Mt.Thielsen Helmet Cam

Went out and climbed most of the way up Thielsen last weekend. Got halfway up the 30 meter summit pinnacle but the rotten, dripping ice and snow was dodgier than what I wanted to downclimb so I backed off and ran down to the car on snowshoes. Good day.

B4+cbi

B4+cbi

Crater Lake Ski Camp

Bethany and I got out for a short ski camping trip last weekend. We headed up to Crater Lake and were hoping to get some turns in on one of the small peaks on the rim. Unfortunately when we got there the snow was extremely soft with small sloughs coming off everywhere - probably due to being the first warm weekend this year. It was a fun trip nonetheless and as you can there is still plenty of snow for skiing late into the summer!

Monkey Face

A few months back my friend Dave and I planned to make a trip out to Smith and go up the Pioneer Route on Monkey Face. After one non-starter weekend we decided to make a go of it on the long weekend. Despite the threat of bad weather and large crowds (3x as many cars in the car park as I'd ever seen before) we made the hike out to the Monkey and surprisingly found only one other party high up on the route. I guess the Smith Rock sport climbers don't like walking. It was on! Dave hadn't been rock climbing for quite a while but because the weather was looming and we had a late start we decided that he'd be able to get a refreshed en route. As usual with the Pioneer route, the A1 pitch is a bit of a PIA but the rest of the route is fantastic and we made it up without any real problems (though certainly not a speed record).

Nevada Landscape

I think the winning photo came from Nevada. It is really just your standard Nevada landscape. 20 foot cinder block sculptures of nude women in suggestive poses are pretty much everywhere. Its just hard to get a photo without one in it.

Utah Trip

Finally - here are a smattering of photos from our Utah trip two weeks ago. They are in pretty much reverse chronological order because of the annoying way blogger uploads photos. It was a great trip although a bit whirlwind and a lot of driving (although as Romaric says, we are American so we have to drive a lot eh). There are a lot more photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/57670177@N07/sets/72157626772886404/with/5744062982/

Great Gallery

After leaving Moab we did a day hike down into Horseshoe canyon to check out some of the petroglyphs. This is a panorama of the Great Gallery - the Great Ghost (the non-solid figure on the left panel) is over 2.5 meters tall. Click on the image to see it up close.