Right...No updates...

So yeah haven't updated this thingy in a while. Called it quits at 32 mountains due to weather, frustration, and a lack of motivation. Had an amazing summer. It's tough re-adjusting to normal life (sleeping indoors on a bed, using a toilet instead of going wherever I want, etc).

Last weekend went to Flagstaff and climbed Humphrey's Peak, the highest point in Arizona. It's no 14er (just a 12er) and the trail was sickeningly crowded, although I've never seen so many college students on a mountain. I did the hike with my old roommate Connor, so I guess it was kind of good to see him too.

That's all for now. Stay tuned though, as I'm going to start updating this blog again when I head to Mexico. That'll probably be in a couple months.

The 2 greatest sports in the world, together at last!

Yesterday, I climbed another fun peak in the Elk Range: Pyramid Peak, elevation 14,018 ft. It was a fun climb up with enough class 4 scrambling to make it exciting. We walked across fun narrow ledges and scrambled up exciting, crumbly sedimentary rock.

Don't be fooled, though. This was no ordinary climb. This was a history-making climb. At the summit, we combined the two greatest sports in the world: mountaineering and beer pong! As far as either of us knew, nobody has ever played the sport of kings atop a 14er. As we approached the summit, I spotted a short rock spire a few feet away that would serve as a perfect table. Here's a picture of the game:


This was probably also the most dangerous game of beer pong ever played, which is why we only had half a beer each. Given that Gabe's perch was small and overlooked a precarious precipice, he was allowed to lean over the table for safety purposes. Anyway, the climb down was a lot of fun too. Maybe I'll write about it later.

Snowmass and Maroon

I climbed Snowmass Mountain yesterday and it was a lot of fun.



On Wednesday I climbed Maroon Peak with a group from 14ers.com. It was also a lot of fun. I don't feel like writing a lot.

Castle and Conundrum

To climb these, I met up with Gabe again at his house on Friday afternoon where he promptly informed me that the weather on Saturday would be terrible, and we decided not to even try to climb that day. We had a 3-peak weekend planned, but with the weather so bad on Saturday, we ended up just climbing Castle and Conundrum. So, Friday night we drove 50+ miles on dirt roads trying to find a party that he'd heard about. Alas, it was to no avail. We did see the moose that night though, which I think is as good or better than a party.

Anyway, on Saturday morning after a 2:00 AM wakeup call, we picked up Gabe's friend Dan and started driving toward the Elk Range. The Elk Mountains are near Aspen, or Ass-pain as Gabe calls it. We got a chilly start around 6 AM, surrounded by clouds left over from Saturday's horrendous weather. We hoped the sun would come out and burn off the clouds, but we were greeted with this view from the summit at around 9:00:

We took advantage of a rare moment of (relatively) little fog to snap this summit pose:

The plan was to hold a beer pong tournament on the summit, however two factors were working to our disadvantage:

1) We forgot to get cups and ping pong balls
2) It was really cold. Like well below freezing and windy at times.

From the summit of Castle, we spent a good hour debating whether or not we should continue to Conundrum. The conditions weren't ideal, and we were concerned the fog would hinder our route finding. We took the opportunity to bone up on our juggling skills:

After an hour of debating, we decided to go for the gusto and try to hit Conundrum too. We're glad we did this, because it was a quick 45 minute walk that would have been tough to get lost on. Additionally, the route down from Conundrum provided the opportunity for a really good glissade. The most important part of this glissade was braking fully before getting to the crevasse above a small lake. Somebody told us the crack in the earth is caused by a glacier flowing under the scree

(the crack is covered with snow where we would have hit it, had something gone wrong)

The rest of the route back to the truck involved a lot of glissading on the still plentiful snow. Overall, it was a pretty easy day but a lot of fun.

Moose!

Gabe and I saw 2 of 'em last night while driving on a dirt road just north of Vail. It was dark, and Gabe told me not to get too close because they're dangerous animals so the picture I got of the bull is far away and dark and not too intelligible.

See, the bright spot is the eye and the body goes to the right. You can kind of make out the antlers above the head. Most photos of bigfoot are better than this.

1 More down!

After something like 4 days of inactivity, I was itching to climb something and the weather was perfect yesterday. I decided to climb Quandary Peak (14,265') last night for the following reasons:

1) Night climbing suits my biorhythms much better than the normal 5 AM start.

2) Hiking after dark might make a relatively dull climb more interesting. You never know when a rabid marmot or sex-crazed hillbilly (as in the classic film Deliverance) might be hiding behind the next rock.

c) Last night was the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, which I thought might be fun to observe from atop a mountain.

Reasons 1 and 2 worked out pretty well, but the summit was so cold and windy I didn't stick around to watch the meteor shower. I did see a few on the way down, though.

Anyway, here I am all bundled up on the summit:

The weather has been truly awful

There's been some sort of system keeping all the mountains here pretty well socked in, and it's been doing nothing but raining for the last few days. The peaks are all in clouds. Hence, when I wake up at 5 every morning to climb, and it's raining, or about to rain, or just finished raining (and it's invariably one of those) nothing seems better than going back to sleep. So, due to a lack of ideal conditions but mostly my own laziness, I haven't hit a summit since Humboldt last Wednesday. It's not that I couldn't climb, because the mountains I've been quasi-attempting are easy walk-ups and no real danger if they're wet.

In the mean time, here's a picture taken from the top of Humboldt peak:

And video from Little Bear: