Jaime sent me a picture of one of my crashes:

Today Ron came over to help fix my door latch. After the door was fixed and the door knob didn't actually come out in your hand we moved on to the toilet. After some nasty cleaning and looking into the bowels of hell we got the new one tightened down and ready for use. Then I tried to get rid of a bunch of cardboard by pouring gasoline on them in the pig pit and lighting it. Needless to say, there was huge amounts of smoke and ash which took 10 minutes to put out.

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On Saturday Jamie invited me to go ski up and down Mt. St. Helens. I went with him, Matt, Bob, Mark? and the Boarder (whose name I forgot).I had a list of excuses to turn around but thankfully didn't have to use them as around 5000' the wind got ridiclous and we all stopped there.As the wind didn't get better we headed down anyway after declaring 5000' the summit of St. Helens.

I made one successful turn and then fell on every turn after that. My best was falling head down hill and then flipping over my head.So I took off the skiis and carried them down with my broken pole (from fall #8).

It was a frickin' gorgeous day and I think everyone had a good time.

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This weekend I went up to Barlow Pass with Vince and his scout troop to practice building snow caves. It took about four hours to form a cave, afterwhich you are completely soaked and cold - at least I was. Vince and his brother made a cave next to mine and we joined them.

It was badass and was pretty fun. The cave was warm at night, though the floor got to be a bit cold at night. Next time I will bring a tarp and a larger thermarest. I was trying to see what it'd be like to build and sleep in one with just what I'd bring on a climbing trip. More insulation is better.

In the morning we drank hot cocoa and waited for the sun to rise. After we got most of our stuff out of the cave I tried to break in the ceiling. After a few large jumps on one leg I broke it in near a vent hole. After that we went to Dairy Queen where I grubbed down food and fell asleep at the table.

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We finally got snow in Portland, two separate times even.

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For New Years we went down to Bend to ski on Mt. Bachelor and drink beer. Everyone had a great time, the weather was excellent and the snow was pretty comfortable to fall on. On New Years Eve we hung out at my house and had a fire, sparklers and a hot tub. And beer.

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Christmas 2006. We had cool stocking stuffers and then a fresh ham for dinner. Ron, Jami, Esther and Angel came over for dinner and ate all the food.

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I just started my training for spring's climbing season. I decided to stop running (a while ago) as it kills my heel and didn't help hiking anyway. So I've been doing stairs at my work with a pack full of kitty litter (40lbs) and rice (15lbs) and magazines (5ish). According to the scale at work it weighs in at 75lbs. I was going up and down the stairs but switched to taking the elevator down from the 9th floor. I've been doing 60-70 flights and am aiming for 100 now that I'm using the elevator

Dan and I went up to Mt. Hood for our second ski of the season. Last weekend we went up with Ron, Esther and Keevin to Timberline. The weather wasn't so good last time, but today it was super nice out. We skinned up twice and then called it a day. Next time we'll get some lift tickets so we can get in a few more turns.

In case the picture of Dan crashing isn't large enough,here is a bigger version.

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This Saturday was Simone's Christening.

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