Swarms

This isn't really great photography or anything, it's more of a Halloween post.  You see, swarms of anything gross me out in a creepy, Halloweeny way.  Doesn't matter if it's rats or people crawling all over each other, it's stomach-turning.  So you can imagine my consternation when, on a winter hike in the Poconos with boyfriend, I came upon an area of snow pocked here and there with holes FULL of swarming insects.  These are big holes, about a foot across, and there were at least a dozen of them.  That's a lot of bugs.  And they were all wriggling and squirming.  It's snow, bugs!  It should be pristine and pretty.  Stop making it gross.

Anyway, Happy Halloween.  May your snow be free of weird bug spawns.

The horror, the horror...

Today, I am going to the Exhumed Films 24-hour Horror Fest.  I went a few years ago (was in Nepal last year, poor me!), and it was pretty bonkers.  Its 3am, you're hopped up on candy, and you are watching some true, delirious insanity unfold on the screen in front of you.  Its usually an eclectic mix of movies, from the actually good (Cronenberg), to the classic (Suspiria), to the classic B-movie (the original Piranhas), aaand to the apeshit, shot-on-a-shoestring, Indonesian, cannibals-kung fu-special forces-orgiastic-pagan sacrifice-zombies whatthefuckery.

And in the spirit of this event and this holiday, here is one of many carcasses we saw piled along a half-mile stretch of the Bishnumati River in Kathmandu- an urban water source.  That is true horror.

Pensive Piety

A congregant at the Great Mosque of Xi'an.

In his house he waits dreaming...

Fancypants spider of unknown species (genus Aranea!), Kathmandu, Nepal.

Burned out

Undergrowth rebounding after a controlled burn in Mariposa Grove, near (in?)Yosemite.

Ama Dablam

Egregious gap in mountain pictures!  Too many goons on rocks- gotta step back and get the whole boulder.

Everest gets all the press, but Ama Dablam, just south of the big man in the Khumbu Valley, is easily the most arresting and beautiful of the peaks in the area.  Also one of the most visible- it is one of the few mountains that you can see from a variety of points in the valley.  This was taken from Dughla, just across the river from the end of the Cho La pass.  I wanted so badly to get some quality alpenglow shots on this trip, but was each day foiled by the relentless march of late afternoon clouds.  This was the closest I ever got- within about 10 minutes those clouds had rolled up to envelop me.  Still, I think this came out quite well.

The Wizard(s)

Back to Birdsboro!  In truth, only one of these guys bears that nickname.  Can you guess which one?

I can tell you who is not a wizard though- me.  Yesterday, for the first and last time, I got my hair stuck in my ATC while rappelling off a route I cleaned.  No danger, if anything I was more secure due to some unplanned shimming of my belay device, but I did think I was going to have to give myself an impromptu haircut.  With a knife (both life-saving rope and life-giving carotid in close proximity!).  While dangling in midair.  While my head was pretty much cranked down on my shoulder.  After about 10 minutes of finagling and some aid from the ground, I managed to free it.  First and last time.

On the plus side, feeling progressively stronger and I can climb fairly hard two days in a row.

Salt of the Earth

Salt formations (don't tread on them!), Death Valley, CA.

Through a Chinese Doorway, Three

A little slice of secret garden in heavily urban environs, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province.

Through a Chinese Doorway, Two

Back alley courtyard, Hong Village, Anhui Province.

Through a Chinese Doorway, One

Inside the Temple of Buddhist Virtue on Longevity Hill, the Summer Palace, Beijing.

World Fucking Champ

This man, my amigo and former teammate, is the Masters Track World Fucking Champion in the Scratch race.  That's pretty impressive.  Oh, and he did it by lapping the field.  That's extremely impressive.  Rainbow jersey, represent!

"Joseph Wentzell (USA) made everyone sit up and take notice as he won this category's title by lapping the field on his own.

It was quite an aggressive race, with lots of breaks going but nothing was sticking until Joseph Wentzell went on his own. By the time the others realised how strong he was, Wentzell had taken a lap." -VeloUK

(Pictured here a few years ago- fit, but no where near what the level of hardman he achieved this year.  This is also the race that boyfriend went rubber side up and broke his hip.)

A Gentle Eye

At a horse farm in the Poconos.

Sending It

Two amigos on a decidedly easier bouldering problem than yesterday's post (easy enough for me to do!).  Bouldering is a tricky thing- you're not roped, you never go much above 10 feet, and yet I am just as aware of a potential fall as I am when leading.  You're not falling far, but you're guaranteed to deck and it doesn't take much to fuck yourself up on a pile of rocks.  I guess that's why smart people bring crash pads.

Bouldering tends to be more technically difficult or, rather, the ratings start at a higher level, and great boulderers can put up some truly awe-inspiring moves.  One of the films shown at the fest was about this girl, Ashima Shiraishi, a 9 year old Manhattanite who is one of the best climbers around, of any age- in her trip to Hueco Tanks, TX, the centerpiece of the film, she was working on a bouldering problem that has yet to see a completed ascent by a woman.  She apparently sent it three times (!!), but remains without a valid ascent because each time her feet swung out and briefly hit a tree.  That's gotta be hard on such a wee one.  But if puberty is good to her (physically and mentally), she will likely become...I don't even know.  She's already phenomenal, I lack an appropriately strong superlative.

Faces of Concentration

This is my favorite climbing photo I've yet taken.  Don't know what this bouldering problem was rated, but a bunch of us tried it and, man, it was a bitch.  No one finished.  Well, except that random guy who came walking shirtless down the path and flashed it with no apparent effort.  This, however, is not that guy, as you can tell by the...effort, quite apparent.

The Top Roped

Another Gunks shot, this time of your humble bloggerer.  This is the first time I've appeared here, I believe, except as a five-year old silhouette.  Milestones!  This, obviously, is a guest photographer.  And no offense to any of the people that have commandeered my camera while I'm on the wall, but I really need to bring someone that knows what to do with an SLR one of these times.  Would love to have some solid pictures of myself climbing!

Anyway, the Gunks have no sport climbing; only trad, which I have not the experience to lead.  Thus I mooched mightily off of the skill (and gear) of some of my excellent friends, who rigged top ropes for us less-badassers.  I did, however, learn how to clean routes.  One step further!

Gunkstravaganza!

Took a trip with a pile o friends to the Shawangunks for some climbing and the New Paltz Climbing Film fest.  More pics and details to come!

American Dream

Abandoned homes along Highway 395 in California.  The first one is actually in the ghost town tourist attraction of Bodie, CA (a goldmine boomtown of the 1870s-80s), but the second two are modern-day abandoned homesteads at the foot of the Sierras.  Plus ca change...

Bones

Yak vertebra at the edge of the receding Khumbu glacier, which we saw while crossing it more or less at random (trails are for...pussies?).  There were quite a lot of bones scattered around in the grass, enough for several yaks.  None of the cool ones, though.  Skulls probably get snatched up by tourists before all the flesh is gone.  (Gross)

Cryptid

Abstract statuary, somewhere in Hong Kong.

Uncomplicated

It's just pretty.  Sunset, Half Dome, Yosemite.  About as idiot-proof as photography gets.

Screaming across the sky

In that last post about Gravity's Rainbow, I mentioned little meerkats of brilliance poking their heads out of the subterranean warren of symbolism and digression that make up the bulk of the 900 pages.  One of these shining rodents of authorship is the longest episode in the novel (no chapters, here we have "episodes"), and is almost a stand-alone short story.  It focuses on a character, Franz Pokler, who had been mentioned maybe once before, and the history of his involvement with developing the dreaded 00000 Schwarzgerat as the holocaust occurs in the background.  I know that's just blahblah to those who haven't read this book.  I won't really try to describe the plot, but it's a case where all of the oblique symbolism and allegory and general verbosity of Pynchon come together into a story that is both thought-provoking and poignant without being heavy-handed (how many short stories about the holocaust can say that?).  It's by turns amusing and horrifying and ends in great sadness.  In the simplest terms, its about the manufacture and manipulation of innocence.


The picture is from the holocaust memorial in Berlin- relevant!