My grandmother passed away today; she was 90 years old and I’m very thankful that I got to see her over this past Christmas holiday.
Take the time for the photos you’ll want later.
Ouray /
Fantastic long weekend climbing in Ouray.
(best viewed large)
(We found some very small boots to fit Polly)
All the photos are in the Ouray set on Flickr.
The Shape of Design /
A cool looking book project from Frank Chimero, who I’ve linked to before, about the ‘why’ in design. He’s got a Kickstarter campaign going to fund it. Check it out:
The Shape of Design, Project by Frank Chimero
Kickstarter is such a great idea for funding startup or side projects, more on those thoughts later. In the mean time see Frank’s talk that is a prelude to the book:
/
/
“Q: What productivity tip have you discovered that now you can’t live without?
A: […] Oh, and dump your cable TV service. Get the shows you actually enjoy from iTunes and Netflix and stop wasting time watching whatever’s “on”.
”
New ice/mixed climb in the Adirondacks /
A new variation called Endangered Species (3 pitches, M6+ NEI5+ R). "we came armed to the teeth," with a prototype offset cam and homemade micro-stubbies (sawed-off ice screws only 4cm to 6cm long).
Cool to see custom gear to help with the thin ice and runouts. Couldn’t imagine lowering off ice tools to get off a route.
Mountaineering Accident Statistics /
Fascinating summary of the data from Accidents in American Mountaineering from 1951 to 2006. Interesting bit: a climber falling and slipping is a far greater concern than any type of gear failure.
via The American Alpine Club, @americanalpine
Fog and empty space /
To contrast last weekends cobalt blue skies and biting cold, this weekend was gray, foggy and warm. Visibility was nil most of the day, and finding the difference between snow from sky was done by feel. We toured out of Alta to Catherine’s pass for a run and then back out and over to Grizzly Bowl. Really fun to be out and moving along the ridge lines, if we could have seen, it would be been kinda exposed in places.
I wanted to keep working on using one lens, in this case a 24mm prime, to tell the whole story. Given all the fog and flat light, I also wanted to try use all the empty space to convey not just what it looked like but what it felt like: the twinge of disorientation before we dropped in, the mild uncertainty of not knowing exactly where we were on the boot-pack relative to the landmarks we wanted to find, and the isolation from the landscape we were traversing.
Turns were much better than in-bounds and well worth the effort (as always) to get out-and-away.
The rest of the photos are on Flickr
/
“Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.”
Background on the Stuxnet worm /
One part of the program is designed to lie dormant for long periods, then speed up the machines so that the spinning rotors in the centrifuges wobble and then destroy themselves. Another part, called a “man in the middle” in the computer world, sends out those false sensor signals to make the system believe everything is running smoothly. That prevents a safety system from kicking in, which would shut down the plant before it could self-destruct.
via the New York Times
/
“Glass is not a high-viscosity liquid at room temperature: it is an amorphous solid, although it does have some chemical properties normally associated with liquids.”
Wikipedia’s Common Misconceptions
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions
/
Very interesting looking documentary of the people who live in the Tiaga in Siberia. I can’t even imagine what it takes to carve out a life year and year out in such a climate.
Sunday turns /
Got to get out for a tour into Monitor Bowl in Big Cottonwood Canyon with Brian today. Great to ski with him again, especially to this bowl (see previous misadventure), and! today was his birthday. Hard to find a better way to celebrate than getting in some good turns.
recovery hikes /
Took some time to hike up Mill Creek Canyon with Polly and get out with her to move! and be out in the cold and smile for cold cheeks.
/
"4 to 6 hours a day to just be in my world." The Sartorialist. A visual life.
/
“If you want to succeed in the world, you must make your own opportunities as you go on.”
Words Of Wisdom – Circa 1896
New Year's in Lillooet, BC /
The wind on the peaks must have been howling.
I spent New Year’s climbing ice up in Canada with Wes and BJ. Very glad to get to climb with them again and to squeeze in a short trip between work and a wedding. Getting to fly up to Seattle and meet up with folks in Washington makes the world seem much smaller and more manageable.
Can you say BRRR!?
The ice was in, but not as full as we might have liked, though one shouldn’t complain too much with this kinda thing. Part of the fun of ice climbing is the chase. Routes form differently year to year, and you never know how good the ice will be till you’re on it. There were routes that we had wanted to try, but weren’t formed well enough, though we still climbed as much as we could each day, so it wasn’t like we were missing out. Temperatures were also a bit colder than we would have liked, -13°C (7°F) on the last day. Seeing the forecasts in Celsius made it hard to figure out how cold it was, though it didn’t really matter because it was cold enough that we all had cold toes most of the time (plus some frost nip for Wes, yikes!).
Lots of excavating ice on this pitch. Most axe or crampon placements took 6 to 15 swings or kicks to clear out and stick.
On this lead BJ dropped an ice tool and while it was starting to spin backward through the air, he reached back up and snatched it back, then in the same motion slammed it back into the ice. You can imagine why he’d be grinning in this photo:
Grinning. (Ear to ear)
The last climb of the trip was across a very frozen lake. There’s still some part of your brain that says walking across a lake is dumb. Seeing how thick the fracture lines were was our ‘reassurance’ that it was thick enough to walk on…
Stable enough to walk on, but still strange.
Cold and happy.
Oh, and Wes discovered that instant coffee+Redvines actually tastes pretty good. We were all surprised. (Starbucks Via, in this case)
The rest of the photos are in the Lillooet Ice set on Flickr.
/
“Money is necessary for lots of things, but it’s helpful to remember that converting money back into time is shaky alchemy.”
…When in fact if you are good enough, you can create your own freedom and you don’t have to wait. You just have to be good… - Frank Chimero's blog
(Eric, this is a note to yourself, good stuff to remember)
Everyone else, Read the rest of the post.
/
New video from Beady Eye (Beady Eye = Oasis - Noel Gallagher), looking forward to their first album at the end of February.
/
