A Busy Month

After my travel debacle, I had a few days to recover, then began the longest month of my life. Since the company I'm working for does rafting trips as well as canyoning, they wanted me to get my rafting certification. Cool, no problem. But I also needed to get fully certified as a Swiss canyoning guide. So I signed up for those courses as well. All told, that's 24 days of outdoor classes in a month. And unlike most American outdoor classes that I've done which seem to finish up around 5pm, these Swissies have no qualms about keeping you busy for 12-14 hours a day. All in all, I learned a bit, spent a lot of money, made good friends, and most importantly passed all my certification tests. So, I'm legal and ready for a busy summer. I didn't get much of a chance to take pictures, but here's a few...

Beautiful scenery, even when the weather sucks:

A cool (but really hard to photograph) Roman bridge:

This is what I paid $4k for?:

My temporary accommodations (no, not the van, the house behind it):

The view from the front yard (and yes, that's climbable):

Alpine glow and waterfalls:

I went to Interlaken to take my rafting test. Most of my time there was a drunken whirlwind, but here's the view out of my hostel window looking towards the Jungfrau (just visible behind the clouds).

Glad to be done with May. Looking forward to a good June.

Planes, Trains, and Violent Illness

No pictures for this one...thankfully. The trip from NYC (where I stopped for a few days to visit my friends Tom and Lindsay) to Switzerland was, to put in mildly, fucking terrible. It began, as so many bad experiences have, with a volcano. In fact, not just a volcano, but The Volcano. As in "Haven't you heard that all flights to Europe are cancelled because of The Volcano." To be fair, I was not one of the thousands of unfortunate people from all over the world who were stuck in random places for weeks, having to live in airports and rely solely on vending machines for sustenance. They were, of course, much worse off, but this is about me, so forget about their miseries for the time being. I wasn't stuck anywhere because I wasn't actually trying to travel during the week or so when flights were cancelled. I was, however, trying to travel soon after that time on a buddy-pass, meaning that I'd be flying standby (and at the bottom of the standby list, with all paying passengers ahead of me). Obviously, given all the stranded people who I just asked you to forget about, flying standby anywhere in the vicinity of Europe was not the best plan. So, nothing for it but to buy a real ticket.

Buying a ticket to Europe at the last minute can be, as you might expect, rather expensive. Given my irresponsible lifestyle, you might also expect (and be correct in your expectations) that I have somewhat limited financial resources; requiring that I purchase the cheapest possible ticket I could find, which happened to be on Jet Airways. Never heard of it? Neither had I. Turns out they're based in India (we'll get back to this).

Since my flight was to leave in the evening and arrive the next morning I, of course, planned on sleeping most of the flight and arriving in Europe fresh and rejuvenated. This is where plans and reality began to diverge. First, the plane was completely packed. This wasn't unexpected, but it led to complications with the next problem; I was seated next to a guy with Restless Leg Syndrome. No shit, this guy's legs didn't stop moving for the entire 8 hours on the plane. I know this for a fact because I didn't sleep for an instant in that 8 hours.

Ok, spending an entire trans-Atlantic flight seated next to a human paint-mixer sucks, but doesn't warrant it's own blog post, right? Well how about if the Indian food (see, told you we'd get back to this) you're served halfway through the flight gives you food-poisoning? How about if all the information you got on the internet regarding which trains to take from the Milan airport to Switzerland turns out to be wrong, necessitating that you carry your 140 lbs. of luggage (canyoning gear and climbing gear weigh a lot) through multiple train stations and the subway while trying not to puke or pass out?

I did, finally, make it to my destination. However, to add insult to injury I lost my sunglasses during the final train transfer and boarded an express train which completely bypassed my stop. When I was finally able to get off the train and get a hold of my friend Eric I begged him to just come and pick me up where I was because I couldn't face the thought of getting back on another train. Thankfully he took pity on me.

The moral of this story is: Volcanoes suck (just ask the Pompeians).

Moab and Goodbye

I had plans to spend the summer travelling around the west, climbing and mountain biking along the way. I sold my truck and bought a van, so as to have a more livable rig. Of course, a few days after buying the van I was offered a chance to return to Switzerland for another summer of guiding; an opportunity I couldn't pass up. Knowing that my parents would be thrilled to have a huge, blue, molester-van parked outside their house for a whole summer I planned my flights to leave from Albuquerque, meaning that I had a chance to spend a few days in Moab on the drive down. I enlisted a few friends to join me for my last few days in the States, loaded all my belongings into my vehicle and headed out. We had a great time climbing and mountain biking, but since it's hard to bring an SLR camera along on a bike, and even harder to bring one along on a climb, all my pictures are of climbing, taken from the ground. We started off with an evening session on Wall Street.

Daryn belaying me at the start of El Cracko Diablo:

And proof that I finished:

Sunday we went to climb Ancient Art. I'd followed Daryn up it a few years ago, but this would be my first time leading it. Here's a shot from the hike in, looking across at Castleton Tower and the Rectory.

Aubrey belaying me at the start:

Climbing through the crux:

And excellent overview of the route. The first pitch goes up the rock jumble and ends at the bottom of the chimney (just left of center). The second pitch is up the chimney. The third pitch is very short and goes from the top of the chimney up on the bulge between the two pinnacles. The fourth pitch is where things get interesting from an exposure standpoint. You're heading for the top of the little corkscrew pinnacle on the left. However, you have about 40 feet of rock to cross to get to the base of it, the narrowest point being about a foot wide with a 300 ft. drop to each side. Then you simply have to climb up the corkscrew and stand on the pizza-box sized summit:

Aubrey rappelling down:

I was happy to get the chance to climb this route again, and especially to lead it. It was a great trip with great people and an excellent send-off before leaving the country.

An Uneventful Winter, Mostly

This past winter in Salt Lake wasn't exactly bad, but it wasn't what we've come to expect. I worked as a snowmaker for Snowbird, a job that would normally end around Xmas. However, as Ullr refused to let loose with the powdery goodness, our season went on and on. By late January I was going crazy, but the snows finally came. Kind of. We got a bit, then it stopped, then we got a bit more; none of the huge dumps that UT is famous for. And hence, I never really got excited about the ski season. Fun was had, good lines were skied, airs were taken, but the excitement of winters past was never forthcoming. Hopefully a function of snowfall, rather than a sign that I'm getting old.

In early March I decided I'd had enough of moping around UT waiting for snow, so I loaded my skis into the truck and headed for Tahoe to visit Miles. I had a great time in my old home. I skied a lot of familiar terrain and found some new stuff as well. An excellent trip and well worth the drive. A few pictures...

Crazy snow crystals found while skinning up Hidden Peak:

Wally and Miles on top of Hidden Peak:

Miles finding a nice line on the way down:

Wally finishing the hike up Maggie's:

Looking out over Desolation Wilderness from the top of Maggie's:

Fulfilling Promises

It's been a long time since I've updated this blog; and having looked over it I realized that I promised pictures of what exactly this "canyoning" business is all about. So here we go (sorry for the picture quality):

So yeah, that's what I do for a living.