Hair of the Dog

Wow, I've been terrible at updating my blog lately. Mostly due to the fact that my life is in a state of constant flux right now.
In the last three weeks I have managed to quit my job, move out of my apartment, and do a ton of goodbyes, hellos, hiking, a dash of climbing, and a lot of Good Will trips. It’s been one of the most exciting times in my life! I love the thought of a different landscape, different people, and different experiences the former bring with them.

Bob's area!

One of the most exciting developments for me lately has been my ability to rock climb with two feet! Last weekend I managed a back to back rock climbing trip; first day was Bob’s Area at Mt. Washington, and the second day was spent at my favorite area of all Little Si. Needless to say I have a bit of endurance to get back, but I will be a mere 30 minutes from the crag for the next 2.5 weeks and hopefully a project or two will fall? I have so many goals that I want to accomplish, or at least attempt, before I go, I’m just a little nervous in thinking about how obtainable they all are.

The approach to the Tooth.

The Tooth is that little guy smack dab in the middle.

Nick finishing up Aborigine (5.11b).

Nick drop knees into the crux of Technorigine (5.12c).

Nick off of Techno.

While last weekend was great; with the exception of a recon mission to find and hike to the base of the Tooth (a super classic multi-pitch trad climb in Snoqualmie Valley), the week on the other hand was full of stress. There were a couple of fleeting moments where I felt like it was never going to end and I was making the wrong decision. Moving out of a place can have a deleterious effect on ones psyche from time to time. The people at my job were great and threw me a going away party with a cake and everything. I was also bought lunch and dinner and yes, there were several tears shed. Whether they were tears of joy or sadness remains a mystery.
It took two trips to get the rest of my ‘stuff’ vacated from my apartment. In all I had lived there for two and half years! I think the longest place I have lived before this was another apartment complex near Evergreen with my then girlfriend Liz.


I've heard this alot over the last 16 months. I had four pieces.

Laura doing all the work.

Dom watching.

Mel watching.

I enjoyed the Hacienda (this is the name of the apartment complex). The small garden and walled in patio out front were pluses and the pool was very nice. Not to mention being in such close proximity to the Chehalis-Western trail was amazing, I absolutely loved running on it in the Fall when the Big Leaf Maples started to shed their decaying leaves. Of course living in Lacey, as well as in an apartment complex that some would describe as having a close resemblance to a south Los Angeles ghetto has its drawbacks. But it was a great little place for me and served its purpose well. Driving back to Seattle last night with my car filled to the brim for a second time I didn’t feel very nostalgic. Just tired and ready to be done sorting, moving, giving, throwing away, and being totally and utterly overwhelmed.
I’m here in Seattle now and last night I had the first realizations of a feeling that could only be described as “Holy Shit dude! You don’t have a job or a place to stay!” I stood in my mom’s kitchen swilling a warm beer and thinking about how my life had almost come full circle. Eight years ago I picked up what little belongings I had and moved to Olympia, and here I was doing the same dance in reverse. Now, it’s not entirely true, I do have places to stay and a small short term job landscaping, but the feeling of having the carpet pulled from beneath my feet and angrily getting up rubbing my backside only to find that the culprit was someone who closely resembled yours truly is a little stunning.

Seatown.

Don't worry, he's just sleeping.

I’m trying not to think about all of the hugely important and absolutely crucial things I need to do before I make my final voyage north to Alaska (like get a ferry reservation, trim my belongings down to what will fit in my car, say good bye to very dear friends, pay bills, save enough money to live on for two months, and find a job!). For now, I just want to think about the incredibly awesome time I’m going to have tomorrow at my BBQ as 15-20 of my friends from Oly and Seattle will combine to form some out of control love fest hungrily making its way down Greenwood taking no prisoners.
Not to mention the pre-BBQ crush fest at Little si. Hope to see you all there!

Time for Some Action!

Jimmy crushing Psychosomatic(5.12d) before redpointing Flatliner(5.13c)
Unfortunately my camera decided to go on the fritz as Jimmy soared up the wall and through the bouldery crux of Flatliner and all my pics of him on this stunning line are trashed!! Jimmy has been on the power endurance ride of his life this last month sending another 5.13b Lizard Prince and crushing his first 5.13c Flatliner. Great work Jimmy!!!!

July has just flown(!!) by. My good friend and climbing partner Nick came back from D.C. to visit and certainly left his mark. It took a couple trips for Nick to get re-acquainted with his once local crag Little si, but once he did it was game time! Making short work of Graven Image(5.12c) he then turned his attention to his long term project and gem of the crag Chronic(5.13b). On his fourth go of the day, on his 3rd work session this year he pulled a send out of the bag in typical Nick fashion screaming from the top of his lungs and depth of his soul to stay on through the crux for his first .13b send!!!


Nick enters the final crux section on Chronic(5.13b)


Latching the last move!!! Nice job Nick! Super proud!


Can you find the climber on Techno?



A wet morning in Seattle.





Keenan TR's Aborigine(5.11b)

Lisa has also put down her first send of the summer with an amazing redpoint of one of the hardest 5.12d's at Little si, Californicator. She had been working this with me for a month now and finally pulled out the send with style! Nice job Lisa, I hope I can join the club soon...

Lisa sticks a move on Californicator(5.12d)


Check out the WRG tank top, REPRESENT!!


Lisa crushes the crux on Cali.

Well, I just returned from another day out at the World Wall. The temps were the worst I have ever climbed in. Warm with a mixture of high humidity. GROSS!! Everything felt nasty and impossibly slick. I did, however, manage almost all the moves on Chronic and am so psyched on this line it's not even funny! I have a pretty good feeling that if my fitness keeps increasing this line will go down this year.
In other news of the day no huge sends went down, but Lisa did manage another one hang attempt of Psychosomatic and is very, very, VERY close to sending yet another giant at the wall. As soon as that and Prop go down it's time for Chronic!!


Lisa sticks the finger jug on Psychosomatic(5.12d)


Grabbing the victory jug!

Tomorrow we are all headed to a new crag, Newhalem. I'm so stoked but have a bad feeling my onsighting skills have severely diminished due to all the projecting I've been doing this last month. But, we'll have to wait and see how the routes play out. I've heard a lot of good things about this crag and I hope something in the mid to high 5.12 range will go down. Jimmy has his eye on a 5.13a called OSX so I'm sure I'll get on that as well. I just hope my camera stops spazzing out on me. Hope everyone is well and having a great summer so far.

The Meaning of Life

For a long time now I have been eager to get up to what appeared to be a magical place. So far as I could tell by the homemade youtube movies laboriously produced by none other than local bouldering messiah Kelley Sheridan, Lake Serene was a bouldering/chilling paradise! The stage was set, the fire lit, and all I needed was a cast of willing characters to support me in my trek to find this outdoor enthusiast promise land. Last year my friend Nick and I kicked the idea around of carrying a crash pad or two up there to see what all the fuss was about, but those plans were run over by the all too accessible bouldering Mecca that is Leavenworth. Ho hum.
This summer has been a bit different. Adding some new faces to the crowd, and a bit of a twist on our incentives to seek out this place, we were off. 7:00 a.m. brought Greg, Erica, and Sarah to my door step. We loaded up the car, picked up Nick and were driving up route 2 at 10:30. We stumbled upon the access road to the trail head for Lake Serene with little to no directions and in a matter of turns were at the parking lot. The hike was rumored to be a killer. 3.7 miles doesn’t sound all too impressive to the weathered hiker but keep in mind that 1.5 of those miles you gain several thousand feet in elevation. We set a furious pace, reaching the more tedious switch backs in less than half an hour passing Bridal Veil Falls on our way:


Bridal Veil Falls as seen from the main trail.


Greg is a true master of stone.


Almost there, the views really start to open up.

The switch back part was not that bad. In fact the whole hike up wasn’t that bad, especially since I had been training my extreme hiking skills by slogging to and from Bob’s area 4 times in one week! We laughed our abs off the whole way up the trail and a big props/shout out/thank you goes to Greg who manned up and carried a half case of beer, bottle of wine, pounds of food, AND crash pad the whole way up. I don’t want to hear anyone complain about a hike ever again in this mans presence; he WILL school your ass! The farther we made it up the mountainside the more apparent the far reaching views and absolute solitude became. We finally reached a stretch of trail that reeked of flowers and herbs and I could tell we were close. I ran p and over a small hill after hearing a shriek of delight there it was, the mouth of the Lake Serene area. It was absolutely a dream…


The small rock in the distance on the lake is the huge slab of granite we called home for the day.

I knew exactly where our party had reservations and did not stop until I had crossed a small granite slab, snow field, and talus field passing several impressive boulders along the way. We made our home on a huge boulder with a slanted flat top, perfectly overlooking the lake, and conveniently sporting an absolutely fitting 20foot drop into a deep pool of water.


Nick swallowed up by the brilliance of the snow field.

The sun was blazing down and we spread ourselves out on the rocks flat surface soaking it in and occasionally(okay frequently) jumping into the lake. The water was crystal clear. You could see another perfect boulder field mirrored back at you from the surface which made the jump a little intimidating until you actually did it and realized it was waaaay deeper than you imagined. The water was so clear, so blue, so life giving. It was absolutely frigid, but on this day it seemed to inspire some sort of boyhood giddiness. We were all in a constant state of bewilderment at the powerful nature of our surroundings. We were kissed by the sun and rejuvenated by the water. It was dreamlike. A day you wish could last forever, and one that will soon not be forgotten. With Mt. Index at our backs, and a calm blue lake spread out before us the mood could only be described as positive, childish fun, and big kids laughing a lot. I know, not very articulate, but I don’t really have words to describe it, literally, you have to be there.


Sarah takes the plunge!


Greg decides to handle the crack in our apartment floor.


Serene.


Psicobloc in the Northwest.


Venga! Nick!


The storm approaches.


Day dreamer.

The sun began to dip behind the towering granitic peak of Mt. Index and we had had enough of the lake. We finally decided it was time to check out the bouldering. The boulder field I can only describe as a close resemblance to Chaos Canyon in RMNP. The rock is exactly the same, polished granite with green and yellow lichen, lazer cut edges, slopers, shelves, arêtes, overhangs, caves, face climbs, thin cracks, and a multitude of overhanging faces with barley enough holds to get to the top. I was blown away by the amount of rock, and the absolute potential this place holds. I saw a couple V.hard projects that would probably be some of Washington’s finest and hardest. Tall proud lines with bad landings, small overhung climbs with flat landings, the spectrum was in full effect. We had one crash pad so we looked for the least intimidating lines, with the softest landings. We had a great time on a few problems:


The first boulder of the trip, a sweet V.1 I called The Slide, because someone almost did take a slide off the backside.


Nick on the Slide with Mt. Index in the background.


Goodbye Erica!


The boulder field, this is only a small portion of the rock we saw that day.


Sarah on a brilliantly straightforward V.0 arete.


Greg wrangles the arete.


This had to be one of the cleanest lines I saw all day, a perfect seam with barley enough handholds and a clean face on both sides. Victory jugs at the top, but pulling on was super hard! Unfortunately all we could do was pull on.


A super aggressive V.3 Nick found. Great jug start to a cool pull over the lip.







Before you knew it, the clouds rolled in, the day’s atmosphere took a 180 and we were packed up and ready to hit the trail. Thunderclaps, bolts of lightening, and fat rain drops accompanied our hurried pace to the bottom. When we arrived at the car the storm had passed and we were back on the road, with a quick stop for Mexican food.
To sum it all up, the day was close to perfect and those don’t come along too often. I would have loved to have more of the crew there sharing in this wonderful place, but I know there will be more hot days to come, and this kind of activity never gets old.
I wish everyone a safe and productive trip to Squamish, and I might add I’m jealous I won’t be there!! Have fun guys.