Having lived now in Wyoming for nearly 2 years, I’ve come to really appreciate and love the climbing history that surrounds me. I recently finished a wonderful book called “Teton Tales and Other Petzoldt Anecdotes“, which is a brief memoir of sorts from Paul Petzoldt. It was a quick read, but only because the stories were so close to home, and so comfortably shared by the man who lived them. Petzoldt started climbing pretty early and had a good common sense approach to safety and order which manifested itself in the climbing commands still in use by climbers today around the world. He pretty much set the standards known today as minimum-impact camping, and taught those principles to thousands over the years through the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) and the Wilderness Education Association (WEA). In the introduction to Petzoldt’s book, his friend Kevin Cassidy summed up the simple lessons Paul shared: know where you are going, watch your step, look around the bend, and pay attention to what you have left behind. I think we need more people like Mr. Petzoldt, now so more than ever. Anyway – having just finished the book and done a little reading up on the guy, it made my day when I came across this footage of Paul along with a wonderful overview of his work with NOLS. The video below was recently found at the NOLS headquarters and cleaned up and posted on YouTube. It’s a bit rough, but the message comes through clear enough.

See also: An article on Paul Petzoldt from Life Magazine in 1969.

I was just barely 4 years old and living in Mountain View, Wyoming when Mount St. Helens erupted, but it’s one of those events I’ve always “remembered”, even without being actually present. My grandparents were living in Seattle and sent down a newspaper which I still have around here somewhere… Having lived in the PNW for most of my life now, it’s a part of the history and culture of the area, and even more so with my interest in climbing history. From my father’s memorable sunburn on a summer ascent and our shared summit in 1994 with my scout troop, to seeing the mountain on a daily basis when we lived in Vancouver, it’s just always been there – along with the knowledge of how unimaginably powerful she was that day 30 years ago.

Some links to browse:

Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument
Boston Globe’s Big Picture: Mount St. Helens, 30 Years Ago
Spokesman Review Retrospective

That’s one heck of a resume.

Seattle’s own Dick McGowan was (among other things – see above) the first employee of REI, the first American to set foot on Mt. Everest, led the first guided climb of Denali, and obviously an accomplished backpack model.

A beautiful ad from the Winter 1973 issue of Backpacker Magazine.

Class 5 was one of a handful of Bay-area gear manufacturers in the 70′s making packs, sleeping bags, and outerwear. More details can be found at the amazing Oregon Photos gear history site…

Jimmy Chin, Ingrid Backstrom, Kasha Rigby and Giulia Monega climb and make the first ski descent of Redommaine , a 20,000ft peak in the Minya Konka range in Tibet. Some great photos and back story on Jimmy’s blog.

Via http://www.tetonvillagesports.com/blog/…

Reinhold Messner has always scared me a little bit. The big Bavarian castle, the wild hair, missing toes – it just all adds up to a Force Not to be Messed With.

Good thing Ben Folds is such a good musician.

Always a place that held both good memories and no small amount of mystery to me, Washington’s North Cascade region is a pretty unique. Many of my first climbing mis-adventures took place in this part of the state, and I have a lot of respect for those hills. This video gives a tidy little overview of the area and features a quick couple of minutes on the indomitable Fred Beckey… Someone I’ve had the pleasure to meet a couple of times and hope to see out there someday!

Rare footage by Yvon Chouinard, initially created for National Geographic featuring John Cunningham climbing an unspecified climb on Ben Nevis in 1976.

John Cunningham and Creagh Dhu climbing The Cobbler in 1978.

I drove the four hours straight into town and picked up my badges before heading in and saying hi to Graham at the CiloGear booth. I’ve been helping out CiloGear for a few years with a variety of web projects and it was nice to get to meet some of the full-time crew from Portland. Making just a quick circuit though the booths in the main climbing area I picked up a handful of stickers before escaping out into the suburbs of Herriman to Dean’s house.

The next morning we met an old high school friend Eric back at the show and basically worked our way through nearly the entire main floor, checking out the goods at the various booths, talking to vendors, and handing out my postcard to folks who were interested. It was fun to watch people try to figure out the illustrations and I managed to pick up a good stack of cards from potential future clients. We dropped our business cards into as many glass fish bowls as we could find in hopes of bringing home some good schwag. At the Rock & Ice booth I managed to win the three of us each a copy of Steve House’s latest book, by answering a handful of trivia questions. I also picked up the Shepard Fairey poster for 180º South which now looks pretty sweet on my wall. They had a copy of the 180º South book at the Patagonia booth and it’s definitely going to be added to my collection once it comes out.

Friday night Dean and I went climbing at the Momentum gym south of downtown. They were having a competition that night so we had to wait a bit, but it was fun to watch a few really good climbers peel off the routes for a bit before doing the same ourselves.

Saturday afternoon we headed back into the fray and hit the smaller businesses off the main floor, picking up more samples and stickers and handing out cards. A highlight was running into Jim Bridwell and sharing my postcard – he really liked it – and it only got more interesting when I helped him figure out how to take photos with his new cell phone.

I also saw Tommy Caldwell and Timmy O’Neill, but I don’t think they needed any help with their cellphones.

Overall it was a productive weekend – catching up with friends, a handful of solid contacts for projects and collaborative efforts, and plenty of gear to look forward to…

See the entire set @ flickr »

With everything that went down last year though, I guess I’m not that surprised. Web surfing and Flickr posting declined sharply after making the transition from full-time art director for a Seattle agency to self-employed designer/developer, but now with nearly a year at this under my belt I think I’m ready to step it up a bit and commit to some consistent blogging again.

First up – a report on this year’s Winter Outdoor Retailer show – only 1 week late… as soon as I get a chance, I promise.

A handful of advertising scans from a 1978 copy of Climbing, as well as some older issues of Summit and Mountain. All good stuff.

I left Graham to his booth after meeting the other CiloGear folks, and then called Dean. He was close by, so we decided to bag that evening’s plans of heading up into the drizzle and slush and walked around for a few hours checking things out before heading back to Herriman and dinner at home.

The next morning before heading back to the show we climbed on the garage wall for a bit and then stopped at a copy shop and made up a handful of postcards to hand out along with my business cards. Nothing spectacular, but hopefully those who ended up with them will hang onto them for at least a few days before throwing ‘em away. Next time I’ll have to come a bit better prepared, but I think they did the trick for this weekend. I talked to quite a few people – mostly small business owners with new products and really basic marketing materials who just looked like they could use some help and got a good number of positive responses. The size of the place made it easy to wander, and after eating some lunch we kept on trolling through the rows and rows of stuff – shoes, outerwear, skis, socks, underwear, stoves, snowball-chuckers – you name it and it was represented. Lots of stickers, a few goodies – a few products noted and tucked away for birthday and Father’s Day lists – and we were outta there. On our way to the exit, we stopped by the bouldering wall where we’d dropped a business card into a ski boot earlier in the afternoon, and realized it was time for the drawing.

“And the winner of the pair of Scarpa climbing shoes is…

Seth…

Neilson!”

So there you go – there will be at least one good thing coming out of those cards, even if I don’t end up getting any business out of the trip… but I’m feeling pretty optimistic. It was nice to go hang out with the Mathew’s for a bit and get a little wall time in, and it was inspiring to see what’s new in the industry and generate a little hope for cool projects this year.

Winter has pretty much arrived in Wyoming, and it’s going to be around for a while. Best thing you can do is learn to deal with it, and I can’t think of too many better ways of dealing with the white stuff than piling it up into habitable structures. It’s just one of those skills every man should know, and the boys and I are looking forward to the opportunity to build a few of these in the backyard.

Off Belay was a mountain-centric periodical out of Renton, Washington back in the 70′s and 80′s, and covered a wide variety of alpine topics. You can pick up back issues at Chessler’s, and the Mountaineers in Seattle have a complete library of issues. I have an issue or two yet to scan, but these special editions they put out are pretty entertaining – and useful.

Visiting my grandparents when we were kids, my sisters and I loved all the collected treasures of a life on the ocean that were displayed on the walls and in nooks and crannies of his Seattle home. There’s a lot of posts I could make and things I could write about him, but today I think I just want to share one of my favorite bits of his life – a map he carried with him on his travels around the world as a sailor. I own a lot of maps, but none of them mean as much to me as this one, simply because it was his. This one was part of his personal papers that he left with my mother, along with journals and poems and photos – he was blogging way before computers – and I’ve often wished he was around to share in some of the adventures I’ve enjoyed in the last few years, especially with Amy and the kids. Mostly I’m just grateful for his influence and memories and inspiration. There’s still a lot of his writings and things that need to be scanned and saved, and I’m looking forward to it.

Gotta love those old Mazama annuals. Full of great content, including some fun ads in the back for different companies, some of which are still around in one form or another…

Last Friday night I found myself at the Pink Garter Theater in Jackson, eating prosciutto and cheese and waiting for the start of that evening’s program – the Reel Rock Film Festival. With the shutting down of Alpinist earlier that week, it had actually been canceled – but awesomeness prevailed and things came together without the corporate sponsors. When the Alpinist expatriates realized a fellow ex-staffer was pregnant and soon to be without health coverage, they rallied to pull together both the films and a silent auction, with all the proceeds from the night (including beer sales) going to help out with her insurance needs.

I had been looking forward to this for quite a while, and the fact that I couldn’t get anyone to come with me didn’t stop me from being the Solo Guy at the Movies for the night. Originally I was going to drive back home that evening, but with the ski swap in town the next morning, I decided to just stick around town and drive back to Star Valley the next morning. A quick supply trip to K-mart for a cheapo sleeping bag and a power converter for the laptop and I was set. I already had my day hiking stuff in the car from that morning’s failed attempt to get some mileage, so I wasn’t going to suffer too badly, and any excuse to sleep outside and catch an early morning sunrise on the Grand is a good one.

I got to the theater around six and bought my ticket before wandering around the square for a bit. I poked my head into different shops and then picked up a drink and headed back into the theater to check out the auction. There was a good variety of things up for grabs, and I put my name down on a tent and some clothing package for Amy, but wasn’t too hopeful. The food downstairs was pretty good – meats and cheeses and PBRs, but it was a good snack before I settled down into a back-middle seat inside.

The place filled in pretty quickly and by the time things were ready to go it was pretty much full. It was a bit surreal to be sitting in the middle of these Jackson-type conversations:

“Hey man, long time. Where you been?”

“Aw dude, just got back from three months of skiing in Argentina. Nothing new. Time to settle back and do some guiding and make some cash this year…”

Christian Beckwith introduced things and gave a little insight into the whole Alpinist deal, and introduced both the nights films and the reason we were all able to be there. Then finally, the house lights came down and the good stuff began.

From the film contest winners to the feature presentation, I really enjoyed all of the night’s movies. My hands were sweating for just about the whole evening, especially when people started jumping off of mountains wearing wingsuits and cruising across the face of the cliff, just barely avoiding a full-on strawberry jam situation. The main film of the night, “The Sharp End“, was really well done and definitely one to pick up for the DVD collection when its available. The crowd was into things from the get-go, and were appropriately vocal and responsive throughout the night, and it was just a good vibe. Even if I was by myself, I’m glad I made it. I just hope that someone picks up the Alpinist Film Festival so there can be more of these kind of productions in town.

After things wrapped up, I picked up a few bits of Alpinist schwag and headed to Albertson’s to get some food for dinner. Pastrami, cheese, a sourdough loaf and a Hershey bar with almonds were thrown into the back of the car and I headed up into the park. I’m pretty sure I did a no-no in “camping” where I did, but no one bothered me and I just drove down below the main road and killed the lights. I left the engine running for a bit to warm up the car while I spread out my kit in the back and ate dinner while watching a nice little documentary on Corbet’s Couloir on the laptop before going to sleep. The stars were out in full force and opening the door a crack I could hear the coyotes doing their thing for quite a while. It would have been nice to have had a tent, but I stayed plenty warm in the car and actually slept pretty good.

I awoke to the arrival of another truck coming into the parking lot and I quickly got dressed and cleaned up my stuff. The sun was still below the horizon and hadn’t really done much to the Grand & Co. yet so I grabbed a couple of cameras and a tripod and walked down to the beaver pond below the road to pick up a few photos. A beautiful sunrise came through with some seriously bright alpenglow to work with, but I wrapped up pretty quickly and hustled my way back into town for the ski swap.

The ski swap was held in the rodeo barn on the south side of town, and there were quite a few people inside when I got there. I ended up walking away with nothing, being completely overwhelmed with my choices and not really knowing what I wanted or needed, and also not wanting to wait another two hours in line just to check out. I think I’ll be able to pick up what I need at a better price through Craigslist or eBay in SLC this year, so we’ll see what I can find. On my way back home I stopped at Hoback Sports just to talk skis with somebody there to get a better idea of what would be the best setup for me, so at least I have a good idea of sizes and measurements now to work with.

All in all, it was a good weekend. I wished I’d have been able to bring Amy or Boone or someone, but the chance to sleep up in the Park, even in a car, was pretty good for my head and although not a typical outing for me, it was better than nothing. Actual climbs for me have been pretty few and far between lately, so with the camping and the climbing films, it was a good warmer-upper and inspiring at the very least.

Since it’s Friday, I thought a few distractions in the form of some Monty Python sketches were entirely appropriate: