I just completed a big milestone on my website upgrade. I finished reorganizing my travel section, regenerating the photo galleries, changing all the links, and setting up redirects to the new pages. It was about 2 weeks of work to do that for Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, and most of the US. There is still plenty to do but it is all little stuff with the exception of a new guestbook.

All done in plenty of time for next year's European adventure!

Hood Climbers

Updated

I don't normally do current events here but I wanted to mention a few things regarding the climber rescue on Mt. Hood. Why? Well because people who do climb mountains get very frustrated hearing things that are downright wrong or otherwise completely uneducated comments. Some media outlets had called the 3 mountaineers on a difficult climb "hikers" for crying out loud. The only negative comments I've seen about the climb have come from non-climbers. The news media and general populace don't have the first clue regarding how to pick a route and carry out an ascent. Experienced climbers, like the 3 on Hood, do. THIS IS THE CORRECT TIME OF YEAR TO CLIMB THE NORTH FACE ROUTE AND THE FORECAST WAS FOR GOOD WEATHER! What are experienced climbers saying? These three evaluated the variables and started the climb. Unfortunately there was an injury and they lost their weather window. To be blunt sometimes that happens. This time it looks to become a tragedy. As I write this one climber has been found dead and the two others are still missing.

Here is a great quote from the Oregon Live that sums it up:

It's interesting to note where the criticism of Hall, Cooke and James isn't coming from. It's not coming from Hood River County Sheriff Joe Wampler and his deputies, nor from the Crag Rats, the Air Force, the National Guard, Portland Mountain Rescue nor any of the others who poured their energies into the hunt for the missing men.

In fact, when professional talker Rosie O'Donnell used her national television platform Tuesday to question the cost of the search, Wampler said, "I just want to reach out and grab her neck."

If you are an outsider to the mountaineering community, take a look at some of these links. Climbers are well connected nowadays and do internet research just like everyone else. Tracing a climber's footprints in cyberspace. I'm a member of both CascadeClimbers and SummitPost. Here is one online discussion following events: Cascade Climbers message board and SummitPost forum.

This also strikes home because with Bernie we tried the Cooper's Spur Route. We turned around near the summit because toaster to tv sized rocks were starting to fall as the sun heated up the snow and we didn't want to get clobbered.
My Mt Hood climb is online. There are two pictures that give a good overview of our route and the route of the current group, dscn5014, dscn5016. The Spur follows the left ridge to the summit while the North Face Route tackles the face of the mountain directly.

UPDATED: I'm in planning mode. Really I've been in continuous planning mode since I started at the clinic back in April for a 2-3 week position. As each contract end date approached I prepared for a new trip. My current contingency is for several months off starting in February (long distance backpacking + euro trip) then interviewing in Denver with a relocation to follow. Of course work is hinting at another extension... I've got to get out of Ohio though!