Big Country!!!

Well, it has been a whirlwind of a last 3+ days. The fast-forward description includes: late night at a pub in Taipei, little sleep, ~24hrs of travel back to Pennsylvania, short sleep, drive to Ohio, visit family, visit friends, pack for three months of travel, little sleep, fly to Anchorage. Looking out my window to the Alaskan sky, the sun still hasn’t set but its 10 PM. I have no clue what day it is, much less what the date it.

To make a long story short, I’ve arrived to Alaska, which will be my home for the next 3 months. You can see the picture of my view out of my apartment (this was taken at 10PM!!). Clearly, living so close to big mountains will be AWESOME.

My first adventure has been grocery shopping. Lesson learned: when lacking a car and having a ~3 mile walk home ahead of you, it is "totally awesome" to buy more groceries than will fit in a backpack. The plus side was that the last 1/4mile I met a very nice couple out for a walk. They told me they saw 3 bear cubs near my apartment last week and there was a moose and calf in their yard recently. This is definitely Alaska! Next time I'll be sure to buy a TV and microwave to carry home. More adventures coming, stay tuned…

Taiwan

Taiwan tales and picture coming soon. Finally got some internet connection....

Ol' Man Wilson, you are a grumpy SOB

“Here it is,” I yelled over to Kevin, fatigue beginning to wear into more voice, and pointed to the “anchor” for our next rappel. This “anchor” consisted of two old nuts shallowly stuck into a crack. Considering some of our prior anchors included of a single nut or just a lassoed chock-stone, two nuts was practically “bomber.” As I looked down at my pointing hand, I saw it shaking in the glow of my headlamp. I guess I am more uncomfortable than I had thought. “Pull it together Mike!” I thought. Sure when this day started nearly 14 hours ago I had envisioned the adventure wrapping up right now at the car and my beloved package of Oreos. As I peered over the next ledge, looking into a black void without any sight of a boundary, much less bottom, it now seemed like the adventure was just beginning.

It was Spring break for me, and like any responsible individual shirking off the “real world” by hiding behind the ivory tower of university, I blew off actually getting work done and headed for Vegas. My trip to Vegas was slightly different those most, my final destination was actually about 20miles west of “the Strip,” out in the desert, Red Rocks Park. For the final day of our trip, we decided to climb a route called Inti Watana on Mt. Wilson (this was Kevin’s idea, for the record…). Inti Watana ended short of the summit, but we could link up with the top of another climb, Resolution Arete, and make the summit. Inti Watana is a 12 pitch climb, and the summit would add roughly 6 more pitches. While the first 12 would all be technical and steep, it sounded like the top of Resolution Arete included a couple technical moves and the rest was a scramble. Needless to say, we were looking at a long day. Jokingly, I told Kevin we could only do this if I had time to take a shower before my 6:50AM flight the next day. Done! Timing out the day, we figured 1.5hr approach, ½ hr to get set and start the first pitch, then ½ per pitch, give 2hrs buffer for the top of Resolution. We had a couple options for the descent. We could either do a series of rappels (yuck!) or something along the lines “walk down the water polished third gully to a rappel, then hike out of Oak Creek Canyon.” While the latter prescribed a 4.5hr trip down, we were fast hikers. It was a very generous timeline, but if we left the car at 6AM, I would be back to my beloved Oreos by around 8:30PM. Long day, but pretty doable, and again, we are fast hikers.

Nearly to the top of Inti Watana we were right on schedule, actually 15minutes early. What an amazing day it had been. Every one of the 12 pitches had been some of the most enjoyable climbing I had ever done. Even the tricky moves that I had feared would stifle me, had been tough but conceded smoothly to me. Then I had the thought that when you see it in a movie you think, “That was the most cliché foreshadowing statement!” Recalling some of our past “last day adventures,” this was turning into being uncharacteristically un-epic for us. But it did not matter, what a fantastic day we were having!!

The top of Resolution Arete (RA) was a stark contrast to Inti Watana. While not technically difficult, the moves were awkward, protection very poor, and rock crumbling. Kevin would commonly have 30+ foot run-outs, above a piece of protection stuck into crumbling rock. After I had a handhold break off in my hand, I knew this was not the place to trust protection catching any type of fall. Considering the quality of the rock, some of the “scrambles” seemed worthy of being roped up (looking down a several thousand foot drop off can be very convincing of the importance of a rope). To make a long story short, the top 6 pitches of RA became around 10 pitches for us. When we finally summited, the clock read 5:30PM, we were already an hour behind schedule.

The summit was fantastic. A great view of Vegas in the distance and blue skies blanketed us. I feared a similar experience as Whitney where the cold wind and temperatures would immediately chase us off the summit, but the top of Mt. Wilson was the most pleasant conditions we had experienced all week. After some pictures, high-fives, and the freedom of our feet from climbing shoes, we were on our way back down.

Immediately, the descent was not going well. After finding three cairns, the fourth played “hide-and-go-seek” with us, and the fifth played “I don’t exist” with us. But we decided on a gully the guidebook vaguely described. As the gully walls quickly steeped we were soon committed to our “third gully.” My only goal was to get through the rappel before dark; I am fine hiking in the dark, but a rappel in the dark sounded awkward. Soon we came to a 20-foot drop and a tree that had been rappelled off at least once in its long history. This short drop wasn’t exactly the rappel I had envisioned, but I’ll take it. Once we cleared that rappel another short drop met us. Ok, that last one was short, maybe a couple of these add up to the apparently singular rappel described in the book. After about 4 or 5 of these rappels, off increasingly sketchy anchors and working our way into a 4-foot wide slot canyon, I began to think we had simply found the wrong gully that some other poor fool had also found. I just hoped that the “poor fool” found a way out in this canyon that didn’t include climbing back up the gully to look for the correct gully.

Soon the sun was gone, our headlamps were out, and I was going through Oreo withdraw. Of all the climbing I had ever done, bailing off the route was never a problem. Within a couple hours I could easily be down on flat ground and off a mountain. Embraced by the vertical walls around me and thousand-feet of elevation below me, I began to feel trapped on this mountain. If the rope became stuck after a rappel, this could quickly turn into a very long night. But hope was in sight. I could see the narrow gully make a sharp turn and open up into Oak Creek Canyon. Maybe this is where the HIKE down begins. Those hopes faded as I reached that point and looked down over the ledge that into a world of complete black. I was soon rappelling into the black void having no clue what was below me. More importantly, I had no clue if the rope would reach the bottom. Maybe the other poor fool that chose this decent had used a double-rope. Those old cams above me had better hold! Squinting through the black I still hadn’t seen the bottom of the rappel by the time I saw the bottom of my rope.

When I was a couple feet from the end of the rope I found a couple cams stuck into a wet crack in front of me. Not only did I have to rappel of these ridiculous anchors, I now had to hang off them!!! Even though they didn’t move after I tugged on them, I still didn’t trust this anchor. So, before unclipping from the rope I jammed my foot and hand into the wet vertical crack. I don’t think I had put a pound of my weight on that anchor until Kevin got down there. After the next rappel I was off that wall and rappelling into back void number two. After a total of around 10 rappels Kevin and I were onto somewhat flat ground. The first thing we found, a cairn. While we hadn’t seen one in hours, this one assured us that this horrible series of rappels was actually correct! After several more hours of one-legged lunges stepping down boulders we were cruising across the desert. We reached the car at 11:30PM, 17.5hrs after we left it. A part of me wanted to suggest we hike around for another 30minutes so that we could make the trip a clean 18hrs, but looking at Kevin’s face I decided an even number was of little importance to him. I did get my shower that night, well early morning, and found my sleeping back by 1:30AM. If I learned anything out of this whole experience, it is this:
When flying out of Vegas, you need to arrive 45minutes before your flight. A 42minute early arrival translates to losing your seat.

It’s always a shock for me to return to my other life after returning form the latest adventure; the longer and more intense the adventure, the more of a transitional shock. Sitting in my dark office with my callused fingertips tapping the keyboard, I only need to look at the back of my cut-up hands to be reminded of my latest adventure. But in all truth, it will take far less than cuts on my hand to remind me of my latest adventure. It seems that every trip I make to Vegas ends in ways I never would expect.

While rappelling into a black void I had thought to myself, “This is the last “alpine” climb I am ever doing!” But similar to when I said the same thing after my first marathon, several hours later I was already looking forward to the next. I seek out these challenges because I am not certain if I can actually do them. It is not an adrenaline-junkie craving; it is a desire to push myself into unknown territory, forcing out my raw character to “figure it out.” I guess it is similar to someone meditating and reducing existence to the “singular;” these adventures strip myself to the character that defines, “Mike.” Sure I could do this through meditation in a dark room, but who would not want to find such simplicity 1,000 feet above the Nevada desert?!?! NOT ME!!

check out more pictures:

Red Rocks

I think the ice had it in for me...

Ancient sages often philosophized (that’s hard to even say in my head) the question: what do you do when Arctic freeze crushes the world like Godzilla stomping small cars under his foot? The answer: GO ICE CLIMBING, of course!!!

My two-day binge of ice began at 4:15AM on Friday morning. Soon I was stumbling out the door into -5degree temperatures and beginning the 5hr drive out to the Catskills of southern New York. Specifically, I was heading to a town called Tannersville. Having spent the last week struggling to get up before 7AM, it was rewarding to think that by 7AM today I was already several hours into the day. AWESOME, don’t you think?

When I finally got off the highway and started heading up a narrow ravine with periodic smearings of thick ice into the town of Tannersville, I began to become nostalgic about the Adirondacks. The last time I was in the ‘dacks was before I left Saratoga Springs. The ‘dacks definitely aren’t the mouth-watering 13,000ft peaks of the West. The ‘dacks are like that car that you have been driving for the last 10years. Parked next to a Ferrari, your old faithful just looks like its blocking the view of the Ferrari; kind of like how I refused to called the peaks of the ‘dacks anything but “hills” the first year up there. But, when you look at your combustion-powered-best-friend, you see all the amazing adventures that those four wheels, spacious trunk, and roof rack have provided you. In fact, when you think about, that car is pretty much the biggest badass you know. Sure hot women aren’t falling all over you to get a ride in your car, but when it comes right down to it, this companion has brought you over 180,000 adventures and its got many more to give. I promise an Adirondack adventure in the near future.

But alas, I digress. Meeting up with Kevin at the local Stewarts (and making a mental note of the $2.79 half-gallon ice cream special) we were off to a friendly climbing spot called the Hell Hole, sounds promising. If I were to admit something that you may not know about me, I would say that I am likely one of the laziest people I know. If my third personality would allow my second personality his way, I wouldn’t leave the couch. So, you can imagine how pleased all my personalities were to face the shortest approach to a climb that I have ever experienced: maybe 30 yards…downhill!

As we were finishing up our first anchor to rappel into the heartwarming Hell Hole, we heard an enormous explosion below us. I turned to Kevin with wide and slightly disappointed eyes thinking for certain he was about to say, “Well, Mike, all the ice in the valley just collapsed, so I guess we might as well call it a day.” Fortunately, my decibel gauge for the sound of falling ice is poorly calibrated, however, a large portion of the wall did collapse. NOTE: for all those mothers out there, specifically all of mine, this was perfectly safe. For all those non-mothers, IT WAS PRETTY AWESOME!!

Needless to say, this was an amazing day. Frigid temps, but clear skies, sun, and beautiful steep, sustained ice. Seeing as I don’t believe in the fad of “warming up” nor in “easing into things” we climbed hard all day. I even pulled a dry tool undercling move that was completely inefficient but would have impressed all the women…if only there were women there. We topped it off at the end with a pretty incredible mixed route. Then as if it couldn’t get any better, I filled up on Mexican and Tecate before making the return trip in probably the strangest town I have ever seen (imagine a town you would see in an amusement park with buildings that have windows and blinds painted onto the walls and it looking like a paint store exploded in the middle of the town. Now, make that real life. Welcome to Tannersville).

As I cruised back to State College, unable to straighten my fingers due to the prolonged pump, I kept thinking, “I get to do this all over again tomorrow! I love living a make-believe life!”

Sleeping in to a late 6:30AM start, I stumbled out the door into -10degree temperatures. Meeting up with CJ and Aaron, we were on our way to the town of Confluence, PA (whoever came up with the names for PA towns was probably the least creative person. Let’s consider a few: State College: where the state college is; Confluence: at the confluence of two rivers; Intercourse: where the Amish live; Blue Ball: …well you get the idea).

Considering how awesome yesterday’s approach was, you can imagine the pity party I began to throw when I heard it was an hour plus approach to the climb. Is it really so hard just a build a road directly to the cliff? (kidding, well kind of…) To my great pleasure, however, this was one of the best hour plus approaches I have ever had. It included two miles along a perfectly flat bike path that walked along (yes bike paths can “walk along”) a scenic flowing river, then a 1000foot hike straight up a mere “400foot hike.” But the quarry-made cliff hosted some impressive ice (who says man’s incessant raping of the land hasn’t improved outdoor sport?). While a little thin and surprisingly wet for sub-zero temps, the ice was great. Again, I held true to my commitment to break the fad of “warming up” and we just went for the steep ice.

To top off the ice binge I jumped on one final climb in order to demonstrate a little mixed climbing technique. After be successfully shutdown by the rock, I hopped on the ice. Not only did the pump in my arms scream, “Not today, mister!” but then the wall threw in one final kick to my wounded pride with a nice punch of ice in the face, effectively saying, “Go home, loser.”

With a trickle of blood from the corner of my eye, I could only gleam a smug little smile. “What happened to your eye, a bar fight?” “No, falling ice…while I was ice climbing.” That’s right, I’m a badass (or incredibly uncoordinated), wanna ride in my badass car?

More pictures can be found at:

Weekend of Arctic freeze

Silent, still....and only one gunshot

After snowing all day, the hills around me metamorphosed from a land of verglace coated brown into a brilliantly white winter wonderland. Come evening, I picked Kim up and we headed to a dead-end up in the hills. We were immediately passed by a couple snowmobiles, but after their noise disappeared and we found oxygen again, the world was silent and still. Popping on our XC skis and headlamps (unfortunately, the lingering storm cloaked the moon light), we were on our way.

The next hour and a half simply included breaking new tracks in the half foot of powder. The only light came from our headlamps. The only sounds were our skis cutting through the snow and the rhythmic clicking of our poles. It was so quiet I could hear the small icy snowflakes patting my face. Until blisters began to develop, all I could think about was how simple it was cutting through the black world before me.

[We did hear one other noise, a muffled pop, a little past half way. In response to Kim jokingly speculating it was either an avalanche or gun shot, my response of, “It couldn’t be an avalanche,” accepted the fact that we both knew it was the latter, but neither of us were too willing to let ourselves think about it any further.]

One day I mentioned to Kim that I’ve never been the spiritual- and meditation-type. She figured long workouts are probably my form of mediation. While we loaded our skis back into the car, having only exchanged a few words over the last several hours, I couldn’t remember anything that I had thought about over the entire ski (other than blisters for the last little bit). In fact, I don’t think I was thinking about anything at all. I was simply cutting through the black world before me.

I guess we all have our own forms of mediation. I’m just glad that mine gets me out of the house on amazing nights like this. I also realize how fortunate I am to have friends that will go night skiing and running with me (the gun shot would have freaked me out much more if I was alone!).

Crested Butte

Most of The Crew, but of course several important people missing.

What? Totally normal, right?

Blake during the calamari-Clamato challenge. He soon turned green, puked, then had to do a full nude lap in waste deep snow around the house while having snowballs thrown at him. You know, normal stuff.

Pretty much sums up the feeling of the trip....I don't think that makes any sense.

A morning quickie before work...

When I awoke this morning to a thick blanket of virgin white snow glowing under the morning’s full moon, did I think of heading into the office early? Nay. (yes, I did just use “nay” seamlessly in a sentence) Upon seeing the thin dusting of wet snow under the dull glow of the morning overcast sky, I thought of the possibility of snow being up on Black Mo. I scampered out of bed, grabbed a banana, yak trax, skis and way too much warm clothing and hopped into the car heading out to the promise land called Black Mo.

As I slid my way up and over Purdue Mt and up the sinuous road of Black Mo, which was yet to be deflowered by a snowplow, I reminisced of my first “attempt” at cross-country skiing. In this attempt, despite tremendous effort, concentration, and dedication to forward motion, I was rewarded with sliding backward. Needless to say, this debacle was remedied by the removal of my skis and good old run to the car. This walk down memory lane was soon interrupted with driving conditions that were ironically similar to my first cross country ski results, calling greater focus to continuing to forward motion.

Arriving in Black Mo, I found the conditions for which I hoped. Everything was white: a white blanket of fresh on the ground, the sticky white clinging to every inch of the bare trees and bushes, even the sky reflected this white theme (I guess a blue sky would have been more idyllic, but the uniformity of color is at least respectable). I popped on the skis and away I went!

I wish I could describe myself gliding miraculously down the trail with childlike giggles ringing in my glorious wake, but nay. I would say I was more similar to drunk adolescent trying as hard as he can to appear sober before his parents, all the while displaying a general underlying sloppiness accented with periodic disastrous stumbles. I would like to attribute my xc skiing impotence on the “hidden tire ruts,” but that would just be making excuses, even though there were hidden tire ruts, honest. My experience reminded me of my first mountain bike ride, but with less flips over the handlebars. Part of me was really enjoying it and another part of me was trying very hard to suppress the growing frustration with my sloppiness.

Sliding all over the road made me think about all the new activities that I have adopted into my life. All these first experiences proved very similar to today: enjoyment of performing the activity and slight frustration at my inability to actually perform the activity. Despite this initial inefficacy, there has always been something that makes me stay with it. For road biking, it was the idea of going fast and covering big miles solely under my own power; for running, it was to impress a girl (just kidding...) it was (also) to experience the simplicity of motion without any other machine and seeing how hard I can push; for mountain biking, it was to be able to experience this thing that everyone who does it loves; for climbing, it was to be a bad ass; and now for cross country skiing, it is to become an aerobic juggernaut (yea, I have now used both “nay” and “juggernaut” seamlessly in sentences). Regardless of the initial motivation, for all these activities I recognized the essence of “quality” for each sport. In this, it is my desire to truly experience the essence of quality (and be a bad ass, aerobic juggernaut, that under his own power can put up big miles enjoying what everyone else does, all while most importantly impressing the girl) that pushes me to keep heading down this (heavily rutted) trail in the opposite direction from my car until I get the hang of this, or at least stop falling down.

Leaving the snowy promise land and heading back into the muddy wet valley, I feel satisfied with today’s effort. While my form was sloppy, I did manage to move forward. As Bill Murray says, “Baby steps.” Now, while I sit at my desk, procrastinating real work, I am thrilled at the idea that I got to spend all morning in the snowy winter woods. This experience has left me with two final thoughts: (1) I really wish I had brought my camera, and (2) is it lunch time yet?