Mt Tuk., Summer '11

Sorry for the delay between posts...I'll try and back-update with some photos and stories of adventures this summer. It's been jam packed since I recovered from my broken hand...which made typing hard and caused me to lose interest in updating this blog.

Quite a few cool adventures have taken place since the last entry. Moab is a pretty amazing place. My friend Krysta and I hiked Mt Tukunikivatz, aka, Tuk, a 12,500 ft peak north of town. Here’s a shot of it from when I first arrived to town, back in April. 

Early August, and the snow was gone. We got up early and drove around the south side of the mountain to around 10,000 ft above sea level. Here’s a view of the peak from Medicine Lake, at about the elevation we left the car. Our route went up the sub-peak on the right, and then followed the right ridgeline to the summit. For most of the time we hiked up through alpine meadows, occasionally stopping to enjoy the wildflowers and crazy views of surrounding peaks and the burning desert plateau below us.

At the top, we had to hike/scramble up some rather loose scree. A fall would have been ill-advised in this area, but we moved carefully and it didn’t feel sketchy.

At the summit, we found a little shelter that had been dug into the scree, and a geocache, a small box filled with various objects. Geocaching is a techno-centered treasure hunt hobby where people create little stashes and publish the GPS coordinates online. I took a UT conservation corps sticker, and left a couple of granola bars.

Below in the distance, Castle Valley could be seen to the North. The towers in this shot will hopefully be the subject of a future dirtbag adventure…stay tuned.

 

AK Part 3 -- Turnagain Pass Backcountry

After 3 days at the resort, I was ready for something a little more adventurous. We loaded up Brian's snowmachine and headed up to Turnagain Pass, where we thought there might be some good snow to be shredded. There wasn't much to be found, but we had a couple of days of super fun hiking in some crazy terrain!

Our goal for the first day was Pyramid Peak, which was visible from the drive from Anchorage to Girdwood. Our group was me, Brian and Elias Holt, a ski instructor friend of Brian's. To get there, we planned on snowmachining over a ridge, down the other side and across a couple miles of flat terrain before hiking the mountain. Unfortunately, a combination of a low-power snowmachine and an even lower operator experience level stymied us, and we couldn't make it all the way up the ridge on the machine. Given we'd gotten a kinda late start, we decided on hiking up and unfortunately realized that without mechanical assistance or splitboads, our goal of hitting Pyramid wouldn't be attainable. We ended up having a great time hiking around, finding some fun lines to shred on some decent snow. Pictured here is one of the lines we took, down from the little peak through the open field on the right side of the trees.

Even though the snow wasn't amazing and we didn't hit our objective, it was an awesome day hanging out in the mountains, hiking around with some cool people and drinking in the awesome energy of the mountains that went on forever in all directions. Even when the riding isn't as good, a day exploring in the backcountry beats all but the best conditions at a resort. Although you have to ride more conservatively, taking into account where you are, how stable the snow is, inconsistent conditions, unfamiliar terrain, it's a great mental and physical challenge. It takes patience to point yourself up hill and trudge for an hour through a featureless snowfield. I don't mind trudging though, it's a nice way to center your mind. You end up spending a lot of time looking at the snow, too, appreciating every aspect of its being--how the wind moves across it creating little dunes, where the surface crust is hard enough to support your weight and where you will sink through, the way its consistency changes thoughout the day as the sun moves from aspect to aspect. You have to like hiking to snowboard the backcountry: you spend a hundred times as long trudging as you do with your board strapped on.

Since there aren't any designated runs or ski area boundaries, it's up to you to decide where to go and which line you want to shred. There's an infinity of possibilities, limited only by your legs, lungs, and routefinding abilities.

The next day we hiked another peak across the road, called Magnum. It's the ridge on the right in this picture. We hiked up and dropped back down on the sunny side, far right and kinda out of the shot.








It was a long hike, and visibility was bad, but it was an awesome spot to be. Riding down in an infinite field of white was pretty cool too -- white snow, white sky, white light all round, blowing snow obscuring all ability to judge terrain features.



The flat light and inconsistent snow surface led to a lot of tomahawking: where the nose of your board suddenly drops under the surface of the snow, catapulting your body forward. It's akin to going over the handlebars of your bike, but way more fun. That's where the snow on my head came from.

Dirtbag Adventurer finds gainful employment

So I got a job working for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources - Moab Native Aquatics. I'll be floating the Green, Colorado and San Juan rivers studying endangered fish for the summer. Two nights ago I drove from Bellingham to Salt Lake, slept 4 hrs, and then drove on to Moab. I was tired but stoked to be there.

The dirtmobile held up to the trip with flying colors. 

The next day, Mark Rineer, one of my new housemates, took me trad climbing up Potash road, about a 15 minute drive from our house. Here he is leading 'Bad Monkey Roof' an intimidating crack line that took me a little bit of flailing to accomplish on a top-rope.

AK Part 2 Saunas, supermoons, shredding

The night I arrived in Girdwood, Bryan Gehring already had an adventurous scheme in mind. We went to the Baña (sp?), a little sauna built into a hillside in the forest. There was an old oil drum on its side through the front wall that served as a heat source. It had been built by some open-minded girdwood residents and was open for use by anyone. We spent a few minutes gathering firewood and stoked it up. A gurgling stream ran next to it, and we drew water from that in milk jugs with the tops chopped off for pouring on the

rocks atop the stove and on our own steamy bodies. A great welcome to the last frontier. That night was the supermoon, an extra large full moon -- rumor had it the moon was closer to the earth than it had been in 30 years, and its brilliance lent a mysterious and magical energy to the evening.

The next 2 days I spent working on my goggle tan at Alyeska mountain resort. Unfortunately, the area hadn't received any new snow for almost a month previous to my arrival, so conditions ranged from bulletproof ice to extremely crusty. Still, two days of snowboarding with beautiful clear skies and perfect visibility of the surrounding epic Alaskan peaks is nothing to complain about for any reason. I got a decent discount from Alyeska as well due to my part time 'employment' as a snowboard instructor at Baker. The terrain at Alyeska was awesome: steep, wide alpine bowls, exposed rock faces, crazy undulating gullies. I would love to ride there during a better snow season (this one was alyeska's worst on record). Still, ripping fast on wide, long smooth groomers is pretty fun. There's a beautiful freedom from thought that wraps your conscious mind like a mist when you're doing 40 mph on hard packed snow. Crashing or making a mistake is not, cannot be in your mind. You rely on the triple marriage between you, your board, in its constancy and the uniform, smooth surface of the snow. Existence takes on a surreality. Occasionally, when I feel and hear the sleeves of my jacket whipping in the wind, I am reminded of the speed at which I travel and the possible consequences of a bad wreck. I release these thoughts, for if I acknowledge them they will take on lives of their own and work to turn themselves into reality. slide back into unconsciousness.

AK part 1

So your dirtbag correspondent just returned from a 10-day Alaska snowboarding/snowmobiling extravaganza. Writing this post, he sits at Cafe Vita in cloudy ol' Seattle with a blown mind and jellied legs. Alaska demands more than 10 days, and he already plans on returning next season to hike and shred more big mountain lines.

This trip is going to take more than 1 post...so hold yer horses, here's a little bit to get you going until I get the time/motivation to write about the rest of it.

Thanks to a favor from a good friend, I scored big on my flight from Seattle to Anchorage (round trip: $130), but I did have to fly standby. Scheduling myself for the earliest flight possible I lurked around the ticket counter, making it on to the plane at the last second. The other benefit to waking up at 3:50 AM to get to the airport on time was this view from the plane window as we descended towards Anchorage: clear skies, and sunrise washing the Chugach mountains pink and gold. I was instantly stoked to get intimate with those peaks:

After landing, I wandered around Anchorage for a few hours waiting for Brian Gehring, my snowboarding co-conspirator and dirtbag-at-large. I walked the three miles out to Earthquake park along a peaceful, wooded cross-country ski trail. Weary of carrying my heavy gear, I decided to thumb back to town. I didn't wait too long -- the fifth or sixth car to pass by gave me a taste of Alaskan hospitality when the guy picking me up took me to his friend's house for some tasty treats.

Back into town, I waited around a little longer for Bryan, who had graciously offered to come to the big city and pick me up. I hopped into his truck and we ripped off down the Seward highway towards Girdwood, a funky small alaskan town consisting of the Alyeska Mountain Resort. The scenery of coastal alaska boggles the mind. 5000 ft peaks rise straight from the ocean, which, when the tide is out, is a hellish mass of rime-encrusted ice boulders. Across the ice-boulder-field of the inlet could be seen Pyramid peak, which will figure into a later blog post.

Enough for now. More to follow in a later post!

-DA

Mazama Rocks

A late post, but a good one to start things off with.

Goat Wall, Mazama WA

Last september, Billy Ray and I cruised over WA SR20 in the cherry tomato. We arrived in Mazama, more of a region than a town, after dark and set up our tents in a some trees next to a field. After a little beer drinking and a quick session on the small boulders by the camp site, we turned in to prepare ourselves for the next day's battle. As we drifted off, visions of our quest quest swam in my brain. Goat wall, almost a thousand feet of low-angle to vertical granite loomed above us in the starlight, still unseen. The route we planned on following the next day, Prime Rib (5.9, 11p) was the longest I'd ever attempted, and one of the longest sport climbs in the Cascades. What was the rock like? Did I have the endurance to climb 11 pitches, even on relatively moderate terrain? What were our options for the rappel? Would I freak at the exposure? How would my partner react? Alone in my tent, camped in a place I hadn't seen by daylight, on the rugged, dry, unwelcoming eastern slope of the range, I felt my confidence wain.

But inertia was with us. I woke up still a little jittery, but with fires fully stoked. Oatmeal and single-cup drip coffee, and we were ready to go. We had to fuck around with some gear, and mash uphill for an hour to get to the granite buttress, and didn't end up getting on the route until 11 AM or so. Bad form, and we'd pay for it later. Prime Rib is an 11 pitch sport climb. For you non-climbers, this means that someone has to climb up part of a rope-length, establish a belay anchor, hopefully on a ledge, and belay up his partner to the ledge, bringing up the rope. We did this 11 times to climb this route.

Here Billy is clipping a bolt. The protection on this climb consisted completely of pre-placed metal rings drilled into the rock using expansion bolts designed for attaching things to concrete. At each bolt, the leader clips a 'quickdraw', or 2 carabiners connected with a short loop of webbing. You can see how this works in the bottom left of the above photo. Then, the climber clips the rope through the other 'biner on the quickdraw, protecting himself from falling. As Billy is doing here, you keep doing this as you climb up to limit your fall potential. Since the protection on the climb consisted only of these pre-drilled bolts, it is called a 'sport' climb to distinguish it from traditional climbing in which climbers place and remove their own protective gear as they climb, leaving the rock unscarred. Traditional climbing is more cerebral, more elegant, more adventurous, more scary, much much more expensive.

I won't spray about the trials and tribulations of each pitch. All had well spaced bolts, and fun exposure. Belay ledges were comfy and large for the most part. The final pitch was a real treat, the most challenging of the climb. A couple of moves around a short overhang with a huge chasm to the left were the some of the most psychologically difficult I've ever done, given my exhaustion, the exposure, the waning light and the closeness of our goal. An exciting climax to the climb. We topped out to views of the Eastern North Cascades silhouetted by a westerly sun.

We didn't have long at the top. Losing light, we began rappelling like mad to descend the route. On our 6th rappel, we were in total darkness. Tossing the rope down where I hoped we had climbed up, I kicked off the wall and down in search of the next bolted rappel station. I swung down past a large overhang, my feet scraping lichen off the underside. Approaching the end of the rope, I considered my situation. I couldn't climb up past the overhang, and the fact that the lichen hadn't been worn off by previous climbers meant that we were off route and possibly totally fucked. I made out a ledge to the left, and managed to reach it by running along the wall, swinging myself like a pendulum. I didn't recognize the ledge, and wasn't sure what to do or where to go. I yelled to Billy, "hey, i think we're off route...hang on a sec while I check this ledge out". The night wind, laughing, threw my words down the methow valley. "What?" came a yell from above.
"Wait! Don't rappel!"
"WHAT?"
"DO NOT RAPPEL! I THINK I'M OFF ROUTE!"
"WHAT?!"
"DO NOT RAP DOWN!!"
"OK, RAPPELLING!"

ah fuck. here he came. At least he had the backpack, and inside it a headlamp. After a little scramble-exploring of our ledge system, we realized we had just ended up about 50 yards right of the next set of anchors. We were back on the route and totally fine, thanks to that headlamp. The next 4 rappels we did were in total darkness. I've never been so happy to be off of a climb. Lessons learned: bring a headlamp. Get on the route early. Think about the season and the amount of daylight available.

All in all an awesome trip. Goat Wall has a bunch of other cool multipitch sport lines on it, most more challenging than the route we did. I hope to return there someday and lay them to waste in a brutal multi-day siege of bolt clipping and finger destruction.

dirt chronicles is born

I'm opening this blog in the interests of people who know me, whom I've loved and lived with, known and encountered. It's also for myself, to serve as an organized journal and photo-record of my adventures. I want to record and share my adventurous life below the poverty line. While I'm not a true dirtbag -- I have a house and couple of regular money-making gigs -- I'm certainly climbing, hiking, camping, skiing, snowboarding, and traveling much more than my bottom line might suggest. I keep the overhead low. My time is valuable to me, and I want to spend it my way.

This blog is for my east coast friends and family living lives far away from their dirtbag adventurer. I hope some other people see it too, and it inspires them to leave their misconceptions about how much outdoor recreation costs, get outside, get creative and get gnarly in their own way.