Memorial Day

Over Memorial Day a bunch of us went down to Bend to do climbing at Smith Rocks and biking at Phil's Trail and the Whoo-De-Doos. As usual it was kick ass. Ron's friends Adam and Angel came down and did their first climb every and did really well and (I think) had an awesome time. My buddy Sara and woman Becky drove all the way from Seattle and said they had a good time even though they had to wait all day for us to string up some ropes for them.

These are our pictures from Phil's Trail

These are our pictures from Smith

Training on Mt. Hood

Keevin, Matt and I took a class through Timberline Mountain Guides on advanced snow technique and crevasse rescue. I think the rope mangement for crevasse rescue melted our brains but we eventually got it down.

We have some action shots.

$250 ticket for blowing stop sign on bike

As I rolled down Salmon street on my way to work I saw a group of bikers on the side of the road with police. I thought it was pretty cool the cops were giving out coffee and donuts. Not so. They were busy handing out $250 tickets for running the stop sign up the block.

I've been wondering when they'd have the police monitoring the 24th and Salmon street stop sign. It's right at the bottom of a pretty nice hill so who wants to stop? I always double check the side traffic and cruise through if no one is there. That doesn't really work for the police. I asked the officer how many they've given out so far that morning - at least 30. That's like $7500.

I really think they need to make 4 way stops into yields for bikes if no other traffic is present. I'm sure most drivers won't feel the same way, but if people rode their bikes they'd understand.

Mt. Hood

Saturday morning my friends Keevin, Frank and I went up Mt. Hood from Timberline Lodge. We left around 2 am and hit the base of the Hog's Back around 5:30. We decided to skip the Hog's Back and traverse over to the West Ridge.

I was a little freaked cos I hadn't done anything like that, but once we started it was totally bomber. We did a running belay with snow pickets every rope length.

The view from the West Ridge is totally awesome, the North side of Hood is quite amazing. I had to take a break at one section cos the wind knocked me a bit when it was really narrow so I hunkered down for a second.

It was totally bad ass and here are some pictures