Best Vids of 2007

Okay, not related to our adventures whatsoever, but I really had to put a link up to these. Reminds me of our potato gun adventures growing up, except much much more excellent.

California Trip - 11/16 to 11/25/07

Here are the photos from our California trip...


Joshua tree stuff


Scary little catipillar that kept trying to "spike" us


More Joshua tree stuff


Cool rocks


Tarantula


Neat little red cactus (obviously)

Mel tearing it up

More of the same

Mel sorta tearing it up...

Mel, happy to be almost done tearing it up

Cool coyote that hung out with us in Yosemite

Looking up at the face of Half Dome

Somewhere in Tenaya Canyon

Somewhere else in Tenaya Canyon

Yep, that's me!

Yep, that's Mel

Check out this sweet action shot of Mel in Tenaya Canyon...

Sunset on top of Sentinel Dome

What's left of Ansel Adam's famed Jeffery Pine

Morning light on El Cap

Glacial awesomeness

More glacial awesomeness

The famed Cathedral Peak, from Cathedral lake

More of cathedral peak from a different lake

Me ninja throwing a huge piece of ice. It cut mel in half.

Cathedral peak spire

Da famed Matthes Crest

Sunset from Toulomne Meadows

Hanging at some travertine hot springs

Aspens on one of the mountain passes near Tahoe

Okay, I gotta admit... It's been going pretty slow lately. I've been lazy about putting up photos and reporting stuff. There was an aborted trip up the north face of Mt. Hood a few weeks ago... No summit, but a beatiful day, fun ice climbing, etc. Then there was also a hiking trip to the Jefferson wilderness, which, well, I guess Mel had a pretty good time, but the postholing sorta got on my nerves. I guess the biggest deal is that both Mel and I finally finished our "outdoor emergency care" class, which marks the end of 2 and a half months of driving to Eugene 4 days a week and learning about the infinite ways people can hurt themselves out there. That is thankfully freeing up both time and brain cells (the latter of which were promptly destroyed the next night). Anyway, in a couple of hours we are off to California for the holiday... Ideally the 18 hours of driving between here and Joshua Tree will help me decompress a bit. Hopefully there will be a few nice stories to tell when we get back. Happy thanksgiving to anyone who reads this!

Nate

SNOW! - 10/22/07

Dennis, Melissa, and I hiked up Iron Mountain yesterday to check out some of the fresh snow we got over the weekend... Unwittingly found what will surely be our "go to" backcountry ski run for this year, with more cool terrain that you would want, all so awesomely close to a snow park lot (meaning accessible when it's snowing out!). It's not quite in full on effect yet, but it's starting to look like winter out there!

Quartzville Vids

Pure Hate - Upper Upper Quartzville Creek 9/16/07

Nick, Sera, Seth, Melissa, and I had ourselves some fun today on the canyon of Upper Upper Quartzville Creek (aka Pure Hate Gorge)... This spot got it's friendly nickname from a group of kayakers who apparently had a deathwish... Running the series of log choked falls and narrow gorges in a kayak at 100X the flow we experienced appeares to me (a non-kayaker) as suicidal... A quote from Jason Rackley's page:

"I first found out about this run through Eric Brown's description in Paddling Oregon. Eric has actually paddled this section, an impressive feat in my opinion. Of course, he doesn't recommend that anyone else do it, describing a log-choked, inescapable box canyon and unportagable, unscoutable class five with wood.

Eric sums up his description with these words: "No one is ever glad to have done this run. It has been described as 'Pure Hate'". "

Anyway, when the flow is down this makes an excellent canyon adventure! Here are the photos:


Team members: Seth, Nate, Nick, Sera, and Mel


Seth on the first wet downclimb


Sera styling the first drop


Right after a short rap, our only of the trip


Another sweet team shot


The reason kayakers don't like it: too much wood in the creek


Nice little swim


Parting shot

Mt. Hood Search - 9/8/07

On Saturday the Corvallis Mountain Rescue Unit joined a number of other Oregon high-angle rescue teams in a search of the north and east faces of Mt. Hood for the two climbers that went missing this past winter. Our team mustered up 7 folks, (plus an additional searcher from the local snowshoe club) to search the upper bench of the Elliot glacier. Although the setting and weather were quite beautiful, it was interesting to get up close and personal with Mt. Hood's ugly side (in late summer the usually beautiful and snowcovered northeast face shown in previous posts more resembles a sandy rockpile). I did gain some additional respect for the size and extent of the crevasses on the the Elliot, and although the efforts of 70ish folks wasn't enough to uncover further clues of the missing climbers fate I think it's safe to say that we made the best of the good conditions.

Approaching the Elliot


First peek into one of the big ones


Checking other cracks


Hi Lindsey!


Mike + Some dirty North Face Gullies


Some crag rats playing around in the upper seracs


Looking some more...


Jim finds a big one... This one was probably ~30 feet across and ~170' deep?


Jonathan having a closer look


Aaron getting nasty on a little overhang


Looking back on some of the search area