Today we did our second training hike up Mt. Defiance. This time it was Matt, Keevn, Aimee, her dag Kala and me. We figured out that our last hike was actually up Starvation Ridge (No. 414 via 414b) instead of Mt. Defiance (No. 413) The beginning was much easier this time when we went up the correct trail.

I used my new trekking poles and they made a world of difference. We left Portland at 4 am so we'd be back in time for the Superbowl. We topped out at 10 am after 4 1/2 hours, 2 of which were in snow. It was a perfect weather day, light wind, sunny and not too cold.

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In preparation for climbing mountains this year, Matt, his friend Dobson and I went up into the Gorge to hike Mt. Defiance after eating some kickass breakfast burritos. We ran into two other groups getting ready and they had snowshoes on their packs. Matt hoped that they were over prepared.

Turns out we were under prepared. At around 3000 feet the snow was about 5 feet deep. It was fun to post-hole through it for a few miles, but then it got a little tiring so we ended up turning around a mile or so from the end. We don't really know cos it was cloudy and we've never done it before. But it was a hell of a lot of fun and we're ready to go up again this Sunday before SuperBowl.

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On Tuesday I took my lead test, again. This time they were kind enough to pass me. After I finished the belay portion of the test and was told to be careful who belays me (as everyone is a midget), they handed me and Matt two cold beers. Matt happens to be the only person in Portland who doesn't drink beer, so he gave it to Scott, who is smart enough to drink beer. That was probably better than passing, drinking beer in front of everyone at the gym.

I pulled my achilles tendon a little over a week ago while running Mt. Tabor. I just got into the doctor today and he told me to ease back into running and to stretch. So I'll stop running hills and stick to flats and doing hikes on hills. That's not too exciting, but an x-ray of my foot is:

Tonight I took my lead test at PRG, and blew my last clip. I'm retaking tomorrow and should pass this time, with less swearing and falling.

For New Years I went out with Aimee, Kim and Matt to the first annual Portland Madness Scavenger Hunt. We were team We Like Big Jugs (A technical climbing term). Our mascott was named Hotness. You'll see her in each picture. We had to take pictures with Hotness at various place around town, only taking public transportation. Each team had a theme and we were climbers, thus our name.

We didn't quite come in first place but we had a kickass time, I even got my name and hand into the paintings at the end of the night. They showed everyones pictures from the night, which was pretty damn cool. Here are ours:

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I've had the keg from my halloween party hanging out in the backyard, waiting for some attention. On Saturday Ron came over to eat pizza and look at my broken window. Instead of working on the window we broke out the 16lbs sledgehammer and went to town on the keg. This is a different version of beer ball, which we did with the 2 half-racks of skunked beer. With the beer cans you can toss them like a baseball and hit them with your broken shovel. With keg ball you just beat the keg. And there was ice from the backyard and pumpkins from halloween. After we got tired of breaking open the keg, we put the ice and pumpkins on the keg and went after them.

I've wanted to get crampon type deals for my shoes in case it gets icy - like last night. I was going to get Yak Tracks but they looked hokey. I read that you can put sheet metal screws into your shoes and still go running on ice and snow. That seemed like an easy solution so I put in twenty screws in each shoe. I tried them out last night and they were fine on the ice, I didn't slip once. This morning I was going to run to work but after getting up to Division I realized it was just wet out, not icy, I went back home and drove in.
Shoes
Snowy

One of my projects from work has been moved into the real world and is ready for use. I work at a climate center that has climate data for the Western US. The most popular data is precipitation and snow water equivalent (how much water is in the snow).
My program is replacing a static report that shows the precipitation and snow water equivalent for certain areas in the country. One of the problems was the data could change and the static reports would then become out of date. The new program gets the most current data instead. There are six different reports now, instead of the original one. You can compare the current snow levels to the average, the peak average or to another year. I think it's pretty nifty, especially if you're into winter sports and want to know the current snow levels. There is a special report you can run that is tailored to skiing - "Ski West Report" (it will take around 10 seconds).
Here is the entry page to the reporting program.

Whenever I call customer service I hate having to deal with "press 8 to...." or whatever. I'd rather just talk to a person. Here is a cheat sheet that you can use to get to a human on the phone quickly.