trout fishing location, so he wanted to protect the banks and restore the river. Despite hiring a number of other hydrology companies in the past, no solutions had withstood the 150cfs flows that Traut Creek experiences each spring.

Together with Jon Kling, I did lots of research into geomorphology and stream creation as well as stream aging. Our research pointed us towards the use of rock structures to divert the river flow towards the center of the stream and away from the fragile banks to avoid this undercutting.

We assessed failure modes of previous systems and performed the engineering calculations necessary to ensure that our structures would not fail under the given load. We also surveyed the river cross-section at a number of key locations to determine ideal locations for structures.

This project also involved a significant amount of planning and management. We had lots of work to accomplish and only so many resources to play with. We also had variables like supplies and rental equipment to manage. The remote location of the work site made everything more difficult, but also more enjoyable!

After an entire summer of hard work with a back hoe, front-end loader, excavator, and tired muscles, we completed a major part of the restoration and have been happy to hear that our work has held up well since.

Adventure - AMC 22-Day Leadership Training Program

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:39:32 GMT

July 10 - August 2, 1998

I took this exhaustive course with the Appalacian Mountain Club between my sophomore and junior years in high school. It was a great opportunity to not only learn backpacking, canoeing, rock climbing, and orienteering hard skills, but also to explore the more amorphous field of leadership. After learning about different styles and approaches for most of the course, we were each given the opportunity to lead our group of about 10 for one full day.

As a relatively shy kid, this was a good opportunity for me to break out of my shell in a setting that I'm comfortable in. Since that trip, I led four Dartmouth orientation trips, a sophomore trip, organized a bike trip across Europe, and have organized a number of rock climbing trips across the US with friends. It was a great starting point for my leadership and outdoor skills.

Project - Loomis Sayles Technology Internship

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:31:50 GMT

Jun 2004 to Sep 2004

This internship gave me the opportunity to with with the internal software development team at Loomis Sayles to add some interesting functionality to their intranet.

Over the course of the summer, I learned Java, Javascript, and XML to help organize the company's accounts and assist with internal research projects. I also helped redesign the intranet homepage to calculate and display key business performance metrics. This involved lots of work with a Java charting plugin.

Project - MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:23:04 GMT

Jun 2003 to Sep 2003

After originally working at the MIT PSFC during the summer of 2001, I returned for the summer of 2003 to continue my training with the skilled mechanical engineers there. My first summer had centered around honing my skills with AutoCAD and SolidEdge. This summer involved applying those skills to a couple of very interesting projects.

The first project was to re-design a molybdenum tile array and steel mounting plate to shield a cryogenic pump within the fusion reactor. The parts were incredibly complex, with cylindrical aspects, interfacing angles, tight tolerances, and "scales" on the surfaces of the tiles to help keep them from chipping as the plasma formed within the vessel. It was a great project and I learned a lot about prototyping, solid modeling, and working as a team. In the photos provided, the original design is shown in red and my design is shown in blue.

The second project involved designing for this cryogenic pump itself. A number of small tubes that were designed to carry liquid nitrogen had to be modeled as well as parts of the casing.

This was a great place to work and I have to extend my thanks to Rui Vieira and Bruce Lipschultz for the opportunity.

Project - DFR - Front Suspension, Steering, and Braking

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:04:03 GMT

Sep 2003 to Mar 2004

As the culminating project for my BE in mechanical engineering, I teamed up with fellow students Joe Horrell and Grant Wagner to build the front suspension, steering, braking systems for the 2004 Dartmouth Formula Racing car.

The 20-week project took us through a number of design iterations, significant education in suspension geometries and suspension characteristic optimization, stress and strain analyses, manufacturing, and finally racing.

Our design involved a double a-arm system with pull rods that linked the suspension to rocker-arms attached to the shocks and springs. We made significant weight savings over the previous year's car by changing our upright material from CNC'ed aluminum to fabricated, welded steel. The majority of our upright was hollow, but it was plenty strong. We built our own hubs and spindles, as well as the mounts for the hydraulic disc brakes.

To see the car come together toward the end of the second term and then be able to drive it in Texas during spring break was an incredible experience. We are still very proud of the work we accomplished. During a training run a number of years later, a driver spun out and broke a weld on the frame. Our suspension system held strong, showing no signs of failure.

Project - Remote Controlled Stair Climber

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:47:59 GMT

Sep 2003 to Dec 2003

During my junior year at Dartmouth, I took a course in machine design, which taught us many of the standard techniques for analyzing loads on mechanical components and determining their displacement under a given load as well as their breaking strength and factor of safety.

The term project for the course was to take a remote controlled hummer model and a set amount of supplies, and create a remote-controlled mail delivery machine that could ascend an entire flight of stairs.

Our design scrapped almost everything from the hummer and implemented a tank-like design complete with independent disc brakes for each side and a front member that could be raised or lowered to help the vehicle get onto a set of stairs. We made use of the stock differential to appropriately distribute power to one set of tracks or the other when the disc brakes were engaged.

Our design was successful--one of very few in the class. Our main limitation was the friction between our treads and the stairs. This forced us to go up carpeted steps, but they were unfortunately set up in a series of groups instead of one long straight. This increased our time significantly.

Project - Remote Controlled Sailboat

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:25:16 GMT

Apr 2004 to Jun 2004

For a graduate engineering course in computer-aided mechanical design, I designed and built a remote-controlled sailboat with two other engineers--Joe Horrell and Gustav Löfholm.

The only parts of the boat we didn't make were the servos. The part manufacturing included a combination of injection molding, vacuum casting, mold machining, and rapid prototyping. We designed the parts in ProEngineer and performed stress and displacement analyses to ensure our parts would neither break nor bend so much as to not be useful.

Our final design looked great and worked, though without lots of time devoted to the physics of sailing, our boat wasn't exactly fast.

Project - Pneumatic Nail Gun Safety Device

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:52:29 GMT

Sep 2001 to Nov 2001

As a sophomore engineering sciences undergraduate at Dartmouth College and along with Joe Horrel, Kip Benson, and Sky Kalkman, I designed, built, and tested a safety device for pneumatic nail guns to address the issue of ricocheting nails.

The final prototype of the device itself was quite simple--a bolt-on steel, toothed casing that caused the plunger to disengage when the gun was held at too low an angle to the workpiece. Despite the simple design, the results were quite compelling.

Our research showed that firing a nail gun at an angle lower than about 35 degrees almost always results in a ricocheting nail instead of a driven nail. Our device was incredibly effective in dis-engaging the gun's firing mechanism when it was held at this critical angle or less.

This 10-week project taught me much about the process of innovation, research, and design for manufacturability. It was also invaluable to learn how to work most effectively as a team.

We received the Phillip R. Jackson Engineering Sciences Prize as the best project in the class.

Adventure - Pinnacle Gully

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 19:00:00 GMT

March 13, 2010

After early-week predictions for rain, we were met with a beautiful day on Saturday morning when waking up in Boston. Owen, Eric, Dan, and I were on the road by 6:30 and made good time to the Pinkham Notch parking lot.

We had decided to skin up to Huntington Ravine and this was my first time skinning. After a few awkward moments, I settled in and we made it up to the base of the ravine in an hour and a half.

After a quick lunch and stowing of the ski gear, we broke up into teams and made the rest of the approach to Pinnacle Gully up the steep snowfield. Owen and I began first, with Owen leading the crux first pitch and me hanging out with Dan and Eric at the base. Despite it being a beautiful day, it was pretty cold in the gully and out of the sun. I was glad to start climbing once Owen had set up the anchor at the top of the first pitch.

The ice was beautiful--fat and blue. Owen and I finished the first pitch, inchwormed up a little bit to a more comfortable belay, simul-climbed up the snowy second pitch, and then set up a belay at the base of the third and final pitch.

All the while, Dan and Eric were right behind us and it was a nice, casual scene at the belays. We lucked out to have no parties immediately ahead or behind us, though just as we were finishing, one guy came soloing up past us. Not exactly a lightweight...

The final pitch was pretty easy and we quickly made it up to the plateau, ate some food, and made our way around the rim to find the Escape Hatch, which was a perfect descent. We even got to slide down a few parts and practice self-arresting.

The descent was probably the most harrowing part of the day for me, given the fact that I hadn't skied on a downhill setup in over 3 years. I snow-plowed my way to victory and thoroughly enjoyed some beer when we got to the car. What a great day!

Adventure - Green Mountain Stage Race 2007

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:55:02 GMT

August 31 - September 3, 2007

Adventure - Green Mountain Stage Race 2008

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:45:57 GMT

September 1-4, 2008

First off, congrats to Chris Gagne for his consistently impressive performances and GC win. Also huge props to David Smallwood for his sacrifice in the RR--for a team like this where we're all covering our own entry fees, etc. it's inspiring to see such team play (especially when it results in a teammate winning a stage and the GC).

I was apprehensive coming into the weekend given lots of time off the bike due to my calf injury, work, and weddings. The TT advice I heard was to not blow up early on the climb. The race was 50% climb then 50% slight rolling downhill with a kicker at the end. Despite an hour-long warmup, the legs felt like wood in the climb. They loosened up at the plateau and I cruised the rest of the way at 32mph. Apparently it wasn't enough to salvage a better-than-mid-pack TT.

I was psyched for the circuit race and felt great for the duration of the 65 miles and two moderate climbs. Our field was super-sketchy and had no fewer than 3 crashes on uphill sections. After avoiding the last crash with 1k to go, I positioned myself behind the yellow jersey and got ready to wind up for the sprint. No such luck - a man-eating pothole gave me a completely flat front and a hissing rear. I sat up for 31st and got the same time as the winners.

Last year's RR saw me lose contact with the lead group on baby gap. This year I aimed to limit my losses while keeping some energy in the tank for the crit. I succeeded in staying with the lead group of about 15 or 20 riders until 3k to go. At that point I was cramping and shut it down to finish 25th.

The crit was my day. Our field did 34 laps (20 miles), with primes on most of the 5-multiple laps. My starting position was less than ideal, so I spent the first 5 laps working my way to the front. Immediately after the first prime sprint I was at the front, just riding my own tempo and taking good lines. Things got eerily quiet and I looked back to see that I had a little gap. There were still nearly 30 laps to go at that point, so I decided to keep riding my own pace and see what the peloton would do. After another half-lap, I had a solid 10 second gap and decided that I would keep pushing to win the prime at 25 to go (no visions of winning the race yet). I increased the lead a bit and had one guy bridging to me coming into that prime when I took the final turn very hard and rolled my tire off the rim. Luckily I was able to keep it upright, coast into the pit, get a new wheel, and take a couple of free laps. They sent me in just ahead of my chaser and I slowed a bit to wait for him to bridge. I told him that we would trade half-lap pulls, share the sprints (not race for them), and keep it as smooth as possible. He was on board and the two of us pulled away from the peloton for the rest of the race. With 1/2 lap to go, we shook hands and said thanks to eachother--it was the most fun I've ever had on a bike! I thought he was toast because my pulls were consistently a couple mph faster than his, so I cranked it up on the descent and took a great, smooth line in the last turn. I was moving really fast at that point and looked back--didn't see him and lightened up a touch. When I brought my head back around, I saw a shadow on my left and realized he was right there. I kicked it back in, but got nipped at the line. The announcer even called my name because it was so close. Oh well...it's a mistake I won't make again. Regardless, we put 43 seconds into the field and I moved up to 18th GC.

Adventure - Green Mountain Stage Race 2009

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:44:49 GMT

September 4-7, 2009

My plan this year was to see how the TT went and then target stages 2 and 4, with a potential of going for the green jersey—a competition I finished 3rd in last year. The fields were different this year, with one straight Cat 4 field and a new 4/5 field instead of an age-differentiated Cat 4. The straight 4s were twice the size this year, with over 100 riders starting.

Stage 1:
I drove up to Waitsfield early on Friday morning to give plenty of time to eat, stretch the legs, and warm up before the TT. I felt pretty good during the warmup, which I mostly did on Rt. 100 and also on Lincoln Gap Road—a similar gradient to the climb at the beginning of the TT. Not long before my start time, I was riding out 100 and figured it was time to turn around and head for the line. The seconds ticked by quickly and I soon realized that I was going to be arriving much closer to my start time than anticipated. I cranked the speed up into the high 20s and screamed into the starting area 5 seconds after my start time (there was a 1.5 minute differential between the actual time of day and the start clock, which I should have known, but didn’t). They held me until the next 30-second guy went and then let me go after him.

Discouraged and heart-pounding, I kept myself from blowing up on the climb and then motored through the rolling finish. I consciously backed off the gas, knowing that I wouldn’t get the time back and that it wouldn’t make that much of a difference in the end. This year’s time: 17:52 (with about 35 seconds of ‘penalty time’). Last year’s time on the same course: 16:10. That time would have put me in 3rd this year. Not the best start…

Stage 2:
Having completely blown it in the TT, I decided to target green jersey points and a good finish today. Felt great and knew this was my kind of course. One relatively low grade climb and lots of rolling terrain usually make this race end in a bunch sprint. I contested the intermediate sprints, but mis-timed them and was just out of the points (there was a headwind on the finishing straight and the final 500 meters took forever). Before the second sprint, Julian did a great job of pulling a break back. I should have let him and others do the work, but I also helped reel them in, then found my legs feeling like jelly for the sprint. On the final lap, a rider near the front caused a massive crash on the climb. A group of about 20 riders were in front of it, but the rest of us had to stop and then chase. I worked with a highly unorganized group of 15 riders over the next 8 miles or so to catch back onto the leaders with about 3 miles left in the race. There was a lot of maneuvering for the sprint with 1K to go and I pulled around a few people to finish in 15th place with the same time. Half of the riders lost at least a minute that day, unfortunately including both Julian and Steven.

Stage 3:
Always a fun and epic day, the GMSR road race did not disappoint this year. I was still holding out some hope of green jersey points, so I contested the intermediate sprint at 14 miles. The peloton was so large that it was difficult to move forward, so I spent a few miles moving my way from mid-pack to the top 10. A few teams had well-organized leadouts and I was too tired from the effort to move forward to effectively contest the sprint. Not long before the Brandon Gap climb at ~25 miles, Julian headed off the front, presumably to try and bridge to a small group that had separated earlier (later, I learned that Julian did not know about the break!). The climb wasn’t terribly hard, but it was pretty long and hurt the whole peloton. I crested in the middle of the pack and then bombed down the descent like a 185-lb rider should.

The headwind was significant during our trudge North and we soon caught the break, not long before being neutralized as the juniors cruised by and we enjoyed the best pee break of all time at about mile 60. There is one wall before the dirt road section that must be 20% grade where they added a KOM this year. I was very glad to have last-minute purchased a 12-27 cassette the day before and I cruised past many riders swerving back-and-forth across the road to minimize the grade.

My goal at this point was to stick with the leaders over Baby Gap and through the beginning of App Gap. Despite screaming legs, I succeeded in staying with them until 3K to go, at which point I shifted into the 27 and took my time. I caught and passed a bunch of riders that had cracked from the front group and finished with a little sprint to beat one other rider before the finish. It was by far the best I’ve felt going up that beast of a climb and I think having a 27 made a big difference.

Stage 4:
I had visions of grandeur for this year’s crit, given my success in staying off the front last year. Julian was very kind to lend me his trainer as I had forgotten to bring mine. The warmup felt good and I made sure to line up early. 100 riders vying for position at the beginning was sure to be pandemonium. A few laps in, I was still connected to the leaders via a very strung-out line when I hit a pothole and my shifting went screwy. I slipped off the wheel in front and cut the course to have the SRAM guys take a look. They handed me a new wheel, but I was sent back with a chase group of 4 riders. There were over 30 laps to go still and I figured we had a chance to catch back on if we worked well together. The 5 of us pacelined for a bunch of laps until I noticed the rest of them slowing down and decided to launch forward in hopes of catching back on. I rode for a number of laps solo and got within 5 seconds of the lead group until a prime was called and they took off. I slowed and let the four guys catch back up. We continued to work together until the finish when I had good sprint and beat the rest of them out for 19th place. Only 24 riders finished the whole crit without being pulled out of 95 starters.

Lots of fun once again. I’m pretty sure it’s time to upgrade to Cat 3.

Adventure - DFR Spring Break

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:55:51 GMT

March 16-24, 2004

After spending 20 weeks designing and building our Formula SAE car, the Dartmouth Formula Racing Team left Hanover and drove to Dallas, Texas to shake the car down before competition.

It was an incredibly gratifying experience to drive the car we had built. We also benefited from the expertise of Charlie Nearburg, our host in Texas. Charlie showed us how to tune the car and bring it to the limit between over- and under-steer.

Adventure - Broadcares Ranch I

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:55:51 GMT

June 26 - September 17, 2005

While much of my time this summer was spent working on the river restoration project, we also spent many hours working as ranch hands and restaurant staff. Joe even got to be a fly fishing guide.

We worked very long, hard days while out in Creede, but they were also lots of fun and shared with great company. Fun projects included moving an entire cabin, pouring concrete foundations, roofing cabins, lining walkways with creosote cross-ties, and varmint population control.

The setting also afforded us the opportunity to take some awesome trips on days off. We climbed quite a bit at Penitente Canyon and also hiked some fourteeners.

Adventure - Long View Farm Sessions

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:55:51 GMT

November 14-17, 2003

Thanks to my friend Chris Evans, a sound engineer at Long View Farm in 2003, my band, Dave's Gone Mad, had the opportunity to record some of our songs at this famed studio in Western Massachusetts.

Over the course of a few days, we recorded 'keeper' drum and bass tracks for a number of our songs. The setup was epic and so was the number of snare drum tops we went through.

It was an amazing experience to learn more about how a professional studio sets up and records. We then re-convened back at Dartmouth to record guitar tracks and made a trip to the Boston area to record vocals. The result was a professional-sounding three song demo that we are all very proud of.

Adventure - The Stretch

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:55:51 GMT

September 12 - November 12, 2002

As an Earth Sciences Minor at Dartmouth, I had the opportunity to go on "The Stretch," a 10-week program to learn about the methodology and theory of geologic field study. Our classroom was the Western United States and we visited many of the national parks during our trip.

We learned things like geologic structure mapping, hydrologic processes, volcanism, geochemical analyses, glacial processes, and some geophysics. It was also an amazing opportunity to work and explore with a small group of amazing students, teaching assistants, and professors.

Highlights for me were the Tetons, Moab, Yosemite, and Santa Cruz.

Adventure - Broadcares Ranch II

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:54:45 GMT

March 22 - June 1, 2006

Once was certainly not enough. After graduating from the MEM program, I returned to Creede and this time worked on the ranch in off-season with Bing and Joe. We were training and saving up for our European bike tour, so we did lots of biking in the area. Training up at 10,000 feet definitely helped when it came to riding over the alps a month or so later.

We had a more relaxed atmosphere this time and a little more free time on our hands. We climbed a lot, biked, took some road trips to Aspen and Vail, and hosted some of Bing's friends for an amazing Cinco de Mayo.

I distinctly remember roofing some cabins when it was too cold to feel my hands. I will also never forget the beard I grew during this adventure. It was pretty legit.

Adventure - Eurotrek

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:41:22 GMT

June 14 - August 20, 2006

This trip of a lifetime involved biking from Rome, through Italy, across the Alps, across Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, and Southern Germany, following the Rhine through France and Germany to the Netherlands and Belgium, then across to the French coast of Normandy, and then finally to Paris.

We biked over 2,600 miles in 66 days, staying in hostels, camp sites, and hotels along the way. It was amazing to see the entire countryside and link up between all of the major tourist destinations. Our perspective of the culture was much more pure than that of a typical tourist.

June 14 - Boston → London → Roma
June 15 - Roma
June 16 - Roma
June 17 - Roma → Tarquina (63km)
June 18 - Tarquina → Grosseto (150km)
June 19 - Grosseto → Siena (107km)
June 20 - Siena → Firenze (89km)
June 21 - Firenze
June 22 - Firenze → Firenzuola (65km)
June 23 - Firenzuola → Bologna (67km)
June 24 - Bologna → Ravenna (85km)
June 25 - Ravenna → Ostellato (86km)
June 26 - Ostellato → Ferrara (42km)
June 27 - Ferrara → Chioggia (136km)
June 28 - Chioggia → Venezia → Treviso (ferries, bikes, and trains)
June 29 - Venezia & Treviso
June 30 - Treviso
July 1 - Treviso
July 2 - Treviso → Iseo (train and bike 106km)
July 3 - Iseo (80km)
July 4 - Iseo → Vicenza (train)
July 5 - Vicenza → Lecco → Como (train and bike 60km)
July 6 - Como → Bellinzona (68km)
July 7 - Bellinzona
July 8 - Bellinzona → Hospental (82km)
July 9 - Hospental → Meringen (75km)
July 10 - Meringen → Interlaken (35km)
July 11 - Interlaken
July 12 - Interlaken → Lucerne (84km)
July 13 - Lucerne → Rapperswil (84km)
July 14 - Rapperswil → Vaduz (95km)
July 15 - Vaduz → Bregenz (63km)
July 16 - Bregenz → Fusen (110km)
July 17 - Fusen
July 18 - Fusen → Lindau (102km)
July 19 - Lindau → Schaffhausen (110km)
July 20 - Schaffhausen → Basel (110km)
July 21 - Basel
July 22 - Basel → Colmar (85km)
July 23 - Colmar → Strasbourg (130km)
July 24 - Strasbourg → Karlsruhe (105km)
July 25 - Karlsruhe → Heidelberg (train and bike 10km)
July 26 - Heidelberg → Bacharach (130km)
July 27 - Bacharach
July 28 - Bacharach → Koln (train and 50km bike)
July 29 - Koln → Dusseldorf (50km)
July 30 - Dusseldorf → Kleve (103km)
July 31 - Kleve → Utrecht (98km)
August 1 - Utrecht (bike stolen)
August 2 - Utrecht → Amsterdam (train)
August 3 - Amsterdam
August 4 - Amsterdam
August 5 - Amsterdam → Brussles (train)
August 6 - Brussles
August 7 - Brussles → Bruges (train)
August 8 - Bruges → Calais (train)
August 9 - Calais → Le Crotoy (120km)
August 10 - Le Crotoy → Rue → Dieppe (walk and train)
August 11-16 - Dieppe (no bike for Normandy)
August 17 - Dieppe → Paris (train)
August 18 - Paris
August 19 - Paris
August 20 - Paris → London → Boston

Adventure - Red Rocks 2008

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:39:09 GMT

April 5-20, 2008

This was my first trip to Red Rocks and I had the pleasure of sharing the experience with J5, Joe, Kling, and Jimmy. We spent 9 days mostly climbing, but also exploring the Las Vegas area with our local tour guide, George Baumer.

I did my first 5.11c (Poodle Chainsaw Massacre) and really enjoyed the style of climbing out there. Other highlights were hitting the hot springs near the Hoover Dam and the most amazing mini golf course ever.

Adventure - Red Rocks 2009

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:37:33 GMT

March 14-21, 2009

Adventure - Antigua Race Week 2009

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 10:38:30 GMT

April 23 - May 12, 2009
Sailing! To be written...

Adventure - Smith Rock 2009

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 09:52:46 GMT

September 29 - October 5, 2009

The trip started with a flight into Seattle, where I got to hang out with Kling, Bing, and the Synapse kids. I did a little bit of sight-seeing, but was most intrigued with the Synapse office--a great place to work.

After a couple of days in Seattle, we began the drive down to Terrebonne, via Portland. It was pouring during the drive, but not long after we picked up Eric and Kelsey at PDX, things started to clear up. It was still quite cloudy and foggy on the Western side of Mt. Hood, but the Eastern side was dry as a bone, beautiful and sunny. As we drove across the plateau on that side, we all got more and more excited to arrive at Smith.

We made it to the Smith parking lot with enough daylight to head in and try out the rock on the Morning Glory wall. We were all surprised by the hollow, slightly slippery feel of the rock and definitely took some time to get used to it.

Over the next few days, we climbed all over Smith, including Christian Brothers, Morning Glory, Cocaine, Aggro, and Mesa Verde. Highlights for me were Toxic, Vomit Launch, Chicken McNuggets, Magic Light, Overboard, Barbecue the Pope, and Heresy.

Our last day was pretty cold and wet, but we still got out for a few climbs on the back side at the Mesa Verde wall. It was hard to pass up climbing the monkey face, but the weather wasn't looking good and we didn't bring any trad gear that day. Oh well. Next time.

Sleeping in a tent for a while at Skull Hollow and climbing every day made for some serious hunger. We had an incredible meal at the Deschutes Brewery and an amazing breakfast in Redmond the morning of the last day, when we woke to snow and rain completely soaking our little tent village.

It was a great trip and awesome to see Dale, Jake, Gracie, Kling, Joe, Chuck, Eric, Owen, and Kelsey, and get to meet Bret and Kate.