Archive for September, 2008

My parents were here over the long Labor Day weekend, and we threw a huge BBQ one night. There was corn, and rotissery chicken and coleslaw galore. My mom made the fantastic ‘slaw with only CSA (local) veggies, and it turned out great. It was so simple, I’ll have to do it again someday: shred cabbage, cucumbers, carrots and cilantro into a big bowl. Add a little olive oil and a lot of white whine vinegar, some toasted poppy seeds, and you’ve got yourself a tasty slaw.

In fact. She made a lot of coleslaw. So much, that after eating it at two meals a day for about 3 days, we hadn’t hardly made a dent, and were getting a little sick and tired of eating coleslaw.

That’s when inspiration struck. One night, over our coleslaw, I said to Mark: “You know, this would make great filling for spring rolls!” He agreed heartily, and the next day he came home with eggroll wrappers. Not exactly the same thing, but all they had at our local market.

We had a ball rolling the slaw up in the wrappers and then Mark fried them in about 2 inches of 350F vegetable oil.

The result was so nice, I had to photograph it. And very, very, very tasty. Mark doesn’t like to waste fry-oil, so we also made churros, and then wrapped left over brownies in the eggroll wrappers and fried those! At that point, we got a little sick.

Oh and one more note. I love photographing food for some reason. Yes, mountains and climbers and adventures are fun too. But for some reason, I think making food look beautiful and tasty is an incredible art. I buy cookbooks for the photography sometimes. If anybody out there wants to write a cookbook and needs illustration, just let me know. I’d be more than happy to help out. :)

So, I’ve learned several important things this week. 1) I don’t know how to spell the word Monastery and 2) The last time we climbed here the lack of fun was all my own fault.

Someday I’ll write a blog post about climbing and having an anxiety disorder. Today I’ll simply say that when we got to the Monastery last weekend, I remembered what happened the last time we climbed there. What I thought, almost 3 years ago, was reasonable fear and doubt in my safety system was actually a full day of panic attacks. No wonder Mark never wanted to go back again.

The photos from the day are up in the gallery.

This weekend started with a rainy, cloudy Friday that made Mark and I decide not to go backpacking. Our trip to Smith Rocks next month is inspiring us to spend more time clipping bolts, and climbing on rock new and unfamiliar rock. So, we decided to take Liv and the little rat terrior we were dog sitting, Izzie, out to The Monastery on Saturday.

The hike out was fun as we met a family in the parking lot who had never been to the area, and wanted to follow us out. It took us about an hour to hike the steep (up and down) mile to the climbs and then we wandered around lost, looking for the Nursery, or something, to warm up on. That’s what the green squiggles on our GPS track indicate, before we found the rocks waaay down the hill (red area).

Eventually, we found ourselves in The Catacomb (gotta love the freaky names for this climbing area) and warmed up on a couple of fun routes on a rock called the Sepulcher. Mark loved the name Sepulcher. It made him think of NetHack and D&D from back in the day.

Gravestone (5.7/8) – This did seem like the hardest route of the day. It was short, and it was like diving back into the deep, dark end of the pool where you’re not sure the crystals will stay in the rock. But after it was over, we were having fun.

The Mausoleum (5.9-) – As this climb shared an anchor with the previous one, we both ran a lap on it. I was starting to get into the groove of sticking my fingers in tiny crystalline cracks and using itty pebble footholds by now, so the route didn’t feel all that hard.

Headstones (5.8) – We walked up the hill to the right side of the rock we were climbing on, and Mark did a lovely flash of this long 5.8. When he got to the top, he found the chain anchors to be in a bad place for top-roping, but decided it would work out ok and lowered off. As I climbed, the rope friction was so bad that Mark had to haul on the cord with his whole body to take the slack out of the TR.

It felt wonderful to top out this little route. The anchors were in the far wall of a little bowl, and the views were amazing on all sides. As I pulled over the edge, I felt completely relaxed and happy to be out in such an amazing place, climbing to such beautiful spots.

Simplexity (5.9+) – There’s a good chance we’ve done this climb before. But Mark picked it out and Mark lead the route. The first bolt was high and creepy, but by this time, we both had our pebble-toes in full gear, and Mark loved climbing a route where all he worried about was where to put his feet. I enjoyed every minute following on it, and then moved the TR to the climb on the left which shared the same set of anchors.

Altered Boy (5.7) – At this point, I don’t know if this climb was really 2-3 grades easier than the previous one. They were all starting to feel very similar and very fun. It was a great, pebbly, crystally, crackily, lovely climb to finish the day on.

The clouds cleared during our last two climbs and we hiked out in the late afternoon sun. The doggies were all tired, and so were we. It turns out, the Monastery is not a scary horrible place to climb after all! I’ve changed my mind. I’m happy to recommend the area to anybody.

Is it a tradition? Not yet. I just stumbled upon some fun stuff this week and thought I’d share.

This first video may make all of my friends think less of me, or they might totally understand. I can’t decide if I think it’s totally awesome or a sign of the end of the world. The Large Hadron Collider has received some bad press. Evidently, some people are worried that this huge super-collider could produce micro black holes or stranglets. Crazy stuff that particle physics. I think this video might be some kind of PR stunt to make the biggest science experiment of modern history a little more approachable?

And, on a possibly less cheesy note (though, I do think the music here is a bit cheesy), I found the Ashtanga yoga demonstration video that I love so much. This is in honor of Liz coming to yoga with me last night! This video demonstrates most of the 108 poses in the standard Ashtanga sequence. Someday, Liz. Someday we’ll be able to do this stuff! :)

I bought some more bicycling clothes so that I could attempt to get in two rides per week without creating a constant need to do laundry. I’ve got new shorts, new socks, … I was psyched up to give them a try today. I rode “Pink Lightning” (my ’80s Schwinn Super Sport racer) and as I rounded the first round-a-bout, I was starting to wonder if I was doing something really dumb. I’ve never really ridden on a cold day and wasn’t sure how much internal heat I could rely on to get me through the 40 minute ride.

My fingerless gloves were woefully inadequate and I found myself jamming my hands in my armpits at every stoplight. My thoroughly vented shoes are way too summery and left me arriving at work with numb toes that tingled until I got in a hot shower. One layer of spandex shorts did suffice and my exposed legs were A-OK. I checked some of the local weather stations ( sweet weather site – weatherunderground ) and found that it was about 42 degrees. WHERE DID SUMMER GO?

If you want to track my bicycle commutes you can follow along at mycyclinglog.com.

And concerning computer games: “Spore” releases this week (Sept 7)!

After all of the weekends spent with family, Mark and I had one day left of Memorial Day weekend to get in a little climbing. The summer monsoon was back with a vengeance, so we opted to head out early and try to tick a few routes at the Palace in the Poudre Canyon.

We stopped for sandwhiches in the morning, and then drove the narrow winding road up the canyon. At the first bend, the road snuggles up against the river at the Picnic Rock recreational area. And there, in the middle of the river, was the wildest thing I had ever seen.

Somebody must have spent hours building this stack of rocks. It was probably 6 feet tall, and made out of beautiful, round, perfectly balanced river rocks. I made Mark stop, and then ran into the river and started taking pictures. I didn’t have my tripod. I didn’t have my ND filter. I had to do a little PS to make the picture look as pretty on the screen here as it did that day. I vowed to come back later with the right equipment and shoot the pillar again.

We drove the rest of the way up to the Palace, now a little later arriving than we had hoped. The river was still deep, and flowing quickly. There’s no Tyrolean for this approach, as there are no real trees to hang one from. Plus the river is VERY wide here. Usually, this time of year, the larger rocks in the middle of the river are dry and we can hop from one to the next without getting too wet. Not this year.

Liv started wading out into the river behind us, and quickly lost her footing. We’ve always thought she was part of the 1% of dogs that can’t swim. And as she started being carried away by the swift current that morning, it reinforced the idea. Mark grabbed her as she floated by, and ended up crossing the cold, deep river twice: once carrying the dog, once with his pack.

Climbs for the day included

Churchill Rejects (5.9+) – The classic warm-up for the area. I’ve climbed this route cleanly about 15 times on TR. Someday I’ll get around to leading it. Mark had no problem, as usual.

Monstrosity (5.10b) – This was our goal for the day. We figured we’d burn ourselves out fast and be ready to go when the rain arrived at 1p. Mark worked hard for the RP of this huge, long, overhanging route. The holds look good, but they’re all ledges, not positive at all. Doug and Liz showed up as Mark was about halfway up, and helped cheer him on the rest of the way.

I threw myself at this route, and had a miserable performance. Ok, so, I like cracks and slabs! I, evidently, really suck at huge, overhanging routes. I got stuck in the first roof, and despite throwing everything I had at the climb, couldn’t get any further. I lowered off and let Doug clean the route.

For Doug’s first climb of the day, he attacked Monstrosity. He monkey’d his way up the climb, making it look much easier than I just had. He cleaned the route, and got about half-way down on rappel when we all noticed that he had left a few directional draws on the route. There was no safe way to retrieve them other than to climb the route again. The anchors are big and solid on that route, so Mark took another lap on TR, and picked up the draws. This time, he made the route look fluid, easy and fun. Jerk.

The Ogre (5.10a) – I think we’ve been to the Palace more than 20 times over the last few years. And probably 80% of those trips have included doing this climb. Despite Mark’s ultra-workout on Monstrosity, he lead up this climb cleanly to finish the day. Liz and I worked the route and eventually found our own way up. I found that I also am no good at overhanging crimp-fests. Perhaps I should boulder more? Doug campused the first crimpy moves and flashed this route on TR. He cleaned it and rapped down with all of the gear this time.

Shameless photo stealing from Doug and Liz (who also took pictures that day):

The day was late, and we had to ford the river carrying packs and dogs to get home. Everybody accept Liz ended up taking a dunk on this trip. Liv got so frustrated with Mark slipping and dunking her under water that she escaped his reach, jumped from submerged rock to submerged rock for a while, and then, eventually, SWAM across the river! It was incredible. I’ve never seen her so calmly navigate deep, rushing water. Heck of a dog.

On our trip home, we saw the stack of rocks was gone.