High pressure, low danger, terrible snow....Jackson, WY

Beautiful views

The snow looked good, but it wasn't

Wicked icy conditions. I cramponed down the whole thing (still fun)

Super cool to be in that crazy conglomerate amphitheater! Reminded my of Hyalite

30 Bulls

catch a wave...

....with some help from my buddies in the Allman Brothers Band

WY sessions

Little tardy on this post, but...Over the fall I was blessed with some good times with great friends in the great state of Wyoming! (and the kinda great state of Colorado)...I've always loved visiting the cowboy state, with it's amazing and desolate landscape... one day sessions abounded at the South Platte, Eldo, Vedauwoo, Devils Tower  and Tensleep.

My engineering training has taught me that cement undergoes strength retrogression in high temperature conditions....unfortunately the same thing happens to climbers under aging, busy-engineer conditions. I took lots of pictures and did lots of belay duty on my travels:

The Voo

Tevor getting up in it on Middle Parallel Space (.9)

Nick on The Grand Traverse (Vedauwoo version)

Ethan lookin solid on The Great White Behemoth (.12)

 Annie psyched on dolomite

Trevor crushing his inner demons in the Denver area

Pat going for a ride

My favorite image from the sessions

D-Tow

MJ psyched on the tower

My hands hurt after a near send (ya right!) of Mr. Clean (.11)

Winter came quickly and I did some unsuccessful hunting and skiing in the bridgers....Summer will be back soon enough.

Full Swing

Winter is here, and conditions are just great.... Bridger Bowl opens for shred-business tomorrow. The stoke is high.

Images:

 Meadow skippin fun

 GB blows her ears back!

 snAlex rips!

 Dave the Wave schmears!

The time is here, too bad I wont return to sw mt til january. have fun out there

Phat-irons

Hanging out in Boulder is super crunchy...right when I dropped into the valley from Denver today "Scarlet Begonias" started coming thru the radio. I was psyched and stepped on the gas, waving goodbye to all the little eichmanns on I-25....grateful to be in an awesome climbing spot, and dead set on soloing some of the moderate classics. 

                                           Paragliders buzzed us on the route. They had a great flight

 Soloing the third flatiron. Can you say "jugs"?

Climber topping out the second flatiron

The awesome third flatiron. The standard route goes right up under the C in the CU painted on the face. Incredible rock...this face has thousands of holds, and nearly every one is bomber!

I blitzed a few routes and hi tailed it back to Denver, just as "Ripple" started playing thru the radio. Crunch-tastic...

Williston, ND (expand your mind, your gut will follow...)

Many of you may know that I have relocated to the oil boom town of Williston, North Dakota. I am working for an oilfield service company that you have probably heard of, and things are going well. The town is a pretty average place in the beautiful high prairie, but it did take some adjustment coming from the Land of the Ice and Snow. To fit in with the influx of roughneck rig hands, I was immediately issued a tribal band tattoo, sleeveless no fear hoody (reveals the tat), and camo rimmed 90's era foakleys (reflective). My gut expansion program (GEP) is going well...I have been able to mix gas station coffee with with the mandatory nacho cheese drip to improve viscosity and absorption qualities. Other engineering innovations will soon follow. My facial hair already grows into a natural goatee, so that is good.

Now that I have the proper look nailed, its time to loose the mountain bro-speak that I have become accustomed to. What I have always known to be a girth hitch is now a "choke hold"and carabiners are, of course, "lifting clips." Slings are still "slings" but they now support many more orders of magnitude of mass, and are much more sun bleached and corroded.

In all seriousness, it is great to do some hard work and make a little money after 12 years of scraping by. No more living off dumpster diving and deer tendons, although I will always look back on those times with a giant smile. I'm on a gravy train with biscuit wheels, which helps with my GEP. Today I swung the Hammer of the Gods under the blazing sun, and it occurred to me that I am controlling the means of production. We are Your Overlords. Ayeeeyaaaaaa!

harvest time

Since my last post, I have been on many adventures....I did not write about all of them due to becoming a bit un psyched about blogging/spray-lordism! But alas, I will be posting periodically because, after all, this blog is about adventure and a little science thrown in for good measure. What this blog will never be about: smug judgementalism (fucking lame), mystical revelations about life and truth (I'm no philosopher), smack talking because I climb a number grade harder than you (I don't climb that hard)...etc

LATE May brought me to Yellowstone park for some inshredible powder ripping with Nick, Kate and Adam. Nick is always so stoked!! I find that the most talented riders and adventurers out there are also beaming a positive psych...People that i know who embody this: Matt Shortland, Kelsey Boleski, Peter Redmon, Neil Kauffman, Joel Kauffman, Trevor Bowman, Peter Ramos, Tom Kingsbury,  Pat Kingsbury, Chris Schafer, Becca Lesure, Liz Rocco, Nick Stayner, Kate McDevitt, Matt Johnson, Jen Womack, Ethan Edwards, Mike McClure... and the list goes on. What these people have done in the mountains would blow minds, but more importantly, I call them friends and want to hang out with them.

Anyways ...At Sylvan Pass in Jellystone (shhhhh)  we got to ski the north couloir on top notch peak, and logged about 10k of pow over two days.... June: 8 (straight) days of climbing in the crushingly awesome city of rocks with Trevor, Catherine and the long lost Bryan Schmitz. My proudest climb would have to have been the Interceptor (soft for the city .11a) once hang ;)  The spring could not have been better, and now that summer has rolled around I am once again psyched...on skiing? The late season harvest is on! Yep I had one great day (6 laps) at b tooth pass, WY, and last weekend I was able to haul my heavy skis up to the great one for 2 laps, a line that i have skied a few times, but still never gets old.... I believe I (along with Georgia Brown) got the season's first descent of the great one on October 12th, and I was happy to return and find a phat summer snowpack. Great creamed-corn conditions prevailed and I was able to ski quite fast....video link:

https://vimeo.com/45002247

Today my buddy Ethan and I envisioned a mind expanding northern Bridger range tripple link up of: skiing the great one, climbing cold forged steel on the Frazier lake spire and then biking the shafthouse trail all in a day. That would be totally sick, and we were planning on doing it saturday..... but E just split his hand open biking at big sky today. He was probably biking over a drop that would be scary on skis, maching at an unfathomable rate for a bike...the Fairy lake multi sport trifecta will have to wait for another day....or will it???