You In?

About 10 days ago I got an email from one of the friends I climbed Hood with asking if I wanted to climb Rainier. It contained a short description of the hike and ended with “It will be a miserable and wonderful experience. You in?”

He honestly didn’t even need to ask. Even after it was all over and I could barely stand, when simple things like opening a beer would cause me to cramp up, did I feel the same way as I did then - of course I was in.

I think I have reached a stage in my life where simply because something is difficult is not reason enough not to do it. When I look back at the past year one of the things I think of most fondly is my Summit of Hood back in June. Whenever I am about Portland and I catch a glimpse of Hood I can’t help but feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment knowing that I conquered such a gigantic mountain.

What better gift to myself than to be able to claim that I conquered another mountain?

What’s Involved

The Rainier summit is at 14,411 ft compared to Hood’s 11,249 ft. In several of my shots there is a mountain called Little Tahoma that seems tiny when on the mountain. It is actually only 100 ft smaller than Mount Hood.

This climb up Rainier is much longer than Hood was. The very last part of Hood, where you need an ice axe to self bellet yourself is probably more technically challenging than anything I encountered on Rainier, but beyond that Rainier is in a different league of difficulty because of the endurance you will need.

Rumor has it that someone went from the parking lot to the top of the mountain and back in 5 hours. We would be traveling with a 90 liter pack filled with gear, food and clothing, which would mean we would be traveling much slower than he did.

Weight was always on my mind. None of my gear is particularly light. My pack is about 15 years old and no where near being ideal for climbing mountains with. I elected to leave my relatively heavy Nikon D90 + Sigma 10-20 combo that I adored on Hood home in exchange for a much lighter (if damaged) Canon G9. My G9 has been through quite a bit so it is filled with dust and if I ever tried to change its focal length it would lock up and give a lens error. I really wish I could have spared the weight but realize that many of the shots that I did get would not have happened if I had to fumble through my pack constantly to retrive my camera.

The hike involves leaving early in the morning from the Paradise parking lot with all your gear. From there you will travel roughly 4 hours to Camp Muir. The trip up was relatively easy. I was fresh and my pack felt light. Despite the length of the hike most of the people doing it were approaching it as a day hike - so up to Camp Muir and back.

Like many others though we were in it to go all the way. We arrived at Muir shortly after noon and then spent the next 12 hours sleeping, filtering water and cooking. We were really concerned about having to carry a tent so we sprinted to Muir to make sure that we had a spot in the first come first serve hut that is available to climbers for free.

We were able to get good spots and shortly after the place filled up with people who would be waking up the same time as we did to tackle the mountain. It seems everyone had the same plan and woke up around midnight to eat some breakfast, gear up and head out for what would be much more difficult climb than the first half of the mountain.

By the end of the climb I was so exhausted that I had to break frequently to make the short walk to the actual summit. Without realizing it I was nearly on the verge of tears as we celebrated the climb. Was it the hardest thing I had ever done? Maybe. Most exhausting? Definitely.

The hardest part of the experience was realizing you had to climb all the way back down again though. Shale and sliding snow made for a really uncomfortable trip down.

How long does it take?

Total trip broke down to:

• Hike to Camp Muir: 4 hours
• Resting at Camp Muir then waking up at midnight: 12 hours
• Hiking from Muir to Summit: 8 hours
• From Summit back down to Muir: 5 hours
• From Muir to the parking lot: 3 hours.

So in total about 32 hours.

My favorite moments were waking up in the middle of night, gazing up at a perfectly clear star-filled sky, and seeing St Helens silhouetted by the glow of Portland.

I also enjoyed catching the first glow of the morning sky on the mountain and watching it change the color of the landscape.

Finally I enjoyed butt sliding the rest of the way down the mountain and arriving at a wild flower filled mountain fed stream that meant we would have water to drink that didn’t involve melting snow.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of the pictures. The rest of my shots and video from the trip can be found at on my flickr set.

All pictures taken with a Canon G9

Well it is time to get back on the wagon again. If my experience with weight loss has taught me anything it is that weight loss is at least 80% diet, and I know for a fact that I have been enjoying the good life when it comes to food and beer a little bit too much.

During the past few months I haven’t exactly been inactive. I climbed a mountain, ran a bunch, and have been playing more tennis. I feel stronger and healthier than ever so why I am I freaking out? Because it all begins some where. Sure a 5-10 pounds of weight gain isn’t much but that is just the beginning. If I get comfortable with a pound here and there then before I know it I will be overweight, out of shape and hating myself.

I have set a new goal for myself to lose 10 pounds. It isn’t nearly as much as last time but weight isn’t everything. This isn’t about maintenance any longer but instead prevention.

I’ll be recording my progress using loseit.com and the related iphone app. If anyone wants to join along then feel free to friend me. My plan is to rein in control of my diet. I don’t think I can give up eating good food completely (I don’t hate myself that much). What I do need to do is to eat smaller portions. So instead of 20 delicious wings of King’s Wings I will instead order ~6.

The last time I dieted my most recorded food was ice cream. The key for me then was instead of eating the entire pint I would only eat a single serving at a time (~200 calories).

For me the most effective way to lose weight is to be accountable and conscious of what I am doing. This is why I love using loseit because if you are being honest with yourself then you can see exactly what you are doing. If you are consistently over budget then of course the weight isn’t going to come off. At the same time you are sharing your progress (or lack of) with your friends who can then share in your success when you do reach your goals.

Bring on the six-pack abs please.

This is a panorama made up of about 11 overlapping shots. I took it as I was making my way down from the summit. It wasn’t until I was making the journey down that I really had an appreciation for just how beastly a journey it had been (8 hours to the top for me).

One of the things I like about this shot is that you can see tiny specs that are other hikers making the same journey that I had made.

Whenever I cross the Morrison bridge on a clear day in Portland one particular object seems to stand out on the horizon - Mount Hood. Hood is the highest mountain in Oregon at 11,249 ft yet around 10,000 people a year climb it. Now every time that I see it I can say I am one of them.

This past Thursday a good friend of mine invited me to climb it and I quickly agreed to it. The exact conversation went like this:

Craig: want to climb a mountain?

me: yes

Craig: Hood?

me: yep

Craig: Have time Friday night/Saturday morning?

me: yep

The next day I made my way to the local REI to rent and purchase some gear (an Ice Axe, Helmet and Head Lamp) and that night found myself in the Timberline parking lot freezing my ass off. Joining us on the hike were two others - Jon and Tom. Everyone but myself had climbed Hood at least once before, with Tom having climbed it three times previously.

The first words Tom spoke after parking the car and feeling the wind and coldness - “OK let’s go back now.” Maybe it was the excitement or maybe it was because of the month I had spent working in Copenhagen during the winter, but the cold wasn’t affecting me at all. I actually stripped down to my underwear and changed in the middle of the parking lot while everyone else huddled in the car.

We started the climb at 1:40am. Climbers try to Summit before the sun fully rises as the final part of the hike can get dangerous when the snow begins to melt and freeze. So by doing it early you attempt to avoid that danger.

The day before the hike I mentally prepared myself for it. A few years ago I climbed South Sisters so I had some experience with climbing. Namely that no matter what shape that I was in physically there would come a time where I would be looking at my feet focusing on each individual step and would have to will myself to continue on. This happened quite often during the hike.

Despite the strong winds we managed to completely avoid losing any gear. At least 3 times we had a piece of equipment fly off down the mountain only to be chased down and retrieved by Craig.

One of my favorite parts of the hike was when the sun was still rising on the other side of the mountain. This would cause the snow to melt and blow over the peak. The sun would catch on the snow and light it up.

We kept a pretty slow pace. The softness of the snow ment that if your footing wasn’t sure then you would be sliding back down. Repeating that over thousands of steps is very exhausting. So we weren’t surprised to see lots of teams pass us on the way up and then back down again.

The hardest part of the hike was dealing with the strong and cold winds. Often I would have to stop and kneel during the hike until the wind died down.

When we got past Crater Rock and on to the the Hogsback we learned that many teams were turning back and not completing the summit due to the weather conditions. By the time we were there though the weather had cleared up enough that it wasn’t completely insane to make the final traversal from the Pearly Gates to the Summit.

The climb up to the Pearly Gates was one of the more difficult parts of the hike. To accomplish this climb we needed to equip our grampons, helmets and use our ice axes. Equipping my grampons was particularly challenging due to the extreme snow flurries that would blow past us on the Hogsback. More than once I had to pause and heat my hands back from numbness.

Using the ice axe and grampons was a whole new challenge for myself. It was a slow process of planting the axe handle into the ice and using it belay yourself while you kick your feet into solid footing. The entire time there is the risk that you will slip and slide down uncontrollably into a crevice at the bottom.

8 Hours later though and we were at the top.

The trip back down was actually the hardest part of the hike. Coming up we couldn’t actually see how far we had to go or how high we had to climb because of the darkness. Going down was just the opposite and the parking lot never seemed to ever get closer while my body began to hurt more and more.

After all of it though I can now look on Hood and say to myself that I had conquered it. Which is a pretty good feeling. It was a hard hike but I honestly enjoyed every bit of it.

All pictures were taken using my Nikon D90 and Sigma 10-20 lens.

If you haven’t noticed - I love panoramas. I think they do a fantastic job of capturing the feel of a location much better than any single picture could and they aren’t all that difficult to produce. Here is a quick tutorial on the methods that I use to take awesome travel panoramas.

I generally rely on two primary methods for taking them - either with my big dslr and photoshop or my iphone and a stitching app.

DSLR, Photoshop and Optionally a Tripod

This is the more established method that I use when I want something that I intend to either print out or blow up later. The method requires that I take several pictures that slightly overlap with a wide angle lens. If I can I will use my tripod that has a panning head on it, which allows me to take sharp shots with precise overlap.

When a tripod isn’t available though I simply snap a bunch of pictures and manually pan from left to right (or vica verca) across the scene.

Once you get the hang of it, the process takes only slightly longer than taking a single shot. I tend to take 3-5 shots for every panorama.

The next step is to use photoshop’s photomerge feature. You give it a list of pictures and it will try and blend them together in a meaningful way - usually a panorama.

Iphone + autostitch app

I can’t always have my camera + tripod with me but I will most likely have my phone. For the cost of a cheap app (under $3 and totally worth every penny), I can grab panoramas wherever I go. I use autostitch.

This method won’t yield the sharpest results but it will definitely be better than nothing. The iphone’s lens isn’t very wide, so be sure to capture shots both above and below the shots that make up your panorama. This will allow you to take in some of the sky and ground. So instead of 3 shots you will end up taking around 9. Autostich is a champ at combining everything together.

You can also use the same method to take vertical shots aka vertoramas. This picture of Saint Peters Cathedral is made up of 3 images taken while panning vertically. Despite having a very wide angle lens (10mm) there is no other way I could have captured the entire building from that position without using this method.

Thanks for reading and let me know if you want me to go into any greater detail into what exactly is involved. Otherwise this should be enough to get you started in taking awesome travel panoramas yourself.

The weather in Paris didn’t quite work out for me. I had planned on spending the evening photographing the city at night only to find myself in a race to stay dry while still getting some shots of the iconic tower. I had gone on a 3 hour tour the city after exploring the Louvre and was exhausted at this point. I only had enough time to grab a few shots and ask some friendly tourists to grab some shots of myself before the sky opened up and drenched everyone.

Oddly enough I met a ton of awesome Spanish people on this trip. I stayed in a cheap hostel that had mixed dorms and ended up rooming with college-aged Spanish girls. On the tour I ended up also meeting a bunch of guys from Barcelona and Madrid. Their friendliness definitely convinced me to add Spain to my future travels.

One of my goals for this trip was to travel as light as possible (while still carrying my camera + lenses). I ended up not bringing my laptop or tripod and wearing exclusively my vibram five fingers. The other tourists really got a kick out of my vffs.

During one point in the trip I was sprinting between metros trying to make it to my flight on time. A friendly French dude ended up leading me Parkour-style over the ticket stalls and showing me how to avoid getting caught in the process. Overall the French that I encountered left a really good impression on me.

This picture represents a special memory for me. Not only was it an absolute perfect night for photography but I also had a chance to take a picture of the rare occurance of a super moon.

This is one of the final pictures I took after a day of touring London. By this point my entire body was complaining and I still had an hour long walk ahead of me back to my hostel. Despite the pain I was incredibly happy to be doing what I was where I was doing it.

Tomorrow I leave on a cheap flight to spend the weekend in Paris - another first for me. Thanks for viewing!

I woke up Saturday morning in a London hostel and then proceeded to spend the next 10 hours touring the city - mostly on foot. The entire time I lugged around my tripod wondering if I should have left the thing at home.

Then the sun set and I was treated to London at night in the form of Trafalagar Square making my sore shoulders and feet worth it.

I am spending a month working in Copenhagen.

The weather here isn’t exactly pleasant. The strange combination of cold, wind, rain and snow means I am not spending much time outdoors. On my walks to and from work I am bundled up and am amazed to see people going for jogs or riding their bikes without their face or heads covered while it is raining and freezing.

My time here has actually been healthier than usual despite being in a foreign country. I chalk this up to two factors: 1) My apartment/hotel has a clean pool and decent weight room 2) the food here is pretty lackluster. Combine those traits with the craptastic weather and I have yet to really leave my apartment except to go to work.

I feel zero desire to eat out because everything is bland and over priced and I am working out and swimming every day. Food wise I have been following a slow-carb diet which does away with carbs like sugars, pastas and breads. So it is mostly vegetables and proteins. My most common meal has been eggs, beans and some frozen vegetables. Yummy.

At the office we get catered lunches. Everyone always complains about the quality but it is a perk that I definitely appreciate and don’t get to take advantage of because I work remotely. There is just enough variety that I don’t have to deviate from my diet.

I plan to spend my first weekend here decompressing from a busy but productive week of work by mostly reading on my kindle. The weather is going to be decent - at least rain and snow isn’t on the forecast. I hope to be able to get out and grab some more pictures or chill in a cafe some place.

The upcoming weekends should be more interesting though. So far I have booked weekend trips to London and Paris. It will be my first time traveling to either place. Both flights have me leaving Friday after work and returning Sunday night. Once you are in Europe it is pretty remarkable where you can travel to for 100-200 bucks.