Another grant!

The Monarchist's Cookbook received a Mountain Fellowship grant! Thanks to the American Alpine Club, Eric Dalzell, Matt Van Biene, Mike Pond, and I are headed to the BC Coast Mountains on July 17th. In the meantime, there's lots and lots of training and preparation. Dehydrating food, building finger strength, and regaining ankle flexibility. Who knew rehydrated curry could be so delicious?! As our departure date looms closer, the stoke builds. We are all psyched for our project. Many thanks to John Scurlock for the pictures provided of the route. I encourage you to check out his website at http://www.pbase.com/nolock The photos here are incredible! Whether you are snooping around for a new line, or simply need to wade forehead deep in alpine beauty from a desk chair, John's got you covered. Also, check out the fabulous AAC at www.americanalpineclub.org They've taken good care of climbers for a long time, and I'm honored and grateful to be among the grant recipients of 2009. They do a lot for the climbing community beyond funding expeditions. Enough shameless plugs for now. I'm headed for the hills.

McNeill Nott Award

I was recently awarded the McNeill-Nott Award from the American Alpine Club and Mountain Hardwear.  This grant will fund a trip to the Northern BC Coast Mountains near Bella Coola.  Mike Pond, Matt Van Biene, Eric Dalzell, and I will attempt the first ascent of a rock and snow ridge.  Our plan is to head in mid July, and be home sometime in the first few days of August.  We get to fly into our basecamp too!  Should be fun!  A bigger, nicer helicopter for passenger travel than Mountain Rescue, too.  We'll even get seats in this bird!  Oooh!  Deeeluxe.

Red Jacket

Since my freshman year in High School when I saw my friend and mentor Seth wearing a red Seattle Mountain Rescue softshell jacket, I've deemed that the epitome of awesomeness.  And I hoped that maybe, just maybe, at some point in my life that I too would be awesome enough to earn a red jacket.  That day came yesterday.  At 18, I was admitted into the "boys club", as the fourth female.  The age requirement was, and still is 21.  I'm not sure how that worked, since every other member has to fight for entrance, and the other females tell stories of how ridiculous the admission process was for them.  I just sent in my resume with the forms, said I was an EMT, and called back every few weeks to check on my application.  No raking over the coals at board meetings, and no bitterness that I can tell.  I really don't know what changed their minds about admitting a woman, and I'll never be able to tell you why they let me in three years earlier  than their bylaws allow.  But I'm super grateful.  And so far it's been a blessing.  Right as politics are getting ugly in KCESAR, SMR offers me another roster to sign in on, even on the same missions.   Also, one must be a member for one year, and fulfill a minimum number of missions, and "prove their probationary worth".  After that one year, the board members take a vote, and they deem you worthy or not of a red jacket.  I asked, used my recent grant award as a shameless bargaining ploy, and picked up my red jacket yesterday morning.  I had gone on the minumum mission number for the year too, but ony 3 months into my membership.  And now I'll be able to fly around in the Coast Mountains, throwing down FA's in a shiny candy apple red SMR jacket!

Ouray

The bitchin-est adventures so far has been my two months in Ouray, CO. I had applied for a scholarship to Chicks with Picks at Bree's suggestion, and I won, so that meant 3 days in Ouray. I had remembered something about an ice festival though, so I got set to do do both. I figured I should look up when the ice fest was, I thought it was pretty close, but it was three weeks away. I decided to go for both. I emailed Mike to see if he had any beta on where to camp out, and if there was enough to do outside of the ice park to merit a 3 week vacation. Turns out, he was going to be there for the winter, and offered me a place to stay. Perfect! We split rent on a two bedroom apartment right in town, a 15 minute walk from the ice park. Two awesome Scotts lived with us for the first three weeks. James and Finley are amazing climbers!! Fin and I snuck the Scottish flag into the ice festival and tied it on with rubber hair bands. The Chicks with Picks clinic was awesome too. I climbed with Kitty Calhoun! My whole stay in CO was inspiring and motivating. It seemed like everday, I met someone I'd read about. And every Wednesday night, the coolest kids in town met back at Mark and Tyler's house north of town for "family night". I'd always bring cookies, except for one week when I made pie. It caught on fire. But it turned out fine 'cause I just scraped the burned top layer off. It was still delicious. I ended up with strong arms and a lot of great stories. Next time we meet, I'll tell a few more.

Boot

I spent a good chunk of the fall as a cripple in a walking boot.  I was a terrible patient, a doctor's worse nightmare, and when they told me they were going to put a cast on my foot in three days, I figured that gave two and a half days to climb.  So I went to go do the NE col on Dragontail.  I was in such a world of hurt on the way in.  As we slogged up Asspounder Pass, I felt my ankle get weaker and weaker as it started to throb.  Not awesome.  Then I rolled a child sized block over my thigh, leaving a sweet goose-egg.  And then a storm blew in, with high enough winds that the spindrift from the top of D-tail that it was making a growling noise.  So we bailed.  But we didn't hike down right away.  Instead we played around on the uber lensed snow near the start of Hidden Col and Micah and Matt taught me how to place knifeblades.   And they scare the living daylights out of me.  Especially stacked shorty blades. Euggugug!!!!!! YUCK!  But it really opened my eyes to the potential protectability of micro cracks, and I'm psyched to practice aid this summer. Finally out of the boot, and on the mend too!!!!  Now I can focus on getting strong again!  Watch out!  I'm gonna rip it up this summer!  I'm trying to decide between getting a guiding job, or simply teaching a few weeks of rock climbing and enjoying a last few months of dirt-baggery before I have to head to school.  School will give me just shy of a whole week off every 2.5 weeks in addition to big winter, spring and summer vacations.  I'll still have plenty of time to go climbing.  But I'll just have to decide how much of my summer I want to spend working.  It really is a tough choice!  A guiding company is going to want my whole summer, but it pays fairly well, especially with a WEMT cert, but I'd get guides training and a whole bunch of experience.  On the flip side though, I could teach three 5 day classes from 6/22-7/10,  and spend the rest of the summer playing.  I'm kinda leaning towards the latter since I can always settle down, but can't always play.  I think I'll take the opportunity for personal climbing.  I've already got a pretty good tick list going: Bugaboos (take two), Monarch Ice Field (BC Coast Range), Pickets, Boston Basin, Ranier (an embarrasing gap in my resume), and of course oodles of cragging and picnicing in Squamish, North Bend, Washington Pass, Darrington, and the Worth.  Which kind of squeezes work to the sidelines, making guiding kinda hard. Oh well, we'll see.  

Yosemite

Yehaw... The Valley! I left for Yosemite the day after I got back from the Bugaboos, September 14th. I drove down with my Mom, who flew back home out of Santa Clara, where I picked up my older brother, Kevin, for a weekend of climbing. I was dog tired, and still jazzed about the wild, free alpine, so driving into Yosemite was a real shock. There were no campsites left, and the park rangers were out patrolling, so we drove back out of the Valley, just to find a place to sleep. The next day, we wandered around, got aquainted ourselves with the valley proper, and picked up groceries. That night, Camp 4 was still full. The next day, we headed over early enough, and got a site. Then we went and climbed Sunny Side Bench, a short 5.4 with a looong walk off. Then we headed back to camp and barbequed some kosher dogs and bagels. The next day, Kevin had to head back to school, so we drove back, and spent the night at his dorm suite. The next morning, I hit the road back to Camp 4. I met up with some friends a few days later, and climbed a few days with them. Then I pinched a nerve in my foot on Sloth Wall, and ended up nearly crippled until I left for home on the 30th. Still got in a bit of aiding, and a lot of litter clean up with the Yosemite Facelift. The slideshows at night were fantastic! I saw a lot of big names... Which is cool- it is sooo motivating to be near people who get after it hard. Oh, and I befriended a lizard. So, in a nutshell, I was nearly skunked by a foot injury... Pretty much the story of my life right now.

The Bugaboos!!

Ever since Matt told me about his trip to the Bugaboos in May, I'd been itching to check it out. Steep, pristine alpine granite calls climbers like dinner bells call cowboys. I made up my mind that I'd go the first two weeks of December. I just needed to find a partner. I started by asking around work... Matt and Eric seemed pretty jazzed about the whole idea. Eric dropped off the face of the earth though, and I didn't hear from him all summer. Matt on the other hand, is fairly dependable, so we sorted out exact dates, and planned it out. Then Climbing did an article on the Needles down in California, and pretty soon, Matt didn't want anything to do with the Bugaboos. Yikes! That was a week before I wanted to leave! So I called Max, my trusty partner on Ingalls. A wild coincidence, the two weeks I had off for the trip happened to align perfectly with the time he had taken off to get prepped for school. Parfait!! So Max was in. I had my wisdom teeth pulled 5 days before we left, had helo-hoist training the next day, helped a friend move the next, worked the next two, and hit the road September 2nd. My parents had fixed us a huge dinner, so we didn't get on the road until almost 9. We drove almost to border crossing in Idaho, stopped at around 3 am, slept until sunrise in a gas station parking lot, and hit the road again. Once we were at the trail head, we wrapped the car in chicken wire, logs, and rocks... it looked like a demilitarized zone... no critter was getting past it! NO WAY, NO HOW! It took everything I had just to get my pack on... but we hit the trail. On the way in, we stopped at the Kain Hut to fix dinner. A storm blew threw as we ate... we lucked out! With the fresh snow, the trail was a little obscured, though, and we wandered until midnight at the elevation we expected to find Applebee at, with no luck. Finally, exhausted, we bivvied on a boulder, and shivered through a clear night. I woke up first, and low and behold, the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the Applebee toilet. It was a little embarrassing!! We were only a few hundred yards from where we wanted to be!! So we threw our packs together, and stumbled over. We found an awesome campsite, well protected from the wind, and right next to the critter boxes and gear tree. The weather looked like it was holding, and the baro pressure looked decent, so we made up day packs and headed up to the Bugaboo Snowpatch Couloir to do a little bit of Pigeon Spire recon. We made it 80% up the col before we found the bergshrund. It was 5 or 6 feet wide, and went all the way from Snowpatch to Bugaboo. Plus, the conditions weren't hot- it was 2' of packing peanuts consistency dry snow over black ice. No Bueno. With no snow or ice pro, we decided it was a bad idea and started back down. The wind had really started to pick up, though, and a heavy crust started to form. In the 3o minutes it took to descend the col, it went from blower snow, to thin, hardly noticeable crust, to breakable crust, to sometimes breakable crust. When we got down to the moraine, the weather system was still a ways out, and with the climbing day spent, we sat down, told stories, had an epic snowball fight, and then wandered back to camp for dinner. Day three we sat in the tent and waited out the system that had blown in the day before. Day four looked a lot like day three, but I pulled out Battleship, and we sharpened our elementary level "strategery". Day 5 was spent in the same fashion, day 6 we did a little bit of cragging around the camp. Day 7 we did McTech Arete, Day 8 we sat out weather. Day 9 we fired Westside story, and day 10 we went for Lion's Way with Tom and Micah. Then we headed out. The walk out seemed to take forever, and the packs seemed to weigh just as much as they did going in. Returning to the car was bittersweet. It had been such a great trip. We drove most of the way home, stopped for the night, and made it the rest of the way back the next morning, just in time for me to shower and run off to a friends wedding, with a hot peach cobbler for the potluck in one hand, and garden gnomes as a wedding gift in the other.