In my mind the year seems to end when it’s finally time to hang up the ice tools for a few months and focus on other things.  This past weekend I swung my tools into the perfect snow of Mt. Rainier’s Liberty Ridge and looked down in the early morning light.  My friend Matt climbed below me and presented the perfect picture bathed in the soft light of sunrise.  I didn’t have a camera, but I didn’t need one.

I’m psyched as I reflect on the past year and look forward to a future filled with mountains, ice, rock, laughter, friendship, love and madness.

In the ensuing fifteen years I’ve often thought about going back, and am disappointed that I never did.  The Gulf is devastated now.  While the direct responsibility lies in the hands of BP, their subcontractors, the MMS, and the rest of those that pushed for lax regulation of the oil industry, the truth is that we all own it.  Oil is involved in nearly every facet of our lives.  I’m not sure where our country and our world goes from here.  It is a finite resource and will at some point run out.  The fact that BP was drilling in water as deep as they were is indicative of the fact that we’ve already drilled and recovered the easy to access oil fields.  The time to start transitioning away from oil was thirty years ago. That didn’t happen, obviously.

The harder and more difficult the oil is to extract, the more likely events like the Deepwater Horizon spill are to happen. Perhaps as a society we’ve become willing to accept the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico as collateral damage resulting from our way of life.  The ridiculous slogan “drill, baby, drill!” makes me uncomfortable.  It makes me uncomfortable because I want to abhor those people, but I am forced to look at my own actions and realize how big a part of the problem I am.

Last Tuesday morning I drove an hour and a half up to Mt. Hood by myself to go skiing for a few hours and thought about what an excess that was.  And I thought about the thousands of miles I’ve driven and flown over the last ten years to go climbing.  And all the petroleum based products, from my synthetic clothing to my plastic helmet, that I use.

The truth is that I feel like a hypocrite.  I am disgusted by our dependence as a nation on oil, but am myself an addict.  I don’t WANT to stop.  I love climbing and skiing, traveling and getting out and more often than not oil is involved in some way.  But I can still smell the Gulf air and I remember the fishing and the wildlife, the beauty of the bayous, and am deeply saddened when I see pictures of the devastation.  Is it worth it?  Will we be able to escape our oil dependence before it’s too late?  I’m not entirely sure that we can, but I do know that in order to stay sane I’m going to have to do something to change my own relationship to oil.

In late November I headed up Bunny Face with the intention of checking out Methuseulah’s. The runouts were intimidating from below, but feeling strong I headed up  and soon found myself clipping the anchor with relief.   The climbing was bold and serious, even with new 1/2″ bolts and modern sticky rubber.  The route was visionary when Dean Fry established it in 1973, on lead, well before bolted routes became the norm at Smith.  Fry established a number of other serious routes in the park.  Most have seen few ascents and many haven’t been repeated, while some have become very classic.  His most repeated first ascents include New Testament, Zebra and Moonshine Dihedral.  He also made the first free ascent of the ultra-classic Karate Crack.

In early February Tyler and I headed to Smith to attempt a new route.  A bird closure thwarted that effort and with heavy packs loaded we headed up to The Wombat to attempt an old Dean Fry aid route called C.L. Concerto.  The route takes an amazing line up the impressive Northwest face of the formation.  Not having much experience with aid climbing I found the thin crumbly seams of the first pitch a little worrisome.  Forty feet up I blew a large beak and lobbed twenty feet onto a cam , ripping an entire screamer.  Short February days and cold conspired against us.  The sun disappeared behind the Cascades and it was time to head down.  The following two days brought more cold and snow and no possibility to climb.  Two weeks passed and we headed back to Smith hoping to finish the route.  I completed the first pitch  and the following day Tyler began the crux A4 section.  Very thin, steep nailing on horribly hollow rock had me a little frightened just belaying.  I was happy for the new half-inch bolts in the anchor and cleaning the pitch I was deeply impressed by Tyler’s aid prowess.  Once again the sun began to set and we fixed ropes.  Another two weeks passed and we returned, jugging back to our high point.  I began to lead the final pitch.  A static fall onto a good pin when my third piece ripped hurt my psyche.  I was climbing slowly and the cold and wind combined to create a most unpleasant experience.  With relief I pulled over a bulge and began easy but runout free climbing to the top of the ridge.  As the sun set Tyler finished cleaning and  led off towards the summit of The Wombat.  It took us five weeks to make the third ascent of C.L. Concerto and standing on the summit was quite satisfying.

From Top: Nailing on the first pitch, A4 second pitch, finishing second pitch, Tyler raps, third pitch

Dean Fry was pushing the limits of Smith climbing during the short time he was active there.  Almost 40 years later his climbs remain an impressive testament to his strength and vision.  In 1973 heading back from Smith to his home in Corvallis, Fry was tragically killed in a car accident.  The routes that he left us are a gift and his memory will live on in the climbers who choose to follow in his footsteps.

We roll through Hood River on the way to the North Cascades.  “It’s not raining now,” says Marcus.

Hours roll by under an increasingly menacing sky.  The forecast calls for a “significant hydrological event” on Friday with up to an inch of rain, then the models show the weather clearing for a brief window on Saturday, and then more crap weather on Sunday.  If we can just approach during the rain on Friday, we’ll be all set to climb the route when the weather window materializes on Saturday.  Desperation really, but such is the mindset of the North Cascades alpinist come autumn.

Marcus tells me, “You know, when you didn’t show up at 3:30 I thought maybe you had decided to bag it and went back to sleep.  I was getting ready to do the same thing when you showed up.  It’s like a game of chicken, I’ll go if you go…”

The rain in Leavenworth is torrential.  We stop at the faux Bavarian pharmacy and buy four dollar ponchos.

We keep driving and the rain doesn’t stop.  The gray sky is oppressive.  The rain isn’t warm.  It is a bone chilling, hypothermia inducing type of rain.  We should be sleeping in and then hanging out at a coffee shop with our significant others.  Instead we’re at the trailhead packing.

Marcus puts his poncho over his head and pack.  I laugh and throw mine on.  Marcus says, “No pictures.”

We walk up the trail for miles.  It isn’t long before everything is soaked.   The pitter patter of raindrops on cheap plastic occupies my thoughts.  We arrive at an alpine meadow not far from our objective and set up the tent.  The mountains are socked in, their tops hidden under a shroud of gray.

That night the rain never stops.  It pounds our small nylon shelter until water starts to sneak in the seams.  Drifting in and out of sleep, I am annoyed by the fact that my butt is wet.  Eventually the loud rain gives way to the soft whisper of snow hitting tent fly.

We wake up with the alarm but the stubborn gray skies remain.

February ’06- Frostbite due to unplanned bivy

April ’06- Sprained neck due to avalanche

January ’07-  Bursitis in my knee from slamming it directly into ice after falling off a bolted M-climb.

May ’07-  Frostbite pretty much all fingertips

January ’08-  Hyper-extended elbow from fall bouldering in the gym

May ’08- Sliced the pad off my right index finger three days into a three week climbing trip to Yosemite.  Left wrist starts to hurt for some unknown reason.

April ’09- After almost a year have surgery on said wrist.

May ’09- Fall down walking downhill in the Gorge and slice open hand on a sharp rock

I am back on the road to recovery and determined to climb, train and walk smarter.  Perhaps  if I can stay healthy for a while I can acheive some of the goals I have set for myself.  Last weekend I had an excellent trip to the North Cascades with a new climbing partner, it was a great and motivating way to start out the season!

I had surgery on my wrist a little over a week ago.  Having been lost in the doldrums of injury and malaise for over a year, I can feel the winds starting to pick up.  The dreams of mountains and rivers are starting to come back.  I feel my mental strength returning and am more psyched than ever to get on it.  A storm is brewing.

(Thanks for taking care of me Kate and Aaron, you are the best)

When the e-mail from Luke Will popped onto my computer screen suggesting that we circumnavigate Oregon’s Crater Lake on skis, I immediately responded (without thinking I might add) that it sounded like a great idea.  After some more thought I made a list of reasons to cirumnavigate something.  It included such gems as “because it’s there,” and, “creating arbitrary goals to feel a sense of accomplishment is the most human thing we can do,” as well as, “why not?”  I left the introspection at that.

Weeks passed until it was time to leave and when the day arrived Luke and I loaded up the minivan and drove quickly south through the surprisingly sun-drenched Willamette Valley.   Winding our way into the Cascades, closely following the banks of the North Umpqua River, we arrived at the park in a blinding snowstorm.

The individual events of the next five days don’t matter much.  We skied and skied, we camped, we ate, we skied some more.  We cursed the winds that knocked us over.  We saw brilliant stars and shivered in our soaked sleeping bags.  We forgot the whiskey.

I laid awake one night lost in thought and that’s when it dawned on me how unreasonable trying to find a reason for everything really is.  There is little evidence in my life that leads me to believe that our existence on this awesome planet is anything more than an evolutionary fluke.  Whether we spend all our time in the pursuit of money, trying to find meaning through adventure, or any of the myriad other things people do, does it make any difference?  Are they all merely pleasure seeking activities we participate in so we don’t have to face the reality of human existence?

Thirty-two miles later I concluded that circumnavigating something is about celebrating the absurd nature of life itself.  It is about the feeling of pilfered Taco Bell hot sauce hitting sunburned lips after a quad burning day.  It is about ripping off your skins and bombing downhill as fast as you can, the added momentum supplied by your heavy pack carrying you farther and faster.  It is about the taste of twenty four ounces of celebratory Pabst Blue Ribbon beer hitting your stomach and feeling better than you ever imagined.  It is about letting go and not worrying about the why.

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January 29, 1927-March 14, 1989

-Ferenc Mate A Reasonable Life

Over the weekend Sarah and I accompanied our friends Kim and Mike to Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho.  Kim’s dad and his wife live on twenty acres of land outside of town.  Rob is a big, burly and totally awesome sawmill manager, Becca is a petite and very kind  woman with a penchant for calling everyone “honey”.  They were excellent hosts and, despite a gnarly respiratory ailment that left me feeling terrible, we had a fantastic time.  I can’t thank them enough for making us feel so welcome.

While we were there we stayed in a small cabin that Rob and Becca built on their property, set in the woods about a quarter mile behind their house.  They built the cabin from a kit and it immediately got me thinking about the potential for a future home.  They use their cabin more as a guest house/retreat sort of deal, but it definitely has the possibility for long term livability.

Their kit came from Conestoga Log Cabins with pretty much everything needed to put it together.  The company has a number of floor plans and sizes, but this is the one on they built.  Neither Rob nor Becca had home building experience before putting up the cabin.  They got help from experienced friends for two parts: squaring the foundation and putting the big support beams up.  Other than that they were on their own.  It’s inspiring to know that such a project is possible with a lot of sweat and time.  The kits are reasonably priced and cost anywhere from $11,000 to $80,000 depending on the size and design.

In my dreams I don’t have to work and I magically have the money to buy a cabin kit and a piece of land like this.  I know this isn’t realistic, but the thought of building my own house is intriguing, and not having a giant, soul-crushing slavery mortgage is even more intriguing.

While daydreaming about cabins I was reminded of an article in Outside magazine  in which the author writes about his ill-fated attempt to build his dream cabin in Patagonia.  It is worth reading.

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