…beyond nice.

Last night was the first day of class for my glacier traveling class. Being the first day, it was mostly introductions with a quick lesson on the most important knot you have to learn how to tie. Being a rock climber, the figure-8 knot is a knot that I can tie in my sleep. The instructor went over the schedule and told us there will definitely be a Mount Rainier climb scheduled after the Mount Baker climb for those of us that are interested.

My buddy Daniel and I took this mountaineering course specifically for learning how to climb Rainier so I can’t tell you how excited we are that the class will lead us up there.

Yes, I know I’m behind in writing up about a couple trips. I do plan to do something about them…but I’m hungry right now.

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My company recently hired a new studio coordinator and she’s been putting pretty touches everywhere.  This morning I walked into the kitchen and noticed how nicely arranged all our snacks are when they used to be piled in cardboard boxes.

A couple thoughts came to me at that moment.  One, it never occurred to me that I can arrange my food all pretty-like and it brightens up the space, but even if it did, I would never do it.  Two, it must be a nice perk for guys with wives that likes to organize things like this, and I will never be privy to this.

I was complaining to my coworker about how I’ll never have a sweet wife that will pretty up my snack table at which point he said I could marry a nice metronome guy that could do the same.  I scoffed and said I doubt I could stay with a pansy guy that puts my food in linen lined baskets for long.  I’m quite okay with lamenting over the wife that I will never have.

A couple friends and I just signed up and paid for a mountaineering course.  It’s a two month program with a class every Tuesday and a weekend trip every other weekend.  At the end of it, we will climb Mount Baker, but my friends and I are really hoping we will be able to Mount Rainier before the summer ends as well.

The two guys have been training for last few months while I sat on my ass since my last hike of the year on December 31st:

The weekend before last, I went on my first hike of 2008.  I felt great and pushed myself as hard as I always do.  Two days later I was hobbling around and in a world of pain but loving every minute of it (I couldn’t tiptoe without crying like a little girl, but when I’m clinging for dear life while rock climbing, my legs can move every which way without hurting, go figure!)

Last weekend we went on a nice mild elevation gain (maybe 2000ft) hike with great distance (11-12 miles) for stamina building and it was just so wonderful.  I remember at one point I felt like calling all my friends and family and telling them I love them.  Hiking is some powerful drug.

We hiked to the top of Oyster Dome.  The hike was very easy, I didn’t even feel a muscle twitch the day after.  Most of the trail was snow covered but luckily the viewpoint was bare.  If you plan on hiking this anytime soon, bring gaiters and waterproof boots, there is much slogging through mushy snow.

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Sorry I had to walk away for a bit.  It could be because I’ve gotten fat and lazy, but it’s so much easier to blame it on you, that I’m going with that.  However, I’m trying very hard to get off the lazy couch and summer is approaching, so hopefully you’ll see more of me in less soon.

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Whenever I talk to my doctor about stuff like, how soon can I start exercising after donating blood or is it okay to do this type of exercise, they always tell me, “Listen to your body.” If I actively listen to my body I would be the world’s laziest tub of lard sitting in front of my TV or computer all the time watching some never-ending anime or Chinese soap. I swear my body purrs with joy and joyness when I’m lounging around watching every episode of Death Note with ice cream!
Just yesterday, on a fine Saturday morning, I figured it was time I get myself back into hiking shape, so I got up, made an omelet and got ready for quick hike up Mt Si. As I was shuffling around the kitchen I noticed my right knee was tweaking a bit, by the time the omelet was cooked I was moving with an all out limp. Have I been cranking up the resistance too high on the elliptical machine? I ignored my knee and got dressed for the hike. As I gathered random gear to prepare for possible snow at the top, I felt a side stitch. Seriously, body, WTF? I know I haven’t been working my abs or my cloits and dloits, and I know I didn’t rupture my appendix while eating brunch, so fuck off you lazy bastard.
I’ve been complaining about how there’s a lull in between backpacking season and snowboarding season, well I’ve decided it’s now boy season. Oh - there are the good bad and the ugly to report on.
Yes, I know…does anyone want to hear a girl drone on and on about boys (especially if the “girl” is a 30 something woman)? I’ve decided on this a while back, I’d rather hear about boys then weight gain in their thighs. Really, have you ever heard a girl that is clearly not on the verge of being slightly obese complain about gaining 2-3 lbs? It’s not a pretty sight and I barely ever have enough will to not punch them in the jaw, so why should I tempt you with such? So…tis the season of the boys.
I’ve also recently made peace with the idea that I’ve become a wino. How does one know when they’ve become a wino? Well, if you somehow end up at the grocery store…and you walk out with 3 bottles of wine and a variety of cheese, and you never intended to share that with anyone else – that could be a sign. I mentioned this to a buddy, and he said, well, it’s not so bad if you slowly drink each bottle over time. I stopped him and said, “No, no, it’s red wine, it’s not right to keep that stuff opened overnight.” Wino.

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Oi! My laziness knows no bounds! What is the point of my going to these magical backpacking destination and taking hundreds of pictures if I can’t be bothered to share them with others!?
Enchantments is often considered one of the most beautiful backpacking destination in Washington and if you’ve ever been there you’d probably agree. It’s so beautiful that it got too packed at some point and now there is a permit system in place to save this place from being over-used. Permit season ends October 15th so my friends and I have decided we’ll go there once a year when it’s open to everyone.
When we were there last year, we had clear blue skies every day and there was hardly a breeze in the air. It was the best weather one could hope for. In order to get to Lower Enchantment, we had to scramble up a steep section with large granite slabs, this section also known as “the wall”. While we scrambled up and down the “the wall” we talked about how suicidal it would be to attempt that same wall with snow on it. There was even a small spot where metal bars were attached to the granite slabs to reduce risk of injury.

This year, we knew we were in for some shitty weather. We expected some snow and knew that we might have to turn back at the wall (when we called the ranger station to check on conditions, they highly advised against going near the wall). There were four of us planning to go, Daniel, Fraser, Jason and me. Our fifth, Sto, dropped out because he didn’t have enough vacation days to cover this trip. The trip spans Friday October 19th to Monday the 22nd.
On Friday morning, we met at Fraser’s house at 8 and were down one Daniel because he caught the company flu. The three of us got to the trailhead by 11 and made our way toward our first destination 7 miles in, Snow Lakes.

The day started out nice and dry just like the trail, and then about 4 miles in, it started snowing HARD. By the time we got to our first camp, there was a good layer of snow everywhere. We set up camp, had some dinner and drinks and wandered around for a bit before bedding down for the night.

It was such good sleep to listen to snow softly fall on my tent.
The next day, we packed up and made our way to “the wall”. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit scared that my buddies would drag us into stuff that was way over our heads. I had horrific images of us being rescued from boulder ledges which made for sugary entertainment for the head while we slogged through the flat part of the hike. When we got to the wall, we found much of it covered in a good foot of snow which made finding the trial a bit more difficult, but at the same time, because the snow was so deep, it kept us in place just fine so we didn’t have to worry about sliding to our doom down various boulder fields.

We could tell we were the only foolhardy idiots to attempt this trip because we had to stamp down our trail through fresh snow. The hike up was grueling and mentally draining but god damned was it ever worth it.
Howling wind pushed us around once we got to the top, but we managed to drag ourselves over to Leprechaun Lake. We wandered around to ensure we had the best camp spot for view and wind shelter. Since we were the only ones there, we had all of Enchantments to choose from. We found a nice spot, set up camp and proceeded to eat and get drunk off our asses warm ourselves up. Because we had the place to ourselves, we shameless did our loud drunk talk until well past 1 in the morning.
The next morning we woke up and set off to check out all the lakes in Lower Enchantment. It snowed on and off all day.
To be continued…

Slide of hike here.

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I’m alive and well.  The trip was amazing, but it was quite different from how I remembered it.

Here’s a picture of Leprechaun Lake on October 21, 2006:

Then here’s the same lake from a different angle October 20, 2007:

I’ll do a proper write-up of the place when I’m not working my ass off.  Hope everyone else had a great weekend as well.

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Whoever you are that is in charge of weather for Seattle this year, you suck!  It’s the day before my annual backpacking trip, and there’s supposed to be a wind storm coming through and lights have been flickering at the office all day.  I had to work both days last weekend and I hear from people that the weather was fantastic?  Fuck you, you’re fired!
Less than a year ago, Seattlites scoffed at the idea of people being afraid of a little wind.  What wind coming this way?  We should all relax and try to harness some of that natural energy and do the earth a favor?  I’ll just go back to sipping my latte and toting my green bag to Whole Foods for some fine fresh produce.  Now we hear “wind storm” and people freak out, trample over each other to get to the power generators and stock up on Twinkies and bottled water.  During the last major storm, my girlfriend’s house was out of power for 2 weeks, she was 5 months pregnant at the time so she and her husband ran to her mom’s house.  When they went back to check on the house about a week after, there was a pool of blood in front of their fridge from the freezer thaw.
My trip is supposed to be 4 days/3 nights.  On the plus side, being out in the woods means I will not having to worry about trivial things like power outage, on the other side, I have to worry about other minor details - like whether or not my shelter will hold up in the storm.
Here’s another prayer for better weather.  In case you worry about me being out there, I’m about 4/5 of the way through the last Harry Potter book, I’ll be back soon enough to finish that damned thing.

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My backpacking buddies and I made a pact to return to the most beautiful backpacking destination in Washington every year the weekend after permit season is over. That weekend is this coming one. I’ve been wavering on whether or not I should go because the weather has been biting cold and rainy and our project is going Alpha this Friday. I assumed half the backpacking crew would be on the same fence because of the weather, but we met up during lunch today to discuss trip plans and everyone was gung-ho over the trip, which got me equally giddy in no time.
The last time I was this giddy was…oh gee, for the last trip, so it seems like the only thing that gets me excited these days is dragging a ridiculously heaving pack up some mountain in freezing ass rain – glutton for punishment that I am. I’ve been in a bit of an odd mental funk these days and no amount of partying or hanging out with friends was able to shake me out of it. This mental funk is something that I think hits a lot of the 30 something crowd…I call it “The Beginning of Feeling Mortal.”
Hitting 31 was when I first felt a twinge of understanding that I will one day die from old age, prior to that, death by aging is a concept as foggy as counting to one trillion. Mind you, I understand I’m still far from “old age” but it’s just no longer a number that I can’t count to.  With that feeling came a need to make peace with the idea of death, which led to the need to constantly over-analyze life – to question every moment because “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Then the more I questioned life on making peace with death, the more I came across the answer of simply stop pulling myself out of moment and to live a good life…but if a good life requires examining, I’m back to square one.
Obviously, I’m going crazy here and I’m two steps away from committing myself, but before I do that I have important unfinished business to attend to, like finishing Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. It’s so damned good that I’m a little pissed that I didn’t think of half the puzzle concepts they came up with. I’m a bit irked by how many times they make you go back to the Ocean King dungeon but I freaking love the boomerang. They should consider renaming “Legend of Zelda” to “Legend of Cutting Grass” because that’s all that you really do in all the games.

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Sorry for my complete lack of posting, I’ve been busy drowning my sorrow, now that backpacking season is officially over and snowboarding season has yet to come, in much too much alcohol and definitely too much anime.

I’ve taken up dorking out by watching every episode of Bleach from start to 143 in the last week.  I’ve been told I should always watch Death Note and Shaman King, so here’s to having zero life.

Things will be a bit quiet around here because I plan on jumping back to my old hobby of reading snippets of too many books and never completing one.

In the mean time, I hope everyone is having a great autumn and may there be many hot slutty costumed girls in your near future.

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It’s rough making a trip to climb a mountain and to return without ever seeing the mountain. The weather this past weekend was just unforgivably bad. There were short moments where the sun broke through the fog and we could see ten feet beyond where we stood, but we never caught a glimpse of Glacier Peak and only got as far as White Chuck Glacier.
On Friday, we got off a slightly late start because Fraser and Daniel had to work, but they did leave early enough that we were on the road by 4. Traffic was already building by then but the sun was shining and we were damned happy. Then after an hour and a half, the clouds started rolling in, and by the time we stopped for food before heading to the trailhead, the sky was dumping rain.
We got to the trailhead around 7:30 and groaned because the rain was not letting up. Just getting out of the car, to grab our packs and put on our boots, got us good and soaked.The chilly night air wasn’t exactly bringing joy to our lives either.

It was completely dark out by the time we got on the trail. We knew our destination, Mackinaw Shelter, was 5.3 miles away with a mere 1000ft elevation gain, so we estimated it would take us 2.5 hours to get there. It took us exactly 2.5 hours. It was a little after 10 p.m. and everyone else was in their tents fast asleep so we tried to be somewhat quiet in the drunk bastard sneaking in the house sort of way, which is to say we stumbled around in the dark, tripped over some shit and cursed loudly. There were pots and pan strewn all around the shelter and inside the shelter hung what looks like a hundred food bags. I told my buddies that there had to be an Ewok village camping in the area.
We tried to find a spot furthest from all the tents to set up camp and ended up in the middle ground. Fraser dropped his pack and found some rum to help warm us up. We drank a bit and started pitching our tents. Fraser rummaged through his stuff, gasped in surprise and said something to Daniel who started laughing his ass off. Daniel came over and told me Fraser forgot his tent so there’s a possibility that the two of them might have to share Daniel’s tiny 2 man tent. I commented that if they wanted to have gay sex, they should just go right ahead and not make up shoddy excuses for that.  Luckily Fraser brought his rainfly which could be pitched as a freestanding shelter, which didn’t help as much in blocking out the cold and would be worthless if rain started collecting underneath him, but it held.
Fraser is our most veteran backpacker, but in his recent effort to go extremely lightweight backpacking, he keeps leaving important things out, one time it was gas for cooking…another time it was water, now he forgets his tent altogether.
The rain slowed to a drizzle and I slept like a rock. I slept so well I didn’t want to get out of bed the next morning.

I stayed in until I heard Fraser and Daniel chatting with the leaders of the Ewok village. It turns out they were part of a wilderness school (NOLS), with 2 people leading a pack of 9 boys. There were a couple other smaller parties at this small camping area which lead to the ending of Star Wars feel.
We ate some breakfast and packed up. The rain had slowed down considerably, which made packing much less painful but a wet tent does add weight to my already stupid heavy pack. I had around 39lbs at the start of the trip, with the extra rain weight; I probably carried 40lbs for most of the trip, which was back breaking. From that camp we started climbing toward White Chuck Pass, and what a climb it was. The weather started like it could be sunny, but as we climbed, it turned to rain then around 5000ft, the rain turned to frozen pellets. Depending on the moment, sometimes we could see a bit across the valley other times we could barely see ten feet in front of us.

As we got closer to the pass, the wind started picking up and it hurled ice pellets at our face while trying to topple us over constantly. We got to the top of the saddle where we had to drop down into to get to the basin (our next camping destination) before White Chuck Glacier. We stood at the top of the saddle for a moment wondering if we read the map wrong because the path down was ridiculously steep and we couldn’t exactly see that far ahead of us with the thick fog. We eventually figured that we were on the correct path and we simply had to drop down the steep path made up of loose scree (I think we all thought about what hell it would be to try to go back up this scree, but didn’t want to give it too much thought).
After we got in the basin, we wandered around to look for a good camp spot. Everything that was damp from the rain the night before was now frozen solid. I was feeling extremely cold and instead of properly fighting it off by cooking some warm food, I set up tent, had some drinks and cookies and went to bed. Snow was sticking due to the coldness.

Warm bed…nice. Fraser was a bit annoyed that both Daniel and I decided to bunk down early instead of staying up to eat and chat…we were hoping to get some rest and if the weather was decent the next day, we could make an attempt for summit.
The weather was far from decent the next day. It was soooo cold I did not want to crawl out of my warm cocoon.

It snowed on us on and off throughout the night and that stayed with us late into the next morning. Randomly the sun would peek out for a minute like it would make a break for it, then the fog would roll back in for a good ten minutes. It continued like that for the remainder of the day. None of us knew the route or mountain well enough to make a summit attempt with that kind of weather. We sighed a lot, made some breakfast and discussed our options.

In the end, we decided to do a little day hiking up to White Chuck Glacier to at least check out the path for our future trip out, then pack and leave.
The day hike was a nice stretching of feet without a pack. Visibility remained an on/off issue during our short hike which made us happy with our choice to not make a summit attempt.

I was still a bit miffed at the weather backhanding us like that, but what can ya do?The area around the glacier felt like we could have been on the moon…there were just ice, foggy lakes, gushing rivers and rocks.

After wandering around for a couple miles, we went back to our camp and tried to motivate our frozen asses to pack.
Then we had to climb back up that wall of hell that we fell down from.

Ugh, did that wall ever suck.

Still, after that wall, it was only 11 miles or so of running back out. We took a short sugar break back at the shelter, I checked my watch, it was 5:57p.m. I figured it would take us 2 hours to get out. The last mile out was so hard, I was slowly going crazy with only my watch to keep me in check. We got to the trailhead at exactly 2 hours.
God that was a good trip, but I definitely need to work on getting my pack weight down. Ideally a person should carry 1/4 their weight…maybe 1/3 at most…I weigh 108-110, so I should try to keep it 36 lbs or below. The idea is that your leg is used to carrying your weight, so you shouldn’t go too much more than a certain fraction of it. Trust me, every single pound beyond 36 lbs was felt.

It’s too bad it’s already fall and the weather has not been improving, else I would probably call in sick just to make another attempt at this…alas, this probably will not happen until next summer. Still, if you like a good dose of pain, I highly recommend this place.

Slide of hike here.

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