Alpine Climbing

I added a few more pictures to the Leavenworth gallery after another trip there with Al and Jason. What with that and a second improptu ascent of Heart of Gold / Prime Rib with Robert when the weather on Mount Stuart refused to cooperate I’m spending a lot of time on Leavenworth granite these days.

I’ve also updated the Favorites gallery with a bunch of pictures I picked out to have printed. This brings the total to over five hundred pictures in the climbing gallery.

It’s that time of year again. Winter is over and the snow has melted in Icicle Canyon so it’s time to commute to the “Bavarian Pillage” of Leavenworth and go cragging. Soon it’ll be time to sneak out of work early to go play at Index too.

I’ve added a Leavenworth photo gallery with some pictures from recent weekends. This year I inexplicably seem to be able to climb 5.10a slabs off the couch. Predictably I’m putting this down to better core strength from a year of CrossFit.

This can’t last but I’m going to make the best of it. You can expect stories of big falls and horrendous skin grafts all too shortly I’m sure.

So the weather here is pretty much terrible for climbing so that means more time for scanning…

• More favorites added.
• Photos from a trip to Mount Arapiles in Australia.

More gallery updates:

• Added a new gallery for my second Yukon trip in 1996 to the King George and Queen Mary peaks. This is a big gallery with fifty pictures!
• Finally added a picture of Paul K to the people gallery. This is long overdue as he and I have been on four major trips together.

There are now over four hundred photos in the gallery! Recent updates include:

• Added a favorites gallery. Only a few pictures so far, more to come.
• Updated the gallery for this summer’s Waddington trip and added more pictures.
• Fixed up the World Map page - which was having some “issues”.

There are more new pictures in the gallery:

• Summer ascent of the Backbone Ridge on Dragontail back in 2003.
• Two ascents of the East Face of Chianti Spire in 2003 and 2006.
• The NW Buttress of Slesse back in 2001.

These all appear on the World Map page. Next up… some more photos from the Yukon.

A trip to Florida, a very sketchy landing at Seattle airport, a five day power outage, and illness all caused me to be much more grateful for Christmas when it really did arrive and to not quite get around to blogging about anything.

All that is now behind us and the official winter climbing season in the Pacific Northwest is but a few days old. Let the games commence.

Thanks to CrossFit Eastside for getting the year off to a flying start with a workout that could only be described as “ugly”:

• 100 sit-ups
• 500m row
• 35 jump squats
• 25 hip extensions
• 25 push presses
• 20 T ball slams
• 20 box jumps
• 10 knees to elbows and pullups (alternating)
• 400m run

Sixteen minutes and change of “ugly” in fact. This year’s motto:

Pain now or pain later. You choose.

There are more new pictures in the gallery:

• Two climbs on Mount Combatant in 2004.
• A few photos of Mount Rethel in 2003.
• Ice climbing on the East Coast.
• North face of Mount Hood, OR.
• An ascent of Taseko Mountain, BC back in 2000.
• A trip to the Upper Tellot Gl. in 2003.

These all appear on the World Map page. If the Pacific Northwest weather continues I’ll be adding some more ice climbing pictures this weekend.

Way too nice a weekend to be writing much but here’s an article I wrote ages ago for High Mountain Sports magazine about a trip to Boliva I organized in the early 90s.

“Land of the Llama“

I’ve posted a full trip report for our “Fat Camp” trip to the Waddington Range. These are Simeon’s pictures, mine will be up as soon as I get those scanned too.