Traditional Climbing Gear

I just received my first bit of trad gear today. I've been wanting to do trad climbing (where you place your own protection) for a year now, but never got around to buying gear or going out and practicing. This weekend we're heading over to Smith Rocks for a friend's birthday so I will get my chance. I'm hoping that for the Moab trip in 2 weeks I'll be able to lead up some easy stuff with Ron.

I don't have a full rack, or even a partial rack, in fact this is pretty pathetic, but it's a start. I also bought a set of Black Diamond stoppers earlier at REI. I even have a few Yates Screamers for sketchy placement.

Olympic Penninsula and Gearhart

Two weekends ago I went out to our place in Gearhart and watched too much 24. While waiting for the DVD player to cool I went to the beach and took some pictures. This was the first time I've been at the coast where it was below freezing, the sand was even frosty.

Last weekend I went up to the Olympic Penninsula with my buddies Matt, Keevin and Josh to do the Third Beach to Oil City Road hike. It is a very cool hike, 17 miles of rain forest and beaches. About half of the hike is on the beach and when crossing the headlands into the forest you take these steep ladders with ropes up and down. We had awesome weather, only 20 minutes of rain, the rest of the time was sunny and cool.

It turns out I'm still taking pictures with unlevel horizons. As my photos are now digital it's much easier to fix the horizon problem. These are the some hundred odd photos from the trip.

Green Card

After about 15 times not passing, I finally got my damn lead green card.

Hood Training

Today Matt, Keevin and I went up to Timberline Lodge to get in a little hike at altitude and practice our basic snow technique. We went above Palmer almost to Illumation Rock, but it was blowing snow pretty hard, so we took off back down. We spent about 2 hours practicing self arrest, belaying on the snow and catching each others falls on rope. It was a pretty kick ass time.

As you can see from the pictures it got rough up there and Keevin had to save Matt on the 70 deg slope. But he got him, so don't fret.

Matt at Timberline

Mt. Defiance #5

Last Sunday we did Mt. Defiance for the last time this season. Brynne came along, though I didn't see much of her as she and Keevin booked ass up the hill. They're insane.

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