Woo!

Rising Dark

Ominous title for a pleasant little post.  JS on Tube Steaks Tomorrow, a pleasant little hand crack!  The best part of the route is the many opportunities for laybacking, which I, sport climber, never appreciated so much before I entered the land of the splitters.

Delicate

The iconic Delicate Arch, sunset.  I wonder if, when the erosion starts to seriously threaten the stability of this thing, the Park Service will do a subtle little bolt-n-glue.  Granted, they have let other arches or towers fall, but this one is such a draw, such an icon, such a reason to a pay a $15 entrance fee.  Could they allow nature to take its course?

King of All He Surveys

SZ looking out over the Indian Creek valley.  He has huuuuge...tracts of land.  (What, the curtains?)

We Be Jamming

SZ in (a crappy, sketchy, sandy) hand crack at Second Meat Wall, Indian Creek.  No fewer than three people, myself included, bailed off of this moderate.  It was a cold morning and a weirdish route- there were face feet, which should make a splitter easier, but they were so sandy that the wall just exfoliated under your shoes and you felt like they could pop at any time.  The sandy crack made the gear less trustworthy too.  But mostly I think we just didn't have our heads in the game for the day yet.

Natural Light

Evening sun through denuded cottonwood trees, in the valley between the cliffs of Indian Creek.  A break from pictures of climbers.

Astride the Stone Horse

SW, leg deep (given the angle, it was really tempting to title this post "Balls Deep"...admire my partial restraint) and nearing the top of Binou's Crack.  There's something comforting about being able to jam a whole leg in a crack; you know you're not going to slip out, and often you can pretty much sit on it, especially if it takes a curve like this one.

Top Out

RH making a grab for the chains atop Sparkling Schnitzel, a 5.11 off-width (tricksy baaaarely off-width; hand-fist stacks for me, and not big enough for a knee jam) in Indian Creek, Utah.

Get ready for a string of desert pictures, cause somebody just got back from MOAB.

Living Color

The brother escaping an inscrutable installation; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin.

Whippoorwilled

MD cruising up Don Miron, 5.11c, alongside Summersville Lake, NRG.

Rainbow Road

Porters & yaks crossing the prayer flag-festooned bridge to Namche Bazaar, high above the Dudh Kosi river, on a brilliantly sunny afternoon.

Cross-Eyed & Blind

Once more into the breach; the last trip to climb in the ol' EnArGee before the horrible, horrible winter descends on the east coast.  I've been feeling quite strong lately, and am looking forward to doing battle with the climb pictured here, Cross-Eyed & Blind, an 11a at the first buttress of the Meadow.  It's a beautiful line on beautiful stone, long, with many interesting moves.  Usually on a trip, I like to get on a bunch of routes, try them once or twice, not really caring about the send.  For whatever reason, Cross-Eyed is one of the few that really captures my imagination and my ambition.  If not this trip, then another- I know that I will send this.

Hope, if not change

Four years ago tonight, this was the scene on my street.  I doubt there will be anything of the sort tonight- no organic 3am congregation, no dance parties, no pot-and-pan drum circles, no bouncing, no unfettered joy.  No feeling that we've reached some sort of turning point, achieved a milestone, made a start on a path toward a new way of doing things.  And in this case, that might be okay.  I don't think it's ever a good thing to think of a politician as anything other than a man, a flawed human like any of us, and tightly constrained by a system that has entrenched centuries of vested interests and patterns of political behavior.  There is a reason hope is considered by some to be audacious- all too often, it is mired in, made a travesty by, reality.

That said, it will be with a sigh of relief if I wake up tomorrow, check the final ("final") returns, and see an Obama victory.  There is always a lesser of two evils.

Decay! Decay! Decaaaay!

Insects making quick work of late-season wildflowers, on the flanks of Mt. Hood.

The title, of course, comes from that seminal work of the postmodern era, Strindberg and Helium. Seriously, you should probably go watch it.  Let it bring...some...joy to the long, boring walk...through the shadowland of memory.

Down to the River (via elevator)

Trolley cars on the elevator to load a pile of tourists (us!) into Yangtze river cruise boats in Chongqing.  Visibility is maybe half a mile- enough to take in one of the many new construction projects expanding this already gargantuan city, going up on the other side.

Take Off

Cliff swallows & their nests, under the eaves of an abandoned house in the California ghost town of Bodie.

Frankenstorm(king)'s Monster

I passed the hurricane quite comfortably in relatively untouched Philly, so I have no photos of dramatic destruction and the raw power of nature, hubris of man and his works, etc.  Instead, here is a view of Zhang Huan's "Three-Legged Buddha" at the Storm King Art Center.

Ruins on the Mountain

Looking down the Khumbu valley towards the inexorable, inevitable evening clouds rising over Ama Dablam.  These ruins are on the east side of the river, across from the "village" of Duhgla.  We...should not have been on that side of the river as the sun set!

On the Terrace

The thermal terraces of Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone.

Painterly

Looking down on the thermal pools that make up the aptly named Artists' Paintpots, Yellowstone.

'Sworthy

The Andy Goldsworthy wall, Storm King Art Center, a fall day.

Halfway to the "Wedding Day"

Yours truly putting up Wedding Day, 10b, as the sun sets behind the dihedrals of Smith Rock.  For an easy route, this had a bit of  a heady crux for me.  Stood there like an idiot for a while before I could commit- sometimes a good no-hands rest is a liability!  And while I was dithering, the guy on the 12+ around the corner whipped out of his crux about five times.

Magic Market

The night market.  Yangshuo, southern China.

Steaming springs

From the level of the Grand Prismatic itself, all you could see was steam.  I was momentarily devastated, until I saw people wandering around in the hills on the other side.  Had to get back in the car and drive to the next lot for access, but fortunately we had bikes!  Quick ride back up the trail, and then a scramble up the hill through a blowdown and we could see the spring the way it was meant to be seen.

Extremophilic!

Meanwhile, I was taking in the therms at Yellowstone.  Its quite a bizarre place, but beautiful.  This is the Grand Prismatic Spring, and grand indeed it is.  The physiology/biology of the extremophiles that color these boiling pools is difficult to believe, to comprehend.  Life finds a way.

(Lurking) Fear is the Mind Killer

Almost 5 days later, including one 23 hour climbing day, the boys topped out on their first big wall- El Fucking Capitan via Lurking Fear.  They say they never want to do a big wall again, but I'll give them a few months before all they remember is the joy of the experience and the pride of finishing.  The pain, the exhaustion, the boredom, the fear- it all becomes an abstraction in the service of The Epic.  Type 2 fun for the win.

And yes, I know this is Half Dome not El Cap.  Shut up.

Wizardry in the Enchanted Valley

The Wizard & AM embark today on their El Capitan odyssey.  The line they are taking is called Lurking Fear, and it ascends the far left of the wall (in this photo, just left of the shaded area near the middle of El Cap).  Today is just hauling and fixing the first three pitches- the fun starts tomorrow.  It's the easiest aid climb on the rock, but it remains far from easy.  They expect it to take three days.

Illin' & Crimpin'

MN puts on the try-hard face as she fights the notorious crimps of Smith Rock.

Hobbit Hole

An idyllic(ly dilapidated) Sherpa farmer's hut just inside the gates of Sagarmatha National Park, on the road to Namche & Everest.  Right out of the Shire.

Monolith

Cue the monkeys.

Through the Keyhole

The leading edge of a storm rolls in over the flanks of Mt. Evans, one of the Colorado 14ers.  We failed in our attempt to race it back to the car, but at least we were off the ridge by the time it broke in earnest.

...and sometimes the gnar shreds you.

Mt. Adams, again.  A person who is definitely not my brother catching an edge at the perfect moment as he flies past my lens (this person who is definitely not my brother fortunately kept it together and ski-side down for a nice recovery).

Sometimes you shred the gnar...

HazMatt on the rip after skinning up Mt. Adams.

Sweet, Sweet Humble Pie

Spent labor day weekend down in the New River Gorge.  Had been sitting on my bum for three weeks or so recovering from an injury, so I expected it to be kinda rough- the NRG is humbling at the best of times, and this was not the best of times.  Lo and behold, I was right!  Could barely pull the moves on routes I had been projecting.  Ah, well.  Climbing is fun even when you're a wuss, and you can't see the takes or the flailing in a still photo.

Merci beaucoup to the Wizard, who absconded with my camera to the anchors, but delivered mighty fine results.

It Tolls for Thee

And now a switch to western funeral traditions- this melancholy, beckoning angel tops a grave in the Woodland Cemetery near my house.  Its quite old, full of stately family plots, beautifully landscaped and my favorite place in the neighborhood to run.  This was taken at dusk a few days after an early-winter snow.

View on a Hindu Funeral, Three

Pashupatinath and the Bagmati river.  The crowd has dispersed, but the pyres will continue to burn for hours.

View on a Hindu Funeral, Two

There were two funerals that day.  The first was a military funeral, replete with honor guard, brass band, and attendance by a a politician/entourage with enough celebrity to draw quite a crowd of locals.  I do not know who he was, I only know he was not this man, Prachanda, former Maoist guerrilla leader and former Prime Minister, the only Nepali political figure I could hope to recognize on sight.  The crowd, mourners, politicians and soldiers, and together with the idle watchers, dispersed shortly after the pyre was lit.  I admit I was surprised that the time of observance would be so short, but then remembered that in western funerals, too, most memorializing and remembrance of the deceased comes before the burial.

In this image, the second man is prepared for his funeral rites as smoke from the first pyre fills the sky.  In the foreground, in the river, can be seen the remains of a previous cremation.

View on a Hindu Funeral, One

While visiting Pashupatinath, a holy area on the Bagmati River in Kathmandu, Nepal, we passed a series of stone pylons covered by corrugated metal.  Could not figure out their purpose until a group of soldiers filed in, bearing a body wrapped in white and orange, wreathed in chains of marigolds....

High Gravity Day

Taking a weekend off from fighting gravity and making it work for me instead.  Been a long while since I've been on whitewater.

On the Prowl

EN and his freakish ape index silhouetted on Helium Woman, the Dihedrals, Smith Rock (Oregon!).

Studious let me sit

...and hold high converse with the mighty dead. (Thomson, The Seasons)

Buddhist pilgrims study texts before the wall of the Bodhinath stupa, Kathmandu, Nepal.

99 (Switchback) Problems

One of the "99 Switchbacks" on the Mt. Whitney trail, en route to trail crest ridge and looking across to the summit.  Would love to go back and get on one of the technical routes up the east face.

Sacrifice

Looking from the winding stairs to the facade of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona.

Bonsai

Trees in the sea of clouds.  Mt. Huangshan, China.

Vignette

Two monks at the base of the Swayambhunath hill, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Super-man

A little foot cut from AM as he pulls the roof on Super Best Friends, 5.12-something, on a grey day in the Red River Gorge.

(Not really very) Bokehlicious

Yes, it's a very shallow depth of field, but it ain't bokeh to write home about.

Daintily-etched characters on a sandstone wall, in southern China.

Arachnophobia

This big-ass spider (they're everywhere in the New River Gorge...or bigger ones) had that moth wrapped up tight within seconds.  It was a mighty spidey-pounce.

Atlas Crushed

JG, back muscles, New River Gorge.  This is the pumpy start to Waco Not Hueco, 11c.

Bad Rubbish

Nepali children playing in an impromptu (and massive) garbage dump beneath a bridge in Kathmandu.