New Year’s Eve: Alta torchlight parade

Late in posting these, but it was a great time. Torches, skiing and fireworks. 

Weather geekery

Argentina in a week!

http://weather.utah.edu/index.php?runcode=2011122218&t=gfs004&r=SA&d=CN

Got a good weather overview of what to look for to do my own forecast (i.e. Eric’s best guess) and correlated some of it to a known weather window back in December. Here’s to hoping for a stable three weeks of austral summer!

Lepidopteres

Lépidoptères on the Aiguille du Peigne. One of the best routes we got do to in Chamonix last summer. Five pitches of fun climbing up slabs and corner systems which then joined the Papillons Ridge for two more pitches

The approach was somewhat intimidating; felt very small walking under these steep dark walls. 

Slabby right off the belay. 

Very memorable to see Polly’s smiling face after she climbed up to the ridge crest and off the north-facing wall and into the sun.

Coolest pitch: weaving between granite flakes and spikes with lots of air off either side. 

Our route is marked in green. 

This used to be impossible.

Really great to see these images being scanned and preserved. 

http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/about/mercury/scans
http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/about/gemini/scans

Last Year,

when we had snow…

From the archives:

Running away from the weather moving up the Chamonix valley and retreating off the Aiguille d’Index. 

Sometimes exterior forces change your expectations, hopes and plans. 

IBM formatted.

Cleaning out the office today. 

New Year’s ice

Continuing the tradition of bringing in the new year with ice climbing.

All the photos here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dacus/sets/72157628731878671/detail/

Dawn over Little Cottonwood

After three weeks or so of inversion it is very refreshing to see blue skies again.

Work sanity: Swinging cold steel and hydroformed alumninum to start the day.

Pre-work view

Got to see the clouds roll in and obscure the stars before dawn and then have the sun add a little bit of warm light to an otherwise blue cast canyon. 

The second pitch of the Great White Icicle was in better than usual conditions too.