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Northeast Bat Die-Off

A great mystery is unfolding in northeast caves -- huge numbers of bats are dying. I caved a bit in the northeast, and bats are certainly an interesting part of the experience (awfully neat little critters, they are). I'm quite a bit curious about how the bat situation will turn out. If you've been living under a rock (pardon the pun), the latest news is for cavers to stay out of caves and mines in the northeast that house bat populations...

SUOC Reunion

Jithka, Sean, and a new recruit Christine came out to Joshua Tree to represent my alma mater's climbing expertise. Laura came down for the event, truly making it one that could not be missed.

I posted a whole big smattering of photos here. Uploading photos via Movable Type has become a little bit painful lately...Gallery is nice as it has a Java applet for bulk uploading, and an interface to use ImageMagick to rotate/crop/resize/whatever photos once they're there. Very nice.

The trip was absolutely fantastic. I was climbing better than I've ever climbed before, even sending a few 5.8s and 5.9s. In the Gunks I would often struggle with 5.6/5.7 moves. I'd like to think that I'm becoming more experience now and can think through moves better. It might just be that I've been going to the gym for the last month or so (nothing spectacular as I'm pretty weak, but at least I'm doing something with my arms besides just typing).

I've been missing Laura immensely over the last few months, wondering how life can put us in the same geographic location again...

From Rome to Little Falls

Work has been going in the 'not incredibly well' verse for a while. It's a funny thing, but I like for someone to tell me what to do every now and then. The SELinux Symposium actually helped a lot, in more than a few ways...it convinced me that I should start working on some parts of RedHat, so I've decided to take on some of the projects from the TODO list. Kind of strange that I'm paid by the government, and am writing software for a linux distribution that will ultimately be sold back to...me...

Growing a little bit tired of having my life and dreams in my own hands at work, I decided to cut out a little early today and go to Little Falls to climb with some friends. A big bonus of commuting to Rome for work is that the cliffs are only a 40 minute drive from work (versus 1.25 hours from Syracuse).

Jonas, being belayed by Sarah O.

I met up with Jonas and about 4 other SUOC'ers and did a few of the famous routes at Little Falls, including Jeff Loves Eileen (5.4, located on the big slab wall and notable because "Jeff Loves Eileen" is spraypainted on the rock in the middle of the climb).

Climbing still serves as a wonderful meditation/stress relief break from the banalities of modern life...I probably should start climbing more often so that I'm not stuck doing 5.4 and 5.5 climbs for the rest of my life.

Mount Marcy^WColden

Jithka and I planned a trip for Mt. Marcy over the weekend. It would be a great way to work through some of the stress that work has been putting me through lately. Fortunately I've been re-discovering my sense of humor with the asinine nature of government work, so my psyche is even more intact than usual. This weekend's multiple brushes with death certainly helped a lot...

We took off Friday afternoon, taking my truck because it was snowing something fierce and I have 4wd. Except when we got to the part of the road that wasn't plowed anymore, my 4wd wouldn't engage. Teh suck.

So we're driving up the dirt road to Tahawus in rear wheel drive. Fortunately it is plowed, but it still has a nice layer of ice and snow on it. My truck is handling nice, and we're getting there around 5:30, so I'm going 20-30mph. We crest a hill, and start coming down, and at the bottom, a tree is across the road. Some expletives were shouted by Sean, Jithka, and myself in our respective native tongues as I jammed the brakes, trying to make a decision: ditch or tree. I cut left, where the tree was slightly higher off the road, hoping it would only smash the roof down rather than catch my windshield dead-on. A loud crunch, and only a bunch of scrapes in the paint tell the tale of that little escapade.

We got to the Upper Work parking lot around 6, had a swig of whiskey, and thanked the Flying Spaghetti Monster for letting us live. Then we strapped on our snowshoes, shouldered our packs, and hit the trail for Uphill Lean-to.

The hiking was slow. Sean fell into a stream about 20 minutes into the hike, but we pressed on. We were breaking trail in a few inches of snow, moving about 1 mi/hr. I lost one of my water bottles on the way, on one of the several times I fell over. We stopped short of our goal and camped in the lean-to near Lake Colden Dam. "No problem," we thought, "if we go one mile an hour tomorrow we'll make it up and down Marcy with time to spare before sunset."

Where we would eventually go: Mount Colden

We cooked breakfast and started melting water in the morning, but our stove quit. Plenty of fuel, it just wouldn't stay lit for more than a few minutes. Unfortunately someone put the wrong instruction manual in the stove bag, so we weren't too eager to go taking it apart. So we left in the morning after a good night's sleep, but only 3.5 liters of water for the three of us.

We hiked up towards Marcy but the snow got deep. Like 2' deep. And we were still breaking trail. I was smart enough to forget gators, so my boots were quickly getting wet on the inside. We slowed to about a half mile an hour. We reached a fork where we could go 2.2 miles up marcy and then another 4 back down to our campsite, or 2.9 up Colden and and another 2 to our campsite, so we decided to do Mount Colden.

We didn't reach the base of Colden until 3pm, with 3.3 miles left to go. We were going to turn around and just go back, but we ran into some luck: the trail was broken ahead!

We started up Colden with renewed vigor, until about 30 minutes later when the previous hikers had decided to give up and had turned around. "We're already most of the way up, for sure," we figured.

3 hours later, exhausted, we reached the top of Mount Colden. By then it was dark, and we had a lot of trouble finding the trail on the top. That, and the trail goes right over the big slide on the Marcy Dam side. I tried not to look down...

Jithka took a few photos at the top, of me looking bewildered and hypoglecimic (will backpost those as soon as I get them).

The funniest thing about being as cold and as exhausted as we were was that we could barely talk. My voice was weak, my jaw couldn't move, my tongue was numb (so were my toes...that water in my boots from earlier? Very cold and worrisome). We were all actually a bit worried up there.

We did find our way down (obviously), and hiked back to camp, landing sometime around 7:30pm. Of course, our stove still didn't work, so we had to eat snow and cold bagels and gorp for dinner, and shiver ourselves back to warmth in our sleeping bags. We woke up Sunday morning with mostly stiff clothing (at least, the stuff that we couldn't fit in our sleeping bags). My boots were blocks of ice. The socks I had taken off hastily and left on the lean-to floor were quite difficult to pry up. But hey, we hiked out and we're alive, so I ain't complaining too much.

People ask me how I stay sane working for the government. Now they have half the answer...

Good Night, and Good Luck

I watched Good Night, and Good Luck a few nights ago. I could almost feel the older population I was watching the flick with looking over their shoulders...Westcott Nation was, I would imagine, a fertile breeding ground for radical ideas like communism back in the day.

In honor of the late Murrow, Laura and I said good night, and then woke up the next day and hiked Good Luck Mountain in the Adirondacks.

Laura, hanging out on a boulder in front of Good Luck Cliffs

We picked up Jay, an RIT student from Utica on the way, and then I joined the Laura and Jay yearly tradition of doing a low peak dayhike the day after Thanksgiving.

The view is not quite as spectacular as previous trips, but worthy of a good nosepick

Brushing with a Vengeance

Work has had me stressed out. I haven't been stressed out since I was in high school, back before I discovered girls. Like Rincewind, when trouble calls, I generally run away. Destination: New Paltz.

Jonas, checking out my dad's house from the Near Trapps. Her face was glued to the camera all weekend.

My dad's 59th birthday was Wednesday of last week, and we were going to go down then and celebrate. My boss needed me in late Wednesday, though. And Thursday morning. And Thursday afternoon. I finally gave my boss the finger, took my overdue vacation time, and we got out of town on Friday afternoon sometime. Getting to New Paltz was half the battle. Fortunately, Jonas was making a documentary of our trip, which kept me at least mildly amused through my failing memory of how to get around the Catskills backroads.

The main road from New Paltz to Gardiner was...well...wet...

The Wallkill river decided to flood its banks after 9 days and something like three feet of constant rain. Bridges were closed, and USGS was out taking water flow measurements. Sad, but higher bridges were available, so we could at least get to my dad's house, even if it did take a bit of extra time.

Since the cliffs were wet on Saturday, we just did a mofo dayhike over the Nears and way out to Millbrook (where my dad's house is), then down into the west valley and back out to the Mohonk Preserve. Saturday night was the climbing film fest at SUNY New Paltz. Sunday...well, Sunday was the best part of the story.

Joel belaying Stephen on Tipsy Trees/Minty

We did the same old climb, including much of Minty. I didn't feel nearly as nervous climbing this time, which means I have to get out of this 5.4 rut I've been in. Harder stuff is in order, for sure.

This old dude soloed the same route we did, sans shoes and rope. Yeah, I feel like a wuss.

First Time Little Falls

I've never been to Little Falls, until now. Jonas took a trip out this morning. It was...little.

Lots of fun, though. I didn't even climb, thanks to a knee that's been making odd popping sounds (I've promised myself to keep off of it until it feels 100% better). So I taught a bunch of new people how to tie figure-eight knots and how to belay, and we sent them on their way to climbingville.

Happy Climbers

Speleofest 2005

Stephen, Laura, and I packed up the woman's hybrid and drove out to Schoharie, NY, for a little thing called Speleofest.

Schoharie Cave lit up by a hundred thousand tea lights (photo courtesy of Eric Porter)

The National Speleological Society has a cabin over Schoharie Cave, which we explored Friday night. As New York caves go, it's the most spacious I've been in. While not nearly as massive as TAG caves (like Limrock Blowing Cave), it was pretty much a walkabout the whole way (which was roughly a mile in). The cave was also full of bats, and those bats were also active since we left sometime around 11PM for our caving adventure. I've never seen so many furry flying mice in my life; it was very cool.

Dante, checking out the bats

After a good night's sleep in my tent, Kevin, Stephen, Laura, and myself were ready for some more caving action. We went to End of Gulch cave, a short semi-wet, not-too-crawly passage that ends in a pool of water (which presumably feeds some lake's coldwater spring somewhere). We also re-checked-out Onesquethaw cave, a tight, wet, smelly, massively long ordeal that includes a semi-sump duckunder and an area affectionately referred to as "the barnyard." On my last trip there, we didn't get to experience the full affect of the aforementioned; unfortunately on this trip, I did. See, there's a part of the cave that sits under some sort of animal barn. The animals above tend to do things like poop and pee and do other things that animals do, and eventually that stinky stuff works its way down into a foot-deep puddle in the cave. That wouldn't be so bad, except that the foot-deep puddle happens to be in a spot that where the floor and ceiling are only about 3 feet apart. So, you guessed it, you get to crawl through water that smells like shit.

Bad smells aside, Onesquethaw seems to have bad luck for joint pain. I started feeling a little sore in my knee during the Schoharie Cave exploration, by the end of Onesquethaw my knee was making odd sounds and hurting quite a bit as I crawled and scrambled and did other maneuvers. Not fun, so it's time to take it easy on my legs for a while (and maybe go paddling instead).

The Gunks Redux

It's been a long time since I really climbed the gunks, which is a shame. My dad and brother have had their separate houses right by the cliffs for a long time now. A dozen mountain biking trips later, I've finally gotten to climb those rocks again.

Dad on the second belay ledge of Minty

Jonas, Paul, and myself formed an extra-small party and climbed over the weekend with my dad. I've never really climbed with him, save for a brief stint on the Elbesandstein. Climbing the Gunks was way better multi-pitch stuff where we could actually set pro.

Rapping off Moonlight, a free-hanging, no-wall-contact fall

All of us being incredibly inexperienced, we climbed easy stuff in the 5.3 and 5.4 categories. Jonas even got her leader legs back after a many-month hiatus of climbing at all, which was definitely nice. We even got to enjoy a totally breaktaking rappel.

Living it up, Reid-Style

We certainly lived the high life while we were there, too, enjoying fine wine, fine beer, fine food, and even a slideshow biography presentation about one the Gunks originals, Hans Kraus. I look forward to reading the book to shed a little insight on other Austrian Climbers...

The Old Timer's Reunion

After much idle flirtation with the idea, I decided on a whim to go to West Virginia for the Old Timer's Reunion, a gargantuan (>2000 people) gathering of cavers from all over the East Coast.

Just another late-night drive...

Polar, Amy, and myself started off on Friday afternoon around 4pm. We arrived quite late, actually registering for OTR at sometime around 2am, and finally getting camp setup and going to bed by 3am.

I woke up entirely too early on Saturday, walked around and saw the sites on the campground. We thought about caving, but opted to lounge in the party-tent instead, talking of "Old Times," arguing the tenets of carbide lamps versus LEDs versus halogen, and otherwise making asses of ourselves. The legends of OTR are true -- there is much talking about caving, and very little actual caving.

Thankfully I brought my road bike down with me, and convinced myself to go for a (albeit brief) ride. I came back to camp to find a bunch of folks playing an interesting new game -- Jenga with instructions written on each block. Pick a block out, follow the instructions, put it back on the top. If you knock the pile over, you have to do a naked lap around the campsite.

Thankfully most people don't remember what the instructions had us do that night

Jonas and I weren't much for multiple days of drinking and sitting with the OTR crew -- there was a bit of awkwardness given the intricate social history of a club like SUOC. We opted to leave Sunday morning for Lake George, where we hoped to climb Little Finger (I had planned to climb it once before, but backed out so Tom's girlfriend could go). We drove and drove and drove. By about 8 o'clock PM we were in Binghamton, a mile from I-88 north to Albany/Lake George area. Unfortunately, seeing the "68 miles to Syracuse" sign made us decide to not drive until midnight for what would probably turn into another aborted climb anyway -- the group partying in Lake George was out of cell contact and theoretically would have packed up early Monday morning. So here I am, back in Syracuse, rested at last and ready to take on the Sunshine State again...

More High Peaks

Laura, and I did a few more high peaks over the weekend with a newcomer, Shad. It was the classic tight-bonding trip in which we shared relationship woe and devoured the sights that the Adirondacks have to offer. We also managed to keep off of AMR land thus preventing another arrest. I'm still miffed that the Adirondacks is not the wild area I thought it to be.

We completed Lower Wolfjaw, Upper Wolfjaw, Armstrong, and Gothics, camped out between Gothics and Sawteeth, and then hiked through AMR on Sunday. Not a bad trip, a lot less crowded than I thought it would be, and oh-so-good in ways that will probably be expounded upon another day...

Same Freedom, Different Hill

I suppose I need to start going on these things alone. Not that I mind groups, I do enjoy the company from time to time. But it'd be nice to just eat gorp for a whole weekend, instead of worrying about other people's opinions on hot meals. The motivation behind that is, of course, the pudge on my belly. I was shocked to find things jiggling a few weeks ago when I went running. A daily regiment of 5k plus cycling a few days a week has kept things somewhat solidified, but it's scary to think that I need to keep doing this stuff my entire life. I'd rather be backpacking, as they say, so that's what I'm ending up doing a lot.

The plan was to leave Friday afternoon at 2:30, go to Elk Lake that night, hike two miles or so in. Saturday would take us up Hunter's pass to the top of Dix, and hopefully provide us a nice view of a few of the other peaks. Then back down the east side of Dix, where we could camp out on the way back south.

I arrived home at 2:30pm on Friday from a Sun Solaris conference to find my truck with a flat tire. It took an hour and a trip to the parts store to get the wheel off, thanks to rusty bolts (I even broke some Craftsman tools in the process), plus a bit more time to drop the wheel off at a gas station, and even more time to wait and see if a plug would work. It didn't, so I left it to be patched and balanced while I went home and packed.

The mad scramble of throwing things in my pack was fun, if hectic craziness can be considered fun. We got out and on the road around 5pm, and made it to the trailhead at around 10:30 thanks to a wrong turn made by me.

An hour in and we were at the first lean-to, where we spent the night.

Up at 8am, we opted to go up the steeper Beckhorn trail to reach Dix, stopping on the way around 1pm to admire the clouding-up view from Beckhorn Peak. Then it was over to Dix, and back down to Hunter's Pass.

I made the interesting decision to pick up a pair of cross-country skis that had been left on top of Dix. One of the bindings had broken off, no doubt whoever skied up with them had gotten a bit irritated at the prospect of carrying them down. Were I in the position, I would have. So I'll blame the hapless skier and speculate that he was probably Canadian -- it may sound stereotypical, but Canadians often come down to the Adirondacks and seldom clean up after themselves, a sight that I've seen with high frequency.

We didn't make it back to the lean-to until almost 4:30pm, and we were all exhausted. I cooked us up some dinner after Laura and Monica chopped our vegetables. While flavorless, our onion, broccoli, carrot, and couscous stew provided a bit of warmth and let us all tell stories...until the hour of 6pm, at which we all went to bed.

We woke up around 6am on Sunday, packed up, and hiked out. We were on the road before 8am, and back to syracuse around noon. It felt like a workday in that sense. These weekend trips are leaving me refreshed and giving me the motivation to return to work each Monday, so in a deeper sense it did not feel like a workday.

Freedom of the Hills

Knowing that life is about to change in a big way, I went with some folks backpacking over the weekend. We hiked into Lake Colden on Friday night, and headed for Mt. Algonquin, again. I even got pictures this time...batteries seem to like warmer weather more. Pictured at the peak, clockwise from the top are Thomas, Laura, Jithka, David, and myself. While I may appear to be out of breath, it's really just because I'm reaching to take the picture.

This time the weather was far more hospitable, and included lots of sun and weather into the 70s. The top was still a bit chilly, of course.

I've been re-reading the adventures of Doug Peacock, and was secretly hoping to stumble into a black bear this trip. No such luck. The peak ranger on Algonquin told us where to avoid -- Lake Colden lean-tos and Marcy Dam in the evenings. I wandered through the brush in both places, and even got a campsite at Marcy about five feet from bear scat (sadly, it was over a week old). Even without bears, the trip was well worth it -- time to think, walk, and meditate about coming changes.

The People vs. the Administration

SUOC came under "attack" by the administration a few weeks ago, with allegations of participation in high-risk activities such as "spelunking" and "mountain climbing." While we don't participate in either activity, we do cave, peak-bag, and rock climb. Apparently we are risky enough to need supervision from 30-something graduates of Recreation Management programs that think holding onto a tree when swimming in a flooded river is good idea...

Damning the man, we set out to rally some student support with a little going-out-of-business propaganda.

Whether or not we're justified in being afraid of a change in management is a tricky situation. On the one hand, the University just wants to protect itself from lawsuits. On the other hand, there never has been a lawsuit in our 70 years of existence, and our system of edumacation works damn finely. The fear is being slapped by a parent and not being allowed to go ice climbing anymore, just because that parent doesn't know how to...

Fortune appeared to be smiling on us during our quad protest. 850 student and faculty signatures (and one signature from a Vietnam veteran who stopped by to thank us for keeping the spirit of protesting authority alive) were collected. The Student Association passed a resolution unanimously condemning the University from messing with us. And we had a rainbow over our quad campsite.

Even all of this wasn't enough to protect us, though. Today, Dean Urtz made it official, and has turned into a newpeak robot when responding to questions about the move (such as: where will money come from? Can we still kayak?).

We'll shoulder on like we always do, though. If us, we won't listen to them. Communication is a two-way street, after all.

Spring Chuck-A-Thon 05

The Outing Club apparently has this tradition of trying to drink as many pitchers as it can from open to close at a bar. Apparently this sort of activity is one of the things every drunkard should do in his/her lifetime.

We broke SUOC's previous record, and in fact the bar record, totalling 182 pitchers of fermented beverage consumed. I'd like to say I played a bigger part, but I was called out by another meeting, as well as the general warm weather leading me to some more walkabouts.

I do so love this city when it starts to warm up.

Country Roads

SUOC Spring Break was an orgy of bicycles, caving, rock climbing, hiking, kayaking, and, well, orgies. Dustin and I loaded my truck with no fewer than seven bicycles, relevant gear, tools, etc, and left last Thursday night. We landed in our cabins at about 3am, tired and in desperate need of beer.

The rest of SUOC began filtering in over the next two or three days, and quite a few hikes and other such trips started heading out. It was a rather interesting setup...kayaking, biking, and hiking all day, followed by either binge drinking or caving at night.

While waiting for them to unpack, a few of us went creekboating in Sandy Ridge, just behind our cabins. A few days later, I would go on my first real whitewater trip -- the South Fork of the Potomac just a bit outside of Franklin. It was given a class 3 technical rating by our trip leader, far buffer than my brother's bachelor party. My core was hard; although I swam four times, I was beginning to read the river right and getting good lines on some of the bigger rapids.

Since I brought all of my bikes, I thought it might be good to take out a decent trip. I gathered up Dustin and David, and we headed up and over North Mountain and out to Seneca Rocks (another group was rock climbing on the east side of the cliffs, yet another group started a downhill ride at the top of North and met us at Seneca). The 30 mile ride was accentuated by a 4000 foot pile of rock, in addition to the general hilliness of West Virginia. Needless to say, I arrived first, followed by another 5 or 6 bike riders some ten minutes later.

I got to climb a little too, after the biking and kayaking. A bunch of us headed to Nelson Rocks on Saturday afternoon to soak up some sun and hard stuff. A torn something in my shoulder left me atop a pitch physically unable to grab with my left hand. Luckily no-one ragged on me too hard.

Of course there was partying, which reached its climax one night during a three-cabin drinking battle royale, complete with themes.

The party took its toll on all involved. Various occurences of digestive fluids finding their ways through sphincters via reverse peristalsis gave way to delirious dreams for more than a few. I stayed sober and took care of the dead. The reward for my efforts included a couple hooking it up in the bunk next to me; thankfully I'm old enough to laugh and move on. Doubly thankfully I brought my tent.

The week culminated in a country dance in Monterey. Several hundred rednecks stood outside of the high school gymnasium oggling each other's pickups. SUOC braved the inside, jumping and jiving to ACDC cover tunes by a somewhat twangy band for the close of the annual Maple Festival. It marked the close of our break too. The following morning was cleanup detail, repacking, and an 8-hour drive back to Syracuse. Somehow, I'm refreshed after the whole experience. A week of no internet and only cursory contact with the outside world is definitely a positive experience. And the future looks a lot different than I ever might have imagined.

West Virginia, Ho

SUOC is leaving for West Virginia, a sizable contingent of us going down today. In preparation, we've been doing our drills with increased intensity and furor.

It promises to be a fun week, if the weather holds. Mountain biking here I come. And kayaking. And caving. And backpacking. So yeah, I won't be around for the next 10 days, yet again.

Banff Again

They say that history repeats itself until the first new episode of the next fall season. I haven't owned a television in 3 years, but I assume that this universal constant still applies. In with repeating history, I played film coordinator for the Banff Mountain Film Festival (check it out, Banff will be coming to your area soon). Our films were decent this year, with over 200 people in attendance for the fest. I only wish someone would have told me that I should keep my head shaved (which I'm doing again). That bald spot on the back is getting pretty nasty...

Guinness Book

Syracuse University spent a few thousand dollars over the weekend (part of Winter Carnival) in order to beat out a poor 14 year old girl from London. I would like to accuse the University of being the only entity in the world with a desire to take away a teenager's pride, but apparently we're not the only ones to break her feat.

In the meantime, we (SUOC, that is) decided to build a fortress around the snowball, three feet high and one foot thick, made from blocks of compacted snow. I dubbed our sculpture Snowhenge, and am predicting that it will melt exactly on the vernal equinox of this year. Any takers on the bet?

After all that funness of playing in the snow, lifting 30 pound blocks of ice, etc, I went with Bert and Arielle to see our pal Polar play with some folk for the Syracuse Irish Music Session. The bar had more musicians than regular patrons. It may be time to dust off my guitar and learn some traditional irish tunes.

Vert School

In preparation for West Virginia, I took some vertical rope ascending lessons at the old E-Room. Rope goes up through a pulley in the ceiling, through the ascending hardware, and down to a pulley on the ground, where ground control lets rope out so you practice ascending and descending with all that fancy gear. Climbing rope is tiring, but at least not technical. Rapelling half so. All aboard.

Gone Caving

On Friday, SUOC had its annual X-Mas dinner. Since I've been having fun at everybody elses' houses all semester, I thought I'd play host for one last hurrah. The dress code was a tad on the formal side, with usual dirty hippies donning their best suits and dress shoes. Most of us, anyway...

Hung over on Saturday, we part-goers went on a caving trip, back to Chittenango's small caverns. I lead the trip, which was a rather silly idea. We hiked in the cold rain for about 40 minutes before finding the first cave. Already cold and wet, we set about our work of exploration, body twisting, and comparison of flowstone to shaved mons.

I was brave enough to bring my camera into the caves this time. I probably won't do it again unless I get a waterproof hard case with some nice foam padding inside...even inside the cave pack, a camera bag, and a plastic zip-lock bag it managed to get pretty wet and muddy down in the hole.

And of course a SUOC trip is never complete without a price. I've got a sinus infection, probably a combination of lack of sleep and caving with a hangover post-party. I hope it clears up by the time next weekend rolls around -- I plan on spending my solstice in the mountains this year.

Bushwhacked

Against my better judgement (I've had a chest cold since Thursday), I went backpacking in the Macintyre range over the weekend. We came into to the Lake Colden lean-to at about midnight or 1am Saturday morning after hiking and wheezing down the trail. When we started our 10pm death march, it was 13 degrees fahrenheit (-11 celsius), and dropped a bit as we hiked -- no cloud cover meant lots of surface heat bleeding off into the oblivion of space.

I awoke Saturday morning at around 7:30, shivering. My bag is rated to 0F. Most of me was warm, my feet felt like blocks of ice. I rolled over to get my glasses, which I left on the floor of our lean-to. I hit them a little bit hard. Not too hard, just kind of a rough pick-up. The frame cracked around the lens, brittle from the cold (and a few years of UV radiation, no doubt). Duct tape to the rescue.

We got a late start, hitting the trail at about 10am. I had all the right gear, I just wasn't ready psychologically for such a cold start. At about 3pm, we summited Algonquin. Above the treeline was frigid, and windy as hell. It was a bit hard to take photos up there...my gloves were stiff from the cold, and it wasn't very comfortable to hold my hand out and take photos.

We opted to not summit the adjacent peak, as the sun would be setting fairly early. Heading down, Bull (our "ghost leader") and Amalia decided to split our group up. David (one of our Czech Republic members), Amalia, and myself were all hiking a bit more slowly. Lack of sleep, my chest cold, and the cold in general were making me feel sluggish. Plus I could feel myself low on electrolytes -- a feeling not unlike I experienced on my Lake Placid ride.

The stories about the trail distances on the signs being totally out-of-whack in the Adirondacks is quite true. After hiking down past Avalance Lake, we found a trail sign indicating that our lean-to was only 1.1 miles away. Another hour of expeditious hiking and we weren't there yet. After trying to convince poor Amalia that maybe we had taken a wrong turn, Jithka (David's wife) could be heard calling for us. They had moved the campsite anyway, so much embarassment had been saved (as the story went, "yes, we knew where we were but our equipment was missing!"). Still, freezing to death in the Adirondacks wouldn't have been a bad way to go.

Another frigid night, this time in tents, gave way to a morning barely below freezing on Sunday. We couldn't believe it, we danced about the campsite in polypropylene undergarments. And that was that. I am certainly looking forward to more winter hiking this season, hopefully with Bert (who has conveyed some interest in preparing for a run on Rainier in the not-so-distant future...).

A road to Nowhere

Guess what I did over the weekend? You're right, SUOC!

While some of us consider running away from our new overlord, the rest of us are happy to cool out and see things through. Myself, I'm learning to kayak the right way (rolls first) at a SUOC rolling session in the gym swimming pool. Lots of good instructors make sure that I can flip myself over when the inevitable happens. I managed to get a somewhat shaky roll down, and with practice I started screwing it up big-time. So I'll be back this coming weekend to make things perfect.

We went deep into Onesquethaw cave on Sunday, me with an aching shoulder. It is a gorgeous one, with an beautifully carved opening (much easier to crawl into than Clarksville, too). We tramped into it for hours, admiring the neat-o rock formations and fun barnyard smells before getting too cold and tired and calling it quits. Then we got somewhat lost trying to find out way out, making for a total trip time of about 5 hours. Thank goodness for Burgelene underwear, which kept me warm the whole time. I even lead a blind exit, where we turned off our headlamps for the last stretch of cave and I felt around trying to tell the group how to navigate over what I found. It was pretty dicey -- there were some climbs to go up -- but the reward of coming out into sinking sun twilight on fully-opened pupils was just amazing

The way home from the cave was equally fun, as my car hit 200,000 miles. That's quite a ways, and it will definitely hit many more miles as the winter wears on.

Basins of Attraction

Yet another SUOC trip went out this weekend (actually the only one), caving in Schoharie, New York. I'm still not sure what the name of the cave was that we dove into, but I do know this: it was awesome. We took what leader Bert referred to as a 'hard entrance' that involved some serious body puzzles (like rock climbing, except in 3 dimensions). Being the caving virgin on the trip, I was sent in first (of course), leading the fray through a tight crack barely large enough to fit through.

I used to think I was claustraphobic, but this trip has convinced me otherwise. I do enjoy the small and tight spaces -- so long as I'm able to back up. Yet another untried recreational activity has been tried and liked by Reid...caves in the northeast are wet, muddy, and cold (we even had to go swimming through a sump on this trip), but they are a fun physical challenge with interesting underwater lakes and rivers for visual stimulation.

We drove home into a beautiful sunset, even, as the last day of hospitable weather (above ground, anyway) gave way to another cold snap. I guess I'll be heading below the earth a bit this winter, where the temperature may be chilly, but is at least consistent and wind-free.

On an Island

Yet another Syracuse University Outing Club (SUOC) trip took place over the course of the day, this time to Tinker Falls and the Labrador Preserve. The falls are spectacular for dribbling affair, and one of our resident ice climbing folks posited the greatness that this overhanging water disposal has once it freezes -- a very cool vertical ice spout that is fairly safe for getting into the sport. As with many new things that I've been introduced to lately, I can't wait.

We hike up and over Labrador mountain, pausing for a while from the top (which is often used as a hangliding launch point) to admire the foilage. The Finger Lakes region is definitely peaked for fall color. We hit up Beak and Skiff on the way home as well, and picked up some more Jona Gold apples for baking and eating needs.

As with most weekends, there was also the dreaded SUOC party. This week, we celebrated Jonas' (pictured) and Dezeree's combined 21st birthdays (both Sunday), with a "round the world" drink tour in HAD-HOWL followed by a midnight trip to the bar around the corner. I even got the chance to earn some positive karma taking care of the latter after a bout of alcohol induced stomach self-evacuation. I also learned the wonders of Tiger Balm as an aphrodesiac. The SUOC crew is full of wonders...

End of the Summer

Henry and I would make a great gay couple if either of us were gay. Those words from my mouth as we whipped up a simple yet elegant little feast with our upstairs neighbor, Lindsay.

The residents of 735 Maryland have been busy with examinations and papers lately, which hasn't left us with much time to unwind. A little creativity in the kitchen never hurt anyone.

Of course, getting out of town never hurt, either. Most of SUOC was going to Moosefest this weekend, so those of that aren't good enough kayakers yet to take on the Moose decided to do some hiking around the basin. A happy clan of elevent, we wandered about the west-central wilderness area of the Adirondacks. Unfortunately, last week was the end of peak foliage season (but hey, I was up here last weekend anyway, thanks to a SUOC canoe trip).

Our hiking group decided to check out the Moose, just to see what we might get to do once we've got a good roll down. The rapids were phenomenal, and they were just class II and III. Part of me is getting the willies at what Sunday's section of the river was -- IV and V. That ripplely water trip that was my brother's bachelor party just doesn't hold a match to what the Moose offers. And to think, I thought the Basin was just a nifty place to ride my bike through...

Like a Rolling Stone

Adventures with SUOC continued this weekend as I travelled to Lake Lila in the Adirondacks (just on the southern tip of the High Peaks region).

My friend and sort-of-co-worker, Polar lead the trip. We arrived at Lila sometime late Friday night (around 10pm, I think), and hit the water after unloading the cars. Paddling by starlight until 2am, we decided to camp on Kenda Island (somewhat illegally) and drank and talked until the wee hours of the morning. Sunrise came all too quickly, and we had to tear down before the Ranger Chris would stumble upon our site. We breakfasted on our early-morning boat landing, a rock that looked out upon the lake and surrounding mountains.

We headed up a small river on the southwest corner of the lake, somewhat in awe of fall colors. The scenery was gorgeous, with surrounding mountains covered in fiery red, yellow, and aging green. Making a rather futile portage, we set up camp mid-afternoon in a promising spot along the creek (camp 12), complete with Forest Spirit protection.

Polar managed to bust out a few tunes on his little folk music guitar. It was no Deliverance, just songs about old lovers being somewhat like pancakes. Afterwards, we went on a splendid llittle hike through the woods, up to the top of one of our nearby mountains. I even got to see a bald eagle fly below.

Splendid territory up there...for a while I believed I could be happy spending the rest of my life on that mountain side. I don't think it was an entirely incorrect supposition.

We slept early on Saturday night, and woke up late Sunday morning to light rain pattering on the storm shield, 7 people crammed in to 2 tents. It's a lifestyle that takes some getting used to, but I think I'll be doing some winter hiking and camping trips as well...

SUOC Initiation

I officially joined SUOC last night at their first meeting of the academic year. It was a riot.

After the meeting, we all piled into the SUOC house (conveniently located directly behind my house) for a partay. Normally these things end with a fair number of attractive lasses (and a proportionate number of lads) removing their clothing to talk a little more "freely." Fortunately we kept these things Victorian enough on the first night, so as to not scare the newcomers (like me). Not that there wasn't a fair amount of crazy things happening, mind you.

I got a full tour of the house, which includes an elaborate rock climbing gym in the attic, a stairway used for practicing snowboarding skills (pictured, right), a keg lift for easy beer delivery in the basement via an outside door, and kayaks, mountain bikes, and caving equipment scattered all throughout the house. It is a phenomonal behomian wet-dream of a place to lay one's head down to sleep. I could easily get in a lot of trouble this year...

The first trips are going out already, but I'm booked for the next two weekends with a wedding and a visit to Virginia. Not that I mind, my body is starting to ache all over every morning from too much exercise...