Unemployment Is Fun

Ian Bloom and I were once joking with each other in Red Rock, Nevada about a certain dope gauge with which one could quantify the radness of one’s life.  If I were to have such a gauge, it would have been redlining this entire month.  My apologies for keeping people waiting on an update here, I’ve been all over the west coast, climbing, hiking, drinking, climbing some more, and now bicycle touring.  Lets start at the beginning:

Smith Rock: The adventurous Audrey Ahlholm was the savior of my memorial weekend.  I had just quit my job at San Francisco General and had (due to unforseen circumstance) a free weekend to kill.  Enter Audrey and Smith Rock.  CLIMBING TRIP!

Jake and I took a gruelling 13 hour midnight train up to bend and were united with the comrads.  We stayed at a wonderful AirB&B in bend and drove out each day to the Crag, getting all our money’s worth on the volcanic tuff.  The cliffs rise like orang eand yellow knives straight out of the ground and the crooked river snakes it’s emerald way around their base.  The place is a sport climbing paradise.

Unfortunately though, the yuppie life called back my compatriots, but I hadn’t had  enough.  I was also unemployed, and more or less homeless.  So I decided to stay.  The rest of the trip was a blur of hot days, bald eagles, dips in the river, climbing, more climbing and of course drinking.  I met some wonderful people while there but mroe importantly I sent some hard shit (for me).  I redpointed Chain Reaction, a classic 12.C sport climb.  Of course it’s in the perfect style for my climbing abilities but regardless, I now have a 12.c tick.  Stoked.

After 10 day of sleeping on the ground and 95 degree heat I had had my fill and decided to come home to San Francisco.

But only for a day because this awesome dude

had his graduate from UC Davis.  Proud of you Daniel.  Now finish those classes and make things official.

From Davis it was on to Mariposa and Yosemite with the family midwest (aka Snodgrasses) for some classic Yosemite tourism.  We all absolutely destroyed the mist trail hike, the teamwork was phenomenal and I am so proud of everyone’s lack of complaining.  Good work fam.

From the Valley we made our way back to San Francisco for more tourism, covering such notables as Alcatraz and Angel Islands, China Town for tea tasting, Ocean Beach for typical crap SF summer weather and more.  All in all a great showing for the Snodgrasses, you guys were awesome.

Rainier: Towards the end of family time I was begining to get a bit restless knowing that this monster was looming in Washington.  We had our group nailed down, 7 weekend warriors, our gear rented and paid for, our spirits lofty with goals of high altitude radness.

We eventually arrived at SeaTac, rented a car and drove to our camping spot at Big Creek.  Low and behold, we were rained on. However, mere rain could not quench the fires of psyche in this group.  That morning we picked up our gear and were met with even more rain along with a healthy serving of sleet.

Still stoked.  We readied our packs and set off into the clouds.

The hike up to Camp Muir was miserable.  We had no indication of progress due to an almost toal whiteout, rain and snow almost the entire way as well. It felt a lot like the hikig equivalent of treading water.  Lots of steps, wetness everywhere and no progress at all.  Seeing tents at Camp Muir was a relief and after a quick pep talk from the ranger (“don’t make me come rescue you”) we crashed.

Dawn patrol and the skies on fire.  We woke at ` am and readied ourselves for the route up Dissapointment Cleaver.  We would take two teams, Sean Bromage leading Nick Binder and I, with Kip Kaehler leading Connor Coady, Jacob Hesch and Robert Del Mar.  There was streak of headlamp lightning ahead of us on the Cleaver, providing us the perfect routfinding aid.  

(Special commendation to Sean for leading both teams the entire way up)

We crossed Cowlitz Glacier and on through Cathedral gap towards Igraham Glacier an Igraham Flat.  We were making good progress on the Cleaver when the sun peaked out from behind Little Tahoma. It was then on to Emmons glacier for seemingly endless switchbacks.  We jumped a few crevasses, and trudged our weary way up to the crater peak.

Oxygen was begining to get scarce as we were at 13000 feet and pushing towards the summit at 14,440.  We eventually made it, gasping and sunburnt, all the way across the crater to the legit highest point in the state of Washington, the summit of Mt Rainier.

At this point I started developing some serious altitude sickness.  For those unfamiliar, it’s like have a throbbing migraine, snuggled up against some dry heaving nausea, all wrapped tight in a warm blanket of gut wrenching dread.  It’s terrible, and the first time I’d seriously experienced it.  As much as I wanted to stay and bask in the sunlight on top of the world, I knew things were only going to get worse until we started heading down.  We had our glory and it was then time for descent.  

There were of course several victory beers in the parking lot.
(Special thanks to Jenni Snead, Nick Binder, Connor Coady, Jake Bartell and any others not mentioned for use of their photos.  If you’d like yours taken down please don’t hesitate to ask)

PS: Please excuse any spelling and grammar mistakes, this post was written on my phone, in the dark, in my tent while camping in rural Washington.