Red Mountain Rutschblock Test

Bedal Peak Scramble

Another 70 degree September day in the Puget Sound area. On Saturday I went with a Mountaineers party on a scramble up Bedal Peak, 6,557 ft. I don't have any pix of Bedal's summit, other than from the summit, because it was quite the bushwacked until the last 1,000 ft, when you could finally see the summit. It's about a 4,600 ft. scramble. The views from the summit of the neighboring peaks such as Sloan and Glacier are, on a clear day, worth battling the bushes.



Sloan Peak from Bedal Peak











Glacier Peak from Bedal Peak

Cutthroat

Arrr! A pirate blog entry you're thinking, right? Sorry, just a lame-ass 8,050 ft. peak in the North Cascades. Climbed it on Sunday in perfect weather with the route completely to ourselves. It's one memorable sighting as you near the crest of the North Cascades, Highway 20. Mid-5th class most of the way. About 8 pitches up and near 10 raps down. It was fantastic except the the extreme number of raps. Oh, well.

The Ascent

Okay, my play on words will surely make you barf, but sometimes I can't resist. I guess it's the pun syndrome. You think you're funny, but everyone else thinks you're a dork. Oh, well. So after two years as an Account Director at Write Image, I was hired away by a fast growing technology+marketing consulting firm called Ascentium.

I'm responsible for project management as well as business development for the Enterprise Content Management Division. Whew! Anyway, the people are fun, smart and the company is in quite a growth phase.

Grand Teton

Upon accepting a new position with Ascentium, I quickly booked a trip to Jackson Hole and the Grand Teton National Park to climb the Grand Teton. Not having any time, or energy, to research route beta etc., I decided to hire a guide to climb the highest peak (13,770) in the Teton Range.

Really the only guide service for climbing the
Grand is Exum Guides.

It was a wonderful, and successful trip. We summited on a bluebird day, after an evening of, what seemed like to me, very high winds at the 11,600 base camp. It was spontaneous and amazing!

Import iPod to iTunes

iTunes is designed for a one-way transfer of data--from iTunes to the iPod. It is not designed to import from your iPod. I didn't really understand this until I unknowingly accomplished several things:

1. Wiped my iPod and about 5 GBs of data clean
2. Created great anxiety and sweaty palms
3. Had to re-rip my entire song and Podcast collection
4. Then figured out I better backup my iTunes library on several servers
5. Took a day off from work to search the Apple support site

I don't find any clear attempt by Apple to message, what I would call a technology anomoly. Or provide clear answers on how to fix this; or how about a link to iPodsoft? Why would you make a consumer product/application a one way data stream? I don't have the answer to that question but it must be about DRM or something. Nevertheless, I did discover there's a utility tool available for $15 to manage this issue.

If you change jobs, buy a new machine, your machine crashes or any number of senarios where you'd need to reinstall iTunes and upload your iPod data (It is really just a really cool hard drive anyway, right?) back onto your machine, you'll need to know about iGadget.

Too Busy Livin' To Blog

Sheer blaspheme to the Web 2.0 recruits, I’m sure. Nevertheless, it’s my excuse and I’m sticking to.

Late June, the hottest June I can remember in the Northwest, I’m experiencing what might have been mild heat exhaustion. Luckily I fell into that misfortune next to a snowmelt-cold creek, crashing down the mountain with the rush and roar of a freight train. I covered my head with my creek-soaked bandanda and drank as much water as I could, recovered my pack, and continued to march up the sun-exposed ridge to base camp.

You can view this same profile of Silver Star if you look up and to your right, after you drive around the hairpin turn, descending the North Cascade pass, and head into Mazama, WA. You reach the summit by ascending the ridge in front of the mountain, climb through the notch, and then a traverse down the other side crossing a snowfield and small glacier. A scrabble with possible belay on the last, short pitch completes your summit bid. A shimmer up the final, true summit block and you’ll quickly feel very exposed!


Right, and more goats! The goat is the unroped creature.

Mount Rainier Climbing

Mount Rainier Climbing

F-day on Kendall Catwalk

Went to do a conditioning hike up Kendall Catwalk, part of the Pacific Crest Trail, on Father's Day. The trailhead starts right off the Alpental turn off on Snoqualimie Pass. There was too much snow to make the last mile 1/2. If I had poles or an ice axe and something other than my trail running shoes, it probably would have went.

This was one of the waterfall crossings you were warned about at the trailhead. I was a pansy and took my shoes off and waded through the icy-cold water. As I was drying my feet on the other side, this guy about my size just hops across the water, smiles and walks on. Loser!

You'll see a notch in the picture on the right. That's the Kendall Catwalk crossing. It's about 5 miles to the catwalk and I probably made 3 1/2 miles. Red Mountain is on the left side of this shot. There was a suprising amount of snow on the trail as shown in thes shot below. I did get a bit lost on the Kendall ridge, then finally found the trail that traverses the west side of the mountain. Too much snow and it was running a bit late in the day.

Just as I started hiking the trail, the deep whirl of helicopter rotors cut tranquil trail. A rescue was happening on Lundin Peak, just left of Red Mountain. I later found out it was a Mountaineers' student who had peeled off some rock and sustain head and leg injuries. Knowing the helicopters were performing a rescue, I thought not to take any chances on doing something lame and stupid like slipping on a snow field with no way to self-arrest.

I typically don't do the nature shots, but all the snow melt was giving way to some beautiful spring growth.