Author Archives: Kate

In which, we learn about climbing on all passive pro, and can’t stop making stupid toilet-humor jokes.

There are lots of pictures from the day in the gallery.

A series of random decisions and strange events landed us at the bottom of The Pear on Saturday morning, at around 11am, with blue-bird skies above, and not another person around for miles. We decided it would probably be a good day to try to get all the way to the top of Magical Chrome-Plated Semi-Automatic Enema Syringe (5.7).

We’ve done the first two pitches of this climb earlier this year, and even climbed La Chaim (as a two pitch to the lower walk-off) before as well. But we’ve never topped out the Pear.

Also, we decided on Saturday that it was time to try a “true Lumpy Ridge rack”, which included almost two sets of nuts, and only 5-6 cams. This didn’t seem like such a big deal when we were on the ground. We’ve been trad climbing, using chocks and cams, for almost 5 years now. Surely we’d have no problem with this lighter rack!

Problems started on the first pitch, when it took me about 15 minutes of banging on one nut with my nut tool to get it out of the rock. Mark and I have been trad-climbing together for long enough that I am usually pretty darn good at getting his very weird placement puzzles figured out. He usually leads, and I usually follow, and I’ve always considered myself “The Nut Queen!” Usually I can pop those suckers out in no time. But on Saturday, my mojo was not flowing.

Mark was having his own problems as well. His pieces were good for down-pulls, but as the route has a twisting and traversing nature, he started having a few pieces actually pull out of the crack behind him! Yikes!

On the second pitch, I left one tiny nut, that was so far back in the crack I couldn’t even see it, behind on the route. In the anchor, I wailed on a giant purple chock with everything I had, cussing and scraping up my knuckles. I left two dents in the bottom of that chock, on on either side of the wire, and it never budged a millimeter.

Nuts falling out of cracks, nuts stuck in cracks, these are things that we haven’t had problems with in years. By the time I made it up to the top of the second pitch, I was feeling defeated and humiliated. Like a total n00b who shouldn’t be on the rock. I tried to convince Mark that we should walk-off, go home, and come back some other day when we had more cams.

But Mark chalked it up to “kinks in the system” due to our recent break from climbing, and he led on up past the escape ramp. I had no choice but to follow him up the rest of the route, and now I’m glad we kept going.

The fourth pitch turned out to be a lovely little crack climb, and the giant rock butt for which the route is named came into view. Mark joked about climbing the 5.9 variation that jams straight up the, eh-hem, crack, but we didn’t feel like we had the gear to protect it that day. The whole time I sat at the belay below that HUGE rock butt, I just couldn’t stop giggling. I’d think I had myself under control, and then I’d look up, and just start laughing all over the place again!

We summited the rock at around 4:30 in the afternoon. We stood on top of the butt, victorious, with the rest of our nuts still on our rack (see, I can’t stop!), at around 4:30p. There were a few distant clouds, but the sky was still clear, which was a small miracle for that area this time of year. A larger miracle was that we had not seen another person on our climb or rock all day! On a Saturday! On Lumpy! Amazing.

We screwed around a bit. Took some pictures. Eventually Mark found the rap anchors and then called me over. The book assured us that we only needed one rope to rap off the back of the summit, but looking over the edge, all we could see was a dark hole in the rock. A dank abyss beckoned us downward.

Mark, of course, went first. He made it down and I could hear his voice echoing out of the darkness “Don’t worry! The rope reaches! This place is amazing! Take pictures on your way down!!”

My eyes were not adjusted for the dark, and getting on rappel with my rope disappearing down into blackness was really creepy. I did not stop to take pictures. But it was a fun rappel.

It turns out, the rappel leads to a secrete space behind the Pear. A hallway was formed in the distant past. With vertical walls nearly 100ft tall on either side, and only about 4 ft apart. It looked like the rock had simply separated. A giant crack had formed, perhaps as the slab of the Pear inched slowly down the face of the ridge.

We enjoyed the cool darkness, and the scent of ferns in our spot. Then it was time to head out. The hike back to our bags was long, but not hard. We were packing up at the base of the climb by 5:30p, and in the car driving home around 7p. It was an amazing day, for many reasons. And I’m glad we got all of the kinks out of our systems. Heh heh.

Next time, we’re climbing with more cams.

So, for years Mark and I worked for Beckman Coulter (originally SAGAIN), writing software that controlled huge, expensive, very smart automatic pipetting machines. I knew more about the intricacies of fluid transfer via automated pipetting than just about anybody in the world. Mark was the first Software R&D employee at SAGIAN, and had spent 10 years working on the software problems surrounding driving smart liquid transfers.

So, yes, we laughed sooooo hard when we say this commercial this afternoon. Mark is still walking around our house singing the song. You deserve to automate…

We did the drive back from St. Louis in one day, leaving my parents’ house at around 6am and getting back to Fort Collins at around 8p. We’ve done this drive before, and while it is long, it’s not too hard. It’s fun to put an audio book on and just cruise across Kansas.

Usually we’re doing the drive on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, or New Year’s Day. We’ve hit ice storms and blizzards along this stretch of I-70 that were powerful and murderous. In July, however, it’s not the snow you have to watch out for. It’s tornadoes.

So, yes, I’m an atmospheric scientist. And I certainly feel sorry for the people who have had losses due to violent storms. But, I can’t help myself. Tornados are cool!

There’s more pictures from the heavy weather on our drive home in the gallery.

We saw storms building in western Kansas, and a quick trip to the NWS website from the iPhone confirmed my suspicions, there was a tornado on the ground to our north. However, there was so much rain, we couldn’t see it.

Later, in Eastern Colorado, I spotted a beautiful, huge, spinning supercell, and Mark stopped so I could get out and take some pictures. And then we drove closer. And took pictures. And then a little closer. And then the storm got closer to us. Standing outside and watching this beautiful, amazing storm was an incredible experience. The wind was blowing so hard I felt like I had to hang on to the car to stay standing. And it was all blowing into the bottom of that wall cloud.

The storm rotated and moved across the plain like a giant hoover, sucking up huge amounts of air. The lift from the updraft in this storm was so intense that a local extreme low pressure was forming below the cloud. That low pressure caused what little moisture that could be found in the hgh plains air to condense into low clouds below the rotating saucer above.

Then it started to hail. So we turned around a high-tailed it back to the interstate. Another check using the iPhone confirmed we were watching a super-cell storm. The national weather service had identified it as a large tornado via Doppler radar. This means that the cloud droplets were definately rotating around the updraft. But we never saw a tornado on the ground for any length of time. So, it’s doubtful that there was an actual tornado on the ground that day.

It was definitely fun to watch, though.

As our week of relaxation and humidity rolled to a conclusion, we had one more big event to look forward to: the celebration of the 4th. In the last 4 years, or so, Mark and I have shown our patriotism by finding the most remote backpacking or climbing local we can, and spending the long weekend there. This year, we got to eat my Dad’s famous Baseball Pizza (hotdogs, cheddar cheese and mustard on pizza crust – really tasty), my Mom’s famous macaroni salad and Miller’s infamous lime beer.

There’s a ton of fun fireworks pictures up in the gallery.

Amy and Murray spent the afternoon hanging out with us and playing song after song on Rock Band. It turns out, Amy has rhythm, Mark has strong hands and very fast fingers, and I am completely tone deaf and but know all the words to all of the songs. If we turn down the volume on my singing, we make a pretty kick-ass band.

In the evening, Amy headed to her friend’s house in Webster, and we rode our bikes down to Kirkwood park for the show.

It was fun being back at Kirkwood park with the family for the 4th again. When I was in highschool, we’d spend the whole day at the park, throwing frisbees and hanging out in the sun on the grass. This year we had just enough time for Mark and I to get a snow cone and Dad to beat me at cribbage before the lights went off and the explosions started.

Liv is terrified of loud noises these days (we had an unfortunate evening with a cannon firing into our apartment a few years ago), so we left her at home in the basement. She was pretty happy to see us when we made our way back later that night.

It was a great week and great vacation. I’m glad we had a chance to spend the holiday with old friends and family. Thank you everybody!

One of the best parts of our trip to St. Louis this summer was the chance to spend some time with my childhood friend Amy. She’s living a fantastic urban life in St. Louis, and loving it. Last year, she took a chance and tried out for a local Taiko group.

This is a Japanese performance art, with roots that go back thousands of years. The drums are huge and loud, and your chest and heart thumps along with the music. The drummers sing and dance as they play, with long beautiful lines and roaring passionate screams. Amy is incredibly, and surprisingly, good at this. Surprising because Amy has had very little in the way of musical, dance or performance instruction in her life. In fact, some of my fondest memories in highschool are of hanging out with Amy at football games and making fun of the band. Now here she is in, essentially, a hardcore drum line!

To see a cool video of the group performing last year, check this out. For more pictures of the thursday night practice, head to the gallery.

While Mark and I were in town, Amy asked permission, and Mark and I were allowed to come watch one of their practices. The group practices 3-4 times a week for 3-4 hours at a stretch. The drumming is a huge workout, with long arm swings and leg lunges. The drummers use their whole body to produce the music, and it is a sound unlike any other. Mark and I were entranced by even their timing exercises and the song which they practiced over and over again that night. I took about 300 pictures before the evening was up, and Mark took some video.

To get a real feel for what it’s like to just watch the 8 or so people who showed up that night practice, plug your computer into a 30″ bass amp and turn the volume up to eleven when watching this video.

Amy and I had long conversations the next day about how drumming and dance were so much like rock climbing. Both are moving mediations, ways for our restless western minds to focus pure attention on a single moment. In life, you learn more about yourself in those quiet times, those places between thoughts, than you ever do in the normal clutter and clatter of brain work. Whether it’s pounding a drum, jamming a crack, spinning and dancing or sticking that dyno, when we find a way to truly focus ourselves on a single task, we find the source of all of our personal power.

So, how do a couple of Colorado climbers keep themselves busy in St. Louis in the summer? Welp, we’ve been all over town and having a great time. There’s a bunch of random pictures up in the gallery.

Mostly, we’ve been enjoying perfect weather at home, relaxing in the afternoons and then heading out to buzz around town in the evenings. Our first night in we went for a walk down Zombie Road. I suppose Kevin heard about this one on one of his paranormal shows, and Mark and I went along for the ride on his “investigation.” Here’s a description from the website:

Those who recall the road when it was more widely in use have told me that the narrow, winding lane, which runs through roughly two miles of dense woods, was always enveloped in a strange silence and a half-light. Shadows were always long here, even on the brightest day, and it was always impossible to see past the trees and brush to what was coming around the next curve. … Strangely, even those that I talked to with no interest in ghosts or the unusual all mentioned that Zombie Road was a spooky place. I was told that one of the strangest things about it was that it never looked the same or seemed the same length twice, even on the return trip from the dead end point where the stone company’s property started. “At times”, one person told me, “we had the claustrophobic feeling that it would never end and that we would drive on forever into deeper darkness and silence.”

We were out there in the pitch black darkness, with only two headlamps between the six of us. It was a creepy spot. The road runs down the middle of a narrow, deep ravine, and was very, very dark. We didn’t see any ghosts or zombies. One guy on a mountain bike riding in the dark with no light, but that was it. A little weird, but nothing unexplainable. Of course, we didn’t last more than 10 minutes or so on that road. And it was definitely longer on the way out than the way in.

We had our obligatory stop at Ted Drew’s for tasty custard. The place was packed and had quite the party atmosphere of an iconic roadside eatery on a summer evening. Good food, fun stop, a must do.

We’ve also spent a good bit of time catching up on our movie watching. We saw Wanted, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It had the surrealistic feel of Fight Club, without too much of the disturbing insanity bits. I’ve got to say, watching the trailer just now, the movie wasn’t quite what it seemed to be advertised to be. A very twisting plot. Angelina Jolie was not a love interest. And the main character never said “Whoa!” once.

And, there’s always food and beer. My mother is an amazing cook, and this week we’ve had the best bar-b-que in years, fantastic macaroni salads and I had my first SLT (Spam-Lettuce-Tomato) sandwich today. Pretty good, really. We’ve also hit up local breweries a bit, including Fitz’s in my old stomping grounds in the Loop, and Schlafly’s in Maplewood. All good food! Climbing might be a bit harder when we get home.

Not that Kansas isn’t an exciting place. In fact, Mark and I have probably come closer to disaster in this state than in any other. But, after living in Colorado for a few years, it’s easy to become a little elitist about adventures and vacations. After all, don’t most people come to my town on their vacations? Doesn’t it seem like the tourists from the midwest are the ones getting themselves into trouble in the mountains? (Actually, thinking about it, most of the people I read about dying in horrible accidents are Coloradoans).

So, when Mark and I decided to scrub our trip to the Tetons, and cancel our climbing plans up the iconic alpine test-piece that is the Grand Teton, we didn’t say it, but we were a little disappointed. After all, we exist in a world of adventure and excitement, surely a trip to the midwest would be, comparatively, dull.

We left Colorado on Saturday morning with the Prius packed full of camping gear and CSA veggies. We drove east at a leisurely pace, stopping to talk to motorcyclists and having picnics outside of Arby’s. At about 2pm, we were driving along the country side when our last bar on the electronic gas gauge started blinking. The computer screen on the Prius warned us “Refuel now!” Mark and I started discussing where we should stop for gas. After all, our tank has an 11 gallon capacity, and we had gone 450 miles at an average 51 mpg, so we should have only burnt 9 gallons of fuel. A minute later the Check Engine light came on, the computer screen blinked the word “Problem” and the car lost power rapidly.

Mark and I pulled over, and after calling Toyota and panicking for several minutes, we determined we had just run out of gas. In our Prius. Obviously, expensive technology cannot save us from ourselves. Mark had only been able to put in 9 gallons of gas the day before, which had been enough to read “full” on the gauge. And get us 450 miles across Colorado and Kansas before running out.

We were able to drive the last mile to a gas station on battery alone, where we topped off the tank with a full 10.5 gallons, and headed out to find a campsite for the night.

After our adventure in bad math, we were near our originally planned campsite in Kanopolis. It was early in the evening, so we decided to keep going the next park was outside Manhattan, Kansas, home to KSU, and was hosting a HUGE country music festival on Saturday night. We were stuck in traffic for an hour and never got a site. We finally found ourselves at Lake Perry State park, north of Topeka, at sunset. We got a primitive site on the edge of a huge lake, and had a great night of camping.

Camping in the midwest was full of wonderful surprises. There were lightening bugs everywhere! I had forgotten how wonderful and magical lightening bugs were. We saw huge deer, a skunk, beavers, and HUGE wild turkey’s in the forest around the lake. We slept in the warm, still, night air, not worried about wind or bears for the first time in a long while.

At sunrise, we were woken up at dawn by a giant cricket under our tent. Mark helped me with some yoga shots on the banks of the fantastic lake, and then we packed up and finished our drive to St. Louis.

I suppose it’s only fitting that the adventure and beauty of a place are indirectly proportional to the amount of time you spend there. Mark and I have started to find camping in Rocky Mountain national park tedious and crowded, if you can believe that! But our one quiet night on the banks of a midwestern lake made me remember that there are plenty of beautiful spots east of the Front Range too.

It’s summer and we’ve spent a lot of time in the mountains lately. But my favorite pictures are still from our backpacking trip last summer. Hopefully we’ll be able to get up in the area again later this summer. This image was taken just after sunrise above Blue Lake in the Rawah Wilderness of northern Colorado last July. I was standing at about 11,000ft and looking out towards the northern mountains in the Rocky Mountain National Park.

As usual, I’ve saved the image as a few different sizes for the most common screen resolutions. Feel free to down load the one that works for you by clicking on the link to the correct size below the image!

1024 x 768, 1440 x 900, 1600 x 1200