Day 2: Fruita!!!

The second day of our journey from Denver to Salt Lake, Jeff and I drove through most all of Colorado before hitting Fruita, our planed stop for the day. Most of the mountains still had tons of snow up high so we were headed to the desert scene to get our mountain bike on.

Fruita was pretty exciting because there was a general dinosaur thing... something about fossils... I was excited.



We headed to the book cliffs to get our bike on. These trails were the friggin bomb. Fast smooth delicious singletrack. This was called Joe's Ridge:



DELICIOUS.

We climbed for another lap and road the more famous trail called Zippity-Doo-Da. Indeed. I enjoyed it.



(this picture is worthy of being bigger.... so fast and fun!)

After the ride we headed to Moab and after hunting for a hotel for a while finally crashed...

So far behind...

I'm unbelievably far behind on updating this blog. Quite a bit has happened in the past couple of months. I road-tripped out here to Seattle mountain biking along the way with Jeff, fought to find an apartment, started work, traveled to China, struggled to find a long-term apartment (I move tomorrow), and am finally settling into the groove of things around Seattle.

I thought I'd share some pictures from the road trip across... perhaps I'll bring you up to date slowly but surely.

I picked Jeff up in the Denver airport after two days of traveling through the big flat part of the middle of the US. It was good to hit Denver. We rallied to Loveland pass:



So much snow... so little time. I wish we could have hung out here longer... but it was off to Dillon.



This beach in Dillon was walking distance from our hotel. Bling bling. We were both exhausted from long days of travel (Jeff on a plane, me in the auto) so we crashed early. Ok, maybe we went to some bars first... but.... yeah.

Epic Update

My blog needs a pretty serious update... A lot has changed since the last time around.

I had a birthday! Woohoo! Now I'm a stunning 22. Schnazy, but not much different.

I got a job! And it's the one that I really wanted! I'll be moving to Seattle towards the end of the month. I'm pretty pumped about the position and hopefully it goes well.

I bought a new car! Kind of! Went to the dealer and negotiated prices today, they're going to find one in the color I want (hopefully). It's a VW Jetta.

That's pretty much the short story of whatsup with me. For now, I'm still in Cincinnati and probably will be until the weekend when I'll be going back up to Sandy Pond. Then I'll come back for a couple days before I take off for Seattle... probably around the 19th.

Woohoo!

Comin' Home

Life's rad.

See all you Cincinnatians tomorrow. Applebees? mmmhmmm!

Gradumicated

College is done... no more classes, exams, etc, etc.

Senior week was a week ago and it was a high quality week of saying goodbye to good friends and old places...

Graduation was a bunch of fun and it's probably time to move on.

We had graduation rehearsal in the field house and they had a really entertaining administrator (seriously) talk about how it was going to go down. In a comical way he explained that we were officially in the real world upon finishing the walk across the stage. At which point someone (presumably intoxicated) yelled "F@%#".... yeah, it's a whole new game now.

I'll be back in Cincinnati after Memorial Day and hopefully I'll see a lot of you there!

Na na na naaaaaaaaa

hey hey heeeeeeeeey

Goodbye

classes.

Yesterday was my last day of classes and I'm pretty stoked to be done. Since I don't have plans to head to grad school, this may be the end of rigidly structured learning for quite a while. I know that I'm ready for a break. Of course, I've still got a couple of exams and final projects to knock out.

Over the weekend I went kayaking with a bunch of Outing Clubbers. It was West Fest which is the bi-annual release of the West River in Jamaica, Vermont (yes, Jamaica!). We did the lower section which is fun Class II rapids and where one year ago I swam in an eddy and have gotten (and given myself) crap about it ever since. I managed to figure out the eddy turn a bit better and conquered the eddy. BUT! It did manage to own two of the beginners on our trip. I knew that thing was tricky.

Good times, although I wish I was shorter and felt more comfortable in teeny whitewater kayaks. Then again, being tall is good times.

No more classes! Woot!

Goodbye Stratton Hello Chinese food

This weekend marked the end of ski season up at Stratton. I've had a pass there for a three years now and it has been a bit of a love-hate relationship. With graduation coming quickly and ambiguity of the plans after that, it'll probably be a while before I get back.

Last year Jeff, Scott D, and myself started a tradition where on the last day of the season we all actually spent money on the WaffleHaus waffles at the base. Normally we're dirt bags and bring PB&J and granola bars, but on the last day of the season, you've gotta go huge and after being taunted by the waffle smell all year long, it's about time.

Sadly, the WaffleHaus wasn't even open this weekend! Tragedy ensued until we realized that the tradition was only 1 year old anyway. Fagetaboutit.

Instead we went for some cheeseburgers and brews. Goodbye Stratton, it's been rad.



On Sunday I decided I should take up a culinary adventure. I know how to cook stereotypical staple meals from a bunch of different cultures: Spaghetti, Burgers, Tacos, etc. But I haven't really learned how to cook anything Asian. I decided to get after some sesame chicken (it looked more or less the easiest). I was pretty stoked when I discovered the 1.5 lbs of chicken I cooked would require half a cup of sugar. That's a lot of sugar.



It turned out really well, and I'll definitely be cooking it again. I forgot pineapples and cashews so maybe those will get thrown in next time.

Have a good one!

Hey look it's Spriummer?

Naturally, I've gotten behind with my blogging again...

I sprained my ankle two weeks ago in a Gunther FC soccer game. Injuries suck and time off sports/outdoors stuff is rough on me. I've been fidgety. With the onset of the end of in-bounds season this weekend, I went to the health center to make sure nothing was truly out of wack. They told me to stay off it for five to six weeks and that they often saw people back in after getting aggressive too early. I think see saw the fidget in my eyes. I went skiing today.



One of those is not like the rest. Ewwwwwwww feet! Note the Burger King crown cuz I rock!

Okemo today was pretty darn fun. The temperatures made it up to a blistering 70 degrees and I skied in shorts and a t-shirt all day = wicked fun. It's sad that the snow is melting, but I enjoy just racing around in the soft spring snow. More like summer snow.



Hurray Shorts!



Skiiable? Sketchy? Oh yeah.

Badasses

Today I stumbled across an article about speed climber Rolando Garibotti who recently completed the Grand Traverse in a stunning 6 hours and 49 minutes. The Grand Traverse climbs 10 peaks in Grand Teton National Park; it usually takes mortal 2 or 3 days to climb to the top of ONE of these peaks. This man is clearly badass and I love the description of the end of his day:

"Garibotti soon strolled into the Exum office near the south shore of Jenny Lake carrying two ice cream bars, two bottles of Gatorade and a can of Red Bull energy drink in his arms. "He showed up like he was going to work," said Exum office worker Cyndy Hargis. "He didn't even look tired."

Badass.

I also admire him for his perspective on things:

"I don't view [the record] as something particularly special," he said. "Anyone can walk up to Amphitheater Lake for the first time and have the same richness of experience."

and

"The time really doesn't matter. The fun exercise that day was searching within me for everything there was and making sure it all got out."

So true! Jea! Go outside! Full article: http://www.exumguides.com/news/garibotti2.shtml



Some of the peaks in the Grand Traverse (I think, this is as close as I got )

I also saw the end of Crocodile Dundee II today and confirmed that Dundee is pure badass too. I wish he had more of a TV show so perhaps he could have gained the prominence of Chuck Norris.

Snowy Moss!

Kind of feeling lazy today, so this is brief. I was in Seattle a while ago and enjoyed getting to know the town and Pacific NorthWest in general. I got to go on a hike with Taylor (a recent RPI grad) and some of his crew (which was pretty rad) and I'm amazed at how the moisture lets moss thrive even in winter. Is this cool or what?

Home and Hangin'

My trip out West went well and hopefully something will pop out of the opportunities I've had in the past couple of weeks. I'm home now and reasonably grumpy. I twisted an ankle in an intraural soccer game this week and wasn't able to go on a trip to Jay Peak in Northern Vermont. Quite a bummer, and it's been a quiet weekend.

On the other hand, a sprained ankle isn't too bad and it's healing quickly. And our soccer team (go Gunther!) rocked pretty hardcore.

A couple of weeks ago, I headed to the High Peaks with Jesse, Kyle, Nathan, and Ben. We wanted to climb both Cascade and Porter in the day. I dig spring in the mountains because there is still snow everywhere but you often get bluebird days like these.

After a couple hours of hiking, we made it to the top of Porter. We were pretty stoked (Ben captured this moment):



From the top of Porter you can see Cascade (Objective #2)



We back-tracked to the trail junction and worked our way up Cascade. While Porter isn't really above the tree-line, Cascade is. And it blows in a super windy kind of way.



I am superman!

Have a good one!

I'm a winner!

Crazy busy week. And now I'm out on the West Coast doing some interviews and what not... weeeeeeee.

Today I flew through Las Vegas. I'd never been there before and shouldn't have been as surprised as I was to see all the slot machines in the airport. I figured, why not and shelled out a WHOLE dollar for the experience and left with $1.25. That's 25% gain for all you mathematicians out there.

I'm a winner.

Hurray!

Happy Easter! And the Interconnect Tour.

Happy Easter! Mine has gone pretty well with church, hanging out, and then dinner at Eric/Scott/Adams'. The weather is super springy today and it was a good day to relax.

Midway through our Spring Break trip, Kate, Dad, and I checked out the Utah Interconnect tour. There's a bunch of different resorts in the Salt Lake City area and this tour goes in and out of six of them via some backcountry skiing and traversing.

We started off in Deer Valley, skiied into Park City, then over into the Big Cottonwood Canyon area which is home to Solitude and Brighton resorts. The ski into BCC was a little sketchy with some exciting road skiing:



One narrow strip of ice next to ski destroying pavement? Sounds good.

We were rewarded with some cool lines at Solitude. I skied the center most line in this picture with some other people from our group. If you look close you'll see a cliff band about 2/3 of the way down. One dude in our group fell above this and managed to stop himself before the cliffs but gave himself quite a scare. We had a group of Germans who would joke about it for the rest of the day: "jou are bery luchy to zurvive!"



Then we rolled to some beautiful sidecountry by Brighton... does this look good or what? A 15 minute hike took us to fresh snow and big smiles. We skied just to the looker's right of the line of trees/forest.



Finally, we worked over to Alta and Snowbird in Little Cottonwood Canyon. A couple more runs and we were exhausted for a day... quality!



Team Youmans represent.

Spring Break!

Last week I was out in Salt Lake City skiing with the family for Spring Break. I've had a really great ski season thus far and it was nice to just relax and chill with the family. I also had a chance to visit some friends from the summer and some of my old co-workers and I realized how much I liked Utah. Good times.

The skiing was sweet too! We didn't get much snow early in the week so we just skied around and had fun. I didn't take too many pictures, but here's a couple:



This was my favorite area of skiing all week; the Daly Chutes / Bowl area at Deer Valley. I skied five or six different lines off that face and enjoyed every last one of em. It's steep, fun, and not too long. Since most people at Deer Valley are more into groomers, this areas gets skied out late.



This is looking down into one of the chutes from the picture above. Mmmmmmm.

The last day we were there it started snowing like crazy. It was a sweet way to end the trip. We hustled out early and laid down fresh tracks all morning. Skiing powder is where it's at.



That's my Dad laying down new lines. We skied this tree shot three times before seeing another big group go in there. Heck ya!

We also took a day to ski the Interconnect Tour which is a guided trip which goes in-and-out of bounds across six different areas in a day... it was stellar and I've got more pictures of that I'll post later.

It's all your fault.

This post has neither ice nor snow in it. And for this reason, I am quite unhappy.

I left Troy on Sunday to go to a job interview in Rochester (went well). When I came back it was in the forties and getting ready to rain. The snow is disappearing like crazy (nearly all gone now) and I'm grumpy. I have decided to officially blame the people who were still in Troy and didn't believe in winter and Brittany whose snide snow remarks have had terrible consequences. It rained almost all day yesterday. Harumph. And now we're seeing avalanches on Mars. Seriously!? http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/03/03/mars.avalanche.ap/index.html. I left Troy for one day and now everything is going nuts.

In other news, I'm not often swayed by advertising and sad gimmicks, but several weeks ago I couldn't resist the attraction of the Labatt Blue Hockey helmet hat. It's fuzzy, warm and reminds me of beer and hockey. Hurray! I had to buy a 24 pack (which Jeff has mostly drank) to get the thing, but it was definitely worth it. I searched the internet for a pictures... but I can't find one anywhere... crazy. You'll just have to use your imagination.

Ice... not snow...

I managed to get out on two ice climbing trips in the last couple weeks. Pretty rad.

The first was up to a place called Pitchoff. It's a really fun little cliff where you can do lots of top-roping. We setup a couple of ropes and just had fun in the sunny weather.



That thar's the climbs. We're ready to rumble.

Vesna challenged us to try this pretty easy climb without ice axes... she went for it successfully and Pat followed.



There was also a mixed route (involves both rock and ice climbing) that Vesna and Pat managed to climb. It was pretty freaking hard looking and burly.



I enjoyed not destroying myself on the mixed stuff and enjoyed the good ice that we found at Pitchoff as compared to Cohoes. I feel like my climbing is getting better and this makes me pretty happy.

I was going to post about the other climbing... but I skied all day today and am pretty exhausted, I think I'll fall asleep instead. Goodnight.

Walking in the Woods with Big Sticks on My Feet

As a downhill skier, I've never really gotten the cross-country thing. I mean, why go slowly in the flats when you can haul on mountains?

This past weekend, I decided to give cross country skiing a proper attempt. I joined a crew of ROCers up to Prospect Mountain which is a genuine cross country area with grooming crews, etc. I must say, it was reasonably fun and my impression of the sport has improved.



We did a couple of different trails and even checked out a black diamond (shudder) trail. I am amazed at how little control there is on the downhill. I missed edges. But some of the moderate downhills and flats were fun to crank out the speed on.

A lot of us were first time skiers and we all managed to line up for a demolition derby style crash. This was truly epic.



Can't you feel the carnage? Noice.

Skiing Wednesday....

Was pretty great. I don't have class and the weather was calling for lots of snow north of Troy. Mike Chu was down for some skiing and we snagged some cheap tickets to Gore Mountain in the Adirondacks. I'd been wanting to checkout Gore for quite a while and they were supposed to get 6-10" of snow... noice!

Mike and I both had a great day. It seemed that we never stopped making fresh powder turns until it started snoraining around 1. We skied in the trees pretty much all day which was just great. We grabbed some lunch and did a couple more turns in the soaking wet snorain and then rolled home... Stellar day!



Gore had all kinds of little cliffs like this. Just the perfect size for me to work on and get better at huckin'. Lots of fun and soft landings.




Mike Chu laying it down in the woods....


Good weekend too! More to follow...

Drinking Tea and Climbing Mountains

Last week I struggled with a random version of the sniffles / cold dealy. I think I overworked myself with joy while watching the Giants win the Superbowl. I discovered the mass amounts of tea left in our apartment from the people who lived here before and discovered how convenient our tea kettle is. Mmm...

After ice climbing two weekends ago, the same group plus Jeff minus Vesna and Pat headed to the high peaks to climb Algonquin the second highest peak in New York State.



The trail passed by this rock formation on the way up. It was eery because of how black and white it looked (that picture is color).

The last half mile-ish before the summit is in the high alpine. You instantly go from hiking in snowy woods to harsh tree-less icy fun land.



There we are on the summit. Isn't the visibility awesome? The way up and down in the high alpine was pretty close to white-out conditions. There are big cairns (piles of rocks) to guide you up and down so it's sort of like connect the dots.



We did substantial butt-sliding on the way down. This was a very fun way to get down the mountain quickly...

Snow tonight! Woot!

Another Weekend....

And there was more climbing... we saw a bunch of rain/sleet last week so I wasn't all that enticed to go out skiing. Instead, we figured the wintery mix weather might have helped form some ice... right....

The plan was to climb at Plotterkill Falls. Upon hiking down to the stream that eventually becomes the Falls, the large amounts of water flowing was very disgruntling. The way streams work mean this water was probably... yup pouring over the ice on the falls. This climbing would have been QUITE unpleasant.

We rallied back to the cars and made a stop at Cohoes. It was amazing how much of that ice had actually dissapeared from last week... what's the deal?! For some reason, a different line had sort of come in, and we ended up climbing it:



Doesn't that look sketchy? The crux is right below where Pat is in this picture. That chandelier like thing isn't very solid and we destroyed quite a bit of ice there....

The ice was also covered in flowing water (although less than Plotterkill) and if it wasn't relatively warm, it would have been pretty freezing. Regardless, fun times and even a bit of a harder climb than last week, so good stuff.

Ice Climbing Cohoes

Last Friday, Pat, Mike, Jackie, and myself discovered that we all got out of class early enough to head outside for some quality ice climbing. The Cohoes area is situated right underneath Cohoes Falls which sort of create some big walls which develop ice when it's nice and cold. The ice was in but there's definitely room for more there... hopefully the cold weather keeps it growing! Pat took all these pictures (my camera is destroyed):



Mike getting up there. This was the route we climbed all day, there may have been another spot that could have had enough ice but we didn't have time to check it out.



Pat showing some belaying steeze with Cohoes Falls in the background.




I was supposed to take pictures of Jackie (Pat's girlfriend) when he was belaying. I found this highly entertaining.

Have a good weekend!

Phelps

Two weekends ago, I decided it was time to give Phelps Mountain in the Adirondack High Peaks another go. I last attempted this climb last May and failed to reach the summit... instead we tromped onwards to Mt. Marcy the highest peak in New York state (this is commonly known as the jump-forward plan, not the fall-back plan).

This time we wouldn't be thwarted by the draw of additional miles and big views and decided to stick with Phelps. A crew of six including myself, Thomas, Jeff, Andrew, Sarah, and Another Sarah headed out early. Andrew Calcutt took all the pictures:



Pretty soon we got to Marcy Dam. Those slides look deliciously ski-able with more snow but I know my avalanche knowledge isn't good enough to mess-around... but still....

Much of the path is the same as the way to Marcy, so it was all farmiliar and pretty fun. Eventually, we ran into some pretty steep ice and stopped to put crampons on. I love getting to use crampons because it makes everything feel adventurey. Eventually we reached the summit which was kind of clouded in, but still good.



Here we're showing off our crampon steeze while trying not to fall off the cliff.

We huddled off in the woods a bit to avoid the wind and ate some lunch before an uneventful and chill hike out. Jeff and I brought along surprise thermoses of hot chocolate. Much to my dismay, my hot chocolate was more resemblant of barely luke-warm chocolaty water. Still better than water? Probably.

It was a good day in the mountains! Now let's have some snow.... commmmon weather!

Hocking Hills Sweetness

Earlier during break, James, Grace, Rachel, Laura and I headed to Hocking Hills for a couple of days of hiking and hanging out (that'd be H&H which is distinct from R&R).

Grace, James, and I headed up first and did two quick hikes to Old Man's Cave and in Conkle's Hollow. We were all surprised at how much ice was hanging around in the ravines. Eventually, we got to a waterfall:



Which was pretty rad. The hiking was pretty cool and I thought the ice bubbly things were really neat:



We all headed back to the cabin and met up with Rachel and Laura for a couple more hikes. First we went to Cedar Falls which was pretty neat:



And we may, or may not, have gotten slightly lost at the end of this one... but eventually we made it to the big sand dune-ish radness of Cedar Cave. The acoustics there were pretty cool, but the light was getting low so we rolled back to the cabin pretty quickly.

Laura cooked a pretty stellar lasagna meal and we hung out and watched a movie... which I can't remember... The Promise? The Secret? For a chick flick it wasn't real bad. The board games came out and despite past failings, I ruled school at Apples to Apples (yes, I'm still proud of this). After a late night stroll (where we weren't attacked by axe murderers) we all headed to sleep.

In the morning, we ate a late breakfast and decided it was time to roll back to the Nati. The trip was pretty stellar and it was great to hang out with everybody!



We rock! Woot.

Whistler, eh?

This needs to be updated pretty badly huh?

Winter break was very good. Lots of good times seeing friends and family. Towards the end of break, my Dad and I flew out to Whistler, Canada for some stellar skiing. Whistler is the largest resort in North America and truly dwarfs other places. A lot of this has to do with the ridiculously huge, open alpine at the top of both Whistler and Blackcomb mountains:



All that terrain and you can go anywhere you want?!?! YES! You can see little skiers on a groomed path kind of in the center descending from the big notch known as the saddle. Dad and I skied through the saddle in the other direction. Our first day was spent cruising around the high alpine at Whistler.

Later that night it started snowing and would not stop until the end of the trip. Overall, we saw 113 cms (bout 44") of snow in four days... JEA!

With all the snow, the high alpine was closed for most of the rest of the trip (avalanche issues) so we skiied a lot of sweet tree runs like this:



That's Dad laying it down. We're skiing on Blackcomb mountain looking over at Whistler.

Mid-way through the trip, we took the plunge and signed up for a day of Cat-Skiing (riding in a snow-cat and skiing in the backcountry). With all the snow, it was deep, untracked and delicious.



Conversation probably went something like this:

Dad: "Is it up over your knees over there too?!"
Scott: "BAHAHAHAHAHAHAH"
Dad: "Do you have any idea where our guides went"
Scott: "NAH HAHAHAHAHAHAH"
Dad: "BAHAHAHAHAH"

Our last day in town, it was still nukin and woke up to 15" of fresh. Dad and I got up early and earned first turns on a lot of the stuff:



You can deduce a couple things from this:

1. It's still snowing hard.
2. I'm very, very happy.
3. BAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

I hope everyone is having a good first couple weeks of school! I plan to update this thing more regularly... no seriously...