Easily Amused: A Look Inside the Mind of a Wanderer

Fur Rondy

2011-03-05T20:48:00.000-08:00

I'm up in the great white north again, waiting to jump a plane to dutch harbor. It actually was an opportune time to be hanging out in Anchorage. While waiting here, the Fur Rondy festival has been happening. And what, you say, is a fur rondy? I haven't really figured it out but so far it has involved several festivities involving lots of people in fur hats and coats as well as the start of the Iditarod. It's been pretty cool to be up here, despite the coldest weather I've ever seen. I had the chance to see some actual sled dogs doing their thing, and a few other very creative and notable events. Here's a quick synopsis.

A friend of mine at the Observer training office participated in the world famous outhouse race, the quarterfinal heat shown above. The goal is pretty simple. Push someone in an outhouse to the end of a short course and back, dress up in crazy costumes, and basically make a big idiot out of yourself. Sounds like fun. Some of my favorite team names: "The Kodiak Crappers," "Cool Runs" (Jamaican bobsled theme, shown at the top), and "Romancing the Throne."

Ever heard of Yukigassen? Me neither, until this weekend. Apparently some Japanese peeps with too much time on their hands (I've never been there, but Japan always seems to be a hotbed of bizarre but creative sports) invented a very specific set of rules for a snowball fight and turned it into a sanctioned sport. It's basically part paintball part capture the flag. This is no ordinary snowball fight though, the dudes and dudettes wear helmets and face masks. Oh, and when they throw, they throw some heat.

Though the official start of the Iditarod is up in Wasila, they do a ceremonial lap around Anchorage to kick the thing off. It'd be cool to go see the actual race, or at least some of it as it's over 1000 miles long. But it was fun to get caught up in the spirit and excitement that Alaskans find in the yearly race. Those dogs are pretty awesome. They appear to be nothing but sinew and bone. When the drivers stop, the dogs get antsy almost immediately. According to a man I met, they don't want to eat, don't want to sleep, they just. Want. To. Run.

2011-02-26T22:43:00.000-08:00

Bone dude

The last day Rachel and I had in Christchurch, we spent some time and hard earned cash carving pieces of bone into something useful. It was quite interesting. Though most of the touristy shops seem to focus on New Zealand greenstone as the neck adornment of choice, a great deal of traditional jewelry is constructed of bone. We thought it’d be cool to go carve a couple of our own and it turns out there are a few places that offer this. The bone dude (yes, the name of the company is called “The Bone Dude”) in Christchurch was our choice, and we had a pretty damn good time. He’s been doing this for a few years now, and had a lot of information about traditional carving. The fish hooks and spirals don’t mean anything in particular, unless you’re in the tourist industry and trying to rev up profits.

Usually, back before Europeans arrived the bone of choice was whale, and in some cases, people. If the latter, skull apparently makes wonderful material for carving. Not all people bone carving was due to grudges, either perceived or otherwise. Actually in traditional Maori culture revered elders (the VIPs of the day) were buried, and a couple of years down the road were often dug back up in order to make a piece of jewelry out of them. In that way, future generations would have a piece of the past and know their ancestors. Pretty cool.

The bone we used either cow femur or tibia, which is still pretty bitchin’ for carving. He gave us the template of our choice and we got to filing and sanding away. Here’s another great tradition: if you craft or fashion something ornamental, it is bad form to keep it for yourself. So Rachel and I made bone necklaces for each other. She got the spiral I made and I received an awesome fish hook. Though I have never been the crafty type, I take a certain pride when I look at that spiral chunk of bone and exclaim, “dude, I freakin’ made that!”

The story so far... South Island part A

2011-01-24T16:12:00.000-08:00

Rachel and I have been in New Zealand for over a couple of months now, with us currently residing (if you want to call it that) on the North part of the South Island. The plan is, well... there isn't much of one at a moment, but I'll give it a go. I've been waiting on teaching registration for a couple of different countries but various bureaucracies are taking their sweet time mailing certain documents. The three months I spent in the Bering Sea are mostly to blame though. The plan at the moment is to take our "if we have to" round trip ticket back to the states in the middle of February. We could stay for up to a year on our working holiday visas, but in the name of being responsible (*shudder* that word gives me the willies) it would be better to try and find jobs in our respective fields. So, we're headed home unless something happens, which I've learned usually does. Ambiguous enough for you?

The first month here, Rachel and I lived in our student housing flat in Christchurch while Rachel finished up her nursing practicum. We had a cool little pad right next to Hagley park and downtown. During that month, we went on a pretty epic backpacking trip which Rachel summarized wonderfully on her blog. Check it out! It's worth a read. Near vertical talus slopes with grass for holds is almost always a recipe for some tasty awesome.

On another trip down south in December we were able to check out the little blue penguin colony in Oamaru, as well as some of the rare yellow eyed variety. They come ashore in the evening, and as the flash of cameras scares them we weren't able to take any pictures. So I'll have to describe them for you: think of the cutest thing you have ever seen and then imagine something cuter than that. Yeah. Pretty cute. The little blues were quite social, running around in groups, squabbling and calling to each other loudly.

On the same trip, we managed to head out to Mt. Cook national park for a bit of hiking in a torrential downpour. Out standing scenery, here's a few pictures. I'll post more the next time I get an internet connection.

On the hooker track. There is never enough time to see all that you want to see.

taking a page from my brother's book on a suspension bridge

New Zealand mistletoe, it was the Christmas season at the time after all

Creatures

2011-01-08T13:01:00.000-08:00

It's not an easy thing to see what's down on the sea floor at around 100 fathoms, so sometimes you have to settle for bringing the bizarre up to you. A longliner is actually a fairly selective means of catching fish, but other lifeforms than cod were still unintentionally caught. Most of the animals probably didn't survive a trip up from those depths (except the halibut, they are extremely tough for some reason). As a biologist, it was a great opportunity to nerd out however. There are strange fish and bizarre invertebrates down there. Here's a few.

A very strange looking sponge

This looks like it is straight out of a Dr. Seuss book

By far the smallest skate I saw

The beautiful atka mackerel

One of my favorite fish, a searcher

Sunsets/Sunrises

2011-01-08T12:43:00.000-08:00

My schedule on the boat was so irregular, I can't tell if any of the scenery shots were taken during the am or pm hours. Regardless, here's a token few shots from the Bering sea. Generally the weather there is pretty miserable, but every so often the sky would open up and some god beams would come shooting through.

St. Paul Island (The Pribilofs)

2010-12-19T14:11:00.000-08:00

Here's a few pictures from St. Paul Island, I place I visited while in the Bering Sea on a couple of occasions. The entire island has about 300 people on it, some amazing fur seals and (my favorite) ... puffins!

I was able to climb a sea stack and get above this little horned puffin. I love puffins

An arctic fox

Just because I'm a licensed teacher now, here's the local school district office. It was a strange island. The locals invited us to the bar (declined, as the boat was leaving) which shares the same building as the police station and the jail, which is a pretty logical pairing if you think about it.

Dutch Harbor

2010-12-07T02:21:00.001-08:00

I'm going to play catch up with a couple of Alaska posts before moving on to New Zealand, which is where I am fortunate enough to be living at the moment.

Because of my observer duties, I wasn't allowed to take pictures of any of the boats I was involved with or any of the crew members. But I did snap some shots of the places I went and some of the fish I saw, I just had to make sure there were no identifiable markings in my pictures. After my three week observer training in Anchorage, I jumped on the first flight out of town too... Dutch Harbor.

Known to many through the TV show, the "Deadliest Catch" Dutch Harbor hauls in more fish, pound per pound than anywhere in the nation, maybe even the world. The Bering Sea, by virtue of the upwelling of ocean currents which creates nutrient rich waters is filled with all kinds of fish and shellfish. I've got to say, National Marine Fisheries has the place locked down pretty tight too. They are committed to keeping the fish stocks sustainable, which made me feel a little better about the job I was doing.

The town of Dutch Harbor is a muddy place filled with rust. You need a tetanus shot just looking at it. But man, there are bald eagles everywhere, interesting ships of all sizes, drunk sailors stumbling around and numerous other quirks to keep one occupied. Few people actually live there and all the people I met were from the most random places. Milwaukee, the Philipines, Mexico, Poland, Chignik (had to look that one up). Some were there for the adventure, some because of family tradition. Most were up there to make some moola, and then spend it as fast as humanly possible in strip joints and then blame the government for taking it all.

Of the few thousand people who live there, even fewer were women. The saying goes that there are as many hot women in Dutch Harbor as there are trees. I think I did see a tree, a short shrubby thing hidden in a nook in town. I felt bad for the ladies though, they got hit on ALL. THE. TIME. I was surprised that they didn't walk around armed with a shotgun to ward off would be suitors. I suppose with the skewed sex ratio that you could have just about any man you wanted, but these are not just any men.

However, for a brief but shining moment in August, the Aleutian islands, or at least the island of Unalaska, is freaking beautiful. Everything is green and blossoming. There are little creeks all over the place filled with salmon. Here's a few pictures of some hikes I went on while I was waiting for the boat to leave.

A pretty crossing

There are ship wrecks and abandoned vessels all around the island of Unalaska. It would be cool to poke around a few if you had the time.

I swear I've seen yellow paintbrush (the flowers in the foreground) in just about every state in the Union. There is about a three week period in the Aleutians in which the foliage is this green. Also note the lack of trees/women...

Journal from the Bering Sea below

2010-12-02T15:21:00.000-08:00

Despite popular demand, I'm back to blogging! Some of you out there have suggested that I get off my butt and post something, which is a legitimate claim considering it's been months.

Below, I pasted in the journal I kept during my time on a fishing boat in the Bering Sea this past summer. I think the total word count came in at over 12,000, which to my estimates is more words than the character Hamlet, Shakespeare's most infamous whiner, speaks during your average showing. I don't expect anyone to read it all, but there is some interesting stuff in there. Living on a boat was a fascinating experience, it is a microcosm of constant motion, fishy smells, cigarette smoke and rife with profanity.

For a good synopsis of what it's like to live on a fishing boat, check out entries: August 25 and 31, September 5 and October 2 and 13.

Oh yeah, I'm back in New Zealand now so be prepared for pictures sometime in the next few years. Peace.

Alaska Journal in its Entirety

2010-12-02T14:35:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

I spent my first night on a moving boat after spending a couple in the harbor. Big difference. So far no seasickness though, but as I understand it the waves don’t get much calmer than this. The water is glassy looking outside this morning. It almost looks like it’s made of mercury through the argent fog.

We’ll be steaming north for a couple of days to reach the Turbot fishing grounds that the Captain knows about. Apparently, this is a new, secret spot that only he and a buddy know about from a tip from a NOAA guy. I found it interesting that even captains of 175 foot boats have secret fishing holes. The couple day’s steam will be nice, as it will allow me to get my bearings around here and get used to a constantly moving boat. When you are on board a fishing vessel, everything, your world, your universe is in constant motion. The cupboards creak and the whole place vibrates from the kinetic energy put out by the engine.

While downstairs eating breakfast, the deck boss went into the crew quarters and said loudly, “I am your mamma!” Then he came over to me and said, “Yep, the kids have a lot of toys to clean up this morning.” Hopefully that includes my observer station, because it doesn’t even exist yet. There’s supposed to be a table going in at some point. As long as I have it by the time we start fishing, it’s required by law that they have it for me.

I miss Rachel; I miss my family and friends. It almost hurts sometimes. I’ll get by just fine, and it will go fast because it is busy. Hell, it should prove to be pretty interesting, all of the weird species I’m going to see. I even saw a few whales in the distance on the way out yesterday. But I still wish I was with my girl. It’s not like living in Corvallis. The enormity of the ocean makes a fishing boat a pretty isolating place. This is especially true for the observer I think. Sure the crew has been nice to me so far, but I’m still an outsider. I play to different rules, have a different boss, and in some cases their goals are not the same as mine. It’s gotta be just a little weird to have a guy standing nearby you with a clipboard, writing furiously. I’m going to try and play off of the things we have in common: healthy fish stocks, a love of the job, and whatever cool stories we might find interesting.

One more thing, before I go. I watched them dump garbage overboard just a moment ago. It bugs me, but it is perfectly legal as long as they don’t dump plastic overboard. Guess that’s just how things go.

That evening

Got my observer station mostly set up. There’s still a lot that I don’t know, but I have a feeling that most it will be “on the job training.” The deck boss reassured me today that they would get me the fish I need to do my job. The guys are all pretty cool, if not stoic. There is one dude who cracks me up how he relates with others, he does not listen. At all. I once asked him a question in the middle of his monologue. He looked surprised for a brief moment but then he kept going right where he left off. But at least his stories are interesting so I don’t mind at all. Sometimes I have to wander off and do my job though. I like how he pronounces Wolves, “Woovs” and Bears “Burs.”

Dinner was lasagna. I ate with most of the other guys while watching the worst action movie I have ever seen, which usually would be a redundant statement. Badass Karate dude is protecting a girl with a pizza slice from her slain father (never did figure out why they were fighting over a pizza slice), complete with break dance fighting and bad hair. Awesome.

Big rollers tonight, so after I did my exercises, I popped a Dramamine just in case. Laying down usually seems to help when I get a little light headed, or sometimes I head outside. G’night.

August 4, 2010

Waves were pretty rough this morning, and I felt a little low on energy so I popped a bonine and now I feel fine. I compare wave height by picking a spot on my small window and watching how far above and below the horizon it wanders as the ship passes over the waves. I have a feeling this will be one of those weird things I do to amuse myself when not feeling well. At other times I sit and wonder what people are doing back home. I hope Rachel’s ok.

On the way out of harbor I saw a few whales and even a couple of flukes, but I was unable to ascertain what species. I’m really hoping to see some up a little closer. The guys have fishing goals for the pounds of fish they want to get, I have my sights on seeing some whales and porpoises. I just noticed a few puffs in the distance. The good thing about being on a long liner is I have to spend a LOT of time out on deck watching what comes in on the line, or set as it is known. This will hopefully give me some good whale watching while there is nothing coming in.

My favorite animals so far are the puffins. They often surface near the boat and are startled and start paddling away as fast as they can. Their beaks are huge in comparison to their bodies so it looks somewhat comical when they move their head from side to side to make sure you aren’t chasing them. When too close, they do this funny movement where they paddle with their wings on top of the water to get away. Picture a bird doing the breast stroke. I love puffins.

We start fishing today. Let’s hope this goes well.

August 5, 2010

Well a lot has happened in the last few hours. We’re getting whaled on out here. And I don’t mean that the waves are brutal or that I got in a fistfight. We set our gear last night and went to retrieve it this morning. It was my first haul, and the observer program lets us take a practice haul to get the hang of things before we start recording real data. I got up just before sunrise (I’ll admit I was a little nervous, I want to do a good job) and went to the wheel house to find the captain and the mate earnestly looking around in the predawn light. It almost looked like they were looking for U-boats, but they were in fact looking for the buoy attached to the longline (they call them “the bags”). When they found it, the captain swung the boat close and the rollerman (the guy who helps fish aboard as the line is reeled in) snagged it with a grappling hook. The first 100 hooks or so were completely empty. Then we started seeing some turbot, as well as a significant number of Skates and Grenadier (the latter have a long pointed tail, weird fish… but then again so are skates). I observed this up on the weather deck, which yup you guessed it, is open to the elements. All of a sudden, the captain exclaimed over the intercom, “Whales!” He swung the boat in reverse and the crew threw the line back in the water. True enough, there were at least 3 killer whales, and I could tell they were feeding on the turbot as they came up. One was a big bull, and there were a couple of smaller ones as well. That pretty much has put an end to our fishing trip.

We’ve been drifting ever since. The guys are going to try again tomorrow, but if they come again who knows what will happen. I was talking to the engineer, and he said they are pretty sneaky. The whales will make sure to not be around when you are setting gear but when you bring it in they will be there in minutes. They can easily outrun the boat and when they hear the hydraulics start running, it sounds just like a dinner bell to them. They love Greenland Turbot, but when we start fishing for Cod on the 15^th, the whales won’t bug us.

I guess I should be happy I’m still getting paid, but hanging out on a moving boat with nothing to do isn’t the first way I’d spend my free time. Before I left, I remember complaining that running more than 5 miles on pavement hurts my flat feet. I’d KILL to be able to run anywhere now. A boat sometimes isn’t the best place for a borderline ADD kid like me. Situps and pushups only get you so far.

Last night I saw some Dahl’s Porpoises. I recorded it as a Marine Mammal sighting (yay, another form to fill out… but it was something to do). Those suckers are fast! Really all you see is a quick rooster tail splash (Their heads are pronounced and this makes water shoot forwards as they surface). At first it seems like someone is chucking big rocks out into the water, but sooner or later you catch one before it surfaces and see the distinctive white side. Pretty cool.

One more thing. I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of this moving around on boats thing. When I go to the bathroom across the hall, I usually wait for the boat to rock away from me, so that I’m faced downhill in a sense. Then, all I have to do is fall into the bathroom. I do the reverse on the way back. If you start walking when it’s uphill and then the boat rolls unexpectedly, all of a sudden you are going 10 miles an hour. You have to do some clever maneuvering to get yourself out of that bind. Fortunately, I haven’t completely eaten shit in front of the crew yet.

August 10, 2010

The big waves we’ve had the past few days put me out of commission for the most part. I’ve spent the better part of it with motion sickness. My job basically is split into 2 parts, tallying what comes aboard up on the weather deck (I love this part, I can see the horizon and I’m outside) and inside in the factory. For the latter, it is cool seeing what has come aboard, but it’s in the bow of the ship and the motion there is nonstop. It made me feel awful. I won’t lie, for a while there, I contemplated quitting. I never partook in any esophageal reverse peristalsis, but man it was all I could do to just do my job and head to bed. I’ve let the paperwork stack up because laying down and closing my eyes was the only thing that felt good. On top of all this, I miss Rachel. A lot. I miss normal conversations and ground that stays put. I was in a funk.

Fortunately an albatross sighting helped me get out of it. I thought I saw an endangered short tailed albatross yesterday, and that got me excited enough to read up on it. After close analysis I decided it was something else. Sometimes the thrill of discovery can be heartening in the worst of times.

I miss riding bicycles and walking more than 100 feet in any one direction. I think this is a good experience for me in a couple of ways. I found out that wide open spaces are the only place for me. The ocean has the illusion of being boundless, but for us puny humans and our blubber-less skin a boat is effectively a prison. The 35 degree water of the Bering sea would make a step off of this sanctuary/penitentiary a costly one. You can die in minutes out here, but here we are eating pancakes and listening to Afroman at 4:30 in the morning like nobody’s business. Weird huh? Another thing I found out is that I don’t want to sail to the Galapagos like Rachel and I talked about. Sorry babe, but if a 175 foot tin can moves this much I don’t want to find out what a 35 footer does. Maybe we can just fly there.

Off for one more sampling in a few minutes. Talk to you guys later.

August 15, 2010

Personalities

We just got a new skipper, who will be running the show. The original one is still here but he’s taking a back seat to the older, more experienced dude. The new guy is a tough, elderly Norwegian dude. About half of what the man says (roughly) includes the phrase, “This Fahking guy…” It amuses me because our Mexican cook says this all the time as well. “This fahking guy always leaves his plate,” “This fahking guy never cleans up his papers,” and the ubiquitous “Just look at this fahking guy.” With the cook I get this all the time, as he is one of my favorite people to mess with. I told him it’s in an observer’s contract to annoy the cook, and he told me that it’s his job to spit in my food. This is always followed by a full two seconds of deadpan, and then “Sheeeeeeeeet!” and raucous laughter. Gets me every time.

It’s kind of weird being the observer on a boat. You’re in this weird position of power that requires people to acknowledge you. Take the new skipper for instance. He’s this tough, crusty old Scandinavian dude whom I picture doing a shot of gasoline before he sleeps on his bed of nails at night. When we were docked at St. Paul Island a couple of days ago, we were waiting for a couple of crew members to get back so we could depart. The captain was getting anxious and was swearing a lot about “These fahking guys.” I realized that I had a few precious moments on land before taking off (before heading back to purgatory) so I hopped over the side and started stretching my legs. From the wheelhouse, the Captain shouted down to me “Hey Fahkead, you work here?!” I turned around and replied, “Yeah. I’m the observer.” He instantly looked embarrassed like he’d said something he shouldn’t have. “Oh, well just don’t go too far.” It’s weird, on a boat like this I’d almost expect to get my chops busted every once in a while, but as the observer the crew is legally required to not harass me. I feel I have a pretty amicable relationship with all the guys, but you just get the feeling they feel like they’re walking on egg shells around me sometimes.

Some other personalities.

Chief engineer: The guy who’s laugh you can hear a mile away or in a crowd of 50 people

Deck Boss: Think David Sedaris’s brother if you’ve ever read or listened to him

Rollerman#1: Sounds like a Mexican football announcer. He’s hilarious

The original captain and the mate and I get along just fine. Most of our conversations revolve around Super steve, which is a breakfast sausage dressed up in a cape with toothpick appendages and hung up in the middle of the wheel house. He’ll appear in other places like the bathroom (or head, as they call it here) or the Galley, but he usually lurks in wheelhouse. He’s turned into somewhat of a mascot for the trip somehow. I find it just a little disturbing that breakfast sausages don’t go bad, as it’s been a couple of weeks now and it looks like it just came off the steam table.

We start fishing for Pacific Cod well… now actually. The guys are setting (dropping baited hooks out the back of the boat) and we’ll probably start picking them up this evening. I just started getting good at Turbot fishing, so hopefully some of my mad dissection skills will come in handy for that. Cheers!

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Bird bird bird bird is the word

During the last haul a Northern Fulmar hit the rigging. It was stunned for a moment and as the observer it’s actually one of our duties to assess bird injuries. It flew off after a moment though.

A Northern fulmar is like a gull, except smaller and it has a tube on the top of its beak, thus the term tubenoses for this type of bird. This helps the animal excrete salts, which allows them to stay at sea almost their whole adult life. I can’t really say anything glowing about them, since they all appear to hate each other. It is here, in the fight for resources, that we see the “violent battleground” that nature is, as Charles Darwin put it. They bump, jostle, bite and bat for position near the boat so when a skate liver or piece of herring falls out they are the first to get it. You wouldn’t believe the size of some of the things they choke down. Sometimes a bird will have most of the morsel down its gullet and others will yank it back out again.

I watch this battle when no fish are coming up, which has been a lot recently (Pacific Cod, or P Cod as they call it, has been in the toilet the past couple of years). The fulmars always have the numbers to back up most incursions. They get the lion’s share of the byecatch. But there are other strategies to be had. I like the sooty shearwaters. They look kind of like a small, dark gull but they have a secret weapon that the fulmars do not. They can dive underwater, actually they fly underwater. It drives the fulmars nuts to see a tidbit that is too deep for them to grab. Occasionally, you’ll see a dark shape swim near the boat and get any bait that fell over. It’s beautiful to watch really.

The black and red legged kittiwakes are the fighter jets of the Bering sea. They are much stronger fliers than the fulmars and will hover or glide above waiting for the right moment to steal a fulmar’s dish. They are striking birds, and I saw my first red legged variety yesterday.

Sooner or later, the albatrosses arrive. The fulmars usually scatter when they come; the albatrosses are massive. They have to power to break apart many of the fish that the Fulmars do not, but they’re a lot more concerned about being near the boat than the fulmars are. They usually hang in the back and break apart fish heads or bodies. Stately birds they are, and they almost seem to enjoy breaking up fights that the fulmars invariably get into. Every once in a while a fulmar will get snippy with an albatross. If the fulmar is too slow, he or she gets “the clamp,” or bit over the head and then shook. Most know better than to mess with an albatross.

We observers are always supposed to be on the lookout for the endangered short tailed albatross. It’d be pretty cool to see one, as there are somewhere around 1000 left. Hauling soon, gotta go.

Wednesday August 18, 2010

Worked another 24 hour shift but I can’t sleep for some reason. Urg.

The way our schedule is set up is random. The crew can’t know when I am going to be there or they might bias their haul somehow or keep one of the prohibited species like salmon, halibut or crab. Not that these guys would, and it’s truly not worth the fine, but there are a few unscrupulous types out there I guess. The random break table to the rescue. It gives me time off in case the work load is too crazy. I get a random 6 hour block off at some point each day. Working all the time would be doable, I guess, but my brain gets too fuzzy for me to do any paperwork. Sleep is the only thing that will help get that done. I gotta hand it to the guys. They do 16 hours on and then eight off. This means that they start working at 8, 4 or midnight on an alternating schedule. That’d be pretty brutal. I guess my schedule is no cakewalk either, but at least when we are steaming to a new fishing ground I get that time off too. They crew is usually working that whole time. You can just see some of them looking at me jealously when I stumble off to bed, but there have also been times where I work a whole shift of theirs, through the night and I see them during their next shift.

Change of subject. In general, fishermen eat pretty well. The galley has all sorts of stuff prepared, and it wouldn’t be that bad if you were a veggie. There’s almost always a hot meal available. I thought this was great at first, but it’s kind of starting to wear on me. Instead of the available omelets and pancakes this morning, I ate a bowl of grape nuts and it tasted great. In college, I always wanted a hot meal, but now there are times where I would kill for a freaking sandwich. Maybe that’s why the Atkins diet works so well for some people. After a while it’s “Dammit. Steak again.”

Some other nuisances.

I don’t particularly like cigarette smoke, but I can tolerate it. I don’t particularly like the smell of raw fish guts, but I can tolerate it. When these two smells combine forces I hate it for some reason. Fisherman, for whatever reason (perhaps the gravel in the gut and the spit in their eyes) appear to be the last firm holdout of smokers left in the states. I know there are plenty of smokers left in the world, but every one except one guy here chain smokes like a fiend. I guess it’d be an easy thing to do since there isn’t a whole lot of room for vices on fishing boats. It’s a great place to go if you want to get sober, thus the term “Sea-hab” for some of the guys.

Last gripe. I usually try to keep an open mind about music. People always seemed puzzled by my “everything” answer to “what kind of music do you like?” On a side note, why is that such a common question? Does it truly provide insight into someone’s life or is it more like the weather, it’s something you can talk about? Anyways, a lot of the younger guys like that Auto-tune stuff. It’s getting old. Music should not sound like robots having sex. The factory is a loud place, so I wear ear plugs every day, but they help keep the boom boom music out of my head too.

Shit, when did I become the stubborn old fart? Off to hibernate.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Nighttime is almost as cool of a time to sample as is the daytime. Weird things happen to the brain. The world becomes surreal. When you’re short on sleep like I am right now (1 hour in the last 30, but it was a good hour) the universe is a different place. You notice different things, or imagine them anyways. You know when you’re listening to your MP3 player and you can’t tell if the noises in the background of that weird song you’re listening to is in your head, from the ear phones, or from something else just beyond the periphery? It happens more often. A mild case of paranoia sets in. I’m up on deck alone for hours sometimes.

I helped out with some sleep deprivation studies for one of my courses in New Zealand. Missing 24 hours of sleep is akin to, no actually, it’s worse than being legally drunk. Your blood pressure drops like crazy, your reaction time goes to hell, your grip strength goes to heck, and your ability to perform simple tasks goes to Hades. It’s a good thing I’m just up on the weather deck away from anything dangerous. But it’s the mental aspect that I truly find interesting.

The wind was whipping the fog around a couple of hours ago, and in a moment of unfocused daze, I could swear there were trippy patterns in the layers of moisture. It was kind of like when you press your hands against your eyes and you start to see all sorts of weird colors. It was a strange moment. On calm nights, the jellyfish come to the surface, looking ghostly as they drift by. It’s beautiful. But part of you is yearning to run back to lights, people, and friendly banter. But I still have another 45 minutes to go on this magazine before I can head down to the factory. And there’s something fascinating about it as well. There’s a little bit of madness in all of us, but we really don’t come face to face with it very often.

Later that day.

Once I got a bit of sleep it’s fascinating to read what I wrote a few hours ago. I’m on break now and I get another one in 8 hours. Score. The world is again a bright and cheerful place.

We’re further south now, near St. Paul island again. The fishing has been terrible. I guess it’s fine for me because I get paid regardless, but I feel bad for the guys. Some of them have daily guarantees, but others are almost completely reliant on how much fish we catch. If it’s a good year this is all fine and dandy, but if it’s a bad year like this one is looking like, it puts the guys in a funk. I counted 922 starfish on one magazine (a longline is divided into segments called magazines or mags) during the last haul.

Wednesday August 25, 2010

A typical 24 hour day

It’s midnight. The night shift is just beginning and the Norwegian fish master has informed me that we will be hauling in a half hour. I make a special point to head downstairs and eat a good meal. There’s something about the early morning hauls that make me feel woozy, and the food helps. I chat with a couple of crew members while eating some decent Mexican food. The cook always finds something that I chose not to eat and describes how he slaved over it. “I slaved over those potatoes.” It reminds me of my Dad, who always says something like this. Bemused, I tell him he didn’t say hi to me in the hallway the other day, and that it hurt my feelings.

The guys start rushing downstairs and getting in last minute cigarettes, even though they smoke downstairs in the factory too. I run up to my room and start pre-filling out all my deck forms with all non-fish related information so I don’t have to do it later. Then, I lurch my way down to the factory, through the narrow corridor between the gear (coiled hooks and line), past the roller station (where the fish come aboard), duck under a couple of belts and up into the bow of the ship. Sometimes in the bow, you can barely stay on your feet. I hear waves crashing into it but the movement isn’t too bad. Hastily, I throw on my Grundens, my belt and knife, and put on my wool glove liners and gloves. I tell the bleeder (Cod need to be bled before they can be processed so this guy hangs next to the roller station with a big knife and, well… you get the rest) to save me 20 cod when the magazine has gone by because he always forgets. I go around the corner to roller station. Conan the Barbarian is there; at least that’s what I call him because when he is the roller man he makes noises like Arnold Schwarzenegger. The name is catching on with the crew. The roller man’s job is to ensure that fish get into the boat and over the roller (think a giant metal rolling pin). If he wasn’t there many fish would fall off the longline before they made it into the boat. I tell him “we’ll do bycatch the next 2 mags.” He says “Si si si.” The rollerman is always busy.

I climb the ladder up to the deck, no easy task with a clipboard in your hand on a moving vessel. It’s a little windy tonight, but the waves are calm and the jellyfish are out again. Fish start coming aboard after they pull in the anchor. I start clicking away and tallying fish. During the dull moments I daydream or watch for birds and whales. Lots of fish are coming up right now, which is nice because it always makes the haul go faster. I am a little underdressed, as I start feeling cold. Finally comes the tap the rollerman makes with his gaff that indicates a mag has gone by, you can also tell by the knot in the rope if you’re watching closely. Back into the factory. I weigh my fish quickly and head back up on deck. I repeat this a couple more times and then rush off to bed.

The next haul is an off haul. Sweeeeet. I sleep from about 5:00am until 11:30am. Norwegian fish master (I want there to be cymbals or a gong that crashes after I call him that) again wakes me and tells me we are going to haul. I go through the motions and end up on deck yet again. It’s a brain surgery haul. My favorite kind. Every few hauls, I randomly select a couple of Cod, weigh it and measure its length. Then I sex it by cutting into its abdomen with my scalpel and finding its gonads. If it’s male, I look for pink top ramen noodles. If it’s female I’ll find 2 large paired lobes, like 2 fingers held in a peace sign or the old school victory if you’re not a hippy.

Top ramen, male, 2.4 kg and 61 cm. Female, she’s a biggun at 75 cm and 3.5 kg. Now the fun part. I take my serrated blade and saw into the fish’s head above their preopercle, or in front of their gills. From here you can utilize one of two methods. You can saw off the top of their head to where you made your cut. With these big beefy Cod, I don’t find that works so well so I simply grab their snout and break open their skull. If you made your cut correctly you’ll end up in the back part of the Cod’s brain. There should be two little bony ovals there, the otoliths. Now this next part is like that board game Operation that many of us played as kids. If you touch the Cod’s brain accidently with your forceps the fish will jump, which scared the bejeezus out of me the first time. I carefully removed the otoliths, clean them, and record my data. I have just enough time to rush back up on deck before my next tally session.

It’s a gorgeous day, one of the few times I’ve seen the sun in the past month or so. I love it up on deck; it’s the best part of the job. I make a special point when no fish are coming up to look for marine mammals. Cod, cod, cod, halibut, flathead sole, cod, cod, skate, cod, skate, cod cod cod cod cod cod, Pollock. I space out a little bit and think about Rachel. I miss her. A tanner crab comes over the rail. I notice that it has barnacles on it. I wonder how the barnacles stay on the crab when it molts. While pondering this, I miss a fish as it goes by, I could see it out of the corner of my eye. I curse myself and focus for the rest of the haul.

I chat with the chief engineer for a little while over dinner. Then I head up to the wheel house to see what’s shaking. I do a little bit of work on the computer and then hunker down for a couple of hours in the galley doing my paperwork. It never seems to end. Before long I my eyes get unfocused and I know it’s time to go out and get some fresh air. Outside, I see a couple of whale exhalations in the distance, but it’s too far to make out anything more than that. Lately, there’s been a fur seal that’s been showing up in the evenings, but I don’t see her on this particular occasion. We’re setting gear, and I can hear the autobaiter launching bait out of the stern in the background. This means we’re hauling soon. Crap. I head back to my room and nap for 15 minutes. The mate informs me that we’re hauling in a half an hour. It’s 11:59…………………………..

Thursday August 26, 2010

I’m bummed. A couple of days ago I found out that we needed to head back to St. Paul and drop off one guy and pick up another two. Now, under ordinary circumstances no sane person would be stoked to go to St. Paul (then again, I don’t suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it) but it meant I could get on land and make a couple of phone calls. I was really looking forward to calling Rachel. I wanted to hear her voice, and I know she’s had a hard few days recently in nursing school. I guess it’s just the nature of the job, but we were there for barely 5 minutes. The guys had just enough time to chuck their bags on board, yell at the guy who was leaving, and then we were off. I had figured we’d have at least a little time. Oh well. I’ll get to make some phone calls when we get to Dutch Harbor, but who knows when that will be. Another thing is I was also looking forward to was the chance to get on dry land, but it is what it is. At least the fishing has been fantastic, and this means heading home sooner.

I like this job, but the communication with friends and loved ones leaves something to be desired. In a way, the lack of communication is nice, as I don’t have to hear what the Hilton sisters are up to or listen to the talking heads babble on Fox news and CNN. But man, I crave human contact from the outside world. I hope Rachel’s ok. I’d love to chat it up with my family members or friends back in Oregon.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

As of today, I’ve been assigned to this boat for a whole month. It’s been a grind, and it has also had its interesting times. We had a great haul in the wee hours of this morning. All kinds of strange fish came up, as well as some sea pens, sea whips, sponges, bryozoans and some other stuff. Several fish were very new to me. The crew called them wolf eels, but I keyed them out to be prowfish. Often, the fisherman term for fish is different from the one I use. There’s a rock fish I call short spine thornyheads (no really, that’s their name) but the crew calls ‘em idiots, or idiotfish. They do look kind of silly. Probably the cutest fish are the lumpsuckers. They’re almost perfectly round and about the size of a hacky sack. And I’ll admit it, we played hacky sack with one. Lumpsuckers have a pelvic fin that is fused through evolution into a disk on their stomach. They use this disk to create suction so they can stick to rocks. My dream is to find a live one and stick it on some guy’s back and see how long it takes him to notice. There were also several types of rockfish in that haul, and it took me forever to key them out. Sometimes it’s a matter of if there is a #5 spine on the head or a slight shade of color on the pectoral fin. It’s great, I feel like a detective sometimes.

Norwegian fish master said he had this one bad observer who didn’t ever go out on deck ever, he just asked the crew what kind of stuff they found and wrote that down. Apparently the guy is one of the higher ups now. Anyways, Norwegian fish master(NFM) said they eventually started making up bizarre fish names, and told the guy things like Atka mackerel are up here (They’re not supposed to be up here, usually, as it turns out). It was a good story, but in the haul yesterday an Atka Mackeral turned up. They’re beautiful fish. I found it amusing that one turned up the day after NFM told me this.

Last night/this morning when all the weird fish were coming up was fun. There is a guy working here who, no matter what kind of fish, at any time of day, will hold the fish in front of his groin and pretend it is his wiener. He does this at least 5 or 6 times a day. Well he did it yesterday with one of the prowfish and I thought, “you are one snap away from pruning your family tree.” Their jaws are huge. Anyways, everyone was laughing, the music was booming. At that moment I had an epiphany. What a crazy place this is. The factory is this bizarre maze of hooks, belts and moving machinery. Water is flowing everywhere and there is constant noise, yelling, motion and clutter. On top of that, I’m out here surrounded a hoard of eccentric people (myself included I suppose). It seems so normal now, but I know years from now I’ll think back and go, “Damn, I did go out on a boat in the Bering sea for a couple of months those guys.”

September 5, 2010

Funny stories (either witnessed 1^st hand or heard in Alaska)

I was up on deck a few days ago. The rollerman (I’ll use the pseudonym Peaches for this guy) was having a bad day. Nothing was going his way and I could hear him cursing on occasion. Apparently he had been yelled at by the deck boss that evening for something. On top of that, his game was off. It happens to every rollerman (remember, this is the guy that gaffs fish as they come on the boat) sooner or later. Peaches swore loudly every time he dropped a fish, and many of his swings were off the mark. Hitting a moving target on a rolling boat is not the easiest thing to do. To borrow the expression, you could actually miss the fish you are shooting at in the barrel.

There were lots of Fulmars that day. I’ve had plenty of time to observe these birds. This is where the story gets PG 13, maybe R, so earmuffs kiddies. When a northern Fulmar has to relieve itself, the feces do not just pass slowly out of the bird’s cloaca. It is ejected as if from the barrel of a gun. They launch the stuff. They almost always do their business in the water, and they rarely fly over the boat as they tend to fly into things when they do that. Thus, I have never been shat on. For some reason, the stars aligned perfectly on this day. Peaches happened to look up with his mouth open at the wrong time and a perfectly pitched fulmar dropping went right in. He hacked, coughed and then damn near heaved. Then he hurled his gaff out into the water and said, “Well. I’m done.” And then he just walked off. I won’t lie; I was beside myself with laughter. The crew has reminded peaches of this every now and again. He thinks it’s pretty funny.

Story #2

I keep hearing rumors about this big, apparently angry Samoan guy who lives in Dutch harbor. The first story I heard involved him hurling pool balls at the police in one of the bars. Apparently, Jimmy Buffet went and played here because it is known as the rowdiest bar in America. Here’s another about the Samoan guy.

Four guys drink ‘til dawn after an offload. More than rowdy, they are kicked out of the place by a bouncer. They leave the bar bristling and looking for some trouble. But they are in Dutch harbor in the winter, and there are few people out and about. They see this guy sitting in a car, so from a distance they start yelling at him, cursing, taunting, and actin’ all unfriendly like. The man in the car ignores them for a while, but after a while he gets fed up and flips the bird at them. This sends the drunk fellers into a frenzy and they start running towards the car. Angry Samoan guy gets out of the car and the men can clearly see his impressive size. The man is huge, with arms like pythons and legs like tree trunks. The drunk guys see this and start to have second thoughts and think that they are probably needed elsewhere. They try to turn tail and run, but it is winter in Dutch and the ground is a sheet of ice. So instead of flipping 180’s the guys keep sliding towards the behemoth. My buddy is watching this from a window and said it was hilarious. The men all slid single file towards their impending doom. Long story short, Big Samoan dude takes all four of them out, and the police are actually pretty lenient towards him as it was the drunks who started it.

Story #3 (short one)

New guys on boats are called Greenhorns. They receive endless amounts of grief from the deck boss and the other crew members. The new guy on our boat gets yelled at quite a bit, but he’s slowly breaking in with the crew and not screwing up so much. There are lots a practical jokes on these guys too. Occasionally on crab boats, the captain or mate will tell the Greenhorn that they have to do a radar check. They’ll tell the new guy to wrap his entire body in Tin foil and then go stand out on deck and hold their arms out so they can “make sure the Radar is working.” The captain will usually direct the new guy to stand on one leg or on his head to see how long it takes him to catch on. There are many laughs to be had at the expense of the Greenhorns.

Our greenhorn was doing something odd this morning: he was popping the Otoliths out of the Pollock when he had time. Now, most of the guys don’t take the interest I do in these sorts of things so I asked him why he was taking the otoliths. He replied that the deck boss told him that you can get 50 cents a pop for the things in Dutch harbor. He may be right, but I have the nagging suspicion that the deck boss is pulling his leg and he’ll end up with a bag of bloody bones to throw away later.

September 9^th, 2010

I just had my first Cod tongues for dinner a moment ago. Norwegian Fish Master and the cook collaborated on it, to great success. They taste kind of like oysters. According to NFM, there is a rule in Norway that adults can’t make money selling Cod tongues, so it falls to the youngsters. The kids can make bank doing this. Anyways, it was pretty tasty. An octopus was pulled up on one of the hauls while I was sleeping a few days ago. I was bummed I missed it, as I haven’t seen one since my family and I rescued one by stuffing it in my jacket when I was a kid. The cook, being the creative type, had it taken upstairs where he cut it up and fried it. It too was pretty tasty, albeit a bit chewy. During the beginning of the cruise he made some of the best Saviche (sp?) I’ve ever had out of one of the short spine thorny heads we pulled up.

Because you’re stuck on a boat in the Bering Sea, to survive you have to manufacture some excitement every now and then. This is no problem for me because I’m fascinated by the bizarre. I took a video of some cool looking barnacles that came up yesterday, took 45 minutes to photograph a long nose skate (It was way out of its range, at least according to the guide I have) and when the crew asks me what I want them to save I reply, “the weird shit.” Most of the crew members could care less, but there are always a few who are curious about something. There are animals called sea whips that get snagged by hooks as the line drags across the ocean floor. The mate calls them water wienies. I can’t even remember what phylum they are in, but what blew me away is that when you bend them they glow in the dark. Unfortunately a boat always has about 4 million lights on at any given time but if you put the thing in a shadow you can see the ghostly ephemeral glow.

Supposedly, we’re headed back to Dutch Harbor soon, but I’ve been hearing that for days. It’ll probably be at least a few more days, perhaps a week. I’ll likely have only 48 hours or so before the boat heads back out again but I’ll use the time wisely. I can’t wait to talk to Rachel.

We saw some whales two days ago. Several were orcas. We were fishing at a spot known as the mushroom (I hypothesize that the topographic map of the sea floor looks like a mushroom, but I really don’t know why they call it that). The skipper told me that they always see orcas in this area for some reason. They swam pretty close on a few occasions, possibly they were checking out the gear to see if anything tasty was hooked. I also had a few Fin whale sightings and another I think was a Sei whale (they’re a bit smaller). One of my life’s goals is to see a Humpback, my favorite whale as a kid. I’m not likely to see on this trip, but it could happen.

It’s the sound of the whale blow that really sticks in my mind. I remember the first pair I ever saw while sea kayaking in Alaska last summer. You can hear it over the ship’s engines when the orcas are close. It sounds so powerful and amazing.

While up on deck tallying this morning, something odd happened. I was sitting in one of my spots watching the line. All of a sudden out of the corner of my eye I saw a shorebird (sandpiper type bird) walking around on deck. Often times at night I’ll see them flying around, disoriented by the ship’s lights. Lord only knows where they are going. Sometimes we are 100 miles away from land and I see them fluttering through the night. Anyways, this little dude didn’t see me (I’m bright orange in my Grundens, he must have thought I was a buoy) and he walked right under my boot that I had resting on the rail and actually nibbled on it for a second. It appeared as if it was looking for any bait left out on deck. It walked around for a bit and then flew off. Cute.

I just heard the engine rev up to a little higher RPM. That means we stopped setting and will be hauling soon. After a month out here you get in tune with these things…

September 14, 2010

Ok we are officially getting close to heading back to Dutch harbor. I feel like I’ve been saying that for a while now, but the crew are starting to fill the bait locker. This is a much smaller freezer for the bait; you might as well go home filled to the brim. The boat is riding a little lower. In seven minutes, I will have been at sea for 47 days, and we likely have at least one more day after that. We are still a day’s steam from Dutch Harbor.

I’m getting a lot better at the job but there is still a lot to learn. Some of the things I royally screwed up were the identification of a couple types of skates, and the halibut injury assessment. I won’t get into the details on those, but things are going a lot better now. For each haul I have to come up with a sample design, and since we haul long lines of varying lengths my sample design keeps on changing. The next haul is composed of 23 magazines. Damn prime numbers, I’ll have to do some creative number crunching to figure out how to sample randomly.

Fun Facts:

We’ll set a longline tomorrow that has over 30,000 hooks and is 18 miles long.

I’ve been at sea for 47 days. I know I know, repeat. But isn’t that crazy?

My beard and neck beard is at its longest length ever. Getting hairier by the day

I think I’ve finally figured out how to rock out on a Ukulele. It isn’t easy on an instrument made for singing somewhere over the rainbow.

A clipboard used in these conditions can go from new to rusty in 47 days

The birds live up here year round. In 50 foot seas and 80 mile per hour winds. Badasses

Life without the internet ain’t so bad, you should try it sometime. I miss beer and fresh vegetables though. Oh yeah, you too Rachel *wink*

Wednesday, September 22

Well, the first trip is over with; now onto the second trip. I was secretly hoping that my employer would send me home after the first trip. Not because I hate the job but because it would have been convenient to get home early, see Rachel and get ready to move to NZ. On top of that, the internet was down in Dutch Harbor. I plan on posting my journal to the blog, and if you made it this far, well… congrats. Anyhow, I pretty much couldn’t get anything done except make a bunch of phone calls home to the sweetie. This trip doesn’t seem to be going any faster, so it looks like I’ll be out here for another 40 days.

During the offload, I basically ran around looking for wireless internet until I realized it was out on the entire island of Unalaska. The crew busted their butt while I did this. It took them 19 hours to offload this boat (this is a pretty big boat for a longliner).

Now, we’re back out in the Bering Sea trying to grind another one out. We picked up a few new guys. The engineer is a Polish guy who recognized that my last name is Polish. I can’t say that’s ever happened before. The new captain looks like Mark Twain. I’ve been tempted to call him Mr. Clemens, but I’ll wait until I know him a little better.

Other than that things remain the same. I’m pretty shut off from all vices except for food. I have no computer games, no TV, no internet, no phone (I was told I’d have to pay something like 100$ to make any more personal calls), no climbing gear and bikes, no beer. Nothing. I thought this might be a neat experience, to shut all that off for a little while and just talk, read and play the Ukulele. I won’t lie; I’d kill to have a couple of computer games right now. On a boat, especially a longliner where one spends a lot of time up on deck doing nothing except tallying, you have so much time to think that your life becomes a giant causality loop. I get Déjà vu all the time. Did I weight those fish already? Didn’t I see that bird yesterday? Didn’t the Chief and I already have this conversation? Good decisions require sufficient thought, but with this amount of time on your hands you start second guessing everything. This gets a little frustrating sometimes. It’s better often to just go with your gut and don’t look back. I’m realizing that’s the reason time killers exist: to keep you from thinking too much, or to over think problems. See, there I go again, I thought about this too much.

September 23, 2010

Now is the winter of our discount tent

I was looking at some pictures of Ian, Molly and I climbing in summer of 2009. I sighed whimsically and said to myself, “Man, I can’t wait for summer.” Then I realized summer was 2 days ago. Summer in the Bering Sea is more like early spring on the Oregon coast. Occasionally it’s a nice day and I get to strip down to a paltry 3 layers.

I’ve been somewhat cursed in my life summer-wise. I left for New Zealand at the end of an Oregon winter. In New Zealand it was nice for a month and then it became winter. I then departed in the NZ spring and weathered out another winter in Oregon. When I worked at Mt. Rainier National Park, it happened to be the year they got 93 feet of snow, or a foot shy of the record. We didn’t see the ground that summer, just snow and an avalanche lily or two popping up through the drifts. I witnessed a flurry in July in Colorado. Here in the Bering Sea, I’d guess the temps rarely get above the mid 50’s, or 10’s if you’re thinking centigrade. It’s not so much the temps as it is the ever present stiff breeze that chills to the bone.

Man, I can’t wait for summer.

October 1, 2010

It’s about 6 in the morning. We’re going to haul in an hour or so, thus I’m trying to forgo sleep until my break later today. It’s another 24 hour shift for me. But it’s ok, because sooner or later the pendulum swings the other way and I’ll get a couple of 6 hour breaks in close proximity.

It started snowing on me yesterday while I was out on deck. The weather’s gotten distinctly colder. The wind now has that bite too it that promises bone chilling temperatures are soon to come. I think I’m getting out of here at the right time. On the other hand, Autumn has been a lot sunnier than Summer was. There’s less fog and patchier clouds. I busted out the secret weapon I’ve been saving for this time: my neck warmer, which will come in pretty handy. If temps get really bad I have the ultimate weapon of war, the mustang suit. For equipment observers can check out one of these bad boys. It’s a bright orange jumpsuit made out of bombproof cordura nylon and insulation. The one I was issued has obviously been through hell and back.

They say all sorts of people come to Alaska, and I’ve certainly seen that here on this boat. Many of the guys have had, or are having trouble with the law so a fishing boat is a great place to go hide out for a while. They’re all good dudes more or less, but when alcohol becomes involved I know a few of these guys get pretty rowdy.

There are all sorts of people here for other reasons too. I’ve witnessed about the broadest political spectrum I’ve ever seen right here amongst the people on this boat. I hate to pigeon hole anybody, but with everyone you can get a sense of their political tendencies. The media back home tends to focus on the people with the most extreme viewpoints, but man, they have nothing on some of these guys. One guy (I can’t, and won’t name names) is very concerned about “Commies.” He uses this phrase all the time, and is very worried that Obama is going to turn the Nation into France. I have doubts I could change his mind so I don’t get into it with him. There are extreme viewpoints on the other side as well. I got into it with a guy because he said NPR is, get this, too “conservative” and “controlled by corporate interests.” He likes Ralph Nader. A LOT. The bulk of the guys here probably could care less as long as Strip Clubs remain legal.

Funny Story # I don’t know

R rated. Maybe X. Avoid reading if easily offended.

According to a couple of different sources, during Black Cod season in the Gulf of Alaska (further south), when skates enter their mating season the Male skates that are caught as bye-catch come up “loaded.” I have not seen this firsthand, but I have it on good authority that if you rub a Male skate’s belly during this time of year the skate will ejaculate like crazy. One of the sources said sometimes it gets pretty bad down in the factory, with guys trying to “shoot” other guys as well as ambush fellow workers by hiding around corners with a loaded skate. Ewwww.

October 2, 2010

The top 5 topics of conversation on this boat:

Fishing and number of fish caught

The other boat I worked on was better because _______

“Get back to F’ing work” and other versions of this

Child support

"Hot ass bitches”

Wednesday October 6, 2010

To .Tomorrow I’ll only have three weeks left to enjoy my cruise in the Bering Sea. Time’s starting to fly by now, and sooner or later I’ll be in New Zealand with Rachel. It’s been a long time coming. I’ve had some cool experiences and made some decent money, but I’m starting to grow a little weary of being on the boat. I’m certainly not disgruntled yet, but after 60+ days at sea some things start to become a drag, if they weren’t already. There are the obvious things like the lack of a normal social life and relationships, namely the girlfriend and the folks I call my friends.

There are other aspects of life on a boat worth mentioning. A boat is a quirky place. For instance, to use the toilet, or head as they call it here, I basically do a lunge and hold it while I do my business, that way I don’t pee all over the wall when the boat rocks unexpectedly. To take a shower, I point the showerhead at the wall for about 15 seconds to warm it up, that way it isn’t shockingly cold when I lean against it. There is no way to stay on your feet in the shower without bracing against something.

On the subject of bathrooms, the toilet in the bathroom across the hall is, as far as I know, the only toilet known to mankind that can be clogged by water. But I surmise that with gravity pointing all sorts of crazy directions that plumbing might not work the way it is normally supposed to. In the bathroom closet, for reasons unknown, there is a large bottle of horse shampoo. Here’s another weird quirk. For some reason, the last observer to use my room had a towel with a garishly embroidered sides and little tassels with plastic diamonds on it. Since I brought only my pack towel with me, I use this to shower with. A couple of crew members saw it the other day and thought it was pretty funny. I asked them to call me Baron Von observer, but it never caught on, they still call me Willy.

In said bathroom, for the longest time there was this odd sound I couldn’t place, until I realized it was a loose screw in the lighting cover rolling around. Anything that isn’t secured can make weird sounds. If a cabinet door is open in someone’s room, you hear it all too clearly. Usually someone will go shut it. In one of the staterooms that wasn’t being used for a while, I could swear there were ball bearings in the ceiling (which would be a pretty funny prank to pull actually). There’s always noise. There’s always motion and things falling off of shelves.

In the Galley, one must always hold onto your cup, otherwise it will go Galley west (Sorry… I had to, I love puns). In stormy seas, sometimes pot lids, tongs and all kinds of stuff are literally flying around down there. The burners on the stove have special sides on them to prevent capsizing of cookware, and anything that isn’t screwed to a surface has some kind of latch or bungee tied around it. Word has it the juice machine has injured more than one person when it flew off its foundation.

To move around a boat requires an odd shuffling motion with frequent stumbles and pushes off of stable objects. You know when you stumble and catch yourself but still need another step to regain your balance? It’s that moment before that second step that you constantly find yourself in on a boat. You’re never positive that your foot is going to land where you think it is going too. What a great metaphor for life, at least for me these days.

October 8, 2010

Mine mine mine miiine

I try not to hate any animal for being what they are (except ticks and mosquitoes, they are the only animals I feel ok with torturing a little before I kill them). In fact, I usually like the more disreputable types; the buzzards, jays and hyenas of the world. Hell, even leeches are pretty cool looking. But I just saw a seagull eat one of those cute little shorebirds that I see flittering through the night and it definitely lowered my opinion of them, of seagulls that is. They’re not down to Michael Bolton level just yet, but they just don’t have a whole lot of personality. And they eat shorebirds. It is kind of funny when they insist on landing on the same perch as another bird, even though there is rail 40 feet on either side that would be perfectly fine.

October 11, 2010

We had another boat drop us off some equipment and supplies yesterday. It was kind of cool, actually watching the other boat rip through the high seas we had yesterday. I was wondering how they would get the cargo from point A to point B. If the boats got pretty close together it would have been dangerous in that kind of weather. The other boat, which was actually captained by the first captain of this vessel (We’ve had a few now) stuffed the gear into water proof bags and inside a cargo net and just chucked it overboard. We followed right behind them and picked up the gear. After a couple of exchanged insults over the radio each boat went on its merry way. What was so important that we had to rendezvous with another boat? Well our roller station needed a few parts, but I think what most concerned the guys was the shortage of coffee filters on this vessel. I have a hard time imagining that anything would get done without Christian crank on this boat. The guys usually have several cups in them. For myself, I actually never drink it because I want to be able to catch a couple hours sleep when I get the chance in between hauls.

There’s always some kind of baked goods made by the cook in the Galley. There is an individual that has been slicing off the top third of several pieces of cake and eating it, presumably to get a higher icing to cake ratio. Late last night I caught the captain in the act. I won’t say anything, as there is always too much food to go around anyways.

What happens to the leftovers? They get thrown overboard like everything else that isn’t made of plastic. I had to get on a guy’s case for almost throwing is pop tart wrapper overboard. It’s actually one of my duties to police this. At first the throwing of food overboard kind of disturbed me, but then I realized that it might be beneficial in a way. Fishing extracts nutrients from the water and the leftover food might put at least some back in the system. The plastic is a big deal, as there is a giant gyre of spinning plastic miles wide somewhere south of us in the north pacific. It takes forever for the stuff to break down.

We had a pretty good look at a couple of fin whales yesterday in the Wheelhouse. Beautiful animals. They are such an amazing combination of sleekness, efficiency and size. I watched them for quite a while.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Yesterday was a special day. It started out in a pretty un-special, for the lack of a better word, with me moping about feeling sorry for myself. It was just one of those moments you find yourself in when you’ve been trapped on a boat in the Bering sea with no end in sight moments. Y’know… one of those I miss Rachel and friends and family and my climbing muscles are deteriorating into nothingness and there’s no beer or mountain biking and what am I doing with my life moments. I only have somewhere around 2 to 3 weeks left but sometimes time seems to stretch out into infinity here. Suffice it to say I was having a bad day. And then everything showed up the next haul.

I had a pretty good time shooting the shit with the guys up in the bow talking about how great women are and then I jumped into my mustang suit. I’ve started wearing it on the super cold days, which is most days. It looks kind of like a cross between something an astronaut wears and a prison jumpsuit. It’s got a pipe fixed next to my mouth that I can inflate for floatation. I don’t know why I didn’t start using it earlier. I can’t believe how warm it is. When I wear my Grundens up on deck the total comes to about 6 layers of clothing and I am usually freezing by the time I get done tallying. I have yet to feel even cool in the mustang suit. Sure, wearing it feels like you’re wearing one of those inflatable sumo suits they have at fairs, but it is more than worth it. I am wearing so much insulation I would wager Mike Tyson could punch me in the gut and I’d hardly feel it.

Anyways, I head up onto deck and there, amidst a beautiful sun shiny day, is Old Clubfin. Old Clubfin is a killer whale I recognized from last trip; I’d seen him a few times now. He is seriously the most farked up whale I have ever seen. His dorsal fin is twisted and has two rounded points on top. The thing I noticed today is that his fluke is all messed up as well. It is seriously mangled and is twisted in such a way on one side that it is 45 degrees from where it should be. It’s a miracle that he can even swim. Apparently he’s been around for a while. The cook thinks he got hit by a prop but the distance between the mutilations makes me suspect it’s some kind of disease.

As I watched Old clubfin, I instinctively averted my eyes because it’s rude to stare. A moment later I found this pretty funny because Old Club fin is a whale and could probably care less. I just hope it doesn’t prevent him from getting some hot cow action, a cow being a female orca. I just wanted to make that clear because I do not condone interspecies relationships.

Old Clubfin was there with his friends I had seen before, another big bull, a small cow and a little guy or gal. There were at least 10 Dahl’s porpoises swimming around at frenetic speeds. There was even a fur seal there. I had seen Orcas and porpoises surfacing in the distance before and I thought that maybe the whales were chasing the porpoises. I know killer whales frequently eat harbor porpoises but it was clear that these two groups were just hanging out together. There was no way a porpoise would swim in front of a whale the way I saw it yesterday. Here’s my theory. Killer whales are known to come in two behavioral types, the seal eaters and the fish eaters. Apparently stellar sea lions on the coast will swim next to the fish eaters, but when they hear the songs of the roving packs of seal eaters they start freaking out and jumping out of the water. The pod of whales I was observing must be fish eaters, and they were not messing with the porpoises or fur seal. In fact, I could swear the porpoises and the young whale were playing. I could see the young gun’s fluke enter the water at all sorts of weird angles and the porpoises made loops around the little guy. I have never seen a Dahl’s porpoise swim at less than 15 knots. They surface in the blink of an eye, and you watch their white sides screaming through the water you can see what a clip they are moving at. Killer whales are no slouches either. They can move at over 30 knots if they feel like it.

I have other reasons to believe this pod consists of fish eaters. The small one made several passes next to the boat, right at the gear line. It was a pretty special moment, seeing this magnificent animal up so close. The rollerman didn’t even notice, but I think I’d react with awe every time this happened. Anyways, it was obvious he or she was checking out what kinds of fish were on the line. This is anecdotal, but almost no Halibut came up on the line, which is unusual. This made me think that the whales were picking off all the flatfish as they came up. According to the captain they never eat the cod, but for some reason they love flatfish like Greenland Turbot, Arrowtooth flounder and Pacific Halibut.

We pulled up a lot of cool organisms during those couple of hauls too. I saw my first yellowfin sole. It was a cute one, about the size of a pancake. We were fishing this big rock pile in this area known as the mushroom. We pulled up several hundred Irish Lords, as well as some neat corals, sponges, searchers (they have beautiful eyes), a couple of rockfishes, a rock sole, a couple of flathead soles, and an animal I don’t even know what phylum it belongs to. The latter was pink with a round top. It had rough scale like plates on its dorsal surface and what looked like a sucker on the bottom. It had a mouth and an anus on top, and did not look like a chiton. Bizarre.

That’s all for now. So long and thanks for all the fish.

In Dutch Harbor

2010-08-01T16:18:00.000-07:00

Real quick, before I have to get back to the boat. I flew into Dutch Harbor yesterday with the understanding that we were going to leave as soon as I got here. Apparently, boats never leave on time, so we'll be headed out sometime in the next few days. The islands are green this time of year, beautiful actually. It reminds me of what I picture Ireland looking like. There are no trees but lots of bald eagles. I hiked to a stream nearby where there are a ton of salmon. It's an interesting dichotomy with the populated areas. Beautiful eagles roosting on top of rusty piles of crab pots.

We'll be out fishing for Greenland Turbot (Who knew Greenland was in the Bering sea...) and will then switch to Pacific Cod. I'll be out of touch for the most part, with a few hours on land here and there for the next few months. I'm excited, even though it mean being away from Rachel and friends and family for the immediate future. The voice in the back of my head, the voice of experience tells me that life is better when you say to yourself, "Oh shit, what have I got myself into this time?" It's rhetorical of course, but man, it's still hard to force yourself to go out and do crazy things, even with my experience.

The boat is a bigger one, over 125 feet. I have my own room, and the last observer was kind enough to leave me his copy of High Times magazine. The crew is pretty nice so far, and I should get the chance to brush up on my Spanish with all the Chileans and Mexicans aboard. If I see some whales in the Bering sea, I'll snap some pictures of some for you guys. Oh, and enjoy your summer, since I sure as shit ain't seeing one for a while.

Take care everybody.

Hot Anchorage Action

2010-07-17T16:12:00.000-07:00

It's been a week or so since I packed up and moved to the great white north. Our three week class takes up a good deal of me and my roommates time. We spend a lot of time listening to stories of people catching rare fish, talking about marine conservation policy, filling out forms (my boss calls us future Fish Accountants) and keying out flounders and rockfish. For the latter, the biology of it is my favorite part of class. There are few cooler things in life than inspecting a flatfish for an anal spine. Well, maybe there's more than a few things. But still, busting out probes and scalpels has always been one of the more enjoyable aspects of this job so far.

As far as anchorage goes, it's a mixed bag when you compare it to other towns. The blocks here are freakin' huge, so don't let google maps fool you; it's a long way by foot to get anywhere. Thankfully, the bike skills I learned from the artist formerly known as Hot Carl helped me piece together several of the mangled frames and parts in the garage into a few complete bikes. I forgot how long it takes to get anywhere by foot. To emphasize how spread out Anchorage, the nearest grocery store is about a mile, and the blocks are about twice the size of normal. One thing Alaska has a lot of is space, so they don't exactly pack the houses in like cord wood, as my old pappy used to say.

Other ramblings: I still haven't managed to find the fur bikini shop I saw up here a year ago. The residents of this state are an interesting bunch. It's weird to see drunks stumbling all over town while it's still light out, though the days of constant light are almost over. When I first flew in, I took a walk around and noticed that one of the neighbors has a caribou in a cage in their front yard. There are often houses with somewhere between 10 -200 sets of antlers mounted to the roofs.

Grocery stores are interesting. Salmon is cheap and beef is expensive. The frozen food section in grocery stores is absolutely massive. Avocados are about 2-3 dollars a pop and cheese is outrageously priced. You can get elk or reindeer sausage at a pretty reasonable price.

There is a graveyard to the north of our observers pad that is supposed to be a good place to see moose, though I haven't yet. There, I snapped a picture of this, I don't know... memorial...?

I was hoping to get up to Denali National Park this weekend, but with the crappy weather and $100's of dollars of transportation and lodging fees (The park service tends to frown on dirtbags like me who try to do things cheaply) I decided to bag it. Inclement weather is really not a problem, but if it prevents me from seeing Alaska's big 20,000 footer, I wasn't sure it was worth the money. I'll get up there eventually. I overheard several fanatical salmon sports fishermen whispering about it possibly being a "100,000 fish day," whatever that means (Sounds big). I thought about picking up a rod and a license and hitching south, but that too can get spendy. But with no cooler and no camping gear, I wasn't sure how that was going to work. In a couple of weeks I'll be hip deep in fish (literally. No really I'm serious) so I figured that wasn't the best idea either.

I found a place here in town that rents mt. bikes, and a dude I met spoke highly of the rides in Chugach state park. So tomorrow I'm going to head out and ride some singletrack. I also managed to find the local rock gym in town and climb with some locals. It was your typical affair: good bouldering with that stinky shoe smell and a couple mangy dogs that hang out in front. It's funny to me how often you see someone's mutt sleeping on couches in climbing gyms.

Cranking in the gym, it occurred to me how important it is for me to find the local gym, crag or mountain club. That's where I usually can find the type of people I usually hang out with. The biology people I hang out with are cool I suppose, but most of them aren't the real outdoorsy types. Also, they're mostly fisheries oriented, so my "What's your favorite enzyme?" conversation starter doesn't get as many laughs.

So it took a week or so, but I was able to find things to do beside study and drink (Alaskans like to drink). This state has some pretty cool places, but man, you really need a car to get to most of them, and even that won't work sometimes.

In a couple of weeks, I'll likely be off to Kodiak Island or Dutch Harbor. I'll be bringing shoes and a chalk bag, just in case, though the climbing prospects don't seem to be too bright. I've been teaching myself to play the ukulele, so with a bit more practice I might not get punched by any fishermen on the boats I will be stationed on.

That's all for now, Happy Summer everyone!

AK

2010-07-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

Finally some time for my poor, neglected blog. Let me sum up the last several months briefly: school, broke, grading, time well spent with Rachel, climbed mt. Hood, school, explosions teaching chemistry, animal surveys, more school (future teachers seem to hang out here a lot), graduated, lots of mountain biking, beer swilling, brewing, snuggling and cooking. I think that's pretty much it.

Well, except I moved to Alaska last weekend. I'm up here training to be a groundfish observer for the NOAA (actually uses a degree I have, woot!). I'll be stationed out on a fishing boat in the gulf of Alaska or the Bering Sea. It should be a pretty interesting job, provided the sea sickness in some of the stormiest seas on the planet isn't too bad. It's the same waters where they film the TV show "the deadliest catch," which apparently is fairly accurate.

Unfortunately, me posting pictures of most of my activities would be a breach of contract, but I'll make sure to get some nice scenery shots, though that might be a bit optimistic of me as they apparently get about 3 days of sunshine up here anyways. If any of you eat fish in the next few months there is a chance that I weighed, sexed, measured and identified the specimen.

It's homework time (thought I was done with that). I'll post more when I can, but I hope you all are enjoying summer, except you kiwi readers of course. Cheers!

The Superfluous Campaign 2010

2010-01-13T00:25:00.000-08:00

Let's get this decade started off right with some bitchin' log surfing.

Getting a Master's Degree in a Year

2009-12-14T15:40:00.000-08:00

My main concern upon entering graduate school was, to be perfectly honest, that I would have enough creative outlets in the absence of numerous outdoor adventures. Instead of heading to Smith Rocks to do battle with my nemesis Cool Ranch Flavor (5.11b), I've been teaching middle schoolers about convection. Instead of coating my bike with Mac Forest clay, I've been churning out word documents like a champ. And in place of Ice climbing in the gorge the other day with Greg and Ian, at 6:37 am I picked up some christian crank (coffee) on the way to school and started cutting out laminated papers for the students.

I won't lie, this hasn't been an easy transition. In the past, I have decided to drive to Red Rocks at 11pm (on an impulse) on more than one occasion. Those days are gone, at least for now, and in their place are deadlines, forms, reflections, research and stress. Despite all that, the past few months have been a truely rewarding experience. From my numerous mistakes, a stronger and more adaptable Jake has emerged, one who gets a kick out of the ever reflective process that a school teacher goes through each day.

I'm not doing this for the pay or the health benefits, even in these uncertain times. Sure, those things will be nice. I'm not even doing it for June, July and August, which are thought by many to be one of the greatest perks of being a teacher. We all need something to throw ourselves at. Something that is bigger than us, and this is what I've chosen. It's been a fun ride so far, even though it's not in the format I am familiar with (snow, rocks, and knobby bike tires are seldom involved). The kids I teach show me flashes of brilliance every so often, and it truely is a wonderful thing when I get to witness it. I'm pretty lucky, I get to learn something every day.

That said, raise your glasses or mugs in honor of some wintertime fun in the woods. Maybe I'll see you out there. Off to go bouldering!

43.365126, -117.306519

2009-06-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

My relatively short existence on this planet has shown me that I am quite good at getting very, very close to destinations but not actually there. It is kind of like a modern day Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox. My brother and I have a history of making it not far from summits, I've driven for an hour out to a mountain bike trail only to realize I forgot my helmet or shoes, and I've flailed on many a rock climb right at the top (see: Cool Ranch Flavor at Smith).

This past week, Rachel and I tried to drive out to the Owyhee Reservoir. At our destination there was canyoneering in Leslie gulch and Succor creek, some sport climbing at said waterways, fishing and camping on the shores of arguably the most remote region in Oregon.

We got within 4 miles.

When we were filling up in the thriving metropolis of Rome, OR (blink and you'll miss it) we were told that inclement weather had caused a washout on the road to Leslie gulch. Succor creek (perhaps aptly named) was supposed to be pretty cool, and it still had climbing and canyoneering so we decided to try and go there instead. Around 8 miles from the campground, we saw the most giant grasshoppers/locusts/whatever they were I have ever seen. They made a very alien noise and where probably the size of a hotdog. We are talking old testament stuff here.

After numerous standoffs with cows (about 8 cows for every person out there), thence began the flood the likes of which the world has never seen. OK, so maybe it wasn't that bad, but the packed earth on the road turned into an adobe and axle grease combination that made the road completely impassable. We camped there, on the side O' the road hoping it would dry out that night. It didn't, so we decided to drive in from the other side.

This meant unavoidably driving into Idaho for a couple of hours. The roads there were just as bad. Disenchanted, we headed back towards Bend. We camped at Glass Butte on Highway 20, which I would recommend checking out. I've never seen more obsidian in my life, thus the Butte's name. There were many beautiful wildflowers viewed on our hike to the top, which mostly made up for a trip that had so far involved a buttload of driving. Rachel is such a good sport, and my cheerful disposition never really allows me to not have fun on road trips. It just didn't turn out like we had envisioned. But maybe that's a good thing. A little unexpected weather tantrum can sure keep you on your toes.

Near the top of Glass Butte

A hottie.

A place given the lofty title of "the Pillars of Rome." Rach and I dubbed it the mud walls of Rome. Somehow I expected a giant free standing ring of spires reminiscent of the coliseum. What we found were shabby mud cliffs with an angry peregrine falcon swooping around. Before you get the idea that I'm now jaded, it was actually awesome, just totally not what you would expect. Bonus: One more place in Oregon that I've now visited.

Considering you could almost get stuck walking around, we decided not driving further.

There was concern for a while this was going to become a permanent part of the car

The country out near the Owyhee river is completely stunning. There were sweeping vistas punctuated by odd spires and giant cliff faces. I'll have to go back and check out the actual canyons next time.

The Pursuit of Untamed Ornithoids

2009-06-08T23:53:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of my Mother and her incubator, we received 5 ducks a couple of weeks ago. You can watch the buggers practically grow before your eyes and their wings are no longer little nubs (10 lbs of food, 1 week). They've been earning their keep, as they murder the slugs with tireless energy. Note to other would be duck owners: fish and lillipads do not cohabitate very well, but man, they are funny sometimes. Hopefully there will be some tasty eggs soon.

It really is an egg by the way...

2009-06-08T23:39:00.000-07:00

"One of these things is not like the others

One of these things just doesn't belong

Can you tell me which thing is not like the others

By the time I finish my song?"

...

==('''')>=|"|=<('''')==

2009-05-31T16:10:00.000-07:00

Been busy. Real busy... but at least I still have been able to get out into the hills to enjoy some great singletrack. The snow is receding nearly as fast as my hairline, and the trails are approaching mint condition. Here's a couple of vids to get me through the next couple of rough weeks, it being finals and all.

Everyone has that one section of the Mary's peak trail that they just can not ride (for many, this can be most of the trail). This is my section, which Shaun executes in perfect form what I did moments earlier.

Dan and Shaun screaming down the fast lower section of the trail. Dan is showing off his new invisible helmet technology. To his credit, the dude can make it over nearly any technical section. Yes, when I scratch my head I get splinters, but my poor riding skills necessitate wearing a brain bucket. Kudos to all riders, and Asher the trail dog cruising in the end of the vid.

In a couple of weeks I'll be done with my undergraduate degree in Biology (with a chemistry minor and a pre-education option with completed master's requirements. Sounds cooler that way). Then it is on to the Graduate program in Science and Mathematics education here at Oregon State. As much as I like sticking my fingers into every outdoor activity I can, it'll be good for me to dedicate myself to something this important for a year, and for the rest of my life. Education is where I see myself, and I am looking forward to it. Challenges come in all varieties, and it's good for the soul to sample their delicacies while you can. Thanks to all whom have helped me get where I am; I've been blessed with some of the most outstanding friends and family one can find. Ciao for now.

Assorted Desert Rock Pics

2009-05-06T11:38:00.000-07:00

Some desert rock art. I've always wondered if these were really masterpieces painstakenly created by a local legend, or some grafitti on the side of the Piaute equivalent of a 7-11 (Damn kids!). Regardless, they are pretty cool to look at.

D-Tron and Chris gettin' slab-happy

Matt on a great/funky 11.c that incorperated some bizarre stems

Looks comfy to me

The Superfluous Campaign 2009

2009-04-26T18:31:00.000-07:00

Exhibit C: Making Creme Brulee with an Oxy Acetylene torch

Rana

2009-04-23T17:07:00.000-07:00

The wetlands near my place are rife with activity, particularly later in the day. The red wing blackbirds dart this way and that and the female mallards can be heard everywhere. The cattails are starting to emerge, The fruit trees blossoming and the wild roses budding. (Begin nerdgasm) Invertebrates of all kinds can be found in moments, and Rachel and I saw a leech there recently (awesome!).

However, around sunset the life form with the greatest presence is without a doubt the frogs. The noise of their calls is DEAFENING. To get close, you have to pad silently into the main cattail pond area. Then, wait for the ones near you to decide that you are not a threat (amid the cacophony, they can hear your footsteps surprisingly well) and they will eventually return in full surround sound. Sometimes I swear it is a few decibels shy of hurting my ears. Also, even when you can hear a frog within a few feet of you, you can seldom see the sneaky little buggers.

My old Canon A540 is not equipped with the latest sound recording technology, but I took some video all the same. In a month or two the shallow ponds will be quiet and well on their way to being dried up, and those of us who frequent the boardwalk will have to wait 'til next year to hear them.

P.S. I've noticed that the Green Heron that lives in our neighbor's tree seems nice and plump these days...

An Oldy

2009-04-21T22:22:00.001-07:00

I stumbled across some of my old backcountry ranger pictures while cleaning out my OSU storage. Summer's almost here people!

Red Rocks 2009

2009-04-07T21:45:00.000-07:00

Some of you may be detecting a pattern here. Though I am loathe to let any sort of routine sneak into my life, going to Red Rock canyon has become sort of habit forming for me during spring break. The trip was, as it usually is, sunny and filled with some steep sport climbing, enjoyable long routes (for the most part) and many laughs.

Many aspects of this excursion were not routine. A few off the top of my head include

I ate a lot of steak
Except for a moment, I never set foot in Red Rocks campground (Thanks Mikey!)
I went to a place called Cactus Joe's. They sell cactus. More at 11
Got wicked scared on a 5.7
I witnessed human feces get on a climbing rope on a multipitch *shudder*
As I scrambled up the side of Mt. Wilson for 3 hours, I was impaled on yucca plants, my arms were raked by desert scrub oak and kept myself from falling by holding onto some grass only to bail at the base of the climb because it was so cold I could not feel my hands (cool view though, I'll be back)
Ate more steak

I won't post an entire synopsis tonight, but needless to say, the trip was enjoyable. Instead I'll post pieces here and there the next month or two, not because I'm lazy (well... maybe), but it'll keep me occupied while I write a few term papers. Here's to some hard crankin' this April people!

Beater

2009-03-09T12:10:00.000-07:00

There are some things in life that you just can't get rid of. Let me rephrase that. It's not that you are actively trying to rid yourself of the object, but more you wouldn't be heartbroken if it were to, y'know... lose itself. But then somewhere along the way you get attached to it and the nostalgia that accompanies the toy becomes larger than it's monetary worth.

Exhibit A: My old Specialized Rockhopper. I bought it with paper route money (and some help from the folks) the year before I entered 7th grade. By my calculations I have had the thing for over 15 years. I bought it because before I had ever mountain biked, I desperately knew I wanted to be a mt. biker. As an aside, curiously I knew I wanted to climb before I ever did that as well; our teenage selves can be surprisingly perceptive at times. Anyways, in that time since it has never been stolen, and much of the bike consists of the original parts. I took the 'ol beater down to the Cyclery here in Corvallis, and the diagnosis brings a tear to my eye. The replace list includes:

Bottom bracket: still spins...err grinds. I have my suspicions that the ball bearings are long gone, and the thing somehow makes use of crushed rock that has infiltrated it over the years.
Headset: Requires hand tightening mid-ride. Otherwise a mid-ride handlebar/stem removal would occur. Upon application of grease converts said grease to road tar within days.
Derailleurs: Front derailleur is irreparably cracked. The rear is starting to do that ghost shifting thing.
Shifters: Replaced numerous times as my knees (long legs) tend to deliver devastating upper cuts. The front shifter is circling the drain.
Brake pads: I probably have put a dozen on over the years. Same goes for the chain.
Brake Levers: Amazingly the bike still has the original levers. I may carbon date them someday.
Saddle: Originates from that gel seat craze in the early 90's. Still amazingly squishy, maybe too squishy as it's like riding on a water bed sometimes. The seat post looks like it was attacked by a wolverine.
Wheels: The front hub and rim are, astonishingly, the original. The rim is wafer thin due to excessive mashing in my many attempts to endo early in my mountain biking career. The bike has seen two tacoed rear wheels, one of which was courtesy of a parked car.
Tires: Long since replaced, the "new" slicks once resembled a rubber like substance.
Frame: 3 huge dents on the toptube but since it's steel I'm OK with that. Numerous chips in the paint. Chain stays exude rust.

To borrow the metaphor, it's a "face only a mother could love" would be an understatement. To fix all of these problems would cost me about $200, on a bike that I couldn't give away. But I'm fond of the beater. Having a bike that looks like a shipwreck has its benefits too. Nobody is going to steal this thing when there's a flashy Bianci parked right next to it at school. Is it worth 200 bones? Probably not, but it might last me another 15 years at this rate, and pedestrians can be thankful that they can hear my fenders rattle as I careen through intersections.

Tower Work

2009-03-03T21:53:00.000-08:00

This is more than a little belated, but this last fall I got a job working on radio towers, courtesy of my buddy Greg who hooked me up with one of the coolest bosses ever: Joe Harrington of Harrington Tower services. How might a semi-pro slacker like Jake get a job like this, you might ask? Well, a major prerequisite is that one not be afraid of heights, because when you are on top of a 300 foot AM self support tower, that sucker sways like bamboo in a spring breeze.

Most often I was painting and pressure washing with coworker Tyler "Mooner" McAdams (painting effects seen below), but at times I had the opportunity to learn how to install coaxial cable, microwave dishes, FM bays, and to work on my ratcheting skills. Sometimes the weather would get pretty nasty on us, as condensation from a cloud tends to make a tower "rain," for lack of a better term. But it was those clear days, the days when you could see all of the Washington peaks lined up that made the job more than worth it. It was one more reason to like hanging out in a harness for long periods of time.

Towers are usually located up in the high places, which tend to have rather protean weather. For illustration, below are two pictures of a tower near Olympic national park, taken 5 minutes apart. Don't be ashamed if you can't see it in one of them, because I could hardly see my work boots right around then. Five minutes later the sun came out, it warmed up by at lease 25 degrees and I could see the ocean, which was a score or more miles distant.

Quick Outdoor-sy Picture (to keep me motivated)

2009-02-19T19:52:00.000-08:00

Nothing like a romp up to Mary's peak to get the ummm... juices flowing. The real money is when it gets Mt. Bike-able. But man, sometimes I forget how pretty it is up there this time of year.

The Superfluous Campain 2009

2009-02-19T19:38:00.000-08:00

Exhibit B: Extreme Snowshoeing

Big Horn Sheep

2009-02-11T23:11:00.000-08:00

Back in 2006, I worked for the BLM in the Steens Mountain Wilderness. It was one of the better jobs I have had. Backpacking around to remote campsites, bucking aspen, using the ol' GPS and bouldering on off days had its perks for sure. I saw my second mountain lion out there, stacks of elk, antelope and some bizarre mt. dwelling shorebirds. My one regret was never getting to see a Big Horn Sheep, which I had wanted to do since my youth.

I recall being astounded hearing from one of the game wardens that a tag for a Bighorn will auction for sums up to $100,000. Well, I'm not astounded anymore. I've actually tried a bit of hunting myself and enjoyed it, but I can think of better things to do with that much money than shoot some mutton with croissant shaped horns. Think of all the cams you could buy with that (sarcasm meter should detect a moderate reading) much dough!

Grown up Calvin

2009-02-11T14:15:00.000-08:00

I try not to pontificate too much, but I thought this was pretty cool. Childhood is seldom the idylic time it is often portrayed as. There are, however, lessons learned during that time one should never forget. This is one of them.

Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, never licensed any of his material. He claimed it would cheapen his work and reduce the potency of their characters. That's why we never saw Calvin or Hobbes dolls and mugs when the comic strip was popular. Those "Calvin pissing" stickers we see on the backs of trucks in the U.S. are unliscensed and illegal. The image above was not drawn by Watterson, and though he might disapprove, I always imagined (and/or hoped) this is how Calvin would turn out.

*end rant* next up: the usual

Broken Top

2009-02-09T16:51:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while the heavens decide to part this time of year and grant us some sunshine. That means it's time to head to the hills and see what they have to offer, e.g. blood, sweat, cold temps and the opportunity to see how the crampons bite. Timbo and I had a decent couple of days playing in the snow out near Broken Top. We found (through the usual suffering) that the summit is a bit far and technical to get to in 2 days of snowshoeing. That said, the weather was crystal clear and the moon was damn near full. We ended up on top of a false summit as a consolation prize, which really was icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned.

View across the crater towards another false summit

The bros at our highpoint with South Sis' in the distance

Pink time during a time o' day I don't usually frequent

South, Middle and North (aka Big, Little and Ugly) sisters at dawn

The Superfluous Campaign 2009

2009-01-05T12:09:00.000-08:00

Exhibit A: Running along sandy ledges until you fall.

Reduced Thermal Activity

2008-12-17T14:37:00.000-08:00

For those of you whom are not in Oregon, the Willamette valley has been hit (and is being hit) by one of the gnarliest cold snaps we have seen in a while. Being the filthy, despicable optimist that I am, there are some unforeseen benefits of all this nasty weather. The Jackson-Frazier wetlands, located a few hundred feet behind my place of residence, has turned into a winter wonderland rife with aesthetic ice formations, snow cloaked shrubs and other winter treasures. It is bound to excite even the most amateur photographer. That's right, even me.

With such great beauty comes great inconvenience. No, I don't mean figuring out how to get rid of that annoying guy at the bar. The wintry weather might not allow me to get down to California in time for the Gradek family Christmas party. Let me just say I've never left the chains on this long. As sad as missing family members during the holiday might be, with rumors of ice forming in the Gorge and frozen Mac forest riding on the horizon, I think I'll get by. If this new storm socks us in more than the last, I think most Oregonians aren't going anywhere for a while...'cept for those with tools and crampons.

Love at First Sight

2008-12-12T14:58:00.001-08:00

Big Gray

2008-12-10T15:51:00.000-08:00

This is Big Gray. She's the boss. Out of our 11 chickens at Shaun's house, she is first in the pecking order, first up in the morning and pretty much is the queen of the coop. She doesn't really have to peck at the other's to assert her dominance, but when that scrap of stale tortilla hits the ground the others know not to be in her way.

The other day, I observed her doing something curious. I've seen chickens peck at lots of inedible things like... say wood or rocks. But usually they figure it out after a couple of trys. Anyways, Big Gray was plucking the wire that the cylindrical feeder was suspended from. What was strange was that she kept at it, which made the feeder bob back and forth. Then I figured it out. The chickens feed from the rim at the bottom of the feeder. Their voracious appetites eventually exhaust the food supply for the day, but Big Gray has learned to cock her head into the top to see if there is food in the center. Then she expertly shakes the feeder back and forth and jostles the feed out to the edge where she can get it. Birds, as a rule are not said to be very intelligent (Ravens and Jays notwithstanding) but this impressed me.

Having chickens has been fun and beneficial in a number of ways, besides getting some mighty tasty eggs. Chickens will eat anything. ANYTHING. Have some chips that went stale, or some lettuce that is a little ratty? It's OK, they'll take care of it in matter of minutes. And yes, just because I was curious, I fed them some chicken one day (am I going to hell for that?). They enjoyed the turkey bacon I fed them today as well. I almost never have to throw anything organic away, and the rest can go in the compost pile. The only thing they will not eat, for a reason I can not fathom, are mint leaves.

With all the leaf litter on the ground in Corvallis this time of year, I figured I'd let the birds handle it. Inside the coop, with their constant scratching and movement, it only takes a few weeks for the leaves to get trampled into a fine duff that will be great organic matter for the garden. On top of that, the chickens deposit one of the finest nitrogen sources around in the leaves. One man's trash is another man's treasure...

Prop 8: This pretty much sums it up for me

2008-12-04T23:45:00.000-08:00

A little satire to lighten the mood. Still worried about those ice caps though....

Ice Plants

2008-12-03T00:54:00.000-08:00

Ice Plants... a misnomer perhaps? I've seen them growing in So Cal. Anyways, here's a few pictures from a couple of weeks ago during my visit to Stone Lagoon in Redwood National Park.

The Garden is Toast

2008-11-04T14:25:00.000-08:00

The onset of raindrops the size of hockey pucks has spelled death for the tomatoes and just about everything else in the garden. The sunflowers are in a decrepit, rotting state, the squash are gone, the eggplant terminated, the sweet peas a distant memory and we even finished off the last of the potatoes the other day. But everything has a flipside. Coming from a farming family means it makes me smile to see the hills get some precipitation and the wetlands and reservoirs swell to their limits. The nights have been hinting at the promise of snow soon (and some fresh "pow pow"). It also makes for some vicious wet roots on the trails... but I digress. As much as the darkness and gray weather gets people down, scraping mud off your face after a ride and watching it hammer outside with a hot cup of tea in hand is just doing it for me right now. Bring on winter.

Below are some of the bounties wrought in warmer times. Our corn sucked this year and the brussel sprouts made aphids drop to their knees at the sight of the promised land. But there can be no denying that Shaun, Carl and I can grow some mean Thai hot peppers.

Our little watermelon plant strove mightily this summer, and despite cool weather and other abuses it produced one basketball sized fruit. We just finished it the other day. So tasty!

Sawtooth Mountain

2008-09-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

Continuing my trend of ass-whoopin' this summer, my brother and I hiked over 20 miles and 5,000 vertical feet only to get thwarted a couple hundred feet shy of the summit of Sawtooth Mountain in the Trinity Alps wilderness. The summit pyramid was a maze of castellated granite spires and we were out of time (turn-around time was 4:00pm and it was 3:52 I believe). We also had a good 10 miles back to the truck, so it was a wise decision to bail. I found out later you don't need gear to summit, but weaving your way to the top must take some pretty clever route finding.

The trip of course was not a total wash. Far from it in fact. The clean, white granite of the Canyon Creek watershed is absolutely stunning. I've said it before and I will say it again, the Trinity Alps are one of the greatest mountain ranges that almost nobody has heard of.

Beautiful Upper Canyon Creek Lake

Right at our turn-around point at about 8,500 feet

Upper Canyon Creek falls behind me flowing over stellar granite slickrock

Another reason the trip was not a wash is it gave the chance to scope out some of the obscure climbing in the Trinity Alps. If roads got anywhere near the high country here I suspect this would be a pretty decent climbing area. Information on the area is very hard to come by but you can bet I'll be doing some more research. Here are a few pictures of the so-called Stonehouse Pinnacle. My old Tim Toula's "Rock and Road: a Climbing Guide to North America" describes the formation as 1,000 feet tall with granite that is "almost as good as Yosemite." (citation needed). It didn't look quite that big, but it looked quality from where I was standing.

That chimney looks like a man-eater

Look at those cracks!

This is another formation across the canyon that I dubbed "the Great white face." Guess I'm going to have to head back with some gear sometime in the future. Anybody keen?

North Sister 2

2008-09-07T00:46:00.000-07:00

So after climbing at smith one weekend, my brother and I decided to see how high up on south sister we could get. He had climbed middle sister the week before and was keen to get on top of another one. Both of us damn well knew that N. Sister is called "the black beast of the Cascades" for a reason (or even Ugly Sister), but we figured we would turn around if the going got sketchy. The standard route is normally done in the winter or spring when the rubble is well frozen over. One ascends the southeast ridge, weaving your way around gendarmes to the so called "terrible traverse." Then you gingerly scoot your way up a groove called the bowling alley (man it seems there's one on every high cascade peak) and up onto the mass of Prouty peak, the summit pinnacle. It turns out we wouldn't have to worry about all the technical stuff, as we turned around at around 8,000 feet when the wind cranked up to gusts of 60 mph +. The blasts nearly knocked you off your feet and we got mighty cold in our thin shells. Being on a ridge, you could never predict which way the next blast of cold air would come. The rain coming in sideways didn't help either. I'd rather have below freezing and snow than just above freezing and cold, cold rain like we did. So before we bailed we made a couple of videos and a few phone calls to confuse people. Anyways, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Even a quick defeat still makes for an excellent day.

Before the steep parts with a shrouded North Sister in the background

A completely unnecessary move on crumbly rock

Right before the real action began above the first gendarme

The wind was so strong it ripped off my wilderness permit!

We. Were. Freezing. It took us a couple of hours to warm back up again on the way down. Here I am starting to dry out once we got back down from the ridge.

North Sister is #1 in my book

2008-09-07T00:04:00.000-07:00

A few videos of Tim and I on Mars... I mean North Sister, accompanied with horrible sound due to high winds. We're a peppy group I'll give us that.

McKenzie River Trail

2008-09-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

About 7 of us and a couple of energetic dogs rode the McKenzie river trail in its entirety this past Sunday. Along its length, one will see some of the bluest water you've seen, several incredible waterfalls and more log bridges than you can shake a stick at. A single speeder has to spin at about 250 rpm during the last half, and that takes it out of you after 30 or so miles. It's normally 27 miles but none of us had been on the trail recently and we took a few wrong turns. On top of that we got rained on, almost lost a dog and got scraped up in the lava rock section as well. Yep, pretty much a great day on a bike.

Greg leading the pack after the first few miles

You just have to stop at the Blue Pool. The entire river comes up from underground and heads downstream.

Mt. Mcloughlin

2008-08-29T14:53:00.000-07:00

Also a few weeks back, my fit parents came up from California to climb Mt Mcloughlin with my brother and I. Perched at 9,495 feet, the summit is gained by hiking the steep trail to the top. It's one of the nicer summits I've had the pleasure of sitting on. Continuing the trend from Mt. Washington earlier this summer, there was nothing but sunshine and hardly a breeze up on top. Sadly that trend came to and end when I got blown off of North sister last weekend (more on that later). All in all it was a great way to spend the day. There were some other old farts attempting the summit that day, but my Ma and Pa smoked 'em to the top. Here are a few pictures

The summit within sight

Mom conked out on top

Timbo: there was a bit of a cliff behind him

The parents about to gain the summit

Tim, remeniscent of this painting

One of the Best Rides in Oregon

2008-08-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

A bunch of us bums with several thousand dollar steeds rode the North Umpqua River Trail a few weeks ago. It is arguably one of the best trails I've ridden. The weekend served as a goodbye party for fellow mt. biker Fred, who is setting up shop as a history teacher over in Salida, Colorado. Anyhow, I snapped a pic of many people in spandex and an expensive collection of bikes just before a ride below the dread and tear section of the trail.

How to Climb at Smith in the Summer

2008-08-29T14:08:00.000-07:00

Climbing at Smith Rocks in the summertime takes some careful planning, a good strategy and some very persuasive talk to get people to go belay you on your "proj" in 90+ degree heat. Or, that is... it usually does. Famed "get a bunch of people to go climbing" expert Richard Burton managed to get several of us out there last weekend. To get the most out of a hot, dusty day, you need a bit of luck; such as not getting stuck behind a party of 12 on monkey face like Greg, Inga, Kristin and I did. But most of it comes down to planning. You need to:

Rise early to avoid the heat- well... that's tough when you drink a lot of wine and climb with Tim "rise at the crack o' noon" Gradek
Climb in the shade- rope-de-dope block and northern point: check
Take a siesta during the hot afternoon- Below is a pic I shamelessly stole from new climbing buddy Rick. Man I love steelhead falls (sucks they took out the zipline though)
Climb well into the evening- check

One word of caution though kids. Be careful doing kneebars or you might end up with something like this:

Bear Necessities

2008-08-11T12:27:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd take a little time to talk about the aforementioned bear take out menu. The first day in Yosemite for Inga, Kristin and myself was largely devoid of climbing. We spent most of the day scrambling around on the Talus all dehydrated and looking for some 5.5 pinnacle that we never found. Can you believe I'm headed back? Yes the rock at Yosemite is that good Anyways, earlier that day when we were setting up at Camp 4, we had, as the ranger told us, dutifully removed all food related objects from my parent's station wagon...or so we thought. A few days prior, one of my coolest relatives had given me some soft, sweet smelling cranberry quickbread that I stowed in my day pack for a special occasion. Turns out the special occasion was for the bear, who we think sniffed the orange juice spilled on the car door and thought," Oooooh I think I'll see what behind door number 2!" The broken window only ended up costing about 50$, and you actually can get a fine if you leave food in your car. So the lesson is just don't leave food in your car, ever.

The scene of the crime. We were parked between this car that was completely covered in tiles on the left and another one with more stickers than I've ever seen. An alternate theory as to why the bear chose our car was that it looked "normal."

Actual bear print. Radiocarbon dating and DNA evidence place the burglar in the Camp 4 region.

I just had to get the girls to pose with their thumbs up for this ubiquitous sign.

Oregon Trail

2008-08-08T14:27:00.000-07:00

My recent adventures have all seemed to revolve around finding my way back to the Willamette valley. The Norwegians and I were at certain points of our trip a couple hundred miles from both Canada and Mexico. We traveled through suffocating heat, vicious mosquitoes, bear attacks and were forced to eat brown cheese in our quest to find our way back to Oregon. I couldn't help but be reminded of the old Oregon Trail game for the Apple II. Granted, our axle didn't break and none of us died of dysentery, but the similarities can't be denied. OK OK so they can. The pioneers wouldn't have crossed Nevada twice on purpose, and they probably did a bit less climbing than us. But in honor of me hunting 2568 pounds of bison meat in second grade, here goes nothing. Let's do the numbers:

Number of windows smashed by bears (Sorry Mom): 1

Number of Cranberry Quick bread loafs eaten by said bears (sorry Auntie): 1

Approximate number of hangs per climb by Jake in Yosemite: 24.37

Odds that a pair of Norwegians would be freezing and wet in a desert in Utah during the Summer: 2000 to 1

Number of Rock Types pulled on: 7 (Granite, sandstone, tuff, basalt, andesite, dacite and whatever the rest of that crap on Mt. Washington is)

Average number of times per day the word "boring" was uttered: 38.72

Hottest Temperature Seen: 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47.2 degrees C)

Coldest Temperature Seen: No data

Time needed for the "novelty" of Nevada to wear off: 16.32 minutes

Amount of times Greg peed in the Willamette river: 4397

Amount of Coronas consumed on top of multipitch sport routes: 4

Gallons of sunscreen applied by fair-skinned Norwegians: 2.3

Number of poses Tim did for the camera: fabulously many

Net number of Ice creams promised as wager material: a buttload

and.......

Number of amazing pictures and memories that will last a lifetime: ∞

more to come later... but you knew that already. Happy summer!

Ok it's been forever

2008-07-31T14:33:00.000-07:00

I realize dear readers, all 2 of you, that this has been my longest hiatus from Blog posting in the history of this blog's existance. But it's going to have to wait a little longer. Putting up pictures on the blog is difficult when you are driving 2000+ miles with a couple of hardcore Norwegians and an American hybrid corporate lackey/badass climber. It is also difficult when you are fending off hungry bears from your Aunt's quick bread in Yosemite, poaching campsites in Bishop, swimming in "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" water in Zion NP, dodging Waves at the Lost Rocks, tubing on the Willamette, sweating at Smith Rocks, climbing Coprolite-esque rock on Mt Washington (and enjoying the hot tube!), bailing on the sharp end of the rope in Leavenworth and riding behind too many dudes with spandex on the N. Umpqua river trail. I suppose none of the above qualifies as a legitimate excuse but here's to trying. It's summer people! Get out and make yourself some adventures before it starts raining again (which in Oregon can last up to 14 months per year).

It was one hell of a trip. I'll be the first to admit that. I was pretty road weary afterwards. And every thursday when the weekend starts rolling around I promise myself that I'll be "taking it easy..." or "laying low." It never happens. This particular weekend I'm going to go climb Mt. McGloughlin with my parents, who are wild stallions for being able to even attempt such a feat at their advanced age (just kidding Mom). I'll get around to posting copious pics in the following weeks, but you can check out Greg's and Inga's excellent entries if you get the chance.

"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from a lack of good judgment. "
~Barry LePatner

Finals

2008-06-07T19:54:00.000-07:00

Locked in mortal combat with my Earth History book and practicum journal, I've broken free of studying just long enough to post something. However, I don't have anything earthshattering or thought provoking to say today. So here's something humorous. Ahh science!

Delay of Game: Penalty...15 yards

2008-05-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

So I was going to finish this days ago but, I have no excuse really. Call it a several day long lapse in reason. Moving on...

My roommate Zack, buddy Fred and I rolled down to California this last Memorial Day weekend to escape this Oregon weather we've been having recently. What we found was not Oregon weather, but full-scale monsoon season and hip deep mud. My two travel mates are training for the annual Cascade Cream Puff and they thought it'd be a good idea to go ride in the 12 hours of Weaverville mt. bike Race, in Weaverville CA of all places. When we rolled in Friday evening the skies were lookin' good, the trails packed and our spirits high. Thence came the deluge the likes of which the world has never seen (a small exaggeration). I guess things weren't so bad because the last time Zack and Fred came down this way their bike rack (with attached bikes) decided to fly off their car at 65 mph.

Despite some mild hypothermia, searing lungs, inflated quadriceps and right knee, my generally cheerful disposition got me through 4 painful laps. Lap 3 was about the worst I've ever felt on a bike, and strangely, lap 4 was one of the best. It's funny how that works sometimes. You never know when your friends the endorphins are going to stop by.

Zack and Fred both finished strong, with Zack winning the single speed category and it must be stated that he stopped riding after about 9 hours. The format was pretty simple. The course was a 12 mile loop that started at the Weaverville high school. Whoever completed the most laps one the race, or there category. This being my second mt. bike race I joined the beginner class. I came in second place!... Out of 3 people. And I'm pretty sure the other two racers were riding unicycles. But either way it was still a blast, and I'd like to do something similar in the future.

The muddy 3 mile climb right off the bat still sends shivers down my spine, though. I passed a guy (who was peddling) while pushing my bike up the hill. Probably the best part of the day, besides not wrecking, was seeing my parents come and watch me roll in at the end of lap 4. Here are some of their pictures that you've probably seen already.

Geology Fieldtrip

2008-05-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

My Geo 203 field trip this weekend was one of the best I've taken. Most field trips at Oregon State end up being rain soaked affairs and I've gotten a bad case of poison oak more than once. Not that I'm complaining, as it's great to get out of the classroom. Anyways, besides the glorious weather this weekend, one of the highlights was the chance to play around on a certain sedimentary cliff on the Oregon coast and do some fossil hunting. My group and I found a number of 16 million year old invertebrates from the middle Miocene epoch. We found a number of bivalves (clams), gastropods (snails) which were preserved in a variety of methods. This included preservation of the original material, replacement through mineralization, and we came across many casts and molds. Another student found something that looked like an ancient mussel, but it was incomplete. I got to take a few home with me and I'm hoping one of my larger clam specimens will get me an extra credit point this week in lab. I just have to identify it first, which doesn't sound to easy.

At a couple of other stops (between excursions in our big yellow school bus) we viewed a a few sedimentary layers that were solidified turbidity flows. A turbidity flow is basically an underwater landslide that occurs on the continental shelf. Then the material was uplifted through plate tectonics and squished together just west of Corvallis. On no other field trip does the scale of geologic time seem so huge, and most of Oregon is actually fairly recent (we are talking tens of millions of years, not billions). It took a loooonnnggg time to create most of these features. I'll finish my science nerd monologue by stating that I think I need to get a rock hammer now... they look pretty sweet.

p.s. I'll also take this space to apologize for my liberal use of parentheses, but it's how I roll. Sometimes life is just too complicated to present in an organized fashion.

Last one, I swear

2008-05-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

The Lost Rocks

2008-05-12T17:36:00.000-07:00

And...*drum roll* a few Lost Rocks pictures on this marvelous malfunction Monday.

Amy watching Mikey up on the North end of the beach.

Amy trying a great arete

Our random seal skeleton to ward off evil spirits. We named him Simon.

Matt on the Button. That shark finned shaped monolith in the background is called The Prow

Mikey on a hard problem that none of us managed to climb

One of the best things to do at Lost Rocks is to climb on top of The Prow and get a little vertigo

The Button

2008-05-12T16:31:00.000-07:00

Let's see if this works.

Product Placement

2008-05-07T12:54:00.000-07:00

I'll be headed down to Northern California this weekend to boulder at one of my favorite climbing areas, the Lost Rocks. The area consists of a quarter mile stretch of beach or so with countless boulder problems of all shapes and sizes. One of the greatest aspects of the place is the variety of climbing one sees there. The west faces of the boulders (some are more monolith size) have been wave polished over the years and thus represent some of the most desperate sloper and slab problems on the West Coast. However, on the east side of the boulders you can find some of the sharpest most heinous crimping lines around. The problems are seldom graded and this is not due to that laid back California attitude. The nature of the storms and sand movement here make it almost impossible to grade anything. Case in point: the first time I ever bouldered there, I climbed one of the most gorgeous V1's I've seen anywhere. Upon returning a couple of months later, I found that the problem was now getting hammered by waves and covered with algae. Now back out of the water, "The Flake" as it is called, is not the 12 foot cruise it once was. The top of it is more than 25 feet high, and the start is impossible for mere mortals like myself. Here's my crash pad for scale.

I've seen a sandy landing be replaced by a bunch of cantaloupe sized cobbles in the matter of a few days as a result of the wave action. You never really know what to expect.

The best part about the climbing here is the ambiance. Bouldering next to the ocean in an awesome, secluded area gives the place a charm that is rivaled only by the Buttermilks (as far as California goes).

Some climbers made a movie about Northern Cal climbing, and you can see a lot of Lost Rocks in this clip from the Spray Movie. While I've heard it isn't the best climbing flick, it still gets me fired up to go climb there. Here's a few more pictures from my last trip. Have fun people!

Just a quick one

2008-05-06T18:47:00.000-07:00

I'd like to commemorate the first Spring Mt. Bike of the season (Read: not muddy or unpleasant) by posting a quick pic. The trails were fast and the bikes were dialed in! One of these days I'm going to have to get some action shots, but riding and taking pictures does not increase longevity. Here, Fred, Zack and I take a breather just before descending the upper Horse trail in the MacDonald-Dunn Forest. I never realized how nice we have it here in Corvallis until I left for Auckland; the trails are about 5 to 10 minutes from town, if that. Hell, the trails go into town in a couple spots. Whenever civilization is pressing on you, a great stress reliever is to head out into the "Mac" for a quick burn. With a little luck, you can see the 3 Sisters and Mt. Jefferson on a clear day, or you might get to see one of your buddies wreck without seriously injuring themselves. Note to other riders: the poison oak is starting to look juicy...

Smithy

2008-04-30T00:41:00.000-07:00

Greg took some great photos of Smith Rock this past weekend. Check them out if you get the chance. Also, kudos (In Kiwi: "Cue-Dahs") to the man for finding out the correct route name for the intimidating 5.11b we climbed.

Procrastination

2008-04-28T13:35:00.000-07:00

As an excuse to not study, I thought I'd post a couple of cool climbing pics to get my train of thought back. Recent news: We're just starting to get our vegetable garden in over here at Zack's place, and I had a fun day at Smith Rocks yesterday, though a bunch of us did get spanked on a 5.11b called "Soul survivor". And for a community announcement, I invite all climbers and wilderness lovers out to Smith Rocks this coming weekend for the annual Spring Thing. This is a great way to repair some of the damage we all do tramping around out there, and it is awesome to give a belay on a terrace you built after the work is done. There is everything from trail maintenance to bolt replacement that needs to be done, and it only takes about half a day of your time.

...and the also rans

2008-04-21T19:32:00.000-07:00

People think that photos don't lie, and that no information is left out. They are purveyors of cold, unvarnished truth. But that is balderdash. In my favorite comic strip ever, Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin takes a picture of himself on his clean bed with all of the junk in his room pushed off to the side, just out of the frame. The idea is that people will think Calvin is a tidy person. Bill Watterson, the author, is trying to tell us, "don't believe everything you see." In the hands of a simpleton, a camera can easily be used to warp the truth to whatever the picture taker wants. I've seen some pretty impressive looking UFO pictures (although most are not) out there, but that doesn't mean SETI should stop searching just yet. Cameras lie all the time.

The cool part about a blog is that it is the blogger's chance to present themselves however they want to the world (not that anyone reads this one hehe). But we too fall prey to this camera manipulation. Out of the 1000's of shots I take, only a handful make it in here. And many of those tend to be shots that, honestly, I think I look cool in. I'm an average climber at best, but I choose to put shots in here that make me look like I can send 5.15. Most of my days are spent reading, typing, sleeping and playing guitar, but I don't often show the viewer that part of my life.

That said, a few weeks ago I viewed a photo of me where I look incredibly... well, dumb. Instead of hiding it away forever I'm going to post it here, in honor of all the other pictures that don't make the cut. I'm also posting it because it makes me laugh, and hopefully I get a few laughs out of other people. See ya!

Today's Random Bouldering shot

2008-04-07T18:50:00.001-07:00

I never did manage to do that mantle

Red Rocks: it never ends...

2008-04-07T18:06:00.000-07:00

Below are some of my pics from Daryl and myself's two day excursion to the Rainbow wall at Red Rocks, which is regarded by some as the highest and baddest wall there. We hiked in our water, bivy and climbing gear the afternoon before and started climbing after a night of little sleep due to the brightness of Vegas in the distance. It was amazing and fun climbing, partly due to the fact that I lead nothing but the 5.6 first pitch. The whole thing goes at 5.12a or 5.9 A2. I belayed Daryl up the first seven pitches so he could work the moves. They are graded (Pitches 1-7 ):

5.6- not near as fun as the pitches to come

5.12a -not very warmed up by the time you make it to the burly crux move on this one

5.11d- very strenuous and sustained liebacking

5.11a- Follow a thin seam

5.11b- Daryl nabbed the redpoint on this one. Climb gingerly up a huge detached block and then up to a strenuous roof around right.

5.10c- This was still pretty hard after all the preceding pitches. We then rappelled the route

Here are a few pictures

The Original Route follows the dihedral directly in the center below one of two black streaks. Follow the notch on the skyline down and you'll see it. You can bivy at Rainbow ledge up near where the tree is slightly up and right. Now, can you see the climber aiding pitch 2? No? I'll zoom in for you...

He's just left of the black streak in the center

Daryl at our perfect bivy spot at the base

A couple from Santa Cruz jugging up their fixed lines

Looking over at Crimson Chrysalis and beyond to Las Vegas. Again, for scale you can just make out a couple climbers on top of Crimson, about halfway up the 45 degree slab on the top of the tower. It was a kick to look out over a 1000 foot route I had done a few years ago with my climbing accomplice Richard.

Trinity Hike

2008-04-07T17:52:00.000-07:00

My family and I have an annual tradition, one that missed last year as I was in the southern Hemisphere. Every year around the onset of spring we hike along the South Fork of the Trinity River and check out the great wildflowers and vistas. This year did not disappoint in the wildflower department, and though it was a little cold we enjoyed ourselves immensely. Another plus: I have yet to feel any itches from being around poison oak. The trail has a treasure of the stuff, but somehow through some matrix moves and paying attention to your feet (as every climber should) you can come out unscathed.

Monkeyflower, or Mimulus

My Father, brother and mother

A Quick Jaunt Across Greenland

2008-04-01T19:44:00.001-07:00

I interupt this irregularly scheduled Lanky Bastard blog entry to post something cool and exciting. I know cool and exciting things don't show up here very often, but this is too awesome to pass up. My fellow NZ adventurer and Norwegian Ingrid was a cool girl and a fun person to climb with. I found out today that she is also a badass (read: American for extremely awesome outdoorsy person). She and 3 friends are going to Kite across the length of Greenland. Yeah... I know. Check out the link supplied above, It's awesome! Some of it is English speaker friendly, which was good for me as I have trouble saying "cheese" right. Anyways, I am stoked to have hung out with a living legend and wish Ingrid and her friends the best. Off to Bombs...

Spring Break

2008-04-01T18:46:00.000-07:00

It was nice to get out of dodge for the past week, and by dodge I mean the Willamette valley in the springtime. It snowed a couple of days ago in Corvallis! It's almost April! According to my brother, it snowed the first day of spring, and we seem to be on course for an icy "take the studded tires off your car day". Anyhow, I rolled back into Oregon late Sunday only to be welcomed by some hail and icy conditions after zooming by Mt. Shasta.

The total tally came to about 7 days in Red Rocks and 2.5 in Bishop, CA. The climbing was great and the sun was more than welcome to the scores of Oregonians there. Red Rocks weather will get even the most dedicated slacker (which is an oxymoron now that I think about it) out of the tent before 8:00am. I got the chance to give plenty of belays on hard redpoints, do some stellar bouldering in Bishop and I followed Daryl higher and harder then I have ever done before on the Rainbow wall. I'll post a few pics from my old camera, but until I get the cord for my new Olympus these will have to do.

Myself about to follow a tough 11a pitch on the Original Route, Rainbow wall

Beautiful Red Rocks in the afternoon

One of my favorite boulder problems: Mikey working The Womb

Matt trying a tough V-hard. I needed some holds on the mantle, as well as some feet.... Hell I needed everything.

Since High Plains Drifter is way, WAY too tough, I opted for the v4 to the left. It's nice with a dash of highball, but it is super safe once you get the jug about halfway up.

Wow....just wow

2008-03-16T21:17:00.000-07:00

Check out some of fellow mt. clubber Tyler McPherson's pictures from Patagonia. I already knew I needed to go there. Way to make it worse dude...

....make that cool place on the earth I must go to #5412

Pre-finals Snow school

2008-03-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

Before my finals next week I took the time to head up into the hills near Hoodoo ski resort with Richard and his friend Max. The idea was to practice some mountaineering techniques so I could actually use the ice axe I bought all those years ago when I lived in Washington. I also wanted to stop procrastinating on being a badass, as I've told people it's what I'm majoring in. Something tells me the latter is a lost cause, but I still had a blast. Max imparted a great deal of knowledge on the two of us, and it was a hell of a lot of fun just playing in our "self arrest chute". Though I did find out that attempting a self arrest with a water bottle is quite difficult. Good luck on finals people!

A couple NZ Photos

2008-03-09T14:21:00.000-07:00

Why do I keep posting pictures of New Zealand even though I am months removed from the place? Part of the answer lies in the beauty of that country. Another part is I just got my hands on some of Greg's pictures. The last part is that I keep forgetting to bring my freakin' camera when I go to smith or on mt. bike rides. And there's no excuses either, as I now have 2 cameras. The second is a sweet Olympus that my Aunt and Uncle graciously gave me, and I am aching to give it a whirl. Here are a couple of photos to hold myself over until Red Rocks in a couple of weeks.

1080 and the letter G, you haunt me to this day

Ed doing the mandatory no Hands rest

Inga on the beautiful rock at Pohara

Dead Week

2008-03-08T20:26:00.000-08:00

I went up to Portland yesterday to go boulder at the Circuit gym with some fellow mt. clubbers. It was a great time and after that we welcomed back Ariel and Rachel from South Korea with some beer and music.

Next week will be "Dead Week" or the week before finals. Of course all OSU students are aware of this fact, except for a few of my former flatmates at the old Chi Alpha Fraternity (I'm not too sure what those dudes do besides play video games). Yep, for a the better part of the term I have been living in a former Frat house that now has a Christian Fellowship downstairs. Moving there was one of those 'get back from Red Rocks with only 2 days before school starts decisions', so I have no one to blame but myself. Living there... how do I say this... sucked. It was the kind of place you felt you had to call Hazmat if you touched the wrong thing. The one saving grace of the place was that it was right across from campus. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I could sleep in 'til 7:59, throw on some clothes, and scoot my way across Monroe avenue to my 8 am class. Going "home" for lunch was pretty easy.

Anyways, I just moved out of the place and moved in with my buddies Zack, Carl (known as Hot Carl) and Shaun. I've lived with these guys before, and they are all big Mt. Bikers. Once I had moved my stuff in I counted 17 bikes in the garage, which, by my calculations is 4.25 bikes per person. There is a tandem there I think, a fixed gear bicycle (the pedals are deadly at high speeds), a bunch of single speeds, and some of the nicest full suspension bikes I have ever seen. Since there are lots of bike thieves here, my new address is: 12345 Fake street, Nobikeshere, OR.

The house is killer for other reasons. They have a tree house, some chickens, and a huge garden. It should be a cool place to spend the rest of my time at OSU.

While up in Portland, I finally got my hands on Greg's pictures so I thought I'll post a couple next time I'm online. Looking forward to spring everyone! Take it easy.

On school and stuff

2008-03-03T23:52:00.000-08:00

The other day in my Geology 202 lab, we performed one of the coolest experiments I've ever been privy too. For about 2 hours, our group of six got to play around with a stream table. Hydrologists use them to model fluvial processes, and on top of just being plain fun, it was very informative as well. Instead of sand, our professor used plastic granules about 0.05 mm in size. Apparently when you scale a river down to a 3 meter long box, you have to scale down the mass of the sediment too. Above is a picture of our stream table, taken on my crappy cell phone.

The box is slightly raised on one end so the water source (a hose) flows down to the drain at the other end. We put a few meanders in the basin and placed Lego "houses" where we thought they would get annihilated by the streams erosional power, just like a kid who builds a sand castle too close to the waves. I was surprised, however, by the amount of river structures actually appeared. Where the stream entered the lake a braided river channel formed a delta. And at one point, we actually had an oxbow lake formed after the river cutoff a meander. Pretty cool.

Now when I was a kid, seeing some water running through some sand meant one thing: Dam the hell out of it. So when our group had some time, we created Hoover dam. Unfortunately, this clogged the drain with sand and we had trouble getting water out of the system for a little while. Of course, the innocent Lego town built below the dam was decimated. All in the name of science!

It's robot fightin' time

2008-01-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

The Bro posing on some slickrock

The reason I keep going back to Red Rocks on climbing trips is that each time the place seems to have more to offer. Though the grades are said to be soft by some, and the sandstone soft by others, it's hard to leave the area without a wicked case of chronic perma-grin. The kaleidoscope of colors you see at the canyon are beyond belief and are a photographers dream come true. And, as I've stated before, it has everything from long easy trad routes, great sport climbs and as Richard, Timbo and I found out, some killer bouldering too. I consider Las Vegas to be the armpit of the Universe and Red Rocks Canyon being so close to it has created a bit of a dilemma for me. The quality of the climbing and past fun times I've had there far outweigh any bad vibes I get from the "city of Sin".

The trip started out like it usually does, with a long drive from Oregon or Norcal that stretches into oblivion. Sooner or later we arrive, triumphantly... and crash at the BLM campground. The days are usually organized as such:

-an easy and sleep in late day

- hard sport day (read, feel inadequate because Lauren Lee is right next to you flashing 12.d's),

-boulder day to get rid of the gibblies you got from that whipper yesterday

-long trad day in order to go easy on your thrashed tendons (doesn't work as you invariably get off route)

-Rest day, or, in Timbo and my case: get absolutely spanked on everything you try

-Get drunk/rest day

-Spend day mostly scraping your knees on a cryptic red rock approach hike. Do one pitch. Your camelback runs dry on the way out and you start to realize the worth of showering around this day.

-Try "must do" project day. Key word is try here.

-Drive 22 hours home bragging about your conquests and sends.

We skipped a few of those last days as we had to rush back to Oregon for other reasons, but we followed the basic blueprint. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Here are some highlights.

The dudes: Richard (with the snazzy hat) belaying Tim

Richard stylin' an 11.b

One of the burlier falls I've seen anyone take. Flying upside-down for a few meters, my brother left some red discoloration all over the previously tan rock.

V hard or bowel movement? You decide, though the patched pants lead me to infer that this has happened before

a fun little slap

One of the best problems I've seen, over at the kraft boulders (I believe it's called the Monkey Bars)

I know my enemy and its name is The Pearl, V4

I have no idea...

Chimneyfest: 2007. The boulder was probably 60 feet tall and split perfectly down the middle.

End of a long day

A gorgeous, clean 12a that proved a bit much for me. I've always said that red rocks can turn an average photographer into a good one. This climb showcased some desperate slaps and a stem in a featureless corner.

Good times

2008-01-26T21:10:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a busy few weeks (errr month. I mean year. whatever) and it is about time for an update. Since I'm back on the quarter system again, we students here at OSU are about to get blasted with some midterms. But such is life. On to some fun stuff. Last weekend I got the opportunity to spend some time in Bend with the bro...

(yeah, that guy). Last Friday was my friend Gretchen's "owie" party, and good times were had by all down in Eugene. G is healing fast after her auto accident, which is great, but I missed a perfect opportunity to ditch this bottle of Arbor Mist she and Richard gave me and leave it at their place. Seriously, the stuff tastes like a combination of ox piss, hippo sweat and that grape fluoride at the dentist you hated as a kid. I'll get 'em later.

Among other events last weekend, the Oregon State Mt. Club's got a cabin in Sunriver for the holiday weekend. It was great to catch up with some people. Now I wasn't around for this, but some members did a little ice climbing a Saturday ago. That's right, it's been cold enough in Oregon for there to actually be some frozen waterfalls. Greg and Ian have some nice shots on their blogs, and I recommend you check them out. I think it might be time for me to actually get some hammers and some crampons. Speaking of cold, we got our second snowstorm since school started. Apparently, we have a pretty significant La Nina this year. Here's a (bad, I know) pic of the library the other night on my way to the climbing gym.

Since I have my camera back I'll post some pictures of Timbo, Lord Burton and myself on our red rocks trip sometime soon. Actually the climbing shots were just OK, but the pictures of all of us screwing around ended up being pretty freakin' funny. Like I said... good times. Take care everybody!

Payne's Ford: Part 2

2007-12-20T15:53:00.000-08:00

The main reason for this whole trip was of course to climb some really cool rock. I had planned on checking out Abel Tasman national park during our stay here, but it never materialized. The climbing was just that good.

The rock is featured limestone in two main areas: Payne's Ford scenic reserve and the cliffs near the ocean at Pohara. The real beauty of the area is that it has something for everyone. We climbed everything from thin friction slabs to the most overhung roofs I've ever seen. Everyone climbed harder than they had hoped.

Inga before the insecure crux of Burly by Sensitive (22). Good flashes by Ed and Greg on this one.

Ed, Greg and I eating bananas and hanging out on the Rawhide Roof (22)

Ed Barefoot at Pohara

Greg on the brutal 26, Why not?

Myself sticking the "not so mandatory dyno" on Why not?

One of the great climbs in the area is called "1080 and the letter G". The claim to fame for anyone who climbs it is that it is essentially one giant roof. The approach involves a scramble up a dirt filled gully to the base of the climb. Part of what makes this 23 so imposing is the fact that you start from a ledge with a great deal of fresh air below you. I have to give kudos to Ed for taking the first go. He Greg and I sat there for the better part of an hour looking at it and speaking in hush tones (with great reverence). As far as 23's go it isn't to bad, but those first few clips had me quivering. It's a great climb.

Ed on the sharp end

Ed Topping out on 1080

Greg starting out, just before the crux

One of the other great things about this climb is the cave about 2/3 of the way through the climb. This presents the climber with the opportunity to do something he or she likely doesn't get to do very often: hang upside down with a no-hands rest. There are perfect little grooves for your calves and places to lock you heel and toes in. While still a little intimidating, it is the most positive no hands rest I've ever seen. There is supposedly a visitor's sign-in guide in the cave but we all forgot to look. Here's Greg following Ed.

Ingrid belaying Inga on an unknown 18

Guess who, at Pohara

A couple of shots I took from above at the Bo peep Slab in Pohara, which is anything but a slab

This cool walking stick below the powerline wall

Kristen and Ingrid hiking out on our last day

Payne's Ford

2007-12-20T14:57:00.000-08:00

Real quick, I just read an Article about this earthquake on the North Island. Read about it here if you like.

As you may know, after my second set of finals in the southern hemisphere I set out for a couple of weeks of climbing on the fantastic South Island. We started the trip in Payne's Ford, which you can find out more in the interesting links I have down and to the right.

In such a short space, the place is a sport climber's paradise. We were treated to near perfect weather (I think it rained a smidgen one night) with great camping and perfect rock. We stayed at the Hang dog climber's camp. If you are ever on the north tip of the South Island this place is a must-stop for any dirtbag. Camping is 5$, a bargain anywhere, you can take a shower for another dollar, and they ask that if you are climbing contribute 50cents per day for the bolt fund, which replaces dodgy climbing bolts. Hangdog is the kind of place I imagined the perfect vacation spot to be: filled with laid back people and where a worry hardly enters your mind.

The place was started by this guy Willie who tragically died a few years ago while being lowered. They have free bikes you can use to ride into town. The toilets have surprisingly good poetry in them (see Inga's blog. no really. It is pretty clever and not your typical bathroom graffiti) and the facility also has it's own Gravity meter...

We stayed in Scumbag Corner, a place that was well suited for our needs

Part of one of the Poems. Apparently the one in German was a bit darker...

The place has plenty of other funny quirks and great aspects. One of which is the great swimming hole a scant 5 minute walk and scramble from the climbs or the camp (there is another with a slackline over the river a short walk away from this one). To get there, walk through a gorse choked field to a ledge situated beneath a massive overhang. Slither on your hands and knees out to a sunny ledge that is complete with 2 rope swings, a cliff jump, and one badass boulder problem the likes of which you have ever seen. Acid Test is situated on a massive roof hanging over the Takaka river. It's a v4 (more like a 3 or 2) out to the roof and then it gets hard. The whole thing goes at apparently v7 and the first ascentionist apparently sent it while on acid and wearing a Walkman, thus the name. It's better without shoes on, as there are perfect little scoops for your toes. All in all, it's a great way to spend an afternoon, the only downside being the freezing water you crash into when you inevitably fall.

Ingrid starting out on Acid Test

Greg peeling off right where it gets brutal. The kicking/campusing method didn't work for him tragically...

Greg and I attempting a simultaneous jump and swing

Ed braving the swing

Back in the USA (sung in a Bruce Springsteen Voice)

2007-12-20T14:29:00.000-08:00

Hey there people, I've been back for a little over a week now. During that time, I've been catching up with people I haven't seen in almost a year, trying (so far in vain) to find myself a new place to live, and have made a guest appearance at the Gradek Family Christmas this year. Being back is a mixed batch of feelings for me. It has been awesome spending time with friends and family, but parts of me miss the life I built for myself in New Zealand. Hopefully I'll go back soon. That said, a warm Christmas just doesn't feel natural.

I had a bit of trouble getting my luggage, as it apparently missed the flight I was on, but my mother and father picked me up in San Francisco with little difficulty. I shaved my beard off into some hideous side burns before I left Auckland but for some reason Mom and Dad pretended that they knew me in the airport. The folks took me to the Jetty in my home town of Eureka upon my arrival.

I realize most of you expect even more slacking from me, but I figured it was high time that I posted some more pictures from my recent travels. It'll be a nice trip down memory lane. Oh, and I can't wait to have an actual summer in a few months. I caught a few weeks in early March when I arrived in Auckland, but other than that I won't have experienced a real Oregon summer since the beginning of September of 2006. One last thing...I had to ride a sheep, even a fake one before I left NZ. Cheers!

At the Hamilton Gardens

Flying out tomorrow

2007-12-07T21:59:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been a hell of an adventure, but my Aunt, Uncle and I arrived safely back in Auckland yesterday. We spent a couple of days checking out Taupo, Rotorua and the Coremandel Penninsula before returning, triumphantly. Aunty Flo and Uncle "chill" Bill are headed off to Northlands for a few days to do some scuba diving and view the Kauri forests. It's a bummer, as they make pretty awesome travel companions, and Bill has one of the most impressive reservoirs of really, really bad jokes I've ever heard. All in all, it was a great send-off for me to travel around with the people who really got me interested in traveling in the first place, so thanks Flora and Bill.

After we got back I was treated to my last Extreme Edge night here with members of the climbing club, and after that there was some pretty funny broom traversing at Owen's place.

I'm gonna play catch-up with the next few blog entries, and the friends I've made here deserve some kudos (pronounced Cue-Dahs in Kiwi) for being genuinely awesome people. They also deserve an explanation of why they need to come to the U.S. for climbing and mountain biking fun. Of course there are other important things in life...Hahahahaha! just kidding... *ahem* In all seriousness, 1000 apologies to all you readers for this blog turning into "Jake's latest climbing exploits", but it is honestly something I did a lot. Think of it as more what Jake has been up to viewed through his lens of interest. It's a great sport, sure. But I see it as a great avenue to check out some of the wild places on the planet, surround yourself with some of the coolest people around, and... of course, brag a little about your latest send. It is one of many ways of getting outside one's comfort zone, only to find it is pretty fascinating out there.

I'll end my last blog entry from this wonderful country with a few of my favorites from my recent adventures. Kia Ora

Greg, Inga and Ed on this random sofa at Pohara

Our photographer for the brutal 26 "Why Not?"

Yours truely on Acid Test

Greg pole hopping in Queenstown

Inga and I showing off our cool new Tat's. Sorry Ma.

Kristen smiling on a great trad route (can't think of the name right now)

Ingrid at Bo Peep slab (hehe... slab, if you consider a slab anything under 120 degrees)

Greg in his wetsuit at Charleston. Cheezy grin, helmet, and a #4 and #5 cam included!

Inga in the foreground, Kristen slightly ahead on the Tombstone boulder. Amazing!

The posse at the remarkables near Queenstown. Myself, Greg, Inga, Ingrid, Ed, Kristen and Suvi (from left to right)

The best international Thanksgiving I've ever had courtesy of Bill and Flora

Some folk dancing on the side of the Road in Tongariro

Cathedral Cove

Cheers everybody!

Hanmer Springs

2007-11-29T22:46:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody! We've made it to Hanmer springs which is about 100 km or so north of Christchurch. The place is supposed to have some killer (read: good in NorthernCal) hot pools which rival those on the north island. I'm slacking big time on posting stuff for the blog from my last South Island excursion, but if it is going to be done it should be done right, and it will take me hours to rummage through all my pictures. So I'll make this one a summary of what's happened for now.

My South Island trip was one of the best climbing trips in years. Somehow along the way I earned the nickname Ost, or cheese in Norwegian, but that might partially date back to the last trip. We spent a full week pulling on the thuggish sport routes of Payne's ford and Pohara. Life was pretty rough. Our lives consisted of Climbing, Eating, Swimming and Sleeping. It was the responsibility of everyone to order these in descending order of preference, which proved to be quite a task. We stayed at the Hangdog's Climber's camp which is probably the best pay campsite I've ever had the pleasure of staying at. It cost 5$ a day, they had a "today's gravity" meter, some clever poetry, the best swimming holes I've ever seen with a boulder problem over water, and much more. None of us wanted to leave, as we had plans further south. While there, each of us did some pretty great climbing, and I would wager some of the coolest each of us have ever had.

Then it was over to the west coast for a couple of days, where we climbed on the wave ravaged cliffs of Charleston. We finished up in Wanaka and Queenstown pulling on schist, which I've found in the States is usually pretty crappy rock, but here was actually quite solid (you can't take it for granite *badoo-tshhh!*). We climbed everything from the thin sport routes of "the diamond" (not to be confused with the larger one in Colorado) to some tall slab climbs in the remarkable (they were) and the huge roofs and cool arete's of Wye creek. We ended up camping in a pretty sweet spot on our last night, right on the shore of one of the many stunning lakes in this area.

Then it was off to Auckland for me to meet my Aunt Flora and Uncle Bill. Packing up my things at my flat was pretty uneventful, but then it was off to the South Island once again after they arrived and got sorted. I gave a bit of a synopsis about the few days we've spent on the north island. After Wellington, we spent a couple of absolutely awesome days in Able Tasman National Park. Yesterday took the cake, as my relatives (one of whom is a technically a senior citizen!) hiked over 20 km linking the inland and coastal tracks into one big loop. Most people take 2 days to do this. I had been wondering why this park was so popular, and the golden beaches and great vistas did not disappoint. It has a kind of Mediterranean climate mixed with tropical ocean color that makes it most impressive.

We drove over Lewis Pass and gaped at some of the mountain scenery, taking our sweet time at some of the pullouts. We'll spend a day or 2 here in Hanmer, and then we'll figure out where too next. That's all for now. When I get to a better computer I'll post some pics, I owe it to my travel companions and anybody else who's followed my travels thus far. It's a bummer my stay in NZ is almost over, but it's been a great ride and I suppose it isn't going anyplace. Life is good! Kia Ora.

Howdy

2007-11-26T17:27:00.000-08:00

Name: Jake Gradek
Current Status:
At crappy computer in Wellington and unable to post pictures on said computer.
Synopsis:
OK, so the last few weeks is a blur of memories that happened way to fast and was over with way too soon. Our South Island trip (part 3: the Armageddon) was a smashing success filled with great climbing, a stellar supporting cast and probably the best weather one could ask for. I'll post some entries when I get a few days to rummage through the 600 or so pictures I took. Greg has thousands from his month and a half in New Zealand. Anyway I thought I'd fill my tens of fans in on what's up.

I'm zooming down the north island in my Aunt and Uncle's rental car. That's right Aunt Flo and Uncle Bill are here after their Australia trip in and around the Brisbane area. It took a couple of days for us to get out of Auckland. Before we did, we had a thanksgiving dinner near the place they were staying. It wasn't too bad, though Bill's dish left something to be desired. Then we were off to Hamilton, south of Auckland. I've been told by everybody in Auckland that Hamilton is the armpit of the universe, but the Hamilton Gardens are actually a great thing to see. The next day we did a bit of Rock climbing at Froggatt with some friends of mine. Then is was off to Taupo, and finally way down here in Wellington. We are taking the ferry this evening to Picton. More later.... Cheers everybody!

Off to the South Island

2007-11-03T21:43:00.000-07:00

This will be the third time visiting the South Island, and as they say, third time is the charm. Though, it will honestly be tough to beat the last two times I've been there. Let's see, what's new? I've been wading through old exams and trying to decipher my own chick-scratch notes for the past few weeks. I feel they've gone alright, and I have one more to do tomorrow. I shouldn't feel overworked though, some of the law majors I know have Final Exams that are worth 100% of their grade for a year.

Also in current events, my friend Greg from Corvallis is over here on a work visa for six months or so. He spent a few days here at my place checking out Auckland and planning his stay, much of which involves use of the ever important Lonely Planet guide to New Zealand. I admit my borrowed Lonely Planet guide to NZ has been an essential travel companion on my trips here. They have one for the USA, and it is almost the size of a dictionary. Anyways, I thoroughly recommend checking out Greg's blog, also linked on the right side of the page. It's full of great pictures of his first few weeks here, and provides some insightful commentary on what it's like to spend almost a week in Auckland. I sadly was unable to spend much time with him, but my landlord the professor took him on a nice drive up to Mt. Eden.

After my last final finishes at 12:30pm Monday morning, I'm catching a plane with flight with Inga down to Nelson. Greg will be meeting us there, and we'll be headed to the Hang Dog Campground at the Payne's Ford climbing area. It's supposed to be some of the best sport cragging in the country, and is home to some of the most thuggish routes on the south island. After they get done with their prospective exams, my friends and fellow climbing club mates Ingrid, Kristin, Ed and Suvi will start to trickle in as well. I'm hoping to get up "Dave's Arete" and "Responsible Lunges" (24 and 25, respectively). The plan is after a week in Payne's (5$ camping, you can't beat that) we'll work our way down to Queenstown, where Ed and I will be flying out of first on the 20th of November. On our way down there, everyone is hoping to do some sea cliff crack climbing at this place called Charleston on the West coast (weather permitting). It's supposed to have some fun wide cracks. The climb I want to do in particular is called "Shark's Breakfast" (18). It supposedly traverses above a wave ravaged cove of water called the Pit of Doom. Sounds fun right?

In Queenstown, there is pretty good climbing with some multipitch potential. I'd also like to do some hiking while we are down there, as it is something Victoria and I missed out on when we blasted our way through there in the middle of the night. Abel Tasman looks to have some really great tramping too, so the opportunities for some nice views and fresh air should be limitless.

Other news: I went on my last mt. bike ride in New Zealand yesterday. Andrew (same dude who thought it'd be a good idea to go caving in Whanganui bay.... Actually it's the same dude who wore shorts to Ruapehu in the late fall... but that's a whole 'nother story) treated me with a ride in a place I've never ridden before, called Riverhead. It had just rained the night, err week before so the trails had some of the biggest mud pits I've ever seen, complete with a sulfurous reek and annoying motor bike riders. It was awesome, and we got the bikes nice and muddy to. I got to ride his cool full suspension as well. For a single speeder like myself, it was like driving a Cadillac with power windows (and a chain steering wheel). Amazingly, Andrew goes Mt. biking without a bike rack, here's a shot of our bikes stuffed into the back of his wagon.

Speaking of last times, I also did my last Yoga night and my last bit of Mt. Eden quarry climbing. We have a great Yoga studio run by the Hare Krishnas here close to campus. For 12$, you get an hour and a half of Yoga and meditation followed by a dank (adj: Term used frequently by hippies and stoners for something of high quality) vegetarian meal. For the record, I like meat... but this food is so good! As for the quarry, I've posted a couple of entries about it already, but it is a pretty freakin' cool climbing area to have in a major metropolitan area. Fun thin gear!

The Quarry

Greg belayed by Owen on a sweet overhung 18

Owen on a thin 19

Inga being cheered on by the peanut gallery

Anyhow, I give my regards to all you readers, and I'll post something around the 2oth when I get back to Auckland. After that, my Uncle Bill and Aunt Flossy (Flora, she'll probably kill me for calling her Flossy...) are arriving for some more fun-packed adventure on November 22. I can't wait. Cheers!

Auckland University

2007-10-29T19:48:00.000-07:00

The University of Auckland is for the most part a massive concrete jungle in the heart of Auckland. There are, however, a smattering of pretty buildings through out the campus, and the Clocktower (pictured below) is just downright beautiful. Just like the memorial Union at OSU, they look like they tried to go the extra mile with this one. I've been wanting to boulder the sides of it for months now, but word has it security has it locked down tighter than ______(insert colorful colloquialism) __________.

The Graduate student's building, likewise is gorgeous. It has an older charm to it, as the stairs creak when you ascend them, and it is made of wood unlike the brick, stone and concrete construction of the rest of campus. Note to prospective PhD and Master's students: they seem to treat their slaves.. imeangraduatestudents pretty well here. There are lots of opportunities for research and the lecturers have been some of the best I've ever had.

Like any University, the stuff visitors rarely see isn't the most aesthetic environment. My locker is deep in the underground under the Information Commons. Next to the entrance, some pipes burst months ago from one of the restaurant upstairs and there have been some fuzzy civilizations growing on the ground ever since. The area where I park my bike is littered with broken glass and is a minefield for my tires. I've never considered myself a city boy, but I've learn to accommodate this as part of my daily routine. I've never been to Times Square and it looks awesome, but I'm sure nearby lies a seedy ally filled with garbage and god knows what else. But hey, it would still be worth it.

The real plus of this campus is having Albert Park right next to it. It's a great place to go bask in the sun, though not for too long as Auckland appears to have trade restrictions on ozone. The park has some completely awesome fig trees (involved in a biology lab of mine recently) that I'll have to take some pictures of for you guys. Some climbing club members and I have set up a slack line there a few times. We're pretty lucky to have something like this this close to downtown and the high rises.

Behind the clocktower

Albert Park

A quick deviation from studying

2007-10-23T02:29:00.000-07:00

I needed to write this otherwise it'd be January before I posted....

If you ever find yourself in Whanganui Bay on the western shores of Lake Taupo, you may just happen across a climbing area called The Plateau. Imagine your astonishment (no really. imagine it.) as you are gazing up at a featureless overhung 30 and you notice a dirty, weta infested hole in the ground between a detached column and the main wall. Choose your own adventure: do you a) keep walking and climb the gorgeous 18 crack further on, or do you b) willfully have a mate lower you into the spider web choked abyss and attempt to climb back out? My friend Andrew chose option B.

Surprisingly, the Whanganui Bay rock climbing guide identifies this hole as an actual climb, and Andrew had his heart set on it. Apparantly it goes down 40 meters and as we all later dubbed it..."is a physical 15" (5.6 or so). Andrew didn't have me lower him the whole 40 meters, but he gets major style points for just even attempting it. We wrapped a sling around a horn and I backed myself up by attaching my safety to a tree. Then, after some nervous jokes I lowered him not-so-quickly (we are talking tens of millimeters per minute here, so as not to dislodge anything from the ominous walls) into the hole. He chimneyed his way out in a timely fashion, with a giant grin on his face. Probably the funniest belay I've ever given in my life. Many "Predator" and "The Descent" movie quotes were uttered up at base camp while Andrew was down there fighting half-orcs (or something).

all photos courtesy of Andrew Baddeley

I plan on getting an A in biochemistry

2007-10-21T03:34:00.001-07:00

Whanganui Bay pictures

2007-10-21T03:34:00.000-07:00

It's Exam period for the next few weeks for me, but here are some of Inga's pictures from our Whanganui Bay trip a few weeks ago. Ciao.

Inga's Pics

The Rugby Way of Life

2007-10-08T00:28:00.000-07:00

Monday, October 8. 2007.
It is a day of mourning in New Zealand reflected by the somber gray skies and seen resonating in the eyes of citizens everywhere. The unthinkable has happened. The All Blacks have been eliminated from the Rugby World Cup. It was a quarterfinals game I believe, and New Zealand lost 20-18 to France, who, somewhat surprisingly didn't surrender *rim shot*. A friend of mine told me that her father openly wept for the first time since his mother died, and men everywhere spoke of inexplicable loss about yesterday's game.

Rugby is far and away the national sport of New Zealand, with Cricket being a distant second. The players have achieved God-like status here. Their Quads are the size of 60 Gallon drums and their skulls have been known to deflect shells from the battleship Yamato. There are posters up everywhere, cars everywhere are adorned with black flags and I've met guys that could recite just about every play from a game they saw 20 years ago. The Super 14 league game I went to earlier this year is a pretty standard event, but the Rugby World Cup, just as in Football (That's soccer for you Yanks) only happens every 4 years. It's been 20 years since the All Blacks, New Zealand's team, has come home with the Championship. Kiwi's feel they are long overdue, as they are almost always a powerhouse and an early favorite in the competition. I was away during the weekend, but apparently during the game the streets were eerily quite and the supermarkets were empty. Expectations were definitely high before the momentum was shattered by France's rally. They'll be even higher in 2011 when New Zealand hosts the next world cup. Cheers!

The Lung Dyno

2007-09-30T14:53:00.000-07:00

A few short videos of assorted climbers on "The Lung Dyno" (V4), on the Lung boulder at Castle hill of all places.

I lucked out and managed to stick the top-out move (there is a "jug" up there...somewhere) for this movie. Thanks to Inga for filming these and funny commentary.

I don't know why the picture isn't coming up but the video works for me. Let me know otherwise. Stefan almost nailing the sloper.

Owen doing the same

Some of the other S. Island pics: my favorites

2007-09-29T20:28:00.000-07:00

Write stuff... later... you know the drill...

Craccum

2007-09-24T02:07:00.000-07:00

College newspapers in the U.S. tend to be scaled down

versions of the commercial ones. They consist of a couple of news tidbits, a few complaints about tuition costs in the letters section, some talk about how great/crappy the football team was last week, and a political editorial by a person with the intellect of a frozen gorilla turd (my bias, it shows through sometimes). They are always incredibly politically correct to the point that any semi-inflammatory comment sends uproars around campus. All in all, student newspapers make a decent time filler for the few minutes between classes.

...And then there is Craccum

The University of Auckland student magazine is pretty much the polar opposite of Oregon State's The Barometer. Craccum is published every week and its pages are rife with vulgar pictures, copious swear words and raunchy humor. It's great. The writer's journalistic integrity is questionable and Craccum's ostentatious writing style beats you over the head at times. However, I'll admit it is kind of refreshing to have a student paper where people can practice their free speech without getting drawn and quartered like they would in the states. And think about it, they definitely cater to their audience, the college (Uni) student. I imagine years and years ago (they celebrated their 80th anniversary this year) the University decided it wasn't worth their time and effort to police what students wrote and the beast has been unleashed ever since.

I'd estimate that at least one of two covers (like the one above) contains somewhere the word Fuck. Quite often they write something as a practical joke and then retract the statement the next week for fooling a few gullible people . Every week readers send in their pictures, at least one of which involves a naked person. The editorials are designed to piss people off, but if you take the incendiary comments with a grain of salt there is interesting reading to be had. People either or read it, or ignore it.

I try to be as respectful as the next guy, but it's nice here in New Zealand that people don't often go off their rockers because they saw/heard/read something they don't like. Mammaries can be shown on TV in NZ and few people here would think that their kids will be scarred for life as a result. Free speech is a precious thing indeed, and this is easy for people to overlook when they are ready to shoot the messenger for saying something they disapprove of.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

~Attributed to Voltaire

Some (not all) of the bouldering pics

2007-09-20T02:59:00.000-07:00

Here are a few bouldering pics, taken over the course of several days (mostly action shots). I'll try and not gush too much, but Castle Hill (and especially Quantum Field) has some of the best climbing I've ever had. Great slopers in gorgeous surroundings. A place of presence.

A surprised Stephan spots as Owen simultaneously goes for the pocket and attempts the round house kick, Chuck Norris style.

A classic v2 at spittle hill

Ingrid with a cool vista looking towards Quantum

Sloper Training 101

Stephan on the sub boulder

Yet another great v2 (Pepsin)

Owen on the hardest 60 degree slab you will ever see. A few American dudes from Montana were climbing with us that day.

The Arch, in Quantum Field. It is one of the more peculiar structures. Sadly no problem climbs right on the underside of it (yet. "Paging Chris Sharma....Chris Sharma could you please report to the field?")

Inga and I during our exploration of Quantum field

Jay (sp?), Jai? whatever his name was, we called him the guy with "Agnes," his cool chalk bag. A damn good climber too.

My first v5. Bust from the low, bad pincher to the chalked area right in the middle. Then for the crux bump up and right to the obvious pocket. Having a little height does help for this one.

A view of Spittle Hill from up on Quantum. See the Cyclops boulder just right of center? The large central eye may seem low, but once you're up there that is starting to get highball *shudder*. Someday maybe... There's even a dino to a slopey arete on the right if you are a cyborg.

Not the greatest problem, but a cool shot.

Inga on what was probably the coolest v2 of the lot

Quantum Mechanics (v7, I noted that the holds where also at the Quantum level)

My favorite shot. It's a surprisingly stout v1 crack (just classic)

Tom on "The Lung Dino" (v4). It's likely I've never had more fun climbing than flying around on this thing. A massive all points off dino to a good pocket is followed by a slopey topout that is just high enough off the deck to make you think twice. We spent an hour or so near the end of our final day fooling around on this thing.

"Agnes" sticking the sloping pocket

Stephan on his way back down. Stop. Hammertime.

We spent our last remaining minutes messing around on these problems, (vM, v1, v3, respectively) each of which had a heinous mantle to cap it off. You'd think you'd have it bagged and then everyone would laugh while you ran your hand across every inch of the top looking for a damn hold. It's a great lesson in balance, trust and humility.

Mountaineering Pics: The First Wave

2007-09-18T00:59:00.001-07:00

The potential for high alpine mountain climbing in New Zealand is, in a word: Limitless. There is everything from the ballsy classic to long ridge traverses for the peak bagger. It doesn't matter where you are on the South Island, you are almost never little more than an hour or two's drive from some awesome 2000 meter (or even 3000+) peaks. The mountains here definitely deserve some respect. The rock, much like the cascade volcanoes, often has the structural integrity of potato chips, and the snow conditions are frequently soft. As Owen tells me, you end up using snow stakes more often than ice screws for protection. The weather is predictably unpredictable. All this adds up to high potential for some adventurous times way up high. Don't let me discourage those of you thinking about coming here for some mountain climbing. The South Island peaks have a savage beauty, and when you are amidst a sea of them as we were, you can hardly observe any evidence of humankind's passing save your own footprints. I'm heading back there someday to be sure, when I have a bit more experience. Success is anything but guaranteed but with a little luck, a head as cool as a cucumber, and great..."testicular fortitude", there are some epics here just waiting for the next hardman and hardwoman.

Owen and Kristin on our first day out in Arthur's Pass

(L to R) Inga, Stephanie, Stephan, Ingrid, Tom and Kristin. This is on our first half assed attempt at Mt. Rollestone. We ended up playing with gear and making anchors. All in all a great day.

Owen gearing up

The beginning of the real meat of the route. It's basically a steep ridge climb, and yes it is pretty classic.

Back down in a great lunch meadow below snowline

Avalanche peak

Our high point that day

Our S. Island snow school

Some curious keas came up to check us out. A well timed snowball can make for some great shots. I love the orange under their wings.

some descending climbers

Daybreak on our second attempt (Owen, Inga and myself)

Rackin' up. Awesome scenery

Looking over at Goldney ridge

Inga on our way down

Our last rappel before some downclimbing. Inga was the last to come down on what was a slightly dodgy anchor.

I wish I had a shot of my miner's helmet

A few Pics

2007-09-12T20:41:00.000-07:00

I'm super busy, but here are some of Inga's Pics from our trip.

Inga's Photos

South Island Shin-dig

2007-09-11T00:10:00.000-07:00

We spent the large majority of our time in the Arthur's Pass area, which is close to some pretty spectacular mountaineering and a scant half hour drive from the bouldering mecca of Castle Hill. The weather made planning anything in advance tough, so we would head to the Department of Conservation (DOC) day by day to find out avalanche conditions and the weather forecast.

We um... stayed here most days, at an enclosed shelter in town

We spent a couple of days closer to Castle Hill at the Cragieburn hut. NZ has a plethora of back country huts and shelters for the wilderness enthusiast. This possum was chilling when we arrived the first night.

This is how much leg room Owen's car had with Kristin, Owen, Ingrid, Inga, myself and all our gear.

We were lucky to have Stephanie, Stephan and Tom and their Mitsubishi van to cart around our stuff. Here's a picture of Stephanie and Stephan on a rest day around noon (Note: not early risers on rest days)

Keas are beautiful, playful, intelligent, and a pain in the arse when they go for your boot liner or destroy your windshield wiper blades. Tourists feed them because they are cute, and they use all the fuel from these high energy meals to destroy things when they would otherwise be out searching for food. Tents, ropes, and even dirty socks are not safe. That said, they are funny to watch. When a new camper van pulls up, a squadron swoops in and immediately begins to inspect the sunroof for weaknesses. They wrestle with each other when there is nothing to destroy as well. When we dried clothes off after rainy days, someone was given 'kea watch' duty.

A really cool church for alpinists in Arthur's Pass. The window faces the high peaks with a view of a gorgeous waterfall.

On a rainy day we amused ourselves on this slackline for a bit.

Some beautiful clouds on our way to Christchurch

More clouds with some dude in the way

Yehaw

2007-09-10T01:14:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! I just rolled back into town early this morning and as expected the S. Island was a blast. Our group was a lively bunch, the scenery superb, the climbing incredible and the weather... well that was less than amazing, but it was pretty decent for NZ and the "roaring 40's" latitudes. Now I'm back at Uni thinking about one of the best climbing trips I've been on in a while. Great road trips linger in the mind long after the trip is over, and when you factor in what might be the best bouldering on the planet (though I haven't been to Font' or Hueco), gripping Mountaineering and the free rum left at the shelter for us you have the makings of an epic. Plus, it was a learning experience. I now desperately need to climb in Germany, thanks to Stephan and Tom, and I learned to say cheese in Norwegian ("ost", though the way the girls laugh when I say it tells me I don't have it quite right :P). Oh and I can count to five in Norwegian, en to tre fire fem (sp?). Let us tally up.

Number of attempts at Mt. Rollstone: 2
Number of summits made: 0
Number of summits gained by Tom, Stephanie, Stephan, Ingrid and Kristin in one day: 4
Number of days rained out: 1
Approximate number of grades the climbs at the port hills are sandbagged: 4 (Jake was owned)
V5's "bagged": 1
Mantle's attempted: Countless
Run start problems achieved: 1
V7's flailed: many
Days spent bouldering: 4
Days spent Mountaineering: 2
Number of self arrests: 1
Number of Keas chased away from expensive gear: 34,394,953
Best English word of the day: "Spelunking"
Best Norwegian word of the day: "Ost"
~Close second: "Feig" (Wimpy)
Best Fall: Tom attempting to "jump the river"
~Close second: Kristen's gear ripper at the port hills
Best move: Owen's boot clad high heel hook
Coolest chalk bag: Ozzy climber Jay's chalk stuffed doll "Agnes"
Showers taken: 1

I'll post the pictures when I can, but to those of you back home in the U.S.A. and everyone else: may your adventures be grand and your smiles broad. Cheers!

p.s. Word has it that certain die-hard cyclist relatives of mine are yet again riding their bikes across the Continental divide. You know who you are. My hat goes off to you guys :D.

S. Island remix

2007-08-28T15:35:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody. I realize it has been a while since I have posted anything. You'll have to wait on the edge of your seats a little longer, as I am headed back to the South Island once again. Sadly, Victoria isn't able to make it this time. Instead, I'll be traveling down there with a few climbing club "mates", or Kristin, Inga, Ingrid, Stephanie, Stephan (and his friend) and Owen. The plan is to do as much bouldering and mountaineering as is (super)humanly possible. While I want to shred some tips and crank some sic-gnar slopers (kids these days...sheesh), it will be nice to do some mountaineering. It hasn't been since I lived in Washington that I've done any large quantities of mountain climbing, and the people I'm going with are keen to do some cool summits. Even if that doesn't happen, the weather should be fine enough to do some bouldering. I'm hoping for a v5 outdoors, it hasn't happened for me yet.

Anyhow, I just got done with an animal behaviour field trip on sleep loss (tell you all about it later) and I'm about to do a whole lot more. Ugh. We'll be driving down to the South Island in Owen's rig, and taking the ferry across the cook straight after which we'll head straight down to the Arthur's pass area (See map, center of the S. Island). There are a lot of peaks and of course the legendary Castle Hill Basin. Should be a blast. Have fun guys!