Ski tour at -8 degrees

Guatemalan friends - NCS alumni - were visiting and wanted to ski despite the chill in the air. So, we headed out the back pasture of the farm on to the Olympic Trails ... after an hour we finished at the cabin with hot chocolate and schnapps. Mount Van Hoevenberg is in the background, with the bob run just out of view.

Lucy named to the World Junior Team

Alex Honnold interview set to animation

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JmVP1DcLrK0

Just finished an easy run on Old Mountain Road ... it has warmed up to -13 degrees

Walking the dog

Skiing 1k laps in our pasture at -9 degrees with our dog Stash. I was wearing an expedition parka I got at the big yearly EMS sale in 1972. As I recall, my college buddies and I slept out on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, so we could get the pick of the litter in the store. This coat has kept me toasty on West Rib of Denali, so despite the windchill, all was good yesterday.

Pretty chilly ... no ice climbing for me today

Does that make me a whimp?

The hidden damage in the new tax bill

http://mountainjournal.org/trading-away-wildness-for-tax-breaks

Pitchoff Left (NEI 3)

Burr, burr, burr ... -5 degrees but thankfully no wind. After Gary's lead, we did multiple laps. He likes his new cassin tools, but he may need to carry a third tool to chip them out when he has embedded them too deeply! (He had to down climb and borrow one of my tools.)

Annapurna III

A beautiful line; a beautiful short video, but an attempt that despite helicoptering (?) to basecamp did not get too far. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zp72WjMVhTQ&time_continue=394&ebc=ANyPxKpefuHPvi0oNRq0mhkhjf8Gbt52AgfzvRAnUcO_BDuDdj-b7k0CB2DK2sBqoFdaBKfCnFc0rEwPSSa-QSx3x6mlK-FcFQ

A Perfect Christmas ... lots to read under the tree!

BLAST FROM THE PAST ... 1989ish

Showing little Jon my biathlon rifle, in our house on Spruce Hill in Keene.

Merry Christmas

This year we have a Charlie Brown tree from our farm. Lucy seems to have gotten over the flu, tonight it's going to be brutally cold, and tomorrow we head down to Granby Connecticut to see Jon, Amanda, and Amelie.

Our dogs enjoying the holidays

When bad and unexpected things happen in the mountains ...

I am always willing to take a look at what alpinists and ski mountaineers put in their repair or first aid kit. Here are the latest suggestions that I read about. 

http://www.noahhowell.com/2017/11/backcountry-skiing-emergencyrepair-kit/

All Of The 50k Olympic Nordic Trails Are Open

I skied for just over an hour on wet, slow snow. Nevertheless great to get out on the Ladies Five. Still scratchy on the holler sections.

Getting ready for a winter bivy

No problem if you are one of Selden's clun forest sheep. 

Putting in the skin track

1k laps in the pasture for Stash to get some exercise. The fat boards make a nice trench for him to run in.

Conditions rapidly improving at Mount Van Hoevenberg

I did some laps on Main Street, Flatland, Campground loop, and beginnings of the Ladies Five. The stadium is well covered with man-made snow, and although everything has been rolled, it is still scratchy in spots.

Come North And Flourish

https://player.vimeo.com/video/246815128

BLAST FROM THE PAST ... bretton woods 50k

A particularly tough race in 1983, having missed the wax, I struggled mightily. Maybe when I retire I will grow that bushy bear again!

I am a grandpa!

Amanda and Jon had a beautiful baby girl. Amelie is 7 pounds, 10 ounces.

Twilight ski on the toll road

Feeling a bit more like a good old fashioned winter

Top of the podium ...

Thus far, Lucy has had a couple of excellent time trial results with peer colleges. However, today's 1.3k skate sprint was the official start of the season, and she not only had the fastest qualifier, but took control of each of three subsequent heats. St. Lawrence University skipped the Eastern Cup races in northern Maine because the drive was too long, and they judged this race in Canada to be of comparable quality. Tomorrow is a 7.5k classic race.

The perfect winter mountaineering food ...

Those that have ice climbed, gone to Alaska, or done a ski mountaineering trip with me know the answer is FRUITCAKE.  This article excerpt landed in my mailbox ... a harbinger of stocking stuffers to come. 

The origin of the fruitcake can be traced to 16th Century Europe, where it was discovered that when soaked in large quantities of sugar, fruit could be preserved. With so much candied fruit hanging around, people crammed their sugared produce with a few other ingredients into molds to make cakes of sort. Known originally as "plum cake" in England, the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets describes early fruitcake as an incredibly time-consuming bake—the egg whites had to be whipped stiff with a fork, the butter had to be washed, the fruit hand-candied. The cakes then baked in wood-fired ovens that had been previously heated and emptied. 

The advent of cast-iron ovens (and controllable temperatures) in the 1800s led to an increase in written recipes for fruitcake, some of which called for baking soda in addition to beaten eggs to lighten the cake. Some British recipes suggested steaming the fruit for additional moisture, while Australian recipes attempted to achieve the same with crushed pineapple.

The addition of nuts in fruitcake recipes is likely thanks to the American South. One of the country's leading fruitcake distributors, Collin Street Bakery of Corsicana, Texas, documented their pecan-heavy fruitcake recipe in 1896. Robert Sietsma writes in A Short History of Fruitcake that the Southern bakeries' inclusion of the ingredient was likely due to the region's "surplus of cheap nuts." Like fruit, nuts were less likely to spoil after being coated in sugar, and therefore made a welcome flavor addition to fruitcakes. Although popular all over the world, American fruitcakes hold a certain prize in their lack of ediblity. Because they're expected to stay fresh during their journey through the mail, the cakes are typically soaked in liqueurs or brandy, then covered in powdered sugar. Since they're permeated with liquor and sugar, the confection can actually remain edible for years. In fact, Jay Leno once ate a piece of 125-year-old fruitcake live on The Tonight Show. When asked how the cake tasted, Leno joked that "it needs more time."

Climate change, skiers, and alpinists

An engaging short essay, and a reminder that climate change is not a hoax.

http://mountainjournal.org/eyeing-glory-in-a-time-of-climate-change

Coldest night so far ...

Must read summary of Accidents In North American Mountaineering

https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/top-5-takeaways-from-accidents-in-north-american-climbing-2017

On the road ...

since Friday, in Manhattan and D.C. I am looking forward to getting home tonight but it is snowing hard, so I may have a heck of a drive from Albany to Lake Placid.

Stars Wars was being hyped in Times Square and I got a few good workouts in at Reggie's gym.

Bears Ears ... a follow up post

https://www.outsideonline.com/2201581/big-business-resist

Ski season not trail running but ...

This vast film archive takes your breath away!

https://trailrunningnordwand.blogspot.de/p/the-trail-running-film-archive.html?m=1

Shrinking our National Mounuments

Over the years, I have done less climbing and hiking in the canyon lands than anywhere else in the continental U.S.  The splitter cracks and the remoteness have always appealed, however more alpine landscapes most often claimed my attention. However, in the late 1970s while on a sabbatical dedicated to ski racing and working for Outward Bound, I did leave Crested Butte for two weeks to go for an adventure in the desert, and it was magical. Long runs in Arches, a multi-day hike in Grand Gulch Primitive Area, great bouldering, and magnificent sunsets. 

The Adirondacks where I live, protected six million acres in the state constitution because there was a realization that extraction (timber and mining) were not a path to sustainability.  This dynamic tension has continued to play out in American history ... sad to see this reversal last week. 

http://mountainjournal.org/trump-scores-a-witless-win-in-utah

La Liste ... the film ... can you spot the skier

Amazing steep skiing in the Alps. Jeremie Heitz goes big! 

https://www.adventure-journal.com/2017/12/jeremie-heitz-goes-mental-steeps/

The Supermoon Rising Over Pitchoff And The Coyotes Howling

Chouinard's Gully ... can't get there from here!

However, after realizing we would have to wade, swim, or canoe to the base as Chapel Pond has not iced over, Mickey led the Crystal Ice Tower (NEI 4) in thin conditions. My shoulder hurts a bunch from a ski fall two years ago, but I am glad to say I am definitely able to swing the tools and climb with ibuprofen.

Chamonix on my mind ...

A great short video. I would go back to Chamonix even if I wasn't doing any big routes, hell as you can see,  just go to boulder!  

The video reminds me of Bernard Amy's wonderful short story. "The Greatest Climber In The World." 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BwRaJ0nMudE&ebc=ANyPxKplLz17MYX9P09MAxZq4oO_UEWsdnWf_dIz8Yd4NqVC9vrfx0LxswJMhnRszP2I1m11e6HU9uZLIe70lZchi87eF_8-gQ&time_continue=188

The Dynafit Ski Season Kickoff Party Sponsored By The Mountaineer

https://vimeo.com/234772972

Come watch the Backcountry Film Festival, Saturday at 7 pm ... BYOB and its free!

The natural world and the sublime ...

I am often reminded here in the Adirondacks that our mountain landscape is not just beautiful but sublime.  A quick bit of history from Wikipedia:

William Wordsworth is the Romantic best known for working with the sublime. Many scholars actually place Wordsworth's idea of the sublime as the standard of the romantic sublime. In his essay on the sublime, Wordsworth says that the "mind {tries} to grasp at something towards which it can make approaches but which it is incapable of attaining".^[6]In trying to "grasp" at this sublime idea, the mind loses consciousness, and the spirit is able to grasp the sublime—but it is only temporary. Wordsworth expresses the emotion that this elicits in his poem "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey":

Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery
In which the heavy and weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened (37-41).^[5](p258)

Here Wordsworth expresses that in the mood of the sublime, the burden of the world is lifted. In a lot of these cases, Wordsworth finds the sublime in Nature. He finds the awe in the beautiful forms of nature, but he also finds terror. Wordsworth experiences both aspects of the sublime. However, he does go beyond Burke or Kant's definition of the literary sublime, for his ultimate goal is to find Enlightenment within the sublime.

Russian doping and the journal ...

Hard to imagine not tossing them out of the upcoming Olympics.  Also hard to imagine that Putin did not know. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/sports/olympics/russia-doping.html?hpw&rref=sports&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

Making it on to the strava leaderboard ...

Taking advantage of terrific snow conditions, I did an all double pole workout which was wicked fast. Of course, lest my vanity get the better of me, there were high schoolers zipping past me, who clearly were not on strava!

The double edged sword of climate change in the Cordillera Blanca

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/26/world/americas/peru-climate-change.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Dawn Patrol And A Hearty Breakfast

Gary and his son James, chowing down after skinning up Whiteface.

The Peter Pan Syndrome ... can you catch it in old age and retirement?

http://mountainjournal.org/when-peter-pan-reaches-middle-age