Unique Little Snowflake

You have been told from childhood, “You are a unique snowflake”.

Well you’re not and I’m not. If you weren’t given the gift you can’t get the gift so the best you can do – if your goal is important – is work as hard as you possibly can, pay attention every hour of every day and then maybe, maybe if you’ve done enough and been smart enough you’ll emerge from the muck of mediocrity to shine a bit brighter than you shone before. Then, upon reflection you might decide your goal is a bit more important so you’ll start paying attention every minute of every hour of every day. You’ll find people who are better than you and you’ll take an empty cup when you meet them. Their example will destroy or inspire you and if it’s the latter you may stay and learn. You might imitate, doing as they do because you’ve already accepted that you do not know best – if you did you’d be leading the group they were trying to join. Perhaps being exposed to their superior ability will drive you to work harder than you thought possible, or necessary. Maybe you’ll overcome your self-imposed (or worse, society-imposed) limitations and shine even more brightly.


Wow, you’re getting it: positive reinforcement for hard work and suffering. So maybe you give your goal even more significance and you begin cutting away the ideas and the expectations and the people who you believe prevent you from achieving it. Now you become a real selfish prick, and you begin paying attention every second of every minute of every hour of every day, and you sustain your awareness for weeks and months at a time. You no longer think yourself a unique snowflake, you’re a steel-edged blade shaped like a snowflake and you’re spinning at warp speed. You’re the biggest fish in the pond. You’re a badass. Now you have options.

-Mark Twight from Gym Jones

White Pine

The White Pine Backcountry

Yessir, I finally got the goods that I needed.  A  Salt Lake resident and friend, Scott, who is a friend of my dad’s, graciously led me on a tour of the White Pine canyon (gully? drainage? watershed?).  It begins as a small gully in south side of Little Cottonwood Canyon, but it quickly opens to a really large, high opening surrounded by rounded peaks.  The amount of terrain in this one high cirque, by my estimate, roughly equals the accessible terrain that we have available in the Mt. Hood backcountry.  But in Oregon, we don’t have this rediculous access, variety of terrain, or quality of snow.

Scott hauled ass up to 9250′ from 7500′ in just over an hour, a pace which seems common to Utah skiers and one that hurt my lazy Oregonian legs.  The snow was great, and relatively stable, with about a foot or recrystallized powder on top of variable quality snow.  The coverage was thin in generall (damn you El Nino), but it was deep enough where it needed to be.  An added bonus was the great view of Tanner’s slide path and Little Pine couloir across the valley.  Some day…

Looking down into a fresh second shot.

Scott skins his way up to 10k’ on windblown hardpack.

Doesn’t it look nice down in Salt Lake City?

Looking back onto our second run, ours are the longer turns in the upper left.

Looking across the valley at Tanner’s slidepath (left) and Little Pine (the extremely straight chute right of center)

The White Pine Backcountry

Reflected Christmas

Reflected Christmas, originally uploaded by raventrickster.

Merry Christmas to all of you near and far. It’s time to think about some goals for the New Year; I’m with Fitz Cahall, let’s make goals, not resolutions. Make ‘em serious, and we can make 2010 a big year. In th meantime, I’ll give thanks for the good friends, deep snow, cold beer, and bright sunshine.

A short story in pictures

Nathan and I heading up the chair at Solitude. Photo: Jeff Fink

Cloud Highway

Cloud Highway, originally uploaded by raventrickster.

12 hours to the minute has brought me to Utah through the baddest of the badlands. I hated Southwestern Idaho, but otherwise, it was all gorgeous country.

Stovepolish

Stovepolish, originally uploaded by raventrickster.

I’m about to head to Utah tomorrow morning, and, barring a mishap, will soon be back up in the mountains. I have to admit though that, on some level, I’m going to miss being at the fridge for this month and a half. There’s something about living in a place that used to be great, and now has more seasoned character than a president-gone-wino. The wood heat, the DIY fix for anything and everything, and more than anything else, the evenings sitting around the wood stove hamming it up over a rack of bad beer.

I’m psyched though, don’t get me wrong. Today was the first taste I’ve had in months of “pointlessness”, or maybe of “idleness”, and it just got me excited for having some free time to take on things that I’ve been putting off. Second semester is going to go well, with so few classes and so much time to climb harder, ski higher, and push my skills farther. I’ll have time to go to yoga again, which has been missing from my life, and time to do what I like to do without cutting into my sleep and well-being.

The wood stove is simmering low now, and I’ve got a stack of cds by my side with 12 hours of Dirtbag Diaries podcasts to keep me company tomorrow as I roll across Eastern Oregon and Idaho. There’s so much to do and so little time. Ski touring trips to organize, thesis to write, photo-editing to catch up on, and of course the NOLS instructor app to pour myself into.

I’m sure you’ll be hearing from me again soon, hopefully with some snowy photos, despite this whole El Nino thing. But regardless, be well for the holidays. Drink good beer around warm fires, and ham it up with the people who deserve your attention. Cheers!

Margarita Mondays: The Third

This week’s marg recipe comes on Monday, and goes out to the Sitting Stone crew. As far as I can tell, they go to Reed College in Portland – hmmm, of the famed Portland Rock, where the Mayflower landed on Thanksgiving, from my last recipe? And Reed is my middle name…see, it really ties the room together, does it not?…As with so many things, the Beergarita can range from rank to pretty good. I’m not sure that it ever gets truly good, like good marg good, but it has its place. For now, and with all respect to the Sitting Stone guys, we’ll go lowbrow. Lowbrow has its benefits, like that you can only go up from here (once your hangover leaves).  -Kelly Cordes

As you might have noticed, Kelly has somehow ended up tangentially connected with us boys over here in Portland (Oregon, Kelly).  How does a hard climbing alpinist end up being sociable towards a housefull of college-dropout-aged folks, only one of whom climbs (that’d be yours truly)?  Well, simple, he started posting margarita recipes, and I started making them.  Every monday.  Voila, Margarita mondays.  Problem was, as of last weekend, I was out of new recipes, so naturally I asked for more, and I asked for cheap.  Not one to be out-cheaped, Kelly hit us with the beergarita, including a recipe (if a little fuzzy on the details).

After some research and development, we’ve developed a good ratio for the beergarita, so I’ll give you a revised recipe:

• 1 can Minute-Made Limeade Concentrate
• 4 cans Pabst Blue Ribbon

Mix those together and stir to get the bubblies out (assuming you’re not using last-night’s flat beers).  Shaking, though often reccomended, is precluded by carbonation in this case.  Now, salt your glass, and mix in your preferred proportion anywhere from 4:1 to 1:1 mix and tequila.  Squeeze a little bit of lime on top to fool your nose, and get rowdy.  This recipe is just about enough mix to use up the entire bottle of tequila, if you’re drinking about 1.5:1.  And yes, we used Sauza gold, because it was cheaper than the recommended Jose Cuervo.

The Essential Ingredients

Dont bother measuring

Squeeze of Lime

Salt the Rim

Neal Chases

Mike Concurs, “Delicious!”

As to the quality of beergaritas: not so bad eh?  They’re not much worse than the cheap marg recipe that Kelly posted last, and they’re loads cheaper.  Total cost for the margs: $15.

As with all margarita Mondays, or, as we came to call it on Kelly’s suggestion, Man Up it’s Monday, there was eventually a bout of complete chaos.  Total damage for the night: 42 PBRs, 2 bottles cheap wine, 2 limes, 2 burnt socks, 1 bottle tequila, 1 can limeade, 1 puncture wound.  Man up! It’s Monday!

Salmon Run Revisited

Rodney, originally uploaded by raventrickster.

More Ice Please

Well, I studied for more than 10 hours straight today, and it’s not even 5pm yet.  I took a few minutes out to mess around in iMovie (I know, I’m an instant amateur for using that piece of *@^&$) and to toy with some little clips that Rodney shot while we were out ice climbing along with some of my photos.

How did I choose the music you might ask?  I queried my itunes as to what was coincidentally the same length as the little clip that I’d made.  It works out a little strangely, but I think I like it.

New Mexico Communiqué

My friend Alex, now on tour to South America with a couple of other bicycling friends, found some time to drop a line and respond to a previous post of mine.  He’s a smart feller’, and certainly a more pensive climber than I, so I think his thoughts on the matter ought to grace the front page.  Below are the quotes that he highlighted from my post on the death of Tomaz Humar, followed by his thoughts and my response.