Election traditions
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Many people arm themselves with booze on election day (to celebrate or drown sorrows depending on the outcome). Nick and I go to Canada. The election results were favorable enough that we decided to use our return tickets. We sure did enjoy our time in Banff though. The annual film festival was fantastic as usual.
Finally, the credit crunch in language I understand!
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Hey all you climbers out there! Having trouble understanding the credit crisis? Don’t feel bad - even business reporters need some help understanding why it all happened, what it means, and what the bailout plan intends to do. Senior Editor of Marketplace, Paddy Hirsch, uses a whiteboard and understandable analogies to explain it to his reporters. It’s a bit longer than 8 minutes, but Hirsch doesn’t get bogged down in wonky terms or over-simplify things - and visualizing banks as wayward explorers is oddly satisfying.
Update: After watching the video Rod Mercer made the following observations about how the analogy could be strengthened:
What the video doesn’t address is why the climbers were willing to commit to such loads. It also implies that AIG was just another climber. In fact, AIG was the agent that was supposed to insure the other climbers against falling. AIG was the belayer. The climbers took huge loads thinking they were protected. What the gov’t did was take it’s eyes off the belay anchors: it unregulated AIG. The climbers thought they had a belay. To maximize performance, unregulated AIG pulled out the anchors, thinking they would never fall. Greenspan assumed self preservation would make them behave responsibly, but in the end greed won out: Climbers ran it out thinking they were anchored and belayers removed anchors thinking the climbers would never fall.
In the name of graduation
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Slippery Slab is not on my list of favorite climbs, but it is relatively easy, involves a gorgeous hike on the PCT, and can be done in a day. Knowing that Kayla (and possibly other basic students) needed one more climb to graduate, I offered to lead a final climb of the season for the Mountaineers. We were blessed with beautiful weather. I also couldn’t have asked for a better group of climbers either. I’m sure I’ll be seeing them again…
Curtis Gilbert
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Hot-diggity! As of this weekend, I’m nine for 10 climbs this year. The one climb that I didn’t summit, I actually made it 75% of the way there, but I pooped out. (Turns out I was on the cusp of a two-week illness.)
In the spirit of climbing things I haven’t done before, I picked Curtis Gilbert for last weekend’s adventure. Dave and Glenn hadn’t been to the area either, so it was a triple-first.
Originally, we planned to climb the Conrad Glacier (hoping to help some basic students graduate), but no students signed up and none of us felt a pressing need to climb a glacier. As a result, we ditched the rope, harnesses, pickets, etc. With light packs on our backs we skipped our way up to Warm Lake, where we bivy’d before a speed ascent of the Klipton Ridge to the summit. We got there so much earlier than planned that we napped on the summit for a full hour and a half! Yummy! We even had time for a swim in Warm Lake (which isn’t as warm as you’d think) on the way back down.
Alta Mountain scramble
Monday, August 25, 2008
On my last day of freedom (yesterday) before the law school grind started, Susan and I decided to scramble Alta Mountain. Both of us had climbed Hibox, Alta’s sister peak, but never Alta. We’d also never been to Rachael Lake, which is on the way to Alta. (This is practically a crime considering how long both of us have lived in the area.) Thinking we’d get a two-fer, it was settled.
We met at Mercer Island at 7:15 a.m. - a divinely reasonable hour for climbing - and headed to Snoqualmie Pass. Our hike started out in the forest on a gentle trail. About 20 minutes in, we came across a retreat. The meditation spot next to the first of many waterfalls we’d see looked delightful.
Not too much later, we got to what people call “the headwall” - the final steep mile and a half of trail leading to Rachael Lake. The truly great thing about this trail are the wonderful waterfalls along the way. Even if you don’t make it to the lake, you’ll get plenty of bang for your hiking buck.
Rachael Lake was as beautiful as everyone says it is. There are plenty of larches surrounding the lake, so a return trip in October might be in order.
Our destination was beyond the lake, so we continued climbing.
High above the lake, we got a much nicer view and discovered that it had a big part and a little part. As we gained altitude, though, the bugs started getting thicker and more aggressive…
Despite being past wildflower prime, we were rewarded with plenty of purple lupine and heather to keep us happy.
If you do this trip in the future, take note...This is the trail we took. It is the wrong trail. We wanted to be on the ridge on the left side of the picture. We missed the turn-off though and ended up near Lila Lakes, which are pretty but not on route.
Not really knowing that we were off route, we ended up at the “Alta Armpit.” (Thanks Kayla for the name.) It is a notch above Lila Lakes, between Rampart Ridge and an unnamed peak to the west. Susan and I must have spent an hour or two trying to figure a way up this unnamed peak, thinking we were looking at Alta. Eventually we chickened out, worried that without a rope, we’d be in a pickle getting down.
In the mean time, a member of Susan’s SIG group, Kayla, and her family joined us at the Armpit. They were out for a day hike, exploring from their basecamp at Rachael Lake. After prolonged head-scratching and map-studying we determined that the ridge to our left actually was where we wanted to be. One of Kayla’s eagle-eyed children also told us that the rock we could see at the end of the ridge was a man-made structure.
Feeling adventurous, we decided that the fastest and best way to the ridge was up a ramp from the Armpit (rather than walking back to find the described route in the book). After 15-minutes of mountain goat scrambling and another 15-minutes or so of ridge walking we made the summit of Alta. To our delight, there was another woman on the summit, who had abandoned her male companion earlier for a trip up the mountain. We snapped a bunch of summit shots, including some yoga poses way up high, and then made our way down the “real” route. Nick would have been proud, because “if it’s not a loop, it’s poop!”
Kayla and Susan on the summit
Looking back at the Alta Armpit and the unnamed peak we didn’t climb
Heading back down Rampart Ridge to Rachael Lake