climbing tall steep things for fun

I never thought I would climb a mountain. There aren't a whole lot of mountains in Illinois to climb. I grew up in the highest town in Illinois, near the highest point, Charles Mound. The elevation of Charles Mound is 1,235 feet. Not a huge climbing feat by any means.

Adrian kept asking me if I wanted to climb Mt. Rainier this summer. Climbing Mt. Rainier seemed like a good idea. Doing it this summer did not. I ended up talking about doing it to my friend, Josh, who goes to my church. He suggested that we try something easier first, like Mt. Shasta in California. This sounded like a great plan. A few days later, he asked if we would like to climb Mt. Adams with him. This sounded like an even better plan.

Now the only thing I really knew about climbing a mountain, I probably learned from movies. Given my terrible movie memory, this wasn't real promising. Lucky for us, Josh was willing to help. He gave us a list of supplies (non of which I seemed to have) and let us borrow backpacks and a tent.

So how does one even begin to get ready to climb a mountain? Adrian and I decided to torture ourselves running stairs. It was pretty painful. Last Sunday (after an amazing lunch, planned by my amazing boyfriend), we went to REI to attempt to get all the stuff on Josh's list. Lucky for our wallets, you can rent a lot of the stuff you need at REI. We hooked ourselves up with rental sleeping bags, sleeping pads, ice axe, climbing boots, and crampons. Unlucky for my wallet, I didn't even have an appropriate coat.

Mt. Adams is 12,285 feet above sea level. The climb itself is about 7,000 feet, over less than 6 miles. That's a whole lot of going up. Essentially pure torture on the body until you stop going up. Then you get to torture yourself because your body already hurts and you have to go back down. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Adrian and I met Josh and Sterling at Josh's place and piled our gear into Josh's blue WRX. Josh and Adrian have pretty much the exact same car, same year and everything. We left Seattle at about 1 pm or so to drive down to Mt Adams. Since some of the roads are washed out, we had to drive all the way down to Portland and back up. Unfortunately we hit tons of traffic and arrived much later than we wanted to. We had hoped to get there early enough to start the accent on Friday so that we had less elevation change Saturday. We got our volcano passes, which allow us to climb the mountain, and went to set up camp. The only good thing about not being able to climb Friday was that we wouldn't have to carry a big part of our gear. Our tents and sleeping bags could stay at the bottom.

We woke up around six to get ready to climb. Ate some food, packed our bags and got on the trail by 7:05. By 7:10 I was ready to turn around. The mountaineering boots were totally hard to walk in. Eventually, we hit parts of the trail that were sandy and rocky and I appreciated the boots, but it remained a love/hate relationship the entire day.

Eventually we got high enough that we could see Mt. Hood to the south, across the Columbia River in Oregon. The view was starting to make the climb worth it. Soon we could see Mt. St. Helens to the east. The views were particularly interesting because clouds had formed over the mountains and valleys in the distance.

Josh, the only one on the trip with any significant experience, told us he needed to stop and attend to his blisters. A few weeks before he had attempted to summit Mt. Rainier and his feet had not recovered. In order to not lose too much time, we left him behind. We made it a bit further and stopped to rest to let him catch up. We heard from a guy who summited the night before that a storm was supposed to come in around 4:30 that day. Josh caught up and we tried to take care of his blisters but they were quite large. Before we left our resting spot, we heard from a big group coming down that they had decided not to summit because of strong winds higher up. We determined that by 2:00 pm we would turn around if we had not summited.

Not far after that, I reached a milestone I had been looking forward to. Being above the tree line. I sort of expected the tree line to be a lot more drastic (looking, oh, I don't know, like a "line") but the vegetation takes its time tapering off. Trees start to look wimpier and wimpier, then you only see bushes, and later only small wildflowers, and finally only occasional moss.

Eventually Josh couldn't go any further, so Sterling, Adrian and I had to continue without him. Soon we started seeing tents. We had reached the first areas where people set up base camp to do the climb in two days. At this point the wind really picked up, making an already exhausting climb even more tiring. Trying to step up, balance on sharp rocks that could shift at any moment, while being blown by 40 mph winds, while your muscles are exhausted... doesn't this sound like fun? Oh yeah, then do it again and again until you finally get to take another break. Torture.

A few hours into the climb we reach our first patch of snow. Walking on the snow is a great break from the sharp rocks. Unfortunately, the patch is small. Soon after we reach the first glacier. (I think it was a glacier, but really I don't know.) It was time for me to use my crampons. Crampons are these metal teeth things you put on your boots to give you traction in the snow. Basically I felt like I was attaching a bear trap to my shoe. Adrian taught me to "self arrest." I actually couldn't even imagine what that meant until they told me. Basically, all it is is using your ice axe to dig in the snow to give you traction in case you slide down the slope. It seemed pretty easy until I just read about how to do it on wikipedia 10 minutes ago. Now I think someone needs to teach me for real before I go climb again.

Walking in the snow was a good break, but since Sterling did not have crampons and Adrian had not put his on yet, we switched back to the sharp rocks when we had the opportunity. If we ever climb again, everyone is bringing crampons and the ice axe and we'll climb when more of the mountain is covered in snow. Snow climbing is much easier and safer than the rocks.

At this point I announce the the party that my motivation is fading fast. It was becoming clear that we would not summit that day. Even making the false peak (Piker's Peak, elevation 11,657 ft) seems out of reach. Our GPS devise told us we were somewhere around 9,600 ft (if I remember right). We decided that, indeed, we would not summit, instead we would attempt to reach 10,000 feet.

A few hundred feet later we ran out of rocks for Sterling to climb on. He determined that he was done and would likely turn back as we climbed further on. My body was pretty much screaming at me to stop at this point, but Adrian encouraged me to make it to at least 9,800 feet. Of course, when we got to that point he convinced me another 200 feet would be well worth it. I agreed, and my body grudgingly complied. At this point the only way I kept going on was to count my steps. 20 steps, take a break, 20 steps, take a break. Occasionally, I'd get a burst of energy and make it to 40. All the while Adrian's checking his GPS to see our elevation.

At about 9,930 feet we ran out of snow. Taking off the crampons seemed liked too much effort, if we sat down, we may not have continued on. Given that they were rentals, we tested them out on the rocks. It was sort of an extreme version of wearing track spikes on metal bleachers. Luckily the rocky patch was short and we were back on snow.

Finally, Adrian stopped and announced he was above 10,000 feet. Finally, the end in sight, I make the last steps to catch up to him and plop down on some snow. We took a few pictures and reveled in the fact that had made our goal. Not making the summit was a big disappointment, but hitting 10,000 feet was something to be proud of and definitely something that sounds impressive.

Our next move was the dumbest of the entire trip. Those rocks we had just passed, still there. The crampons on our feet, still there. The combination: absolutely ignorant. About halfway down the rocks, I step on myself and fall flat on my face. Now falling flat on my face is something I've done before. Falling flat on your face on that steep of a slope, an entirely different experience all together. Totally embarrassed, I refused to turn around to look at Adrian, much less the family of four sitting right above us. Adrian attempted to rush towards me to see if I was ok, and subsequently fell flat on HIS face. I turned around just in time to catch it. I must say, that was very good for my ego. We had a good laugh at how dumb we were and decided to never do that again. We stopped to take of the crampons and I put my pant legs on to cover my newly cut up knees.

The best part of climbing (besides reaching the goal) is descending on snow. There are lots of options. Some people carry up skis, or snow boards, some sled down in garbage bags (or so I've read), many just slide down on their heels or on their bums. The technical term for this slide is "glissading." Glissading is just as fun as it sounds, and takes much less energy than actually climbing down. Adrian and I used a combination of the bum glissade and the standing glissade.

This blog is getting long. I guess it takes awhile to climb a mountain.

After the snow, the way down hurt in entirely different ways. Pretty much every step hurt because of the stiff boots unless you manage to land with your leg totally vertical, which happened about 1 out of 10 steps. Once we got off snow, we changed into our hiking shoes and life was a lot better. The rest of the way down was pretty uneventful. We paused to talk to pretty much everyone we passed. I normally dislike small talk, but something about trail small talk is really wonderful to me. Maybe I just enjoy the time catching my breath and relaxing my muscles, but I think it's something more.

Not much else to say about climbing the mountain. We're going to do it again next summer, give ourselves more time and make it. Adrian asked if I wanted to try again this year. I told him I needed to forget how much it hurt first. I think pretty much all I wrote about how much it hurt and how bad it was, but I loved it. I don't have the desire to go do this all the time or climb Mt. Everest or anything, but it was an amazing experience.

knock on wood

I should post a blog about my weekend last weekend. I'm kinda feeling lazy and uninspired to write like I normally do. Let's just say the weekend had its great moments (like hanging out with Gary and Becky, and sunning ourselves on the beautiful Smith River). It also had some rough moments (starting with my speeding ticket in California and getting worse). Yeah, good stuff. I survived. Adrian got to see me cry for the first time this week. We both survived. I'm pretty sure it only happened because I told him Sunday afternoon that it would be a long time before he ever saw that. Yeah, a long time turned out to be just a few hours.

Ok, I'm short on words tonight. My week is turned out pretty good. I've spent lots of time seeing and emailing friends (old and new). This weekend Adrian and I are staying in Seattle. Amazing. When was the last time we did that?

i ate cake for dinner

Life has been crazy this summer... I feel like my mind is about three days behind my body. I'm having way too much fun. A lot has happened since I last blogged, but I'm feeling sort of lazy so I'm going to write the Reader's Digest version.

I got accepted into the Construction Management Master's program at University of Washington. Basically that means that in May of 2009 I'll graduate with two master's degrees, one in architecture and one in construction management. Part of the reason I ended up in architecture was because I love the construction process so it seems appropriate. I actually got accepted into the construction management program at Iowa State University in high school way back in 2000, and now here I am seven years later... I love architecture but very differently than most architecture students. The technical and construction side of architecture is way more fascinating than designing and drawing pretty pictures. (I maintain that I don't DO pretty).

Two weekends ago Adrian and I went on a Hike with a few people from my church (Gift of Grace). Seven of us took a seven mile hike over on the east side of the Cascades at Ingall's Creek. It was fun to go hiking with other people. As always Adrian got some amazing pictures. Our favorite was this rock that had just a few inches of water rushing over it. It was a great place to stop and dip our feet in at the end of the hike. You can check out my Ingall's Creek Picasa album if you're interested.

Last week flew by as they have been all summer. Thursday night was dedicated to packing and getting meals ready for camping. I didn't really realize or appreciate how much work my mom must have put in getting ready for all the camping trips growing up. We headed down to the Columbia River Gorge Friday right after work. Our friend Rachel and her boyfriend Ryan came along. Adrian's car was packed to the point of near explosion. Luckily Rachel likes her boyfriend, because the back seat was a bit cramped!

Friday night we slept at Adrian and Rachel's friend Kane's parents' place. (Was that enough possessives in a row?) Adrian, Kane, Rachel, and I are all in architecture at UW. Actually Rachel graduated, but that's not the point. We woke up to the smell of pancakes and bacon. Nice work Kane. Before leaving for our hike Kane's dad showed us how he makes biodiesel. Totally a sweet little set up. I found it fascinating.

Saturday was spent hiking Dog Mountain (see photos). The hike was 7.1 miles with 2850 feet in elevation change. It was pretty difficult with lots of switchbacks. Somehow I managed to get to the top without my calves completely cramping up but it was close. Note to self, avoid workouts for 3 days before big hikes. The views of the gorge were pretty great. The top was really windy and cold but the views were great. We had ourselves a good snack and headed back down.

After the hike we went swimming at a little creek. Actually it was really cold, so Adrian and I never went in above the waist, but everyone else did. Craziness.

We stopped at Kane's so we could shower to make sure we didn't get any poison oak. After that we went and found ourselves a really nice camp site. Adrian and I cooked everyone tacos for dinner. We enjoyed the fire... burned a ton of wood... then went to bed. Adrian and I got up early to make us all breakfast (egg mcmuffins, sans egg for me). I totally dig the coleman stove, even if I can barely work the thing.

We had to get on the road quick to make it back to Seattle for the Blue Angel's airshow which was part of Seattle's annual Seafair. We made it to our spot along the water with absolute perfect timing for the start of the show. Adrian got great pictures with his telephoto lens (see the pretty blue planes here). It was really really fun. Adrian knew all these random facts about them from his time in the Navy. Apparently he's even worked on their planes.

I'm sure I have a ton more I could write about, but I'll never sleep if I write it all. This summer is one of the best I've ever had and it isn't even done yet. Left this summer is a wedding down in California, climbing Mt. Adams, a trip home to Illinois so Adrian can meet my whole family (and to celebrate Meghan and Jake's wedding), and possibly a trip to Portland. We're also taking a week off before school to travel some more. We might head down to southern Utah, maybe climb Mt. Shasta in California, maybe go to Yellowstone, maybe some other national park in Montana... Probably not all of those things, but we'll see what all we can squeeze in. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Wait, I was exhausted before I started thinking about it. School should be relaxing compared to all this.

Phew, so that's my update. Most of my time outside of work is spent being all "goooooggly" over Adrian. That's my sister's word for it anyway. I think that quite aptly describes how I feel about him. Lucky for me he's quite "goooooggly" over me too.

Oh and just for good measure I find it necessary to point out to the whole world that my boyfriend not only owns the movie "Love Actually" (great movie but kind of girly), but he also owns "the Notebook" (and probably cried watching it too, who wouldn't...) Now I find this pretty amusing and cute that he owns these movies, but the other day I noticed he owns "Titanic." That's just wrong. Even if it did win lots of awards and make lots of money. I'm pretty sure he's been hiding it under his bed because I never noticed it before. What's next? Hope Floats? Dirty Dancing? Clueless?

Time for some sleep so I don't die of exhaustion before the end of summer.

the only stupid question

My brother, Drew, asks a lot of questions. Actually, "a lot" doesn't even to cover the amount he asks. Growing up I always remember him asking the questions when we were in the car. Not that I remember him asking it, but the type of question would be like: "why is the sky blue?" Usually not impossible questions, but frequently ones that no one in the car knew the answer to. My mom would try to come up with answers, but at some point she just ran out of answers and started saying, "I wonder."

I find it convenient to blame my personality traits on my siblings, so I like to think that the reason I don't ask many of questions is because of Drew. I tend instead to take things at face value. What I see IS what I get. Unless forced into small talk, I don't ask much. I usually just sit back, watch, and listen and eventually figure things out. Most of the time my questions get answered eventually without me asking.

To be totally honest, the other reason I don't ask a lot of questions is that I like people thinking I already know all the answers. Actually, that isn't true, I doubt people think that about me. I simply don't like them knowing I don't know something when I do ask. It's one thing for someone to think I'm not perfect and all knowing... it's another thing to have proof.

Sometimes my curiosity gets the best of me, as it did late in the day on Tuesday at work. Our office is two floors of totally open studios. We don't have cubicles. My boss, Brian, sits directly across from me. He doesn't have any walls either. Generally the office is really quiet (well, upstairs where I sit it is). Brian walks upstairs and tells Erin to turn the music he's listening to through headphones on so all of us can hear it. Apparently it was too quiet (which I would agree with).

So Erin turns the music on, and I recognize it, but I just can't quiet place the name of the band. All I know is that I'm pretty sure I own the album that is playing and I like it. I have a horrible horrible auditory memory. I usually can remember about one line of lyrics from a song. The only song I consistently name when it comes on the radio is Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good" (random song to know). Since it's the end of the day I'm packing up my stuff. Before I leave, I can't stand it anymore, I have to ask.

"Erin, what band is this?"

All the sudden behind me, Brian stops mid-sentence and says, "look over your head" while Erin just keeps saying, "seriously?" while laughing.

Oh man, bad news. I totally insulted my boss's favorite band. Above my desk, directly above my computer is this six foot tall poster of U2. There are only two pieces of decoration on the whole floor and both of them are giant U2 posters. You would think that since I own the particular U2 album that was playing, I would recognize it. Not so much. I stammered half coherently about my bad auditory memory and trying to defend myself by explaining I owned the CD. I don't think it helped my situation at all. Everyone thought it was pretty funny. It was, but I turned pretty red. This is exactly why I don't ask questions.

So, the moral of the story is: maybe there aren't any stupid questions, but there are lots of questions that might just make you look a little stupid. As for me... I'm going to think twice before I ask the next time. I didn't really want to know that bad anyway.

i'd vote republican if it got me longer weekends

I woke up to the sound of rain on the pavement this morning. (Well, and the sound of my phone beeping to wake me up). I love the rain. One thing I really miss about the Midwest is the thunderstorms, they're so amazing in the thunder. I miss the nights on my parents porch watching the lightning or getting woke up by a huge clap of thunder. Seattle doesn't have storms. I've seen it lightning twice since I've been here. Both times everyone stopped what they were doing to watch because it happens so infrequently.

So my summer seems to be flying blissfully by. Work seems to occupy a bigger chunk of time than I remember. That five hours between getting home at six and going to sleep at eleven sure fly by. The only way I seem to get things done is to wake up at 6 am.

Adrian and I are trying to take maximum advantage of the beautiful place we live in. Despite being exhausted, I agreed to go up camping in the North Cascades last Saturday night. We tend to camp with little preparation (and by tend I mean the twice we've gone). Even though I have equipment to make meals, we live off of granola bars, fruit, and s'mores. Totally manageable when you're only camping one night. Adrian is pretty good at planning where we go, but beyond that he has a bit of trouble, particularly in packing for himself. I couldn't resist making fun of him for packing only one pair of shorts, no pants, and nothing to swim in. But hey, he remembered a jacket this time.

We got up to the Cascades midafternoon (we can't seem to get out of town before eleven). We took in some amazing views along the roadside and then found ourselves a campsite and set up camp. We have a nice little devision of work. I put up the tent and get our sleeping bags set up and he gets the fire ready.

We did some hiking then decided to try in swim in the lake that had probably been all snow further up the mountain a day or two ago. What I'm saying here was that it was insanely cold. Even the kids were cold and kids will swim in any temperature. It took a little convincing, but I jumped in off the end of the dock. It was bad. Pretty much cold enough to hurt. We got out immediately and I thought that was that, but then Adrian pushed me back in. Apparently I went in too willingly the first time.

We spent the evening playing with our fire and Adrian's camera (check out my Picasa Album). Probably the most entertaining part was listening to our neighbors' drunken fire conversation. ("That's pretty cool, huh?" x 148) Too funny really.

Of course it rained a little that morning so that my tent would be damp once again when I put it away. (I'm lacking a yard to air it out in). We explored more of the road through the park and forced ourselves to make one more extremely difficult hike (one mile and no elevation change) up to Rainy Lake. As you can see in the picture, it was totally worth it.

Basically after that we went home. The rest of the night was pretty good too (who am I kidding it was amazing) but it was really just me and Adrian hanging out so there isn't much to say, other than we're both stupid crazy about each other. I'm still recovering from all the mosquito bites. With my lack of self control it's making me itch like a girl in tights before her piano recital (which trust me is REALLY bad itching!).

Time for another day at work. I hope the rain holds off so I can play frisbee with Jessica tonight.

gotta love the rebel (especially the digital rebel)

Check out the hike Drew, Vanessa, Adrian, and I took at Mt. Rainier: web album of Mowich Lake. So much beauty in my backyard.

the hostest with the mostest

I'm totally exhausted from hosting my brother and sister-in-law for a week. They left on Friday morning. Friday evening I picked up my friend Kristin from the train station. She came up to see me (and Seattle) for the weekend from Chicago (via Portland). I had a lot of fun and even got to see a few things I had never seen before. It's all sort of running together now, but I think the highlights were going to Mt. Rainier with Drew, Vanessa, and Adrian and going to ride bikes on Bainbridge Island with Kristin. I totally love going new places.

Mt. Rainier was great, we hiked up around Mowich Lake. There was still a lot of snow (though it's probably melted with the weather this past week). It was weird hiking on snow, considering it was the end of June. The upper lake was still frozen over. Unfortunately when we got to the top you couldn't see Mt. Rainier because of the clouds, but the hike was still worth it. Adrian and I had a blast sliding down on the snow. He got some quality action shots of my successfully falling on my rear. I'm so coordinated.

Hopefully I can fully recover this week, because Adrian and I want to head up to go camping somewhere in the Cascades. We'll see. Ok, on that note, this is all you get, because my brain needs to just wander a little and not try to think coherently for a few hours.