February 2012
12 posts
A preview
Pitch 3 of the Routa Normal on the Torre Principal in Frey. Monte Tronador in the background.
WatchThe flutes at 2:20 look beyond steep.
January 2012
17 posts
4 tags
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...
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/
December 2011
10 posts
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.
The Great White Icicle before work
“The details are not the details. They make the design.”
– Charles Eames
4 tags
Chamonix photos
(at long last)
Chamonix 2011 on Flickr
Photos from our trip in August. More details to follow.
“Everything in life is a challenge. You can accept the challenge to improve. Or...”
No snow?
Without any new snow recently in any real amounts or on our way in the forecast, we headed up to just go looking around.
Don’t be fooled by the magic of photography, these were some of the only good turns of the day.
Definitely put some “texture” on the bottom of my skis after this outing. Looking forward to more (minus hitting as many rocks…).
November 2011
10 posts
Details matter: stainless steels
Stainless steel, specifically 17-4, 304 and 316 are all grades that get used in surgical instruments all the time. But these steels are all fairly similar and when put two flat surfaces of the same material are in close sliding contact or load there isa risk of galling. What’s galling?
Galling usually refers to the adhesive wear and transfer of material between metallic surfaces in...
2 tags
Sometimes you just have to start:
CAD work, modeling, SLA prototypes can be helpful to getting most of the the way through the development of something, but its been my experience so far that until the metal chips start flying, its not real and you can’t really fully understand how its going to turn out.
Perhaps the hard way is the best way. I wish we had started directly learning about this part much earlier.
November 6th turns
Second day of the year? Not a clear definition of where last season ends and this one begins, but November is definitely not last season. This is also just 14 months of skiing in a row. Today was a fun way to get things kicked off: new bindings, the first tour with my brother and good to get out with Rich & Renee as well. There were plenty of rocks lurking under the snow and it felt like less...
Pulled the O1 bindings off my skis last night. 3 years on these, its been a good run.
Perfectionism and honesty
From Alpinist.com Alpinist Redpoints Cover Misses Onsight
A yellow size twelve typo on Alpinist 36’s full page, John Svenson-illustrated cover. For the editorial staff there wasn’t much discussion; the cover had to be reprinted.
…
It wasn’t a hard decision, just a hard truth that we closed our eyes and swallowed. We reprinted the covers. When Alpinist 36 arrives at...
“You put up with the grind of work or school as long as you can or is required....”
–
Wishing there was ice to climb, could use the head clearing nature of this type of climbing.
October 2011
9 posts
