Vancouver & Squamish

Got back last night from a great trip and much needed vacation to the pacific northwest.
Julie had long been planning and training to run the Vancouver B.C. marathon so it was only natural that we extended the trip by going to granite rock mecca of Squamish for the rest of the week.

A quick buzz through Seattle and a hop over the border to the glass city of Vancouver. At first I was taken a back by the city, then began to like it. It has a huge Asian population and it kinda feels like you're in Hong Kong with the glass high rises.



That's her on the home stretch.. rock star

On to Squamish.. with one of us with dead legs and unstable rainy weather we did lots of walking around the first few days and warmed up on some nice and easier climbs and got scared on wet cracks. It had been over a year since I lead trad rock so I had to get my head game together a bit as well!


The Cheif - big wall playground!


We pretty much stayed in Smoke bluffs the whole time. Fantastic 1-2 pitch climbs around every corner. Like Pikie Corner a nice 5.8 pair of cracks:


This was another fun crack at the Neat and Cool wall:

The weather got better later in the week and we climbed till dark on one of the evenings. Hiked up to the shannon Falls climbs and lead a nice 5.8 crack that turned to fists higher up and was wet.. it generally blew me mentally for the rest of the day leading that thing.

Anyway, fantastic quality 2 pitch climbs at Mosquito - here we are topping out on Flemish Dance an awesome 5.8 that is quite stiff!


Great week, J's first real into to the world of gym-free climbing and it was great to get on some stellar granite climbs. Just as we had to leave we actually felt like we were warmed up and were ready to step it up a notch and get on some harder climbs but there is always next time. Looking foreword to more mixed in this summer at Hatchers.

heading out...

Leaving Anchorage for the first time since about September... whoo hoo. Julie is running the Vancouver marathon then we are going rock climbing in squamish. Needed it bad 2 weeks ago during breakup, but now that summer is here with a super strong high pressure system and the forecast for Vancouver is rain. humm..

Some recent highlights - Luz made her first descent of peak 3 running after me snowboarding at mach 6.5. It was so warm down to a tee shirt on the up & down, not for Luz though, her slayer training is coming along quite well.





Build up a new bike... 9 speed and full suspension, jumping into the 2000's!


Time now though to pack gear, lots of gear!


Looking foreword to a certain rematch traverse fest in May..

Trials sickness

This should get the stoke level up.
Thanks Jesse!



The second half is insane.

Tinkering

Been wrenching on 4 different bikes lately - Turned the Karate monkey into fast city mode with my touring Marathon XR tires. Converting Julie's bike into a single speed. Black Sheep has become light weight single speed fattie wilderness machine, and finally project Canzo has begun in earnest.

Some Pics:

Wheel by Mike C DT 340 hub, sram cassette (9 speed!! I'm stepping into the new millennium!)


My older Hugi 240 with Salsa delgado - great front wheel. The fork I'm simply not worthy of.




The black sheep I just could not part with, maybe next year. This frame was the first 29er mountain bike that James ever made. Now he's got like a year of back log making super bling 29ers. It is not totaly ideal for its intended purpose, lots more standover would be good as would singlespeed dropouts. But it's light, its Ti and it fits 2.4's with 44mm rims. The Surly singleator was the quick and easy solution for chain tension and works perfectly... hopefully it does not get ripped off. I didn't feel like dropping the $$ for an ENO hub and 50mm Uma... So until that perfect other frame comes along, this will be the setup for packrafting.

Peak 3

The lung bugs have been mostly vanquished.
The corn harvest on peak 3 Monday night was fantastic.
Thanks for the photo Dan!

hacking death cough

I've had a case of the night time hacking death cough for the past 2+ weeks. This creates a new non-athletic experiment in sleep deprivation. Not much excitement lately except for watching the slush get thicker and wetter on the bike trail every day.
This was pretty exciting though:





Don't worry, this blog will be back to its usual self once I clean out the lung bugs. In the mean time the animals will have to do.

Luz

Everyone - meet Luz (aka Lucy).
She's a golden lab puppy with 6 months under her furry belt. We've had her for 5 of those. With spring here she's starting to get her first jaunts into the Chugach. Even some snow free hiking.



She's a slayer of the Chugach in training.

Ok, I'll trade it

I morally couldn't seem to just sell my Black Sheep - so now I'll trade it.
Looking to build up a Titanium singlespeed wilderness bike with fat tires.
So I'll trade this nice Black sheep frame (20" 29er rack mounts - tons of tire clearance, steel fork) for a similar Ti frame with horizontal drop outs with lots of tire clearance.



I know my chances are slim, but it you have a Ti singlespeed frame and want to go with gears let me know and we'll deal :)

If not I'm going to build it up with a Surly singleator, throw it in rivers all summer and call it good.

Happy Easter

Its that time again, 3 years running, it's still as funny as the first time.



I know, its sick humor, but think how much fun they had making it!

hell yeah

Thanks Marlin,
Good to know there are others out there who like to throw their bikes in the water!