Why are E.T.'s eyes so big?

Why are E.T.'s eyes so big?

Because he looked at his phone bill :)

What a week this has been! I was terribly sick last week and kind of the week before, so this has been one huge game of catch up. But I managed to get all of the most important things finished and most of my... less important schoolwork as well.
Thursday I was freaking out a little bit because I thought that I was only going to have time to climb once this week, but I managed to calm myself down and remember that there's always time to climb if you're willing to look/work for it.
Crisis averted.

So, basically, I planned an AMAZING weekend at the price of working my tail end off all week. I ended up, on friday, taking two exams (and doing really well on them), attending four hours of class (where I learned integration in calculus, awesome), establishing a boulder problem on the side of my apartment building(v4-v5ish), and hiking up Y mountain to camp at 8,520 feet in preparation for Mt. Whitney in two weeks! Busy day!

My boulder problem! I numbered the bricks here. It's actually a circuit that starts at 1 and 2 and goes to fifteen. I want to build up to being able to do four laps on it. That would really roughly translate to 100 feet or more of climbing! 

So, Cameron and I brought this random girl who wanted to hike Y mountain with us friday night (props to her, there really aren't a lot of people that I know that are willing to go to the top of a mountain and camp in freezing weather with two crazies like us), and did an awesome trek up in the snow! While up there I learned some valuable lessons to take up to Mt. Whitney with me.

1) It doesn't matter how nice a sleeping bag is, if you are not in a tent or on a full-length sleeping pad, the wind or the snow that your bag is exposed too can and will suck the heat out of you like a child demolishes a 7-11 slurpee. This is important to know if you want to get sleep.

2) Sleeping on level ground is the best option. Always.

3) Tennis shoes are cool for snow until you have to put your feet back in them the next morning.

4) Base-layer thermals are ALWAYS a good idea.

5) If nothing else, worry about your feet getting too cold.

6) Hot chocolate is worth carrying up a mountain for the end of the day.

7) Stop learning these lessons the hard way.

So I was pretty uncomfortable all night. Not really that cold, just very uncomfortable sleeping, and I only got 2-3 hours max.

The next morning we booked it down the mountain, got down by 8:30, and, after dropping them off, I got back by 9, just in time to get ready for my date at 10...

Against all odds though, the date seemed to have gone really well (I at least had an awesome time), and, by the blessing of deity I'm sure, I was awake enough to really enjoy myself!

Well, the awakeness was short-lived. As soon as I dropped my date off at home, my body decided that it had enough and started to shut. me. down.

Just then I got a text from a friend reminding me that I promised to climb with him right at that time. 

This was a good opportunity to evaluate how I really felt about climbing. Did I really want to go out while I was dog tired and start exerting myself by carrying all the gear up the canyon and then try to climb something really difficult? Or would I rather spend a warm evening at home, maybe watch a movie, and go to bed early to catch up on sleep?

Matt and I ended up on a climb called Double Jam because I was able to convince him to do some trad routes instead of a multi-pitch climb (for those of you who don't know, trad climbing is a style of climbing where, as you climb up, you place gear into cracks and crevices that will keep from hitting the ground if you happen to fall Here's a little, not great but better than what I want to write, article on trad climbing). I just wanted to work on my placement of protection and see how Matt broke down the climb for placements. He led the climb first and I just followed him and took his gear out of the wall so I could look at exactly how he placed it and what he was thinking.

I'm pretty sure Matt and Craig were scheming at the bottom because, when I got down, they both asked, "well, are you ready to lead it now?" 

This was probably the crux of the climb for me, I ended up having to climb up past my protection (pro) and hoping that I wouldn't have to put a cam to the test that day.

I have to admit, I was really tired and actually a little bit upset with them for even asking me if I wanted to! I freaking fell when I was on toprope trying to get the stupid gear out of the wall, how in the world was I going to lead it??

Well, five or so minutes later I find myself thirty feet off the ground and messing with a large cam trying to get it into a crack from a very exhausting position on the wall. What can I say, unless I really see a safety hazard from doing a climb, I can't say no!

So I sent the climb after a pretty hair-raising runout that I think scared Craig and maybe Matt a little bit (gotta work on feeling the need to place pro more often), and felt pretty dang accomplished!

After that, as if I wasn't enough of a glutton for punishment, I asked Matt if he'd belay me while I worked on my project Meadow Muffin (first bolted 5.12a climb in Utah!). So I actually remembered all the beta I had figured out before and then sent most of the climb after a third-or-so try. Matt wanted to give it a shot, and, with me shouting beta and encouragement to him, got way past where I did on my first try. That guy is crazy strong even though I'm pretty sure he doesn't realize it!

Now today... I think I'm just going to revert to that, watch a movie-stay inside-go to bed early tactic that I mentioned earlier. I earned it this week.

Let's see what damage we can do next week. :)

What is our purpose anyway?

I'm back! After that Timpanogos trip I didn't sleep for another number of hours totaling almost 40 HOURS OF NO SLEEP. Some of you folks out there may scoff t that whole idea. "40 hours? This kid's a wimp..." But let me remind you that it was 40 hours of being straight up active on a mountain and I'm like a little princess that needs her 8 hours of sleep every night or else I turn into a little grumpy princess. No one likes grumpy princesses.

Anyway, I didn't sleep and got incredibly sick. This was the most sick I've been in a long time, it literally laid me out for a whole week. Boy I'll tell you. Being sick is the worst! You sleep all the time, have no willpower, and have nothing to do because you can't go be active and people don't want you around! Miserable!
But after a close shave with death in the doctor's office (our conversation, "You need to drink 20% more water." "My pee is clear EVERY time..." "You need to lay off the junk food for a few days." "I never eat junk food!" "And you need to sleep 20% more." "Dang." "Gotcha.") I managed to get away and now I'm feeling so good that I climbed a three pitch route on friday and climbed all day saturday. So good to get out!

Two or so weeks ago I watched a movie titled "Hugo". I thought it was going to be pretty bad honestly. However, I became pretty interested in the very first few moments of the movie with the vintage color scheme and the scenes of clock pieces revolving around in the picture. I also have a soft spot for movies that feel a little off the beaten path and also want to convey a message, it seems like I hit a jackpot.

While I wasn't thrilled with the ending to the movie, there was one moment during the movie where the boy Hugo said a couple things that really made me think.

"I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too."

"Maybe that's why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn't able to do what it was meant to do... Maybe it's the same with people. If you lose your purpose... it's like you're broken."

The purpose of a person has always drawn me to thought. Do we have a purpose? If so, what is that purpose?

Like Hugo, I've been led more to be inclined to think that every person does have a purpose. Honestly, at a point in my life I struggled with severe depression and I think that the only thing that kept me from giving up to hopelessness was that I was and am sure that everything has a purpose. A greater purpose than the simple biological term for success (survival and reproduction). A purpose that transcends our ability to reason and falls more into the category of what we would call our heart or soul.

Also, I think that filling your purpose, the intended reason for you and I being here and now, is a major key to happiness in our life. I think that each of us must find our own purpose according to our talents and passions but that we'll all find that while every purpose may be different, they will all be good (no one has a purpose to propagate world hunger I believe...). I also reason that we don't need to go on some epic quest to find our purpose in life, but that we can't idly sit by expecting a 3x5 notecard to be given to us with our purpose on it.

We have to actively live our lives and understand, eventually, what abilities and gifts we have and how we can use those to better the people around us, our societies, and, ultimately, the world.

If the whole world is a machine, maybe you are a gear, a cog, a humble screw, or even the master switch. Just make sure that you're able to complete you purpose when the time comes.

Trip Report on Everest Ridge, Mt. Timpanogos!

Well people, it happened. I went on my first mountaineering trip! For those who are interested in a trip report (this should be everyone), here it goes!

The whole thing started on the morning of friday the 7th. I had to get up at 5:30am to cover a shift for one of my coworkers. The snow conditions had been iffy that week and friday morning Darren and Matt were going up to the base of the mountain to dig a snow pit a decide whether the conditions were too avalanche prone or not. The plan was that, if it was too dangerous to climb Timp, we'd make the three hour drive over to Nevada to climb another peak instead.

Thankfully Darren sent out an email around 9 that said the snow conditions were great and the trek was on!

So I spent all day trying to do homework and focus on other things, but of course I couldn't! This was my first mountaineering expedition!

My buddy Cameron was good enough to give me a ride to the trailhead for Dry Creek Canyon where we were going to meet up with the rest of the climbing club. We got there right at 10pm and spent some time getting our gear together while the rest of the group (about 30 people!) decided to start making their way up the canyon. Thankfully they weren't moving too quick and we hoofed it up to the group in time to get a breather before the self-arrest practice.

Self arresting (not like cops, we did not throw ourselves in jail, this is a method of stopping yourself on the ice and snow if you start to fall off the mountain) was at the Baldy Saddle and was really fun, but the snow was so powdery that you didn't really need to even use the ice axe to stop yourself from sliding. Good practice nonetheless!

After the brief self-arrest clinic everyone strapped on their crampons and warmer gear and we took off straight up Everest Ridge. Most people were using their headlamps, but the lit up city in the valley and the moon were so bright that I found it unnecessary most of the time. It was a pretty cool sight to see some thirty-odd headlamps moving up the mountain in a single file line. I wish I had snapped a picture of it!

After a while people started to peel off and different groups were formed according to how fast you wanted to climb the mountain. I found myself in the front group of five or so people and even got to break trail for a while! I realized that climbing a mountain this way was all about the patient, methodical progression up the side of the snow-covered slopes-- pretty different from sport climbing, but just as awesome, if not better.

At about 2am something happened (I may have peeled off for some water or food or something) and my front group kept going and I found myself pretty alone on the mountain for the next three or four hours. I didn't mind this too much because I could still see the front group ahead of me and got to follow their freshly broken tracks. Eventually someone caught up to me (I think it was one of the Matts...) and we caught up to the group right underneath the Hillary Step (if you look on the map above, the Hillary Step refers to the rock outcropping right below the ridge line on the mountain).

In my humble opinion I thought this was the absolute sickest part of the whole climb. It was so steep that if you fell there was no chance that you could self-arrest and stop yourself from falling... so don't fall haha. We traversed underneath the straight cliff faces for a bit and then climbed straight up when there was a break in the cliff that formed a snow covered chute. From there you make your way up to the summit ridge line. When we broke over the ridge the sun was just starting to come up over the mountains farther east of us and it was absolutely gorgeous. I'm so lucky that I go to school here...

Then we traversed the summit ridge line over to the summit of Everest Ridge and then chilled there for a little bit (kind of a pun, someone guessed that, with the wind chill, it was about -15 up there). I decided to break out one of my celebratory bananas and we had ourselves a little mountaineering feast on energy goo, powerbars, shot bloks, and, for me, a banana as well.

It being pretty cold, Andrew was the first to leave, followed by me and the two Matts. Andrew and Matt 1 BOOKED it down the mountain and Angela ended up going back up the mountain with some friends that she was ahead of while Matt 2 and I just kind of enjoyed an easy pace on the way down.

Instead of having to downclimb the Hillary Step we just went around it on a longer, but more timid slope. The whole way down Matt was a good sport and answered all of the beginner questions I had for him. From crampons to recognizing snow formations, he answered them all and answered them really well also. For the sake of our pants and because the snow was warming up, we chose not to glissade down and instead just kept trekking. By the time we got to the bottom of the snow fields we both were sunburned pretty bad because we didn't put on any sunscreen and I thought it was hilarious to see a sunburned guy with a big 'ol beard.

We made our way down pretty quick, but Matt was pretty tired and decided to ease up on the pace (I think he ended up stopping and taking a nap) while I kept up a pretty good clip to the bottom where I hung out with Jen and Andrew for an hour or two until Cameron got down and we made our way back home. It was pretty funny sitting there because the trailhead is in a pretty nice neighborhood and I swear we looked like homeless people just chillin' in this really nice place.

One family passed by and somehow it came up that it was really cold on the summit and the dad said, "yeah well I've been in -55 before."
Yeah. Big deal. Did you do it for fun at the top of a mountain?

Most everyone was really nice though and it was pretty funny to see all the exhausted climbers coming off the mountain and staggering to their cars to go home and sleep for the rest of their lives!

I think I learned lots of valuable lessons from this trip. Some of them were life insights, but I think the biggest one was that you really need boots that fit well when you do things like this. My feet still hurt!

But it won't stop me from doing this again :)

This is what Summitpost has to say about the climb

Sunday! The end of the week! Or the beginning if that's what you think of it as. I kind of think of sunday as being its own little thing, not really a part of the week, just kinda, set aside.

Anyway. This week has been nutso! Amid the struggles of mmbio tests, physics homework, looming calc tests (which I'm actually really excited for the calc test, I LOVE that class), and sleep deprivation, I somehow managed to visit a few friends (some new, some old) and to have a great time. I would like to apologize right now to everyone that I was really late to picking up, didn't keep in very good contact with, bailed on, and anything else I probably forgot about. It's not you, it was me trying to keep my head from exploding with busyness!

What with all this busyness though, I had an interesting experience at Mountainworks (the local climbing gear shop) this week.

I was at the Quarry (climbing gym adjacent to the store) and decided to go into the shop to ask the store owner some advice on the next pair of shoes I was thinking of getting. There, I got to meet a man who actually just finished a tour of climbing/hiking each of the high points in all 50 states (here's the news article for your reading pleasure: Provo man summits all 50 states' highest points)!
This is pretty impressive, not really because of any technical skills required per se, but mostly because of the sheer time and dedication that it takes to do something like that.
But, because I was more interested in getting my shoe advice and getting out quickly, I offhandedly said something like, "Wow, there's no way I would have time to do something like that."
Aaaaaaaaaand that's where the experience got interesting.

I learned that Andy (50 summit man) is actually a lawyer, has a wife and children, and still somehow manages to gather enough time to be a mountaineer. He was a very humble guy, so the majority of the story came from Jen (the owner's wife), but she told me of multiple occasions where they would drive for a total of 24 hours in one weekend just to be able to snag multiple peaks before he had to return to work on monday.

Then Andy told me that you just have to figure out what you want to do and plan out your life and priorities in order to achieve your goals and dreams. And I think that's what really struck me.
Here was a full-grown man telling me, a college student who's supposed to be well practiced in spending inane amounts of time doing things I consider fun, how to commit to a dream! And he was schooling me!

I think, as humans, we are meant to dream and aspire. I actually think that having a dream and aspiring to do or become something is what fills us with a purpose that's vital for a satisfying life.
The thing is, though, how many of us toss our dreams aside as "implausible" or too difficult to mesh with our current life? Are we scared what that change might bring with it? How many of us fail to see that we could achieve something if we were willing to make the effort?

Enter "time".

Time is curious because it seems to be like a vessel for something. Let's say that time is a pitcher and what we do with our time is what we choose to fill the pitcher with. There are lots and lots of good things that we enjoy drinking and there are probably more things that we don't enjoy drinking. If we waste our time or squander it doing something that we don't enjoy, it's like filling our day to day pitchers with things that we hate (for me that would probably be a mixture of muddy water and radishes, gross.). But we can also spend our time by doing things that are productive, enriching, and that will give us ultimate satisfaction. That's like filling our pitchers with delectable refreshing goodness (pure spring water with lemonade and mixed berry juice for me!). At the end of the day we have to drink what we fill our pitchers with, so we've got to be careful. Although we may fill it with something good, maybe some days we prefer one drink (or activity/thing) over something else. Both are good, but we want our favorite.

This all boils down to the fact that we get to choose what we do with our time. Whether that's summiting 50 peaks, spending more time with family, training for sport climbing (my little plug here), or just taking a well needed nap, we have the decision and there's never an excuse, "Well I just don't have the time."

Anyway, sorry for the long post this time, I'll try to be less long winded in the future!