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.