So, on release day (two weeks ago?) I bought the PC game Spore. For those not following PC games, this is a game where you start out as a single-celled organism and evolve your creature until it grows legs, forms a tribe, builds cities and then ventures out into the galaxy. It also has an internet community component where you can encounter other players’ creations while you play the game. But don’t start imagining yourself as the ultimate core wars player whose organism will crush other players worldwide. What you do see other creatures/buildings/vehicles as a flavor element which you then crush/befriend on their way to galactic dominance.

It received so much hype that I had to try it and find out for myself. Does it stand up to all the hype? No, of course not. Is it fun… yes. I’m a huge fan of all the Civilization style games and galactic exploration/conquest so this is right up my ally. I think this review is fair where they describe it as the ultimate casual game.

Last night, Mark and I went to the 3rd annual Reel Rock Film Tour, as it stopped in Fort Collins for an evening. While I’ve never been one to give movie reviews on this site, I thought I would give a few impressions of this event, more as an evening with the local Northern Colorado climbing community than anything else.

We convinced Doug and Liz to come out as well, and evidently Alpinist Adam was in attendance too, though we didn’t meet up with him until afterwards. The auditorium was nearly full, with several hundred people in attendance. Even though the movies were being shown in the student center theatre at Colorado State Univ, the crowd was diverse, and we saw people of all ages in attendance.

Doug, I think, summarized most of our feelings about the movies at the end by saying “Wow, that was a lot of Dean Potter.” I felt the whole film festival could be renamed The Many Hairstyles of Dean Potter or maybe Check it out yo! Dean Potter is crazy/beautiful and Tommy Caldwell is missing a finger! Ok, that last one kind of sucks, but it sums up the general feel of the shows.

We all really liked Peter Mortimer’s new film, The Sharp End. Each of his movies seem to get bigger, better and prettier. This one had great production, and cool computer generated segments. It was full of typical Sender Films humor, drama, suspense and really big falls. In this movie, they either mic’d the climbers or had one of those Sonic Earz, because you could hear the breathing of the leaders clearly as situations got desperate. It was a wonderful effect. Listening to somebody else’s breath makes me breathe along with them, and then really draws me into the tension of the moment. Then there was always that moment, one sucked inhale, one “F—.” and we’re off!

Definitely head over and check out the big version of the trailer on their site, because the one from YouTube (shown here) is pretty grainy and hard to see.

The crowd was great. Everybody would gasp and then give a big “Oooow!” when the climber lands. I thought it was fun to hear the different people in the audience cheering for the boulderers, the crazy German trad climbers, or the insane big wall aid climbers. A large group of girls cheered each time Steph Davis graced the screen, and the crowd erupted when her line on Long’s Peak (Pervertical Sanctuary 5.10c) was drawn across the Diamond.

Probably for me, one of the highlights of the evening was the gear-give-away at “intermission.” While I didn’t win anything, the guy just to the left of Mark won a GIANT block of chalk. I’ve never seen so much chalk in my life. They called out the number, and he actually groaned.

“Oh great. I won chalk” he grumbled dismally. He didn’t get up to accept the prize, just sunk down in his chair and passed the ticket to the end of the row for the runner to check. They passed the chalk down the row to him. Mark was laughing.

“Wow, that’s a lot of chalk,” said Mark.

The guy next to him looked up hopefully and said “Do you want it, man?”

“Sorry, I don’t use chalk,” Mark replied honestly.

“Me neither.” He glanced hopelessly around for a minute and then sat back in his chair to watch the second movie. Mark and I were both quietly laughing like mad. It’s so easy to think everybody in the Fort boulders. After all, we have Rotary Park, Carter Lake, and the 420’s. But there are lots of other climbs around here, and lots of other climbers. And last night, we all celebrated the sport together.

I love the state motto for New Mexico: Land of Enchantment. You just can’t walk around the desert and mountains in this place and not feel some kind of mystical connection with the land, the sky, and the ancient Native Americans that also walked through these mountains. Maybe it’s the low population density, or the beautiful mesas and desert rock formations. Whatever it is, every time we visit the state, I feel like I’ve gone someplace beautiful and remote, a wild and exotic land, that is barely part of the world I live in every day.

I woke up early and energized on Sunday morning. Mark and I had to leave by noon to make a Sunday evening commitment, but nobody was stirring when Liv and I set out on the trail. Even though the sky was deeply overcast, I took the dog and hiked up to the top of the mesa we had been climbing on the day before, in the hopes of getting some pictures of the sun rising over the canyon, or the desert beyond.

The trail to the top edge of the mesa was about 2 miles long, and probably took Liv and I about an hour to do. The clouds were breaking up as I reached the edge, and the sun had long since risen. There were no incredible sunrise pictures for me that morning, and judging by the moist, cool breeze coming over the the mesa, there would be no climbing before we had to leave at noon either. But it was really nice to sit on the edge of the cliff, in the quiet desert morning, and watch the clouds slowly roll over the canyon and lands far beyond.

Eventually, I left my little perch and hiked back down to camp. The rest of the gang were hanging out in Dylan and Ann’s camper, drinking lots of coffee, making biscuits for breakfast and doing crosswords. I really suck at crosswords. Evidently, “creative spelling techniques” are not part of the challenge of the puzzles.

The clouds slowly burnt off, and Dylan and Ann decided to head up the hill for another day of climbing. Mark and I packed up camp and reluctantly headed home to our normal lives. It was a very nice, if too short, weekend away from reality.

Mark and I have climbed a little bit in New Mexico, and each time, we’ve been impressed with the quiet, secluded nature of the crags, even if they are just off the road. Last weekend, the stars aligned, plans came together, and we were able to meet Dylan and Ann in the Land of Enchantment.

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We drove down to Sugarite Canyon State Park on Friday after work. We got caught in a bit of traffic in Denver, but made it into the campground just before the gate was locked at 10pm. Following the pattern from the previous few days, it rained for most of our drive down.

Pictures from the weekend are up in the gallery.

On Saturday morning, we rolled out of bed a little later, made breakfast, and hung out with the ranger who had spent the previous evening dealing with rowdy campers for a little while. Eventually, we packed up and hiked up to the lovely, south facing basalt cliff. The approach felt relatively short, and we enjoyed the hike up to the rim of the mesa through high desert forests and prairies.

The day turned out to be clear and beautiful. The rock was sunlit, warm, and the views from the cliff-line were incredible. We were on the edge of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, in the high country of northern New Mexico. To our south, we could see distant deserts and open lands, with peaks, mesas and wind-blown sand sculptures. The summer has been feeling late, and the desert climbing season will be starting soon. Looking out at the beautiful landscape below us, I started to get excited about new adventures this winter! But for now, we were having a great day in the mountains.

Pete’s Downclimb (5.6) – Mark and I started the day on a nice crack suggested by Dylan. We had brought a light rack, with gear up to one #3.5 cam. Mark got about 10ft up this route and realized that the whole thing was going to take much bigger gear. He climbed back down, grabbed all of Dylan’s Vedauwoo big gear, and then headed up again. The climb was lots of fun, and Mark even found a perfect little placement for the smallest Big Bro about 3/4 of the way up. I followed, and enjoyed the nice little ledges and pockets covering the climb.

Crack Head (5.8) – Dylan lead up this route while we were figuring out gear on Pete’s. And we began our day of free-loading off of Dylan’s TRs. Why not? It was a fun day with good cracks. After each of us climbed and enjoyed the perfect hand crack on Crack Head, we’d clip a few of the top draws on Sangre Verde (5.10a), and then run up that nice arrete on TR. The pockets were lovely, the moves were smooth and the traverse back to the anchors at the top was spicy.

Salt Mother (5.8) – Another Redpoint feather in Dylan’s cap, and another TR for Mark, Ann and me to enjoy. The climb starts with a tricky thin fingers crack, that felt creepy and insecure. It ended with thin hands that were perfect for me, and quickly became my favorite route of the day.

Great Roof Left (5.9) – This intimidating roof hung over us all day, and Dylan attacked it on lead. Mark and Ann followed happily, and everybody seemed to agree that this route was not as hard as Salt Mother. I hung out in the sun with the dog, resting my now aching wrist and hoping that this pain wasn’t a resurgence of the tendinitis I dealt with a few years ago. Eventually, I decided that it was the end of the day for me, but enjoyed cheering everybody else up their routes.

Motengator (5.8+) – I guess 4 pitches just weren’t enough for Dylan at the end of the day. We had all started talking about cold bear and ice water, but we had plenty of time left to get one more in. Dylan lead up this route, which seemed much longer than any others so far. Perhaps it was the heat or exhaustion from a long day, but it also seemed harder than the 5.8 grade would suggest. Careful, but strong, crack technique got Dylan, Mark and Ann to the top of the route without any problems.

Ok, without many problems. Mark lowered Dylan off of his belt, which was not set up well and resulted in a few minutes of apparent agony for Mark as his belay device dug into his crotch and the rope ran over his leg. Evidently, the usual belay set-ups that Mark uses for me, don’t work as well when your climber weighs 50 more pounds.

By the end of the day, we were all smiles, sunburns and sore muscles. We hiked down the mesa and spent a cool evening camping out with our friends.

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)!