Welcome to ol' Kentuck

See you in a couple days Miguel!

Summer (Sorta) Vacation!

I took my last final yesterday, so I'm loading up the family and heading east for our summer-even-though-its-not-technically-summer vacation. For months, Keith & Andrea have been sending me pics of them out at the crags that are 10 minutes from their house. They’ve made me insanely jealous of all of the awesome, uncrowded, barely developed sandstone out there in KY. It looks SOOOO good. We must really want to go, because we are willing to drive 27 hours to get there. I plan on reading several books on the drive.

Some of the persuasive pictures that I’ve gotten from Keith’s iphone over the past few months:

After getting these for nearly a year, it's time to go check it out.


Rubbin' it in.


Bennett getting ready to pull down.


I can't take it anymore!


We are finally going out there. Tomorrow we are loading up the van and heading east for a couple of weeks to check out their new digs (They moved from Philly a year ago) and do some climbing. I know I’m just a shadow of my old climbing self (which isn’t really saying much anyways), but nevertheless, I’m really looking forward to this trip. Here's hoping I don't get a flapper or a broken ankle on my first day out there.

Reunion & Hallway Couloir

I love rock climbing and I first started really climbing alot with Tyler, my friend from high school. With college, the move to Cali, then school again, we've lost touch. I knew he was a great skier, so I tried to track him down to go on a tour and today we finally were able to make schedules work.

My hippie friend. Notice the frost. It was cold!


7 of 13 ski resorts are closed for the season even though several Utah resorts received 3+ feet of snow in the past 5 days. I don't get it. Tyler and his friend Ed were going to do the Hallway Couloir in Cardiff Fork, and I was happy to tag along. Just as an aside, I have caught two different colds in the past 3 weeks (Hooray for me) so I was armed with both a barking cough and lots of Ricola cough drops. As we were hiking up Flagstaff mountain across from Alta, there was this light red dust-dirt covering all of the snow. I guess they had a good dust storm up there recently. Snirt (snow + dirt) looks kinda gross, but the snow was still pretty good.

Cool snag on the skintrack up.


The reason for waking up at 4 something or other.


Dropping in to the Couloir.


It did not disappoint. This morning was very likely my last powder day of the year, and it was a good ending. Really soft good snow up high, and then kind of firmish powder cement down low but super fun. It was a beautiful day to be out and all in all a good day and well worth the calories and sweat.


Splitboards do have a decided disadvantage on the not-flat-enough-to-snowboard exits. Click on this picture-it is much better in large view. :)

Some people are such morons and other stuff

Tax season is over and I have some random thoughts to share.

I think rule #1 that you learn in school (even before not running with scissors) is don't climb the fence at the zoo and jump in the polar bear cage. Heard about this in the news and I had to check it out.



I'm surprised that that lady was able to hang on to the rope what with her being gravity challenged and all. Do you think she was self-conscious about showing her muffin top?

One of my dreams in life is to be on a Japanese game show. I think I'd be awesome in one.



Lastly, when I was 18, after I graduated HS but before I started the next phase of my life (mission) I decided I wanted to go to Yosemite. I didn't have anyone to go with so I decided I would go alone. The problem was is that I didn't have my own wheels at the time, so driving was not an option. And my Mom would NOT be an accessory to me participating in dangerous endeavors. Enter the Am-Trak. I bought a ticket and decided to go for 2 weeks in October. How long did it take to get there on the train & bus? 20 hours Plus an overnight stay in Modesto. Yawn. But it was worth it. I was there for 2 weeks and met some people to climb with out there. It was super cool. I met some Welsh chaps, Miles & Neil who stayed in my campsite. They had this wicked cool tent that was probably 30 years old and I remember them drinking earl gray tea alot. There was a whole group of Welsh dudes there, but I got to know Neil the best.

Anyways, Neil is hardcore. After I had to come home, we made plans to meet up for more climbing in Utah a few weeks later, and had a good time climbing some of Utah's excellent/choss limestone. He came and stayed at our house a few years later with another friend (I forget his name) but I've lost touch with him. Why am I telling you this you wonder? Well, thanks to youtube, I can see he's still a strong bugger. Me? Well...Since we last saw each other I've gotten married and had three kids, so well, um, I'm not doing problems like "Silk Cut" anytime soon. But it's nice to see Neil still pulling down.

Neil doing his thing.

Waste of Time

I'm breaking format with my usual type of posts for some life commentary.

I've become convinced that Facebook is popular because people are so IMPOSSIBLY bored these days. Seriously. Before I go any further, I should make it clear that I have a facebook account. And I look at it about once a week or maybe a couple times a month. And it is way boring to me, but I've looked at it because I don't have anything better to do--Actually, I probably do have stuff to do, just stuff I don't want to do. This really bugs me. Blogging may be in that same vein (it can be a timewaster, etc.) but you don't get the retarded updates all the time. Who cares is "Tim is taking it easy" or "Jim is loving the office" or whatever else.

Some may say blogging is the same kind of thing, but I disagree. For instance, because of blogs, I can see what people are up to(not superficially), get ideas for places to ski, and reading opinions on life and people's experiences and commentaries. In short stuff that is way more meaningful than "Eric hates doing the dishes." By the way, what is up with all of the Karl-Malone-third-person speak on Facebook? Annoying.

KDay posted an awesome video about flutter, the second generation twitter. Check it out here.

I've kept my blog so I can document some of the things that I've been able to do and remind myself that sometimes life can be really good. That, and to let the single digit followers of my weak-sauce blog know how awesome I am. O.k. I'm think I'm done ranting. Bloggers, keep blogging so I have some productive ways to waste my time. :)

While I was writing this, Jami gave me a tattoo to remind me who's number one. I didn't realize I was so freckly, but whatever.

DP with the Best Utah Rider

Nate likes to ride his bike alot. In fact, this is Nate's first ski day of the year because he's been training so much. Nothing to get you psyched like waking up at 4:30 for skiing, eh Nate? Some of my best ski days ever have been with Nate at the Canyons, so I was pumped to hook up for a rare ski day together.

I've done a few of the pre-work ski days this year and every one has been awesome. Today was no exception. Farmington Canyon has been the choice for the mid-week ski days because of its proximity to where we're currently living and how easy accessible some of the hills are from the parking area.

With this low pressure system over the last couple of weeks, we've gotten so much snow here in the Wasatch. There was a good foot of snow on the road the whole way up the canyon (The plow doesn't come until about 9 am) so just making it to the parking area at the Bountiful Peak turnoff was iffy today, but we got there in time to make three runs before I had to head into the office. With me fighting off a man-cold, I'm glad Nate only had snowshoes and I had my skis/skins to keep us on a level playing field. I don't think I could keep up with him otherwise.

Every time I look at the Wizard's Blog I wish I really knew how to take photos--mine pale in comparison. All well. Perhaps with more practice. On to the photos:

Utah's Best Rider prepping for the down.


Run #1. A poor action shot.



Run #2.


One more time up on flip-flops.


Run #3.

Dawn Patrol w/Nate from Tom Guernessy on Vimeo.

Just like last time, one car in the lot when we were ready to leave. Beautiful.