Kendall Ridge

The weekend that I was skiing in Chamonix saw some really warm weather back in Washington, to the extent that the ski resorts in Snoqualmie Pass actually closed due to the conditions being so bad. We didn't get a lot of snow during the week but it did cool off a little, so that the rain soaked snow froze to a crust and created less-than-ideal ski conditions. Despite this, when the weekend rolled around and the weather looked like it might be decent, we were definitely going skiing since a rotten day in the back country with skis strapped on your feet is far better than a nice day in the city with your feet propped up on a couch.

We decided to try skiing Kendall Ridge since I am trying to explore all of the places in my Washington backcountry ski guidebook, and it sounded pretty fun. There was one other car present when we pulled up at the trailhead, so at least one other person thought the conditions were worthwhile for heading out. We clicked into our skis at around 9:30am and started skinning up through the forest. We soon emerged from the forest into a clear cut with smaller trees and more open areas, and continued our ascent. The trees were completely soaked with water at this point, so we got pretty wet when we had to squeeze between them. Here is Roanne trying to enjoy herself despite all the moisture as we slowly gain elevation:


As we continued to ascend, the water on the trees slowly turned to snow, and the thin layer of fresh snow on the crust became a little thicker. Another bonus was that the clouds parted and the sun came out. Here is Roanne continuing to climb in our newfound sunshine:


Eventually the top of the slope we were ascending came into sight, and we climbed the final stretch onto Kendall Ridge. Here I am headed up this final section:


The last part had been quite open so we were pretty excited for the way down. Before doing that however, we decided to work our way along the ridge some more since I am always hesitant to turn around and head down when it is possible to climb further. We soaked in the view a little before heading on, here is a nice view of the Chair Peak and it's environs where we had been touring a few weeks ago:


We then headed back into the forest and continued along the ridge, as the clearcut ended there. Here I am about to reenter the forest:


We continued along the ridge through the forest, which stayed fairly flat with some minor undulations. After a stop for lunch we continued up, as the ridge gradually began to steepen towards Kendall Peak proper. Here I am as things open up and get a bit steeper towards Kendall Peak:


As we continued the terrain became quite steep, making further progress on our skis quite difficult. By this point Roanne was strongly suggesting that we turn around, but I somehow managed to convince her that we needed to test the ski-carrying capabilities of our packs by bootpacking. So, we continued on (though we only tested the ski-carrying capabilities of my pack since I somehow ended up carrying both sets of skis) and eventually topped out onto a rocky high point. I knew that we were not on Kendall Peak yet since the rocky ridge continued along further, but after wading through knee deep snow along this high ridge we eventually were blocked by a drop off and had to turn around. Here is Roanne wading after me on this final stretch of our ascent:


At this point I finally conceded that it was time to head down, so we reversed our tracks to a point where we could remove our skins and put our skis back on and got ready to head down. Here is Roanne gearing up for the descent:


The snow up at this high point was a pretty good approximation of powder (we were at about 5500 feet), which made for some fun skiing down the steep part of the ridge that we had come up:


Upon reaching the flat ridge below we continued on with some side-stepping and boot packing to surmount the undulations, and then headed down the clear cut with some fun skiing. By this time the sun had softened up the crust, so what had been an icy crust on the way up now had a few inches of soft snow on tip which made for some fun turns. We arrived back at the car just before 4:30pm, an wrapped up a great day out in the backcountry. Here is a topo of our out and back route:


And the profile, which saw us gain about 2600 feet of elevation:

And finally, the most fun, the GoogleEarth view:

Chamonix Day 2: The Vallee Blanche

Our alarms went off at 7:00am and we dragged ourselves out of bed, sore from the previous day's skiing at Les Grand Montets, but eager for the day's adventures that lay ahead. After our baguette and pastry breakfast we began packing our things up, since we would be checking out of the Hapimag that morning in order to make the drive back to Milan that evening after the day's skiing. I had brought along an adapter for European outlets, and when I removed my laptop charger from it the adapter cover broke while still in the outlet, leaving the two live metal contacts exposed. I wasn't quite sure how to deal with this since I didn't want to leave it in there and have the cleaning staff electrocute themselves, so I tried prying at it with the plastic of the enlosure, but after about a minute of doing this there was a loud crack and a bright spark (I had shorted the contacts together) and all of the lights went out (it was still early enough that the sun had not risen).

The upside of this turn of events was that there was no longer power to the broken adapter so I was able to remove it and thus preemptively save a member of the cleaning stafff from electrocution, but the downside was that it was really dark inside now which would make packing difficult. Stinker! Dylan found his headlamp and we fumbled our way to the circuit breaker box (which we had luckily noted its location previously), but even after pushing the circuit breakers back on there was no power restored. We joked that maybe we had blown the power for the entire Hapimag and perhaps all of Chamonix, and continued on with our packing by headlamp.

We then headed to the car, checking out along the way and informing the clerk of the mysterious absence of electricity in our suite. We had arranged to to the Vallee Blanche as part of a guided group (Martin had recounted the story of his friend who had decided to try it on his own and ended up being helicoptered out the next day after spending the night in a crevasse) through Evolution 2 Mountain Guides, and we had been instructed to meet at the base of the Aiguille du Midi cable car at 9:00am so we headed into Chamonix and reached the cable car on schedule. My selection process in choosing a guide had been to e-mail 3 different guiding services and then choose the single company that replied to my e-mail. In hiring a guide you can either get a private guide or do it in a group, we had elected to take the former approach for cost considerations and the chance to meet other people.

The guide fee was 105 euros which seemed pretty reasonable, and we ended up doing it just as a group of 3 (the website said that groups run from 4 to 8 people) which was nice since we were able to chat with the guide more and we were all at about the same level (with the exception of our guide). We convened with Robert (pronounced Roh-bare, of course), our grizzled french guide, and Garret, our fellow client who is from Manchester but currently lives in Egypt and loves windsurfing, at the base of the cable car and then headed to the ticket booth to buy our 50 euro ticket that covered the cable car ride up and the train ride at the end. Unfortunately, when we asked to buy a ticket the woman in the booth said that they were not selling tickets at the moment since the cable car was not operating due to technical problems. When I inquired as to what those technical problems might be, she replied in a thick french accent: "Electricity.", to which Dylan and I turned to each other and burst out laughing, thinking that maybe my inadvertent adapter short circuiting at the Hapimag that morning had shut down the Aiguille du Midi cable car and ruined our day of skiing. Dylan told me that I had to go and apologize to each and every one of the skiers and climbers assembled at the base of the cable car for spoiling their days adventures, but I decided my french wasn't good enough to explain myself so I took a pass.

We spent the next hour and a half drinking coffee in a nearby cafe, listening to the periodic announcements that the next information on the cable car status would be in 15 minutes (every 15 minutes). We had begun considering what we would do for the day if the cable car didn't get fixed (shopping for Euro ski outifts in Chamonix? Playing ping pong back at the Hapimag?) when finally at 10:25am Robert came striding into the cafe with the news that the cable car would be up and running in 5 minutes. We hurriedly donned our harnesses, gathered our skis, and got into line, and sure enough at 10:30am the announcer informed us that the problem had been resolved and we moved through the queue and into the holding area to board the cable car. The cable car soon came sliding down to the platform, and it looked like we were going to have our ski adventure after all!


We boarded the cable car and it whisked us up to the midstation at the Plan de Midi, where we transferred to the next cable car which took us up to the Aiguille du Midi at 3840 meters. I had been up there last summer with Roanne, and I remember seeing the ridge that led out onto the glacier for the Vallee Blanche and other objectives and being super excited at the possibility of skiing it someday, so it was pretty surreal to be back there just 4 months later making it a reality!

We exited the cable car at the top of the Aiguille du Midi and crossed the exposed bridge to the main structure, from where we caught a glimpse of the ridge that we would descend to start our route (the prominent ridge in the foreground):


After crossing the bridge we re-entered the corridor that had been tunneled into the granite spire and headed for the exit onto the ridge. We paused here to put our skis on our packs, and Robert put on crampons. I kept waiting for him to pull more crampons out of his pack and offer them to us but this didn't happen, so we had to be content with short-roping ourseleves together with the thin cord that he offered us. Here are Dylan and Garret donning their packs in the corridor and wondering why Robert didn't bring us any crampons:


With everything in order, we donned our packs and headed out the icy corridor that led onto the ridge. This was pretty amazing, as I this icy corridor had been my strongest memory of the Aiguille du Midi from the summer before, so it was awesome to be headed through it with a set of skis strapped to my pack. Wa-wa-wee-wah!!!!


We emerged from the tunnel onto the narrow ridge in glorious sunshine, and started heading down in a long line of other skiers. I was pleased to see that there were fixed ropes installed, if those hadn't been there I would have been really wishing hard for some crampons but with one hand on the fixed line and one using a ski pole it was no problem. It reminded me a bit of the hike up Half Dome in Yosemite, with the fixed lines up the final slab section to the top.


After an uneventful but breathtaking descent of the ridge we stopped at a flat section at the base to don remove the rope, don our skis and beacons, and get ready to head down. Here is a shot of Dylan and I at the base of the ridge, with Robert getting his skis ready. To our left the sheer north face of the Aiguille du Midi drops steeply down to Chamonix (though apparently insane people do ski this when the conditions are right, to me it looked like the only way down would be drop a 2000 foot cliff).


Here is the view looking back up at the Aiguille du Midi and the ridge that we had hiked down (one person skied down it while we were walking, maybe next time we'll do that!):


With our skis on we swiveled around and took in the majestic view surrounding us, and peered down to the glacier below where we would be descending. Here is about 30 degrees of the view that we had, with some skiers visible on the glacier below:


After a short set of instructions from the grizzled Robert ("Ski behind me, I don't want to pull you out of a crevasse"), he started singing some french song and took off down the glacier with us hot on his heels. Oh man, SO AWESOME!!! I really like the act of skiing, but skiing in surroundings like that is almost too much fun to bear. I had to yell out loud about how much fun I was having otherwise I think I might have exploded with delight. It was an amazing sunny day and was actually pretty hot since there was no wind, so before long we stopped to shed some layers and admire the scenery some more:


We chatted with Robert a bit about the surrounding peaks and climbs, and he told us that he had been guiding for 36 years and it was impossible to say whether he liked skiing or climbing more, but he liked them both ("beacoup, beaucoup, beaucoup."). Now this is someone that I can relate to! Here is Robert holding forth on Chamonix alpine history:


As you can see there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and on the horizon we could just make out the triangular summit of the Matterhorn (also on my climbing objective short list, even above Mont Blanc) which is across the border in Zermatt, Switzerland. At this point we could look back up at the South Face of the Aiguille du Midi which according to Robert has classic rock climbs on it from 6b to 8a, as well as the famous Cosmique Arete which also needs to be climbed by me. To give a sense of scale, you can see a small skier in the lower right of the picture.


At the conclusion of our break Robert broke out into song again and headed down the glacier with us following as I attempted to whistle along to his song (difficult because I had never heard it before, but I still gave it a shot). Robert kept a pretty even pace so it was fun to try and turn exactly where he did, and try to mimic his elegant french technique. After a while we stopped for another break and some more Chamonix climbing trivia, here is Robert holding forth once again with another spectacular backdrop:


Before long we were off again, heading across a flatter and wide-open section of the glacier, with Robert out in the lead under the sunny blue skies:


We continued our pattern of descending for a while and then stopping as we progressed along and down the glacier, here I am soaking it in at one of the stops:


The skiing on the upper sections was really fun, varying from wind slab to consolidated powder that made for some really good skiing, here is a shot of Dylan paused after one of the looser sections:


And here is the view down the glacier as we began to wrap around and head back towards Chamoinx, very nice!


There are 6 variations on the Vallee Blanche route, of varying difficulty. They differ in how the top section is skied, and by now all of the routes had funneled into one so there were a fair number of tracks. Apparently we were on one of the routes of intermediate difficulty, the classic route goes through a lot of crevasse-riddled terrain so it cannot be skied until later in the season and the more difficult routes have south facing 45 degree sections that are dangerous to ski in sunny conditions due to the sun crust that forms and could result in a skier inadvertantly routing himself into a crevasse or off a cliff. Here is Robert headed out along one of the well-tracked traverse sections of our route:


We stopped at the Refuge du Requin (Shark Hut) which is beneath the Dent du Requin (Shark Tooth) formation. The hut wasn't in operation at the moment, but it did have a nice sunny patio and seemed to be a popular spot to stop for lunch. Robert told us that it opens in February, and described some very attractive-sounding backcountry intineraries that involved staying at the hut and skiing over into the Italian side of the alps and back during the day.


We enjoyed a delicious picnic in the sunshine on the patio, and looked out onto the glacier below where the Vallee Blanche glacier merged with another glacier to form the Mer du Glace (sea of ice):


After finishing our snacks we traversed out from the hut, and skied a nice steep descent to gain the Mer du Glace below. From here it was a long gentle downhill along the glacier, made a little more interesting by the sun crust which made turning difficult. Here are Garret and Robert leading it out as we ski down the glacier:


Just to keep things from getting dull Robert steered us across some snow bridges and along some gaping crevasses in order to show us some spots where we could ice climb in the crevasse, and eventually the terrain became a bit more difficult with combinations of rocks to avoid and crevasses to bypass. Here is a shot of one of the more memorable traverses which went along a steep, icy slope where w fall would have meant extracting yourself from the depths of a crevasse which disappeared into darkness. The skier in the middle of the shot is about to do the intimidating part.


Robert went first and assured us with a confident "C'est facile!" so we all followed, taking great care to look forward only and not divert my gaze down into the crevasse. Here is a shot looking back at the crevasse which fortunately did not swallow any of us:


The traverse is on the right of the photo, with the just-visible boulder forcing you to ski along a narrow track that is uncomfortably close to the icy slope down into the darkness. Thank heavens for momentum! From this point we had great views looking across the valley to the Petit Dru:


Apparently several years ago a huge section of the famous Bonatti route up the north face broke off, so the route can no longer be climbed. When the rock face seperated there was a party on the route, but luckily they happened to be just above the fracture line. I bet they had to change their underwear after that one!

After skiing a little further we reached the bottom of the glacier. Starting in late January it is possible to ski right down into Chamonix, but at this time of year our only option was to take a cable car up out of the valley (the cable car exists so that tourists can come down to see the glacier) and then take a cog-wheel train back town into Chamonix. We removed our skis and started hiking up the metal steps to the cable car base:


You might think it is strange that you need to hike up to the cable car, the reason is that when the cable car was installed in 1990 it reached the glacier, but in the 20 years since the glacier has receded so much that the top has dropped by 80 vertical meters. This was one of the most tangible demonstrations of global warming that I have witnessed, as we ascended the metal steps there were signs that denoted where the glacier level had been throughout the past 30 years. The accelerating nature of global warming was evident, as while the glacier had only dropped 5-10 meters in the decade from 1980 to 1990, the next 20 years had seen it drop an additional 70-80 meters with the current drop rate being 5 meters per year. Sucks! I hate global warming! Let's all stop creating CO2 so that we can keep skiing! I think we need to hold the next global warming summit at a ski resort, once the world's leaders get addicted to skiing they will have no choice to focus on enacting legislation to combat climate change.

We rode the cable car up to the train station where we had a good view up the valley and the glacier that we had just descended:


While we waited for the train we took a group photo, here we are:


After 20 minutes or so we boarded the cog-wheel train that whisked us back down into the valley below, where we disembarked and walked to the shuttle bus stop for the final leg of our trip back to the Aiguille du Midi cable car station:


Back at the cable car station Garret rushed off to the pub and we said our good byes to Robert who gave us his personal business card for when (not if) we return to Chamonix. If any gentle readers are headed to Chamonix and want a guide recommendation let me know and I will put you in touch with Robert, he was a great guide and when I asked him if he had ever had a client fall in a crevasse he said "Non!", but then grinned and added that he was probably just lucky.

Oh man, what an awesome day! After popping into the Aiguille du Midi office to pick up a guide book for Mont Blanc (next year?), we climbed into the Fiat, made one last stop at the Hapimag, and then headed back through the Mont Blanc tunnel (which has a 37 euro toll, yikes!) towards Milan. As we neared Milan the thick Italian fog returned which made driving quite difficult, but we eventually found the airport where we were staying at the onsite Sheraton (chosen to maximize sleep the next morning so that we could roll out of bed and walk straight into the terminal to catch our 7:00am flight).

We made it to the airport by 7:30pm, but then the quest to find gas for the rental car turned into a 2 hour epic of driving slowly through the thick fog while Italian drivers tail gated us and flashed their high beams at us, finding two unstaffed "24 hour" gas stations in a row that only accepted cash (as conveyed by handwritten notes to the effect that the credit card part of the payment machine was out of order), a long search for an ATM, plenty of wrong turns, an inadvertent tour through the "Family Fun Center" parking complex, and the eventual purchase of gasoline. The best part was that when we finally had cash to buy gas we put in 50 euros and it only ended up being 36 euros to fill the tank, and since the machine didn't give change we ended up paying about 1.5 times more for the gas than we should have, which is probably more than the rental car place would have charged us if we had just returned the car with a half full tank. How do you say "stinker" in Italian? Oh well, 2 hours spent exploring the foggy roads around Milan isn't the worst thing you could do on a Sunday night, molto bene!!!

Chamonix Day 1: Les Grand Montets

We arrived in Chamonix without incident at about 6:30pm, and after asking for directions we found our hotel which was just outside Chamonix in Les Praz. The hotel was called the Hapimag and was quite nice, appearing to have been renovated recently. After dropping our bags in our room we headed back into Chamonix to get some dinner, and ended up at a good restaurant that served lots of typical Savoie fare, which tends to be centered around cheese and cured meat. Not wanting to violate local tradition, Dylan ordered a hot bowl of bread and bacon drowned in cheese, while I ordered fried potatoes and bacon drowned in cheese. Delicious! Here is Dylan getting ready to dig in:


After finishing dinner we headed back to the Hapimag where we settled to our new lodgings. We had an apartment-style room, with one bedroom seperate from the main room, so one of us slept on the pullout couch in the main room while the other took the bedroom. We set our alarms for 8:00am the next morning, and after a refreshing sleep we rose the next morning ready for a day on the slopes. We picked up the fresh baguette and croissants that we had ordered from reception the night before, and after a delicious breakfast we headed down to the parking garage to load up the Fiat. As always, with our skis loaded up there was barely room for us:


The valley of Chamonix has 4 different ski resorts to choose from, and upon recommendation from our friend and colleague Martin (who works at another company that had been participating in the Milan meetings) we had settled on Les Grands Montets. Les Grands Montets was known for having the most rugged, least family-friendly terrain, which was enough of a recommendation for us. It also had the highest list accessed skiing, with the highest cable car topping out at 3300 meters.

We drove the few kilometers to the base of Les Grand Montets in Argentiere (a few km from the Hapimag), and after buying our passes (50 euros each, not as expensive as I had expected!) we got in the queue to board the first cable car up the mountain. The line-ups had actually been something I was interested to see, since I have been told (and observed) that Europeans don't like to line up, instead they all just crowd around the object of interest and try to rush for it when it becomes available, irrespective of who might have been waiting the longest. Fortunately this wasn't the case at the ski resort and relatively orderly lines seemed to form that operated more or less as they do in North America (the less being from the significantly higher prevalence of wacky ski outfits that serve as entertainment while waiting in line - lots of shiny material, fur trim, and one-piece suits).

The cable car whisked us up 800 meters, and we stepped out into the sunshine to behold the wide-open terrain that we would be sampling on our first ski day in the Alps:


There were fewer lifts as compared to a North American resort, but each lift had higher capacity and accessed more terrain. Due to the wide open, alpine nature of the mountain, there were no trees dividing the runs as in North America and you could ski more or less whereever you wanted. That being said, there were a few relatively narrow groomed runs that descended the mountain (about the width of a slalom course) and most skiers seemed to stick to those with the "off-piste" being far less crowded. We headed further up the mountain on another smaller gondola, and stepped out to some pretty rugged terrain:


Luckily there were fences guarding the sheer drops, but with cliffs dropping off to one side the scenery was pretty spectacular, far more impressive than any North American resort that I have skied at. Here is a shot looking back down into the valley at Chamonix:


And a shot of Mount Blanc (the highest peak in the Alps at 4810 meters, and on my short list of climbing objectives) with the fabled Petit Dru and Grand Dru on the left in the foreground:


We headed down for a warm-up run down the groomer, which was already getting a little bit icy with all the traffic. It was pretty steep in spots (the runs in Europe are graded green, blue, red, and black in order of increasing difficulty, and the easiest run at Les Grands Montets seemed to be a red) so it took a bit to get warmed up, but before long Dylan and I were finished with the groomers and headed off-piste for the rest of the days skiing. We found some really good runs accessed by a high speed 6-person chair (I had never been on a chair that wide before) which never had any line ups, here is a shot of us at the getting ready for some more off-piste:


Les Grands Montets is north facing which mean that it didn't get much sun, but it also meant that the snow stayed in really good condition, and even though it hadn't snowed in a few days we managed to find a fair bit of consolidated powder to ski in. The snow coverage was a little low still at this time of year (they don't get as much snow as the North American resorts that I normally ski at) which meant that on the way down you had to be aware of rocks both on the small scale and a large scale as seen here:


There was one cable car that accessed the highest point at the resort which we had avoided for most of the day due to the long line up (about 45 minutes), but eventually we decided to buckle down and get in line. We ate our lunch in line (some dried fruit and energy bars that Dylan had brought from home), and eventually we boarded the cable car and made the trip to the top. The cable car terminated on a rocky spire from which you could either walk down a set of steps to the glacier to ski, or up a set of steps to a viewpoint. We headed up to the viewpoint where we were rewarded with amazing 360 degree views, here I am soaking it in:


After enjoying the panarama we headed back down past the the cable car station to the glacier below, where we donned our skis and got ready to head down. Here is a shot looking back up at the the cable car station:


There were a lot of options for where to go since we were on a glacier, but we decided to heed the warning signs and take the solitary marked run down (a black run called Point de Vue).


The skiing on the glacier was really fun, with great snow and an amazing backdrop. Eventually we funneled off of the glacier and back onto the standard run to the midstation. We spent the rest of the day packing in laps on the 6-person chair, making variations of our off-piste selection of the day. By the end of the day we were pretty spent, here I am at the top getting ready for one last run:


For the last run we skied all the way back down from the midstation, and with there being only one run down this part it was really crowded and icy, making for some not-so-enjoyable skiing. It seemed to be all artificial snow on this part of the mountain, and this run was only used as transport back to the base with the good skiing being found only on the upper part of the mountain. We were pretty wiped by the time we reached the base at 4:40pm, having packed in just over 8 hours of skiing (minus the 45 minute line-up for the top cable car). Tres bien!

We had decided to make use of the kitchen facilities in our Hapimag apartment, so we headed into Chamonix for the grocery store where we procured some delicious salad, pasta (made just across the border in Aosta, Italy), cheese, baguette, sausage, and wine. After a delicious dinner we organized our gear and headed to bed. The plan for the next day was to ski the Vallee Blanche, a famous glacier ski descent accessed from the the Aiguille du Midi cable car, so as we slept we had dreams of bluebird skies and off-piste turns dancing in our heads.

Milan, Italy

In late December I found out that I needed to be in Milan for a week in early January for work, and while the timing wasn't perfect (it came right on the heels of another work trip to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, and cut short the climbing part of that trip which was the whole reason that I had manoevered myself into attending in the first place), I couldn't be too upset because I had never been to Europe in the winter. And, as we all know, Europe in the winter means skiing in the Alps.

Two of my colleagues joined me for the trip to Milan where we had a week of meetings, and while I couldn't persuade Riyadth that a ski trip on the weekend after the meetings was needed, fortunately Dylan was thinking rationally and he agreed that a ski trip was a sufficient and necessary condition for making the trip to Milan. So, on Sunday afternoon the three of us met at the SeaTac airport and boarded a flight to Paris that would connect on to Milan. The connection in Paris was on the short side at 1 hour, especially since connecting through the convoluted Charles DeGaulle airport usually means multiple shuttle rides, moving between terminals, and passing through customs and security. The flight to Paris was actually pretty fun (at least for Dylan and myself) since we were both upgraded to first class and enjoyed the royal treatment, all the while feeling badly for Riyadth sandwiched between crying infants back in economy class (at least until we had consumed a few glasses of champagne, then we forgot all about Riyadth).

We had taken off late, and while we had assumed that we might make up time in the air, the french don't like to rush things (we were flying Air France) so this was not the case and we landed 40 minutes late. Dylan and I both bolted off the plane (being conveniently near the front) and boarded the first shuttle bus to the terminal. Riyadth didn't manage to make the first shuttle bus, and upon reaching the terminal Dylan and I decided that I would go on ahead while he waited for Riyadth. I took off at sprint through the terminal, and after negotiating the aforementioned hurdles I arrived at the gate with about 5 minutes to spare. At first it looked like I wouldn't be allowed on, but after some negotiations I was allowed to board and settled into my seat for the flight to Milan.

Riyadth and Dylan didn't end up making the flight (having boarded another shuttle bus for the transition between terminals where I ran; the shuttle bus subsequently became stuck behind a broken down bus, ending their chances of making the flight), and I knew that there was no way that my luggage had made it on either. As a result, upon reaching Milan-Linate airport I went straight to the lost luggage desk and filed a claim, where they confirmed that my bags were still back in Paris and would be arriving that afternoon. I then headed on to the hotel where our business meetings were being held, and attended the afternoons meetings with my rumpled yellow cyclocross T-shirt striking a sharp contrast with the well-pressed suits and pointy leather shoes of the Italians who we were meeting with.

Riyadth and Dylan arrived that night, along with my checked bag of clothing that they had managed to retrieve at the airport, but Dylan's bags had also been lost in transit. I tried calling the number that I had been given for the lost luggage desk, but after numerous tries I could not succeed in reaching anyone. Dylan was in the same situation (worse actually, since he didn't even have his checked bag with his clothes). As the weekend approached I began getting worried about our skis, but on Wednesday there was a glimmer of hope as Dylan's bag of clothing was delivered (but still no skis). Finally on Wednesday we decided to physically go to the airport to try and talk to someone (since we still had not been able to reach anyone by phone), and upon doing so we were able to claim my skis which were being stored in a room full of bags, apparently not slated for delivery anytime in the near future. Dylan's skis however, were out on a truck for delivery, so at this point we were 3 for 4 with tracking down our lost luggage. I informed the man working at the luggage desk that it was impossible to get in touch with them because they didn't answer their phones, to which he laughed heartily and said "Lot's of passenges say that!".

So, we picked up our rental car for the weekend and headed back to the hotel, getting lost several times in the thick fog that seems to be characteristic of Milan at this time of year and somehow turning a 20 minute trip into a 60 minute trip. Fortunately Dylan's skis were delivered overnight, so by Friday afternoon when the meetings ended, we finally had retrieved all of our lost luggage from the chaotic Italian lost luggage service, and we loaded up our little Fiat (really little, with our skis down the middle of the car they rested on the shifter, which made driving somewhat difficult) and headed out into the Italian fog once again. After driving some loops around our hotel while we tried to determine what direction we should be heading we were finally on our way, heading north west for the Mont-Blanc tunnel which would funnel us into the valley of Chamonix.

2011 New Years Resolutions

Sorry that I am a bit late with this, post New Years has been a bit busy with two work-related trips consuming my time. The first was a trip to Las Vegas to attend the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). My intent in manoevering myself into attending this event was to use it as a vehicle to do some climbing at Red Rocks, and this was the plan until I found out a few weeks ago that I needed to be in Milan the week after for another work project. This forced me to cut short my climbing time to just one day, which was unfortunate, but I did still get one day in of sunshine and sandstone. Another bonus was that Roanne ended up attending the show for Microsoft, so we were able to spend some time together there. So, as I write this I am on a plane headed for Milan where I will spend the next week before heading for the alps to do some skiing (watch for a trip report). Anyways, enough excuses and back to my resolutions for the new year. As I did last year I will categorize them into "Sport" and "Life" resolutions, with the latter coming first since they are more important.

Sport Resolutions

1. Send a 5.13 sport climb. This is a repeat of one of last year's resolutions, but since I didn't do it an would really like to, I am putting it on here again. I pinned the blame for last year's failure on not being able to train throughout the winter due to some elbow problems, one unfortunate thing is that I am currently again having some elbow problems that might prevent me from climbing as much as I want. This time they have been brought on by nordic skiing instead of climbing, but a faulty elbow is a faulty elbow so I am hoping it gets better soon so that I can start hitting the climbing gym with more regularity.

2. Climb the north ridge of Mount Stuart. This is a long alpine route that I would really like to do, Fras and I had planned on doing it together last year but for various reasons it never worked out. This year I am really going to work hard at making it happen since it sounds like an amazing experience and it would be a good challenge to try and do it in a day.

3. Ski the Garibaldi-Neve traverse. I love long ski traverses, last year one of the few resolutions that I actually ticked off was the Spearhead Traverse and it was amazing so I thought I would put another of the classic ski tours on here. This one is similar in length to the Spearhead, so we would also try to do it in a day.

4. Upgrade my road racing license to Category 3. This is another holdover from last year, and is similar to the 5.13 goal in that it is something I feel confident that I can accomplish if I can just stay focused enough, not get injured, and dedicate the necessary time to training. That being said, both this and the 5.13 goal would demand a significant amount of time so they may end up being mutually exclusive.

5. Try track racing. This one will be pretty easy, but I meant to do it last year and never did so I thought I would put it on the list for added motivation. Track racing (bicycles of course, who would waste their time running around a track?) looks really fun so I would like to take the track racing course out at Marymoor and then do some of the weeknight races. I am pretty sure I will be awful at it since of the millions of muscle fibers in my legs I think only 3 of them are of the fast twitch variety, but it will be a fun experience nonetheless.

6. Try a classic ski race. Just before Christmas we went and did a nordic ski camp in the Methow Valley, and at that camp we received our first formal instruction in classic skiing. I obtained some classic skis in advance of the camp, so now I feel that I need to justify the purchase and instruction by toeing the starting line in a classic ski race (which is why I wanted to learn, I can't accept that there would be nordic ski races that I couldn't do since I only skate, so I felt that I needed to add classic skiing to my resume).

Life Resolutions

1. Weigh under 160 when it matters. Last year I weighed under 160 lbs for one fleeting day in February, this year I would like to clock in at my racing weight when it actually matters, like during the summer when I am trying to send a project out at Si or in the spring when I am trying to do well in a hilly road race (though I'm not sure those exist around Seattle). I am currently at my steady state of 166-168 lbs so it will take a bit of work, but should be possible.

2. Be more exciting. In Las Vegas this past weekend Roanne commented that I can be a frightful bore at times. This was spurred on by her asking me if I wanted to join her co-workers in attending a show and then hitting the bars afterwards, to which I replied that I would rather go to bed early and wake up early to go climbing at Red Rocks. Apparently life isn't all about climbing, cycling, and skiing (I know, its news to me too), so Roanne would like me to get more interested in social activities. I have dutifully added this goal to my resolutions.

3. Get rid of extra stuff. I hate having extra stuff, but I am also quite lazy in putting in the effort to get rid of it properly by selling it on Craigslist or dropping it off at the Goodwill (the last option sounds easy, but it is amazing how long it can take me to dedicate the time to driving the few blocks to make a dropoff). This year I would like to get our basement organized and jettison any stuff that we don't use.

4. Make a better garden. Last year I got a garden established and it did reasonably well, but it was a pretty low effort operation due to my hesitance to dedicate much time to it. I do really enjoy the fruits of these labours, so this year I want to spend more time upfront (maybe even a weekend day!) to putting the proper infrastructre in place and making it bigger.

5. Never eat dessert alone. This is not intended to spur me to go and find out others to have dessert with, rather, it is intended to act as a check on my ravenous hunger for delicious dessert. When I am by myself I can easily justify eating an entire container of ice cream, whereas when I am with others, social cues serve as a check on my impulse to eat all the cake that is in sight. So, since I have demonstrated numerous times that I have no self control in this arena, I am going to rely on others to fill in for me and institute this rule that I can only consume dessert when I am under close supervision.

6. Learn to speak french better. When Roanne and I were in Madagascar last year it was really fun to exercise our french, and it made me wish that I spoke it better. The last formal instruction I had in french was during graduate school at the University of Washington when I took some french classes that I really enjoyed. In the coming year I would like to develop my french language abilities further (or repair them as it may be that I have forgotten a lot from when I last had instructoin) by either taking the rest of the french courses at the UW (my last one was French 202) or by joining the Alliance Francaise or a similar group. Due to my demonstrated lack of interest in socializing in my native language, I would say that the first option is the more likely candidate.

Well, that's all folks! If you see me violating any of these resolutions please give me a polite reminder.

2010: The Year in Review

One year ago I wrote a blog entry with a number of New Years Resolutions for the year 2010. With 2010 now on the books, I thought it would be appropriate to look back at those resolutions to see how I have done, and then re-make those resolutions or make new ones as appropriate. Here is a blow-by-blow investigation of how my resolutions fared in 2010:

2010 Sport Resolutions

1. Redpoint a 5.13 sport climb: I didn't come all that close on this one. I did redpoint a 5.12d (Psychosomatic out at Little Si), but it was one that I had done before and I think it is a bit soft so I'm not sure if it count. I had trouble with this one for a few reasons, the biggest one being that I had some elbow problems in January, and as a result I didn't really climb much until May when we started going to Little Si. Normally I would have liked to have been getting into the gym a bunch in the spring to build strength for the outdoor season, so I think the problem was that I didn't have the base of fitness that I would have needed going into the season.
2. Onsight a 5.11 trad climb: Oh boy, I fell even shorter of the mark on this one. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I even pulled my trad rack out of the closet, forget about pushing my limits. I think the only trad lines that I did were long alpine moderates (like Prusik Peak), which while super fun, sure don't do much for your ability to climb hard(er) trad. Part of the problem on this one is just too many fun activities and not enough leisure time, last year when I had to choose a climbing pursuit I usually chose sport climbing or bouldering for their convenience.
3. Upgrade my road racing license to Category 3: Uh oh, not even close on this one either. I raced a bunch of the Seward Park Criteriums and at the end of the summer I was getting some good results in that a won a couple of primes (I had never won a prime there before), but the only sanctioned road races that I did were the Volunteer Park Criterium and the Skagit Flats Circuit Race. I meant to do more road racing, but when a weekend rolled around I was usually more excited to go climbing or go on a big ride than do a road race. Also affecting this area was the fact that my threshold for driving to a road race is set at 1 hour, which rules out a lot of the races that have courses which I might be more excited about (hilly courses).
   
4. Do the Leadville 100 mountain bike race. I didn't do this one, but unlike the past three this was a conscious decision on my part. The entry for this event is based on a lottery system which is understandable, but in most lottery entries you can enter a group of people so that if one gets chosen in the lottery, everyone can race. This is handy because for races like this where many people travel to it, it is more fun to do it as a group rather than flying there to race by yourself. If I did this race, I would want to go and do it with some friends, so since their lottery system doesn't accommodate this I chose not to enter. It is also stinkin' expensive to enter, $290 which I think is exorbitant for an event of this nature.
   
5. Do a 50km nordic ski race: Huzzah! Finally a resolution that I kept! In February Trev and I did the Gatineau Loppet, a 50 km ski race in Quebec. It was a great race, though I felt like I bonked a bit towards the end. My time ended up being 3:00:06 which was good, though it sure would have been nice to have dropped those 6 seconds!
   
6. Do the Spearhead Traverse ski tour in Whistler: Another one that I did! This was probably my sporting highlight of 2010, for a few reasons. First, there were a bunch of weekends where we planned to try it, but then plans fell through usually due to weather or poor avy conditions. The weekend when we finally did it, we almost canceled again due to a marginal forecast but went ahead and tried it due to circumstance (I was already headed for Vancouver with my skis in the car) and the conditions ended up being perfect. We had an awesome team (Fras, Markezzy, and myself), and it was an amazing day out in the mountains, I highly recommend this to anyone who loves skiing, mountains, and has a modicum of fitness.

2010 Life Resolutions

1. Weigh 160 lbs: Well, since this resolution didn't say how long I had to weigh 160 lbs I am going to claim success, since I registered at 159.8 on one morning in February. Too bad I didn't weigh 160 lbs when it really mattered, like when I was falling off my projects out at Little Si in July, or getting tailed off the back of road races on the climbs (actually I hardly did any road races, but if I had, I bet I would have been dropped like a bad habit since I was too heavy!).
   
2. Only eat dessert on special occasions: I may have started out well on this one, but by the end of the year it was nowhere in sight and during the last few weeks it has not been uncommon to spot me eating dessert for breakfast. I didn't even remember I had made this resolution. Is breakfast a special occasion?
   
3. Shop at the local farmers market: Darn, I blew this one too. I'm sure I'll make it to one of these eventually, but maybe only if they start holding them out in front of my house from 9-10pm when I commonly end up going grocery shopping.
   
4. Only eat meat once a week: I didn't slavishly keep track of my progress on this one, but I am going to claim success since I definitely ate less meat and when there was a choice between a meat-based or meatless entree I usually chose the latter, as long as it sounded good. The same goes for cooking, almost all of the recipes that chose were meatless. Hooray for being a part-time veggie!
   
5. Get a job: Great success, for almost an entire year I have been working at Synapse Product Development. At the outset I was a little unsure of how I would find the transition from integrated circuit design to embedded system design, but I have found it to be quite enjoyable. I do miss some of the technical circuit design challenges of IC design as most of the circuit design in my current role is of the "canned" variety (the IC manufacturer provides a recommended circuit configuration in their data sheet, and your role as a designer is not to screw it up), but one of the advantages of embedded system design is that it is fun to design something that you can hold in your hands and see it do something cool. I also really like the people that I work with, and have enjoyed the client interactions that can provide some of the same fulfillment that I gathered from teaching in my previous position at the University of Utah.
   
6. Read one book per month: I definitely did this, though I stopped recording all of the books that I read. I wish I had kept track better, I will try to do that this year. My average was well above one per month though, with the highlight probably being "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell. I have to thank my Mom for bringing this book to the forefront of my attention, it was a great read and I highly recommend it to anyone. At the moment I am midway through "The Trial" by Franz Kafka, which is a bit of a strange book up until this point.

Well, I guess my overall performance is that I was 2/6 in the sporting department, and 4/6 in the lift department, which makes an overall success rate of 50%. Not half bad (pun intended)! I guess I should be happy about doing well in the life department, but I sort of wish I could have shifted a couple of those life successes to the sporting arena! I have been giving some thought to my resolutions for the coming year, and I will detail those in my next post.

Backcountry skiing in Chair Peak Basin

What better way to ring in the new year than with some backcountry skiing? On the first day of 2011, Roanne and I rose bright and early and headed for Snoqualmie Pass. There was almost no one on the roads, and we pulled into the Alpental parking lot a little before 9:00am, just as the lifts were starting to run. We suited up, and after a quick beacon check we skied onto the Armstrong Express and headed up. The plan was to ride the lifts to the top of Denny Mountain, and then take the Great Scott Traverse out into the backcountry.

It was an amazing day with a perfect blue sky, though a bit on the cold side. I checked my thermometer as we exited the upper lift at the top of Denny Mountain and it read 9 degrees F, yikes! We headed down to the top of Upper International, which Roanne was none-too-pleased to find out was a double black diamond of which we had to descend a couple of hundred feet before setting out onto the traverse. I was none-too-pleased about it either, but I already knew what it was like from having skied it a couple of times previously. To make the icy moguls even less appealing, there was a bunch of exposed rock that made the entrance to the run a little hairy/bad for your skis. After a short debate about whether we should continue on or head back to the lodge for hot chocolate, the former eventually won out and we headed down.

The icy moguls weren't as bad as they looked, and we were soon heading along the Great Scott Traverse towards Pineapple Pass, with a mix of gradually descending traversing and side stepping up short ascents. Here is a shot of Roanne sidestepping her way up one of these sections:


We eventually finished the traverse, and dropped down into the hanging valley below Pineapple Pass and the Tooth. Our objective for the day was the Chair Peak Basin, but we decided to take a little side trip up to Pineapple Pass since the skiing looked pretty good from our vantage point. We donned our skins and climbed the 500 or so feet up to the pass, here is a shot of Roanne on the way up:


At the top of the pass we met another group of 4 skiers who were setting out on a circumnavigation of Chair Peak, which sounds super fun (next time!). We deskinned and headed down, with decent snow aside from the patches of wind slab that made turning a bit difficult. We continued down past where we had put our skins on, and dropped into the Alpental Basin just above Source Lake. Here we once again donned our skins and headed up a well-established skin track towards the Snow Lake divide. We paused at the divide for a photo opportunity, here we are (note our matching green outfits):


From this point we continued up through trees towards the Chair Peak Basin, here I am enjoying the rare January sunshine in Snoqualmie Pass:


The skin track was pretty steep in spots which made the going a bit tough, but no complaints since the pre-set track sure made things easier. Roanne hadn't done any backcountry skiing in a year due to all of her treatments last winter so she was a little rusty, but she improved throughout the day. Eventually we popped over a shoulder and into the Chair Peak Basin where we had a great view of Chair Peak, here I am continuing up through the Basin:


The route that we were following (from our Washington Backcountry Ski Guidebook) described ascending to the east ridge of Chair Peak. Roanne was feeling pretty spent by this point, or maybe she just wasn't into bootpacking up a steep chute in order to justify some yellow highlighter in a guidebook, but I love ticking things off in guidebooks so she waited patiently in the basin while I headed up to gain the east ridge:


There was a thick icy crust on the snow near the top of the ridge which made my descent an exercise in survival skiing (actually, most descents for me are exercise in survival skiing but it always seems fun in retrospect), but after a series of crash turns (wherein the skier makes a turn and crashes immediately afterward as a means of rapidly decelerating) I made it back down to Roanne in one piece.

We then headed back down towards Source Lake with some great powder along the way as much of the descent stays shaded and had not established any kind of sun crust. From Source Lake we hopped on the super highway that is packed in by skiers who do giant lift-powered loops from Alpental, and after a few kilometers of bobsled-style descending we were back at the Alpental Base area ready to do it all over again. Actually there wasn't enough daylight for that and we were both pretty tired, so we headed for the car and drove back to Seattle.

I took my GPS along (GPS is so awesome, if anyone reading this doesn't have one please go buy one immediately), here are some of the outputs from that, starting with a topo of our track file where we did a clockwise loop, and the straight lines are when we were riding the lifts to the top of Denny Mountain:


Next is the elevation profile, with the first climb one that we cheated on by riding lifts, and the other two major climbs being Pineapple Pass and the east ridge of Chair Peak:

And finally, a ground-level view in Google Earth of our GPS track (thanks to Skooks for alerting me to this cool way to view your track), with the Chair Peak Basin on the right of the view and the ascent to Pineapple Pass not visible:


Happy New Year!!!