So I spent the weekend in Durango visiting Janea and Jon, and participating in the annual Durango handball tournament. Once again, I entered into the C singles bracket and also played with Dick as my doubles partner. However, unlike in Albuquerque last year, we entered B doubles rather than C. Unfortunately, Dick was sick for the week leading up to the tournament and I was climbing Rainier... so we were both pretty worked before we even started.

Anyway, I lost my first match 21-20, 21-10 to a guy who I probably could have beaten if I were fresh, but it would have been close (unlike last year, where I hurt my elbow and lost to a guy who sucked). The fact that the first game was 21-20 is significant, since it was obviously very close despite my being entirely winded. Oh well. It was a single elimination bracket, so I was out of C singles.

The doubles match was entirely weird. First of all, it was in the B bracket, so I expected everyone to be better than me. Unfortunately, the scheduling sucked and Dick ended up with a singles match immediately before our doubles match, so he was totally beat when we started. Our opponents consisted of a husband and wife team, and I had seen them player earlier and thought that we might be able to put up good competition for them if we were fresh. But given that we were both beat, I wasn't too hopeful. Then, in a turn that made no sense to me at all, the other team was allowed to substitute a player so that the husband could rest up for a later singles match. Eh? Yeah, so anyway the original opponent guy was replaced by a total ringer. So... we stood no chance. 21-7, 21-1. Yowch.

First of all, here are 80 or so pictures from the Rainier trip. I've put captions on the first bunch... hopefully I'll get around to doing the rest as well.

Since I haven't yet written a trip report, I'll bring you up to speed by mentioning that after we climbed to Camp Muir we befriended one of the local climbing rangers who turned out to be 100% awesome and agreed to climb with us to the summit once the weather stopped being complete crap. So that's who this Peter is that you see in so many of the pictures.

And speaking of Peter, he put us in the official Rainier Route Conditions blog.

We spent two hours at the summit, partly because the weather was awesome, but also partly because there are ice caves in the crater and also a geocache. Turns out Peter is into geocaching, so this was an easy sell. But how sweet is a single event that combines caving, mountaineering, and geocaching!? If only we had launched a rocket and maybe done some FPGA design while up there... Climb of the nerds indeed.

I'm off to Durango tomorrow for my second ever handball tournament. And let me tell you... I am going to suck because right now I feel like my toes might just come off. And my calves aren't too happy either. That, and I haven't played in the last two months as a result of all the mountaineering training. But whatever. Staying with a couple of local caving buddies there and hopefully will learn a few things about handball. Back Sunday.

Photos and commentary coming soon.

That's the gear I'll be hauling up Rainier this weekend. Actually, some of it is already in Seattle (I dropped it off when I was there for Dan's wedding). Not pictured are my boots, camelback, crampons, and crampon bag. I haven't weighed it all yet, but I think all told we're talking about 65 pounds or so.

Conditions on the Disappointment Cleaver route continue to be sub-optimal with most of the snow bridges rotted out in last week's extreme heat. Now the weather has turned to constant storms, though the temperatures are still above freezing even at the summit. Camp Muir at 10,000' is not expected to drop below freezing, even at night, for the entire time we're going to be there. So while we probably won't be all that cold on this trip, we may have issues with terrain. But whatever we encounter, I've probably got the gear for it sitting in that pile somewhere.

So the Seattle area has been experiencing extremely high temperatures for the last few weeks, and it's melting the glaciers on Rainier at an astounding rate. The snow pack is disappearing quick to reveal the crevassed glaciers beneath, and that makes getting to the top much more challenging.

This is the top of Disappointment Cleaver and a bit of the Emmons Glacier, which Laura and I will have to cross Sunday morning, in the dark. Sweet...

So if you go to images.google.com and search for los alamos nerd, you get a picture of me. In the #2 slot is a picture of a caterpillar I took. The next recognizable person is the 8th wonder of the world, Ed Grothus. Feynman comes in at #4.

I'm in Tucson, Arizona, it's mid July, the temperature outside is 105° F, and I just bought some down pants. The sales people looked at me like I was insane (but then why do they stock them?)

Actually, now that I'm back in my hotel writing this... it appears to be hailing. I don't understand.

Went to the Titan Missile Museum today, which was pretty interesting. Bought a baggie of what was labled "Uranium marbles" in the gift shop. They're clear, so at best they might have some trace ²³⁸U. When I get back to work next week, I'll put the gear on them and see what we're actually looking at here. For $2.95, my guess is.. not much.

The conference wrapped up this morning, I leave Saturday morning. I spend tonight and tomorrow doing some (more) county highpointing and geocaching. These are things that must be done, you see. I have no say in the matter.

We managed to get Dan successfully wed without a hitch. The ceremony was pleasantly short, the weather was great, and the whole place was full of LANL and Microsoft geeks, which I found very agreeable. Somehow I only took two pictures during my entire visit, one of which didn't come out well. So... here's the other one:

Knee-deep in Lake Washington, Dan sings Layla a song.

Now I've flown from Seattle to Phoenix, and it was one of the most scenic flights I've ever taken. It started with a flyby of the west side of Rainier. Unfortunately, you can't see the route I'll be climbing in a couple weeks:

The west side of Mount Rainier, rising above the clouds..

Shortly afterwards, we flew right over the summit of Mt. Hood, and I could see a single rope team making their way down from the summit. Later, we flew over the Grand Canyon, though the lighting angle there was sub-optimal.

The Phoenix airport still gets huge kudos for having free wireless... I'm waiting for my flight to Tucson. That is all.

Have arrived in Seattle, got upgraded to first class for both legs of the flight, successfully made it to Laura's parents' place, despite road construction which made their driving directions impossible. Her parents rock; we had a great time hanging out this evening. I fixed their wireless router, so now I have access to the various internets while here. Granted, I will be spending approximately zero time here after tonight... but you get this exciting update.

I was on the wrong side of the plane to get a clear shot of Rainier from the air. Looking across all the other people to see out the other side of the plane, I saw a pointy mountain sticking out from the surrounding plain an assumed that to be it. I decided it didn't look too bad, though I didn't have that clear of a view. Then, I noticed that the next few windows forward were all totally eclipsed by a massive tower of rock that extended beyond the altitude of the plane. Rainier is unbelievably massive. It defines bigness.

Once the plane landed, I snapped this shot as we turned around to taxi:

Bear in mind that this is probably at least 50 miles from the mountain; when flying right past it, it was infinitely more loom-y. 13,200' of prominence is a LOT.

I'm back from a superb mountaineering/backpacking trip. Laura, Minesh, Laura's summer student Andy, and I spent four days up in Chicago Basin climbing 14ers and hangin' out with mountain goats.

Andy walking towards Sunlight and Windom

The trip was pretty epic in that Andy and I managed to climb 3.5 fourteeners (Eolus, Windom, and Sunshine; North Eolus doesn't really count) in two days, after having packed heavy camp packs in six miles and 3,000' of gain. It was the most physical effort I've ever undertaken in such a short period of time; the 10,300' of gross elevation gain beats my previous record (6,300' on Kit Carson) by quite a bit. We hiked a total of 28 miles. We also rode the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, which was interesting.

Anyway, I'm all kinds of sore now and I leave tomorrow to go make fun of Dan be Dan's best man.