Hatchers Climbing

Fun weekend up Arch-Angel road
Dan and I drove up Friday night after work and jumped on the bottom of Toto roping up at 9:30pm... it was a good start to the weekend! Light till past mid-night made it hard to go to sleep!
Saturday hit the monolith, then webfoot area for an awesome lead up Aurora Slab while dodging lightning and rain...

Got some cool pictures of Joe and Cathy climbing the harder upper section of Toto. You can barely make out Joe in the upper center of the photo.
They are dots on the top of the ridgeline in the other two.








Dan and the Aurora Slab... fun climb in the corner on the left of the slab.



Walked out back to the car in the pouring rain to a fun evening of cooking and fresh clams.

Hit the snowbird area on sunday, here is Cathy bring the photo slave..

More peaks

Hiked & climbed Granite peak in the Mat Valley this weekend with Dan, Billy and Yvonne.

We had a total blast and made it despite not-so ideal snow conditions.

anyway, the knee cycle is back at it again, must increase self-control on these weekend jaunts. It felt good the whole day but has been sore till today. So frusterating.

I'm starting a real attempt at going to yoga twice a week and really taking more time to strech.

I'm also writting off doing any serious winter biking in the near future by selling pugsley. The thing just collects dust and I feel guilty even owning it.

on a happy note I won the video contest woo hooo!

not much else to write, the GDR starts Friday, its one of those things that I know I could do well in if my body and knee let me. Touring has taught me alot about what that race would be like.

anyway bla bla bla.

Lots of mountains!

Been Busy lately.
I'm recovering from a combo of Forsyth's wedding, Climbing Mt. Rainier and getting serious altitude sickness. after a week of 4hrs or so sleep a night it has caught up to me. The trip was a much needed break and it was super fun doing a trip with Brook.
Anyway 2 weeks ago the N. Face of Pioneer:

An awesome day with 6,000' of climbing to a steepish 60 degree couloir at the top. It was sweet. Until the 4 hr bushwack to get back to the highway, yep we should have descended a different way...







Then Rainier... four days of crazyness, the full story I spewed forth here. Liberty Ridge was a fun climb, but the brush with life-threatening altitude sickness on the descent is what I took away from the trip however... HAPE sucks!







anyway..

It looks like I won the photo contest, so if anyone wants to buy a 50" plasma HDTV drop me a line, thanks for voting! Since I used Dan B's music in Colorado it seemed fitting to offer him a flight up to alaska with the procedes to go into Little switzerland... the training begins. Team Stupid united at last! its been since India and hanging in colorado.

Aside from all this hoopla my knee is still sore as ever and I'm looking at getting a wetsuit for alpine lake swimming. I hope that by focusing on rock climbing for the next month will give it some rest now that my mountaineering bug has been itched, it never ends.