Stay tuned

Lots of stuff has happened but I haven't had time to write about it...stay tuned.

The shenanigans continue

Scott abandoned me to go to a hippie music festival, so I climbed Handies Peak solo. I met a couple fine young ladies though, so it worked out fine. Anyway, I'm really enjoying the video thing so here is a fine summary of my exploits on Handies Peak.

More video!

Since making videos is a lot more fun than typing, (I try to keep myself as illiterate as possible) here's another one. This morning's mountain, Wetterhorn Peak, was the most technical one I've done so far and IT WAS AWESOME! Scrambling! Danger! Multi-hundred foot cliffs! Absolutely fantastic. And we saved a good 1000 ft of vertical downclimbing through the magic of glissading, captured for the first time on my state of the art HELMET CAM!

Here's a picture of the verticality of these awesome mountains:



If you have the chance to climb in only one Colorado mountain range, make it the San Juans. (FYI, that picture was taken on Uncompahgre Peak yesterday)

Here's the video from today's climb of Wetterhorn: (warning: I think I drop an F bomb or 2 in the video, so if you don't want to be exposed to profanity, don't play the video.)

Statistical Update & Video

I didn't climb yesterday because I slept too late and I didn't climb today because I had a gnarly case of food poisoning this morning...this simply won't do. In any case, here's a video from my latest climb, Mt. Antero (14,269 ft):




Some stats:

Peaks reached: 14
Feet climbed: 49620
Miles Walked: 98
Miles Driven: (forgot to check)
Days without showering:
Current: 6
Record : 10

Kicking it up a notch!

Allright, no more pussyfooting around these lumps of rock. I'm doing 2-3 days in a row of climbing to try to knock 'em all out. I'm getting in good enough shape that walking up a mountain is actually more pleasant than excruciating. Got 13 down now: Since my last update I've climbed Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. Harvard was a lot of fun...some rocky scrambling at the top which is a nice change from boring old walking. I think it was said best in Dumb and Dumber:

Harry: I expected the rocky mountains to be a little rockier than this.
Lloyd: I was thinking the same thing. That John Denver's full of shit, man.

Here's the summit photo:



That other guy is Scott. We both had the same dream for the summer: living out of our cars like dirty hobos and climbing peaks. So we've teamed up. He's really good at being a bum; he knows where all the free wi-fi is in these towns and taught me how to camp in the Wal-Mart parking lot. (Free bathrooms, 24 hours a day!)

Then, on the way down, I stopped for a side trip at Bear Lake. I tried to take video of me jumping in, but my camera's battery died about 3 seconds before I hit the water. In any case, here's a picture of the lake. It's where I want to go when I die. It has the clearest and tastiest water I've ever experienced. You can see in this photo that the far side of the lake is covered in a sheet of ice. The water was cold. Very cold. And refreshing, in a "my testicles have taken refuge inside me" kind of way.




Jumping back a few days, here I was on the 4th of July:



America! Fuck Yeah!

Status update

Peaks reached: 9
Feet climbed: 28,070
Miles Walked: 58.4
Miles Driven: 1051
Days without showering:
Current: 10
Record : 10

These mountains are kicking my ass

That said, I got 3 more: Belford, Oxford, and Princeton.



To climb Princeton, I met up with some dudes I met on a climbing forum. We had an instant rapport due to our mutual love of bathroom humor. This was one of my favorite climbs so far. In the morning, the clouds were climbing up the mountain and the scenery was amazing. By the time we hit the summit, we were above the clouds! Also, we ended up bumming beer off some other climbers on the way down. It was a long climb of 5300 vertical feet and 13 miles.

Clouds rising up the mountain:



I climbed a couple others too:






I'm slowly getting quicker at climbing...slowly...And as the snow melts, it gets easier to climb. I may actually be able to finish my climbs this summer!