Pulled the O1 bindings off my skis last night. 3 years on these, its been a good run.
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To make each knife the very best knife I’ve ever made
The satisfaction in his voice communicates perfectly why one should find what they love doing. It will be hard to find, it may not pay well, but it will be worthy discovery.
Perfectionism and honesty /
From Alpinist.com Alpinist Redpoints Cover Misses Onsight
A yellow size twelve typo on Alpinist 36’s full page, John Svenson-illustrated cover. For the editorial staff there wasn’t much discussion; the cover had to be reprinted.
…
It wasn’t a hard decision, just a hard truth that we closed our eyes and swallowed. We reprinted the covers. When Alpinist 36 arrives at your door, the cover will be blemish free, as it should be. Some of us wanted to let the matter end there. It was an expensive fiasco, and not something we really needed/wanted to share with you, the reader. But we botched this lead, and we’ll admit it.
This kind of perfectionism and desire to produce a quality product along with the honesty to publicly admit mistakes and their solutions is impressive to see.
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“You put up with the grind of work or school as long as you can or is required. But then, one day, the phone rings one too many times, or the line at the gas pumps seems unending. The air smells bad. The food foul. ‘Enough of this’ you cry. You grab your ice tools and are gone.” — Duane Raleigh”
Wishing there was ice to climb, could use the head clearing nature of this type of climbing.
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Iterations…
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Who knew that thermostats could be awesome? http://www.nest.com/
Indian Creek, October 2011 /
Big air and a catch.
/p>
Finally sent this one.
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“(Good Design)
The things we make are all just excuses to speak with one another and to help one another. We are all linked, and the things that we make for each other strengthen the invisible threads that tie us all together. There is a part of me that will always design for the joy of making it, but I now understand that the point of it all is not for me to enjoy myself, but for the ones using whatever I make to have some sort of wonder when doing so.
”
If only we could make our torches burn a little brighter. /
Lots of thoughts and lots of clarity of ideas:
It’s like when you walk out of a theater after seeing a matinee that you really enjoyed. You went alone, and you laughed a bit and maybe choked up in a scene or two, and now you stumble out of the theater onto the noisy street and your pupils become pinheads and it feels like two new pairs of eyes are being born in your head. The world is mostly the same, but you are different, and you see differently. Such hope. Such vision.
and
All I want to be
is a person who makes things
and thinks about them.
JOHN MAEDA
Ski season started last week /
Before a friends wedding at Alta last Sunday (photos to follow soon), I got to get the first turns of the new season in with Rich. Oct 9th isn’t a bad way to start things off!
I’m sure most of this has melted off by now, but it looked like mid-winter last weekend.
Note the tracks coming out the bottom of Main Baldy Chute… ambitious!
The turns were much better than expected up high…
And the ice and rocks a lot less fun at the bottom…
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Lines
Hornbecker Lens, AO DLX Film, No Flash, Taken with HipstamaticA good hike /
Really nice to take a day off and get out for a hike with a good friend who’s in town for a short while form a long, long way away.
There’s a month worth of photos that are going to get posted soon…
September 30th, Skied 12 for 12 /
One year of skiing each month.
Managed to complete the ‘turns all year’ goal with Rich last Friday by getting some turns in up at Snowbird after work. An arbitrary objective? Sure. But, oh so very satisfying to hike in the dark and complete it on the last day even when giving up and settling for 11 of 12 would have been easy.
We watched the last tram go up for the summit just as we pulled into the parking lot, so no cheating for the last month I guess.
Brilliant sky to start hiking under.
It was about now that the realization of hiking and skiing by headlamp was really starting to set in.
Last light.
Snow!
Turns. By headlamp.
What we skied.
Celebratory beers!
90mm /
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“Despite the large significance of the measurement reported here and the stability of the analysis, the potentially great impact of the result motivates the continuation of our studies in order to investigate possible still unknown systematic effects that could explain the observed anomaly. We deliberately do not attempt any theoretical or phenomenological interpretation of the results”
Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam
http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897
Faster than light?
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Bugaboos to Rogers Pass Ski Traverse by Kari Medig
Completely inspring.
A hard look at the reality of mountain sports /
From Adding Death into the Equation
My question to everybody is, which game do we want to play? The one that sounds funny and cool and romantic, or the one that is real?
It strikes me we are fortunate that running whitewater actually is fairly safe nearly all the time, even when it looks hideously dangerous. I wonder whether this is one reason that so few kayakers have any answers for this kind of thing. But what is our sport if we are playing it this way and cannot actually face the ultimate questions it asks us? Are we fooling ourselves?
If we’ve got our finger on the pulse of this wondrous thing called a river, and if we are going to go places where death is a possibility, then we need to think more deeply about why we’re there. Because when you add death into the equation, the question is different and the answers change.
After seeing the indifference of the big mountains this summer, this essay is pretty challenging, and if you replace paddling and rivers with climbing and mountains it gets personal in a hurry.
http://teton.outerlocal.com/kayaking/adding-death-into-the-equation-outpost
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Colors may vary.
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“REDUCE
We make useful gear that lasts a long time. You don’t buy what you don’t need.”
- Patagonia Cleanest Line blog
http://www.thecleanestline.com/2011/09/introducing-the-common-threads-initiative.html
Interesting to see a company that sells cloths basically saying, don’t buy what you don’t need.