Restless Adventurer

6 May: Bonus pics for you

Sorry no updates from the weekend. I had wanted to get back out into the mountains but I sort of had a lot to do around the apartment still and frankly it was easier to be a little lazy. Do not dispair. I have a little treat for you. It isn't new but I never advertised it before. Perhaps you've noticed the changing picture in the upper left? I've thumbnailed the whole directory of them. My worldwide adventures

28 Apr: North Star Mountain (13614 ft / 4150 m): almost

I slept out at the trailhead and got a decent start for this mountain. The plan was to do the East Ridge route and the weather looked good. The ridge is over a mile long and a serious time committment. The higher up I traveled though the windier it became. It wasn't horrible wind but by the time I reached the upper mountain (13,200 ft) I had developed second thoughts about dancing along a narrow snow arête for hours with strong winds and unexpected gusts. It was too easy to imagine myself being pushed off the ridge and that first step is a doozy. Another time. The photo shows the east ridge from where I turned around. The summit is the rocky point on the left. The "haze" on the ground is actually wind driven snow blasting toward me. It is approximately a four hour round trip from where I was to the summit and back.

27 Apr: Drift Peak (13900 ft / 4238 m)

The third time was the charm with this peak. The weather was excellent and the snow conditions were fairly safe. I stayed over B&A's Lakewood itinerant flop house which put me about 20-25 minutes closer to my destination. This time of year is great because you don't have to start super early in order to finish before afternoon thunderstorms roll in. I took advantage of that with a pretty late start. I'm getting a little tired of the Mayflower Gulch trailhead but the trip was a good one. I made the summit without incident.

Enjoy my Drift Peak Photos.

Home Sweet Home

I have a new place. I had been graciously hosted by Bernie and Adria while I was looking for work in Colorado. Now with a new job comes a new apartment. I'm about 3.5 miles from work and sort of across the street from my consulting firm. It's a good area not far at all from where I used to live before I moved away. I've got a lot of work to do yet to make it presentable.

Oh yeah, I got a new programming job. It will be just weekend trips for me for awhile but there is no off hours support with this job, not even a rotating pager. Cool.

13 Apr: Grizzly Peak (13427 ft / 4093 m)

Finally I got this peak. It was my first attempt but I had planned to do it two other times but variously didn't like the weather or would be starting too late. This day the weather was unusually good - supurb even. Normally winds are high along the continental divide (as you can see from the huge cornices) and visibility is often reduced. I do have some pictures to share from this snowy spring trip. I met two others and a dog going up the ridge and enjoyed talking to them between little breaks. Then the dog fell into a crevasse in the snow providing a lesson to us all. It wasn't a glacial crevasse obviously but it looked somewhat like one. I suppose it is an older portion of the cornice that either pulled away from the rock or formed a moat then was covered again by snow.

Those 3 decided to turn around below the final summit push but I soldiered on up the slope after scoring Martin's exta water. Awesome. It was only another 600 vertical feet but I didn't realize how far I had gone when I sat down for a snack break. When I started moving again I was on the summit in 5-10 minutes. The weather was super nice but I only spent 20 minutes relaxing because there are some pretty significant humps on the ridge that I would have to ascend on the way back. It makes this peak kind of a pain in the butt.

Mountain News

No I haven't just been sleeping away every day. I've done a lot of mountain trips but conditions haven't always been favorable. Successful summits were limited to glorified hikes/snowshoeing on lower elevation peaks around Boulder or Evergreen:
Squaw Mtn (11,486 ft),
Mt. Sanitas (6,863 ft),
Bear Peak (8,461 ft),
and South Boulder Peak (8,549 ft).
I also did a successful practice solo aid climb of Big Dihedral (YDS 5.8) on North Table Mountain. Unsuccessful climbs include Drift Peak (13,900 ft) pictured here, Eldorado Mountain (8,335 ft), Twin Cones (12,060 ft). The first two I had to turn around on because of snow; the last because I started at the wrong trailhead. D'oh! Hey it wasn't marked and the people standing there said I was in the right place. I've also driven out to a few more trailheads and decided not to give it a go due to weather or time. North Star Mountain and Grizzly Mountain are two good examples of that. They'll have to wait for another day.

For at least the next couple weeks my mid-week mountain trips will have to be curtailed because I have a bit of part time work in the evenings. I'm still interviewing for something more substantial. These last couple weeks especially have been very productive on the job front.

Bernie has some Denali updates and a new article, Would you carry about 50 pounds of food up a mountain?, up on his hometown newspaper. Matt also was interviewed for SL native climbing to new heights.

Denali in June?

Just a quick blurb to say that I am officially a member of Team Powersauce. We registered as a 4 person climbing team with Denali National Park. The deadline was fast approaching so we had to do it soon. I haven't talked about it much if at all on the site because my near future is unknown. The other members know that I may have a new job and not be able to go (losing that $25 deposit - oh noes) but are happy to have me as a hopeful. Matt already made me a tee-shirt. :) The name Powersauce was my idea and Bernie liked it because we are both Simpsons nerds. It comes from an episode in season 9 (King of the Hill) where Homer climbs Springfield's highest mountain, the Murderhorn, and is sponsored by Powersauce Bars. Team Powersauce 2008: Bernie, Matt, Melissa, and G.

08 - 10 Mar: Igloo 3 Return and Atlantic Peak (13,841 feet)

Saturday I decided to take three days and head back to Mayflower Gulch, better known as the place where we built the 11 foot igloo. I had three goals and succeeded at two. 1) find, dig out, and evaluate the old igloo, 2) climb Atlantic Peak by the West Ridge, and 3) climb Drift Peak also by its West Ridge. I have a strong suspicion that those ridges up high are glacially carved arêtes and down low are lateral moraines from the last ice age. Ridge routes are good this time of year because it keeps you out of avalanche terrain.

Day 1: I found the old igloo easily enough, but it was in sad shape. There had been some warm days combined with the direct sunlight. The bottom 2-3 levels had deformed under the heat and weight as I found out after a little digging in the entrance tunnel. The lower levels had folded in so both the height and the inside diameter had dramatically decreased. For me it was still usable though. I spent some time piling snow on the exterior for sun protection.

Day 2: I didn't get far on Drift Peak. After about only 45 minutes I was at timberline on Gold Hill (part of the west ridge) trying to figure out how to reach the ridgetop just a short way above. Most of the ridge was heavily corniced and there were large deposits of windblown snow - potentially quite dangerous. I trudged through the trees a ways but soon I had spent over a couple hours of effort since leaving camp and was actually farther away than when I started. Screw that. I went back down into the basin and checked out some of the old mine buildings.

Day 3: Read about Atlantic Peak here.