Thanksgiving and other randomness

This is going to be just a general blog about my life over the past month, but more specifically about my thanksgiving. I am pretty sure that most of you know, but I am working at Crystal Mountain, and it has been going great. I love ski patrolling, the work is fun, the people are great, and the skiing has not been awesome, but at least its skiing. I am living in the patrol dorm with 10 other patrollers. The living space is actually really big so it does not seem too crowded, except for in the morning when we are all trying to cook in the kitchen. But you get used to it. I am sharing a room with one other guy, Josh Smith, who I worked with this past summer on Rainier, and we get along pretty well. The work days are pretty long so we do not do a whole lot after hours. For the most part, I get off of work, make dinner, and go to bed around 8 or 9 every night; fairly exciting nightlife. The mountain is open everyday until the snow melts, so we all have to work on holidays. So we decided to have one big thanksgiving dinner. The dinner was fantastic, and I have off on Thursdays and Fridays so I was able to help with the setup and cooking. We had about 25 people in our house which is a bit much in the living room, but we made it work. There was so much food! We had a turkey, 2 hams, sweet potatoes, 2 different kinds of green bean casserole, 2 kinds of mashed potatoes, candied pecans, and many other things that I am sure I am forgetting right now. For dessert we had 10 pies including pumpkin, pecan, apple, blueberry, and peanut butter. Although it was definitely not home for the holidays, it was a really good thanksgiving. It was nice to be able to spend it with some new friends.

It has been quite awhile since my last post, so this will be a short summary of a lot of stuff. I have been climbing down in Oregon since the middle of September. I was training for a rock climbing guide course that actually just finished 2 days ago. The course went well and I learned so much. I was not climbing as well as I would have liked, but that is the way it goes. I was on the course with 2 good friends and co-workers, Austin and Erica. We had a great time together and we spent about 2 weeks straight together. Our instructor was Amos Whiting, a fully certified guide from Aspen Colorado. Amos was a great instructor and I hope will be a life-long friend. I had such a great time that I was really disappointed when it was finally over, and I am already really excited to continue towards full IFMGA certification. I am taking a couple of days off before heading southwest, probably towards Moab. I have a few friends down there already and more are on the way so it should be a good time. Kristina Rand came out to visit me for the last few days and it was so good to see her again. It is really nice to have family come to visit and to be able to share something that I love so much with family and friends. She left today to go back to Utah, but I might be stopping by to see her again since Salt Lake is right on the way to Moab. Then it will be back to Washington on the first of November for ski patrol training at Crystal Mountain. Right now my plan is to work at ski patrol for the winter and try to make enough money to pay for my next AMGA course in the spring. I am excited to be in one place for awhile this winter and not have to worry as much about where I might be sleeping the next night, even though that is kind of fun as well. I will try to do better at updating the blog, so feel free to check back periodically.

The past week I spent climbing at Washington Pass in the North Cascades. It was great to have some time off from work to relax and reconnect with my personal climbing. WA Pass is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to, it seems strange, but every time I go to a new place in Washington I seem to think that it is amazing. I spent 7 days climbing nonstop and I came back to Ashford completely exhausted but rested and replenished at the same time, climbing is strange like that. I have a lot of great pictures, but my camera and computer are at a friends house in Seattle so I will post some later when I go to pick up my computer. I arrived back in Ashford around 2 am and had to work the next day. George actually called me on the way back and asked if I could go up early the next day and climb the mountain to do some work on the route, so I woke up and did route work all day then met up with the rest of my clients that night. So I was fairly tired to start the climb and it went down hill from there. We had an epic summit day; no one else stood on top of the mountain that day except for my crew if that tells you anything. But we all made it up safely and made it down with 10 fingers and toes which is always good, and everyone was really happy with the trip which is even better. I think I have around 15 summits so far for the summer. I have only 4 trips up Rainier left and I am excited that the summer is almost over, it has been good, but I am ready to do some of my own climbing and and am even more excited for my Rock Course in October.

Alan comes to visit

This week I climbed Rainier with my cousin Alan Keller and 2 of his friends. Alan came up for the weekend and it was nice to have some family out to visit. We had a great trip and everyone got to the top which was nice for them. Then we all went back to Seattle and stayed at his friends house. He has a really nice house and it was fun to spend some time in the big city. We went out on his boat for awhile and cruised around the Sound, we went golfing in the morning, and then I was able to run some much needed errands. The season is starting to slow down a little bit for me which is nice. I had this week off, then another week off from August 17-24, then I work 2 more trips and its off to Kansas City to see the family. I am going to the University of Washington for a preview day on the 17th to see what there masters in education program is all about. It should be interesting and a step in the right direction if I want to go back to school. But all is well here in Ashford, it has been a little rainy recently which is nice because it had been so dry and hot for a few weeks.

Mt. Stuart Mini Epic

Last week some friends and I decided o go climb Mt. Stuart. Stuart is in the North Cascades about 5 hours from Ashford, it is one of the largest pieces of granite in the world, it is 9,400 feet tall, and the North Ridge is one of the 50 classic climbs in North America. So I got down from a summit climb on Mt. Rainier, drove the 5 hours to the trailhead, slept for a few, then started the hike in to the base of the route. We planned on doing it in 2 days, with the first day consisting of the approach and about half of the rock climbing, then we were going to bivy on the rock and finish it the second day. But as it turns out our plans changed after climbing for about 5 hours because one of the guys ending being a fairly slow climber. My partner Kelly and I ended up waiting for a couple of hours for the second team to catch up and when they did we decided it was best for them to go down because the speed at which they were moving was just too slow for comfort and it would have been quite unsafe for them to continue. So we rappelled down the ridge, which is not an established rappel route, until about 1 in the morning. We then bivied at the base of the climb for a few hours, then got up to walk out. But the fun was not over, because when we woke one of my fellow guides Mike woke up with some crazy sickness. He was throwing up all night and could not hold down any food or water. So we had a 6 hour walk to the car through trees, boulders, streams and all other sorts of fun, and Mike could hardly stand up without falling over. So we half walked, half carried Mike out the entire way. Oh yea, did I mention that the mosquitoes in that area are the worst they have been in years because of the heat wave we have been having in the northwest. So it was hot, and I was getting destroyed by mosquitoes the whole way, we did not get to summit, and Mike ended up in the hospital, so all in all it was another successful mountain climbing adventure. Really though, the climbing was spectacular and I cannot wait to go back! Unfortunately I had time on that trip because I had to get back to work the next day to climb Rainier again. So needless to say, I was fairly tired on that trip, but I got everyone to the top and back down safely, so all is well.

Busy Season

I am sorry that it has taken me so long to update my blog, but it has been quite hectic for the last few weeks. I have been working nonstop for around 17 days straight now, I am not exactly sure because it seems as though they are all running together now. I never know what day it is anymore, but it does not really matter when you are climbing everyday anyways. I have been having a great time and all of the climbs have been going really well. The only real thing to report is that I was able to help out a climb that was stuck on the summit in some pretty bad weather. I was leading a climb that ending up turning around at 12,800 feet but I kept on going to the summit to help out a team that was stuck in a really bad storm and was able to lead them down to relative safety. It was a great experience and the other guides and clients were extremely grateful for the help. They even took me out to dinner to say thank you, which is nice because a good meal is hard to come by in the mountains. So far I have summitted 7 of the 9 times I have been up which is a great success rate for this time of year. Last June the weather was miserable all month and nobody was summitting. So there is really not much news to report here other than that I am really busy. Right now I am sitting in the Alpine Inn which is where we base out of for the Emmons climb (which is a route up Rainier) and they have wireless internet so I am able to get some work done on the computer before I head up the mountain again tomorrow. I work a 6 day climb then I actually have 2 days off which I am planning on going to climb Forbidden Peak in the North Cascades and I am really excited about that. I am training for some guiding courses that I am taking in the fall so whenever I have days off I will probably be climbing. It sounds a little crazy, but I love it!

Liberty Ridge

I just got back from climbing Liberty Ridge. Liberty is one of the 50 classic climbs in North America and definitely deserves its fame. It is typically done in 3 or 4 days, but Austin and I did it in 2 long days. We got back late last night and I was completely exhausted. It took everything I had to just pick my feet up and keep walking. Overall the climb took us 38.5 hours which I was really pleased with. The entire route was challenging and very exposed. You had to be on your game the entire way because one slip would basically mean death, and since it was so steep and exposed no rope was required for most of the way. At the top of the climb is a few nice ice pitches, these were the crux, or hardest part, of the route. I really enjoyed leading the pitches. This was Austin's first time ice climbing and I think he enjoyed it as well. Then to top things off, the whole mountain was covered in clouds when we topped out, so we got to enjoy some brutal weather and complete white out navigation on the way down. But it was a great climb and I am so excited that everything went well and we got down safely. Right now I am relaxing at the office trying to recover because I leave for a guided trip up Mt. Rainier tomorrow. Life sure is busy this time of year, but it is so fun and I love every minute of it, well maybe I did not love getting pummeled by the wind and snow yesterday evening, but it is all okay now.