People keep mentioning off hand today that Die Hard 4 was really really good. How is this possible? I mean... I liked the first one a lot, despite it probably not being the best of films. But two was so bad... and three was... worse, despite the SLJ and Jeremy Irons factors. I have this vision of the franchise being a flaming meteor of Bruckheimerian badness on a terminal collision course with a black hole of pure entertainment negation. I feel compelled to go home and replay the Die Hard 12 send-up from the old Ben Stiller show: "I don't know who you think you are, but I've got a hundred people out here, and they're covered in lettuce." "Vee vant zee christmas coupons."

Anyway, enough people whose opinions I trust have told me that it is good that I'll have to go see it now. But I swear if its bad, I will curse you all. With voodoo. And... hexology.

For the next month, I will be largely... elsewhere. I leave tomorrow night and drive up to Durango with Minesh and Laura, where we'll be spending the night at the house of a caver friend of mine. In the morning, we're taking the Durango & Silverton narrow gauge railroad up to Needleton. From there, we hike up into the Chicago Basin for four days of backpacking. This'll be the longest backpacking trip I've ever taken, and the last mountain climbing I'll get to do with Laura before we climb Rainier at the end of the month. We'll hike back out and catch the train on the 4th, go back to Durango, and drive back home.

Once back at home, I'll just have time to take a shower, unload my mountaineering gear, and load up my pre-packed suitcase for the following 10 days. I then drive down to Albuquerque and spend the night at Nina's. On the 5th, I catch a plane to Seattle to go be in Dan's wedding. From Seattle, I fly straight to Tucson for the INMM conference. I return home on the 14th, but only for four days. Then it's off to Rainier until the 26th. I should have email access while at INMM, between the 8th and 14th of July, and for the short stint I do at home between the 15th and 19th. Other than that, I'll be largely incommunicado.

So last weekend I climbed Blanca and Ellingwood solo. This was the fourth time I had attempted to climb these mountains, and I was starting to think that they were cursed. The first time, one of the climbing team got hypothermic on the way up and we had to retreat. The second time, I got a stress fracture in my foot early on in the hike and retreated. The third time I had car trouble and never even made it to the mountain. This time, however, I made it.

For starters, I drove my Tacoma considerably farther than I had driven previously. I was able to park at about 9,670' and only stopped there because there was a very attractive pull-out and I wasn't sure whether I would run into an impassable obstacle before the next one. After hiking the road further ahead, I found that I definitely could have driven as far as Jaws 1, and I marked the last pullout before this meter-high rock bench for future knowledge. Anyway, I made the hike up to Como Lake in very good time, and continued on to the next set of lakes, called Blue Lakes, which are just above treeline. As I arrived there, an afternoon storm set in and I started getting hailed on, so I set up my bivy next to the trail and hunkered down for the duration of the short storm.

Then came... the marmots. I made the mistake of urinating nearby, and it turns out that 1) marmots can smell urine from a mile away and 2) they love it. It seems that every marmot in the valley was instantly attracted to my campsite and they all wanted their chance to eat some of the dirt that I had peed in. This put them about 10' from my bivy sack and all my gear, and those that weren't eating piss-dirt decided to have a go at my bivy, ice axe leash, boots, and the seat of my pants (not kidding... one bit me in the butt while I was cooking dinner). I basically had to be constantly vigilant because at any given time, at least one marmot would be trying to eat something I owned. It made for a very irritating evening.

Anyway, after about 8:30 when it had gotten pretty dark, the marmots wandered off and went to bed, so I was able to go get some water from the nearby stream and go to sleep. When I got up at 4, the marmots were still absent, but I was worried that they would probably destroy all my stuff while I was climbing. I had two choices: carry everything with me (~50 pounds) to the summit and back, or stash my campsite in a tree. Marmots can't climb worth a damn, so I just put everything inside my bivy and tied it up in a tree. I was on trail by 5am just as it was getting light.

The hike took a long time because I had to cross some steep hard snow without crampons, which made for slow going. Also, the upper 1,500' or so was on loose talus, which means tall steps onto shifting boulders and sore hips. Anyway, I made it to the top and was the first person up for the day. I could see a pair of people just getting to the summit of Little Bear as I ate a sandwich, and I was eventually joined by two climbers from Boulder. The weather was perfect. It felt really good to finally have made it to this summit which had eluded me for so long. And, of course, the list-ticker in me was pleased; this is a triple county highpoint, the highpoint of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the fifth-highest point in Colorado, and an ultra-prominent peak with over 5,000' of topographic prominence.

I made my way back down the summit ridge to the connecting saddle with Ellingwood. My legs were feeling a little shaky at this point, and the class 3 ridge seemed a bit much. So I dropped down below the cliffy upper ridge to Ellingwood and ascended the great snow slope that went all the way to the top. The snow was really steep, I'd estimate over 50 degrees in places, but it was getting soft in the morning sun so it was no problem with just an ice axe. The climbers from Boulder hadn't brought axes and didn't follow me to Ellingwood, so I had the summit to myself. I managed to fill my camera pocket entirely with snow when one of my footholds gave way and I slid a few feet, so I didn't get any pictures from the summit. I let my camera dry out on the way down. A trio of good, long glissades got me down to Crater Lake in short order. I actually caught up to the Boulder guys on the way down because I was able to take the direct route on snow at 20mph or so while they had to negotiate the loose talus the whole way down. I got back to camp at noon.

Much to my relief, the weather held off and the marmots couldn't reach my stuff in the tree. I took a break back at camp, purified some more water, and read some of Isaac Asimov's "The Naked Sun." I had the option of staying another night and climbing Little Bear in the morning, but I didn't relish the idea of fending off marmots for the next 8 hours and I was feeling pretty beat, so I packed up camp and headed out. I was at my truck by three.

So the short/funny version of this weekend's trip report goes like this: We bailed on Wetterhorn Peak (14,014') about 700' shy of the summit due to exhaustion on the part of Minesh and Laura, while a nun in full habit passed us and summitted. I'm not kidding.

I've been pushing us for a really aggressive training regimen for Rainier because I felt that I needed a lot of physical conditioning to pull it off. Unfortunately, this left Minesh and Laura somewhat overwhelmed with trips and feeling constantly exhausted. When we got up onto the final summit ridge and were faced with 700' of rock scramble and some exposed class 3 terrain, they felt too exhausted to safely summit so we turned back. I didn't get a picture of the nun, but she made it all the way up through very soft snow wearing a full habit, dress and all (plus the... hat thing, I dunno), and light tennis shoes. She was accompanied by her sister, who was wearing jeans and tennis shoes, and their father, who looked like he was getting his ass handed to him by his daughters. I guess nuns must work out a lot or something. Especially considering they had Nebraska plates.

The real bummer of the trip is that Minesh has now decided to drop out of the Rainier bid, so there's going to be some discussion of what happens next.

Laura and I did complete a very high-angle glissade, and I took a video of it:

The video doesn't really convey the scale of this drop, the angle, or the speed at which I was going. It was about 350' of drop at 40° in about 20 seconds, and my voice makes it sound like I needed some clean shorts or something. Moving that fast is pretty scary. And whenever my boots made contact with the snow, a shower of wet snow went everywhere, including all over my face and the camera; so for a lot of this, I couldn't see a thing. Anyway, it was a fun glissade in perfect snow. Unfortunately, when I turned the camera around at the end to show all the snow covering my face, I accidentally hit the stop button so you can't really tell the extent of it and you don't get to see the pan I made showing the route from below. Anyway, let's see you do that in a habit, nun...

It was a long night last night. Immediately after work, Minesh, Laura, two of Laura's summer students, and I drove up to the ski area and hiked up the Mother Lift route to Pajarito's summit as Rainier Training Climb #5. On the way back from Pajarito, I got a call from one of the El Valle Astronomers asking if I could help out with a dark night for 40 high school kids that night. So I drove straight to El RIto, grabbing fast food on the way in order to make it in time for sunset.

Dan and Lee were there with their 17" Dobsonians, and I ran the 16" SCT in the dome. The sky was clear up until sunset, then it clouded up pretty badly. The theme of the evening was trying to get the scopes pointed quickly enough that the object was visible by a few kids before it went behind a cloud again. It was a pain, and the Dobs had a huge advantage in this sort of environment, but I still managed to pull off good views of Venus, Saturn, Jupiter & moons, the great globular cluster in Hercules, the Whirlpool Galaxy, and the Sombrero Galaxy. Of the 40 kids, about half of them didn't really care. But the other half were really into it and they had a great time. Eventually, their teachers had to pull them away from the scopes and leave at about 11:30pm. Of course, the sky cleared up completely as soon as they were all gone.

Anyway, it was great to see kids getting excited about science, etc. And of course there were the odd comments that only high school kids can make:

* after looking at M13, a giant globular cluster: "Can we send a monkey there?"
* after looking at Venus: "I thought we were going to look at space."
* "Do you think we will be dead in 100 years?" (after a clarifying discussion, it turns out he was asking about global warming.)
* "We're rappers; you should pick up our album next time you're in Espanola." This was followed by a prolonged discussion between the four "members" of the "crew" as to what their group's name was.

SPACE!!

Hah this is pretty good... watch this video of Bush greeting people in Albania. At the 0:50 mark, he clearly has a watch on his left arm. By 1:03, it is definitely gone. So one of those people grabbing his arms totally lifted his watch. And right in front of a secret service agent. Nice lift.

Update: Nevermind. Damn, I liked the yoink scenario better than reality.

A few quick videos from this weekend. First up, Laura demonstrates the easy way to get down a mountain. This is the best reason to climb in the early season.

Next is the view from the summit, and the three of us goofing off on top.

And here's a video of the fox we saw on Uncompahgre.

Last one: the intersection of 4WD access road and some snow melt.

This weekend my coworker Minesh, his wife Laura, and I climbed a couple of Colorado 14ers as training for a future climb of Mount Rainier. The first peak we climbed was one I had attempted before and failed, Handies Peak (14,048'). This time I succeeded, as did Minesh and Laura. We got started at about 6:30, were on the summit by 11, and back at camp before 2. Click on the photo for a gallery from the climb.

After the climb, we had lunch at Poker Alice in Lake City then drove up the fun 4WD road to the trailhead for Uncompahgre Peak. This mountain was the second 14er I ever climbed, back in June of 2004 with Robin. This reclimb marks only the third mountain I've ever climbed more than once (after Pajarito and Cabezon). We got to bed really early and were able to get up at 4:30 to start, though Minesh wasn't feeling well so we didn't get on trail until 6. We had to move slowly on account of Minesh's nausea, and he ended up bailing about a third of the way up the main snow slope before the summit block. Laura and I reached the summit just before 11. For some reason, I was feeling really strong on this hike. Maybe it was all that sunflower oil I accidentally dumped into my Mountain House the night before, making it a ~1000 calorie meal.

Click on the photo of Laura on the summit block to see the gallery. Scroll past all the photos from my previous trip to find the new ones.

Here's some random photos to keep you satiated over the weekend. First up is a picture of Mr. Fou hugging a bookmark that has a picture of a cat hugging a bear on it:

The next one falls into "weird things I found at the supermarket" category:

A solution of what? Unclear. And why does the barcode imply that this is turkey? Anyway, next up is a picture of East Pecos Baldy, taken last weekend during Rainier Training Climb #2.

Finally, one more Engrish-esque item... the el-cheapo HDMI cable I bought recently. You can pay $60-$100 for a cable like this at Best Buy, or you can buy them from Amazon for $2.73.

The only difference is that the cheap one comes with awesome stuff on the packaging like these gems:

• HDMI CABLE V1.2 with bright gold plated. I'm not sure what the V1.2 is all about... perhaps this means that the cable supports version 1.2 of the HDMI specification? But if so, that's not unlike the "Windows 95-compatible" power strip I found at Best Buy once. But at least it includes bright gold plated; I loves me some bright gold plated.
  
• Supports up to 720p and 1080p. OK... well since 1080p is more than 720p... that's sort of like saying that my truck can tow up to 1000 and 2000 pounds. Sweet. On the back of the package they go into a bit more detail: "For video, 720p, 1080i, 1080p (next highest resolution)." Well. There it is, then.
  
• Triple copper shielding to reduce interference, radio like frequency. It's those radio-like frequencies that really get you.
  
• HDMI ready device can auto detect the best viewing format for Your display. For movie, often it's 16:9 and for the standard viewing, it's 4:3. Pave the mat, anyone?
  

Anyway, enough of that. Minesh, Laura, and I will be leaving for Rainier Training Climb #3 here in a bit; this weekend's targets include Colorado Fourteeners Handies and Wetterhorn.

Remember when I made a post a couple of years back about how the satellite imagery of Washington D.C. used by Google Maps included some obviously pixelated-out bits, specifically the White House roof, the roofs of the buildings to either side of it, the entire capitol mall, and the Naval Observatory? I just happened to be looking at some of the same imagery today on Google Maps and noticed some changes have been implemented. In fact, all of the previously-obscured areas are now crystal-clear with the exception of the Naval Observatory. I doubt that Cheney's house has anything special going on that makes it more deserving of special security treatment... so my only conclusion is that they've done some Photoshop action on whatever it was that needed obscuring on the White House, neighboring buildings, and the capitol mall. I hope it's laser turrets. Or maybe the Super Monkey Collider.