The quantity of writing on this blog is directly proportional to the amount of time I have and how inspired I am. When I'm psyched I can get a lot done when under life's fire, but when I'm down, well, not much gets done. The temperatures have been ridiculous here in the Rockies, and I gotta admit I'm down about that. Some friends from France are going back a week early because they've had it with these disastrous temps. I asked if I could go back with them but they told me I had too much to do, and they're right. So the lack of posts reflect both temperature-induced torpor syndrome (five points to whomever figures that one out first) and the quantity of stuff I've had going on. Two magazine articles, a journalist inhabiting my life, Christmas, kid, parties, shoveling the walk, feeding the fire and a whole list of other excuses for the limited climbing and posting I've done lately. I have stayed on the training bandwagon though, getting stronger! See the picture for my latest training tactic, it's a triceps workout from hell combined with kid care!
But there are going to be even fewer posts for the next week, as I'm packing duffels and and clanking gear like mad. The quest is on, and we're off tomorrow morning. I can't say much more about it than that, but there's a big route out there, time to go hunting for ice!
Best,wg

Cold weather always makes me feel excited in a, "I sure am glad I'm not on a climb!" sort of way. The squeaking crunch of the snow underfoot, the sudden numbness in an earlobe, the hyper-real sound transmission in the air and of course the, "Just how cold is this going to go?" feeling all combine to make cold weather something I really look forward to. I know there's no way in hell I'm going to do anything except hike in this weather, which is sort of liberating.
Fortunately I climbed the last two days in a row before this "cold snap" blew in. I say fortunately because I give up on ice climbing below about -20, I just don't enjoy it. I've done some days at -30, it's just too damn nasty. I also feel like the line between survival and total chaos is much closer when the temperature is so low; break a leg at -5 and you'll have a shot at living until help shows up, but at -30, well, good luck. But I still feel invigorated by extreme cold, it's just such a clean, sharp feeling every time I step out the door to get more wood for the stove. Overall I'm pleased with the wood stove addition to the house, and we haven't had to turn the heat on yet. All the wood cutting in the fall (standing dead trees only, they have very low moisture content and so are OK to burn now) is paying off! 
Minus 35 isn't that bad compared to the cold I've felt in the far north, but just a week ago it was warm enough to climb rock outside in the sun! Amazing transition.
Training:
Mostly outdoors on one long route and a few drytooling days, although I did get sucked into a wicked session at the Vsion two days ago. I went in for a quick evening slam after a short day out in the morning; I had clear-cut goals (front levers, power pulls) but the Junior team had a new toy: A speed system... Stand on the little pedal, punch it to the top, hit a buzzer. The Juniors were going fast and it looked like fun, so I had to play. Before I knew it 45 minutes of desperate yanking laps had gone by. I lowered my initial time of seven seconds (short wall) down to just under 2.5 seconds but couldn't get it any lower despite trying as hard as I could. The record is 1.91 seconds (nice work Eric!) to go from standing at the bottom to the buzzer on the top of the roughly 20 foot wall. Basically three power moves in a row to the top, so maybe it was a good power workout after all! 
One thing I know now is that when you get a groove on in a training session it's way better to go with that than to try and force the original plan. Staying fresh mentally is as or more important than anything else. If you're not motivated by your workouts then you ultimately won't go. So next time I hit the front levers and power pulls I'll be feeling extra aggro and psyched, and the speed didn't hurt my forward progress. If anything the psyche pushed me to try harder and go deeper, which is what good training is often all about.
Stay warm!
PS--the temp is now -36, could we hit -40 tonight? I haven't seen -40 in many years in the Rockies (apparently neither have the pine beetles, one reason they are expanding their range so dramatically to the north). Cold, cold, let's go -40! The sun doesn't come up until 8:38 tomorrow, so lots of time left tonight...
11:20 PPS--Now we're down to -37! Time for bed, but I'll check the stats from last night in the morning, this is getting really, really cold!
The temp dropped to -42 last night. I can't remember the last time it was -40 something around here, nice to see.

We all need inspiration. I find a lot of mine outdoors, from friends and family, but also in music and reading. If you're looking for some inspiration here's what I've been abusing my ear drums and eyes with:
Books:
Raw Shark Text: This is about the weirdest thing I've ever read, and one of the best. There's this idea that words can become alive, and eat us as "sharks." Brilliant stuff, I wish I were half as smart as the author.
Five Novels: Phillip K. Dick. This guy saw the world so very differently. I picked this lunker of a collection up in some airport on the way to Europe because it had the most words per Euro of anything on the rack, and it then took over my mind. Dick defined so many pre-cursors to things we take for granted today (cyber punk, the ascendance of the electronic over the physical, viruses, electronic propaganda, etc. etc.) up to 50 years ago. Cool read.
Music:
MGMT: Evil good pop.Buck 65. So many good lines... Old Crystal Method: I was playing some of this in the office today after a good Nordic workout when my daughter wandered in and started grooving like a glam queen. Hard to argue with that, I was too.
The reason I'm thinking about inspiration is that I can sense it's time for winter climbing to change for me again. Ice climbing isn't going to look the same in 20 years as it does now; sometimes climbing evolution is incremental, other times a new idea comes along that completely shakes things up. Mixed climbing did that for me, and changed the sport around the world pretty dramatically. Standards on both ice and mixed have shot up massively in the last five years, and that's cool. I saw that yesterday while teaching a clinic; two guys I didn't really know came into Grotto and climbed brilliantly up the ice. Their technique was obviously refined well past the usual "X and grunt" method of ascending; nice body position, safe, fast. It would have been impossible to see that 20 years ago as that technique didn't exist. Now the question is, "What next?" I need a shot of Phillip K. Dick's futurecasting to find the path of most interesting resistance and drop into the groove of new possibilities.
Training: Did some more icicles of late, having a ton of fun just climbing ice with the odd mixed bit throw in, plus it's the start of the ski season. Nothing like pounding for an hour with a 30-pound kidlet on my back, killer workout and fun for both of us.
Give 'er.
WG

There's finally enough ice and time to get out, yeah! Last Wed. I headed up to the Stanley Headwall with my favorite philosopher, David, who moonlights as some kind of oil-patch bidness man and general outdoor organizer. We've been climbing and attempting to climb together for over 20 years, so it's always good to get out with him. Anyhow, we left the car kinda late (8:40) with vague plans to do Killer Pillar, but there was a party on that. Plan B was to do Suffer Machine, but there was a party on that. Plan C was to climb anything without people on it, and somehow that made Nemesis the goal. Nemesis is one of those all-time classic ice routes, something that novices wonder about, up-and-comers epic on, and the experienced tell two-beer stories about. It's about 160M of very steep ice, and back in the day it was a very long day at best and a bivouac situation. Times change.
At the base David was looking nervous about the time; I'd had to stop and duct-tape my heels together (first time skiing in ice boots that season, joy) so now it was going on eleven, and David had to be back in Calgary to give a slideshow that evening. My wife, Kim, had done the route pretty fast with Scott S. back in the day, and we had 80M ropes so I figured we could do the route in two pitches (normally 4). We wouldn't be slowed down too much by placing protection as I'd kinda only brought eight screws, a bit light. I know David can move, so I semi-jokingly said, "We'll be back at the packs in under three hours, no problem." I figured we'd probably rap from the first anchor but what the hell, I'd never actually done the climb (put me in the "up and comers having an epic back in the day" category for sure) and really wanted to!
Swing, kick, swing, kick, kick, kick, gee that screw is a long way down there, anchor 80M later. David raced up despite somehow taking a softball sized chunk to the helmet; I know how big it was 'cause it left that sized dent in his helmet. He wasn't feeling too hot but was still game, so off to the top, crux move fighting through the soft slab and finding an anchor, back down at the packs in under three hours, David made his show and reportedly did well despite the head injury. Sure was a nice day, thanks!
Also had fun at Hafner yesterday; I love thin ice climbing, the kind where it's just thick enough to hold your pick but thin enough to show the first tooth. This type of climbing is just provocative, like a strip tease show but more interesting; what you can't see is what it's really all about. A nice day out with old guard again. I like going climbing with people who have a sense of humor as black as their coffee, plenty of both going around. Nice crowd in Hafner despite the fact that it rained all the way from Canmore to about 10K from Hafner. I was sure we were on a drive to a coffee shop with a detour toward a climbing area but the temps and ice were fine if a bit wet. There is just nothing like pulling the crux of a climb with a shower of ice-water in your face and running down your neck, I will NEVER whine about the temps while sport climbing again.
So the season is on around here, lots to do, yeah! And today there is snow outside my window and the temps are down to -10 finally, I was starting to think global warming had finally arrived.
Training: Yep. Had a wicked session with Dr. Simon in the gym the other night. 15 minutes of big offset pulls and front levers turned into something more than that, thanks for the motivation. Today I took my kidlet to kidlet gymnastics (she's going well!), and managed to almost hold a front lever on the rings for a second. It's coming! My workouts haven't been perfect, but they have been as regular as I can make 'em, and the results are starting to show.
Hope you're having fun outside wherever you are!
wg

I've been out wandering a bit in search of new ice, but not much success. Normally this time of year I'm climbing a fair amount, but there isn't all that much ice in at the moment, or at least ice I haven't climbed. I'm always up for climbing just about anything, but given a choice I'd rather wander the woods in search of something new than climb something I already have. So more wandering will take place!
Training: Good gym sessions. Spoga, offset pulls, bouldering, lots of laps up and down the wall locking off on every hold and reaching up, some front lever training. It's going.
I hope it's game on wherever you are!

Had a wicked session in the gym today (well, yesterday as it's late at night now), and a decent one Wed. Plus I did some solid logging recently, very nice dry wood from standing trees with Keith, and scored a whack of wood from Alpine Precision Tree Removal (Thanks Jeff and Chad!). The picture is of me being a tree hugger, all proud of the very dead tree that went down cleanly. Oh, cutting that thing up and then splitting it was a bad-ass workout too--knotty-ass tree, I had to resort to the new chainsaw a couple of time to win. Kinda weak but that's how it goes sometimes, all of it is very nice firewood now. New saw required a new chain too, knowing how to sharpen ice tools does not translate directly to sharpening chain saws. It is possible to remove too much of that little tooth that sets the depth of the cut. Bought a guide thing.

Training Wed: Good warmup, then bouldering, then kinda got psyched to work with the Vsion Junior Team for a bit on some skills, then blasted myself on the system board for body tension and power moves. Wicked.

Training Friday: Solid warmup, sent some problems that had been beating me down, wore my soft skin out then got on the dry tool campus board. Big offset pulls, new season record (I'll take any victory I can get), half levers, worked. Full Spoga set in there too, never stopped moving except when I had to gasp like a new-born for breath. Love that.

Plus wrestling a couple of tons of wood, some walks with live weight on my back. A good week, beat some long-standing office stuff into at least a stand-off, the kind of work that just keeps piling up and piling up then it's really late so it's even worse to deal with so I didn't until this week. Lame, but fixed now.

The ice season is on around here, but the temps have been really warm. Only the relatively high and north-facing ice (Ranger Creek, Replicant, etc) has stayed in. The last month has really reminded me of winter in Colorado--highs above freezing most days, warm enough to rock climb in the sun, a few degrees below freezing at night at most, pretty stable weather in general. While this has been pleasant, it's not right for mid-November in the Canadian Rockies. It rained here in Canmore last night, and the most snow we've seen this season was in August. WTF? I've decided "global warming" is a misnomer; what the term should really be is, "Weather Fuckitedus." It may be colder, warmer, windier, wetter, dryer, sunnier, cloudier or just generally totally unpredictable compared to any pattern you might once have recognized.
Training: It's fallen apart a bit due to weather-induced lassitude. It's hard to get really psyched to mixed climb when it's sunny and plus five, or raining. But these little lulls often lead to better results in the end. I'm likely tired from all the mad travel, and my motivation is the first thing to suffer when I'm not fully in the game mentally. I expect things will come back with a vengeance here shortly. Over the years I've found that pushing through demotivated periods often leads to injuries, or severe and long-lasting demotivation. Better to focus on things in life that need to get done, stay healthy, train when the energy is there, and know that it will come back when it's right. That was a hard lesson to learn for me...

Yesterday I went for an all-time fugly walk in the woods. We went the wrong way repeatedly, mired ourselves deep in the debris of an overgrown logging slash, fell down, groveled, cursed and were rewarded at the end of this experience by not finding any ice to climb. But you know what? It was a pretty good day of it. This is what's funny about climbing; you can not climb anything and still have a good day. If I'm working in the office and, say, the video editing system implodes it can ruin my entire day. But I can sweat and grovel for three or four hours in the mountains and it's pretty fun. This just confirms my basic idea that office work is evil.
The day did end well when I scored a bigger chainsaw in good condition for a fair price. This things should wail through the bigger logs with aplomb (can you use a word like that to describe a chainsaw?). I had a dream last night that I used it to quarry a huge cave in my back yard, it was going through solid rock like butter. This is likely a man dream that women will not relate to, but I was stoked, sad to wake up and find out it wasn't true. My backyard is cobbles for at least a hundred feet of depth anyhow.

Training: See above, with some time spent hanging by the tools in the garage. Getting stronger!

Every so often my home gym, the Vsion, has a bouldering comp. All the local climbers rejoice not just because the comp is fun, which it is, but because the new routesetting means a total reorganization of the holds on the wall, and a lot of new boulder problems. Something like 50. Yesterday I went in with Scott, and we started on the easiest, 1, and worked ourselves up to about 35. Yeah, it's not the best mixed training but it sure was fun! Lots of big hold jug pulling and body tension, I feel it today after the relatively lower-angled climbing in Poland.
Then my friend Keith and I went and chopped down some dead standing trees as part of Firewood Quest 2008. This is undoubtedly the most dangerous thing I do; I don't know shit about chopping trees down, so we're making it up. My favorite line from yesterday was, "Keep running!" from Keith as I headed out of the danger zone. It was a big tree, and not really going the direction I'd have liked it to... Some kind of workout for sure. 
A few interesting bits from friends:
-Andy Kirkpatrick, one of the more entertaining guys in climbing, just finished his book, Psychovertical. Worth checking out for sure, and part of the Banff Book Festival.
-Kev Shields, the one-handed but all-talent climber, went and soloed a classic M10--again.
-The Coldsmoke powder festival is on again for Nelson. I can't imagine any sort of cold smoke coming out of Nelson given the astounding ability of the locals to create hot smoke. Wait, I think that means powder, not greenery. A really cool event by all reports, I'll be heading there this winter to get my ski on.
Finally, Obama, as anyone who doesn't live in solitary confinement knows, is the president elect in the United States. Politics generally just piss me off (I've got a degree in political science so it's an educated annoyance), but this is genuinely cool. Finally a slim majority of Americans got their heads out of their asses and voted for something different. I say that as a part-American; nothing is more frustrating than watching a country you know reasonably well go so wrong for so long. Maybe Obama is just another pawn of the powers that be, maybe not, but I am damn glad he's president-elect and not McCain. On the other hand, a bunch of states voted for anti-gay marriage ballot measures, so fear and loathing of the "different" is still alive and well. I can't fathom the fear and small-mindedness of voting against allowing someone else to marry someone he, she or it truly loves. With all the problems in the world, so many children in pain, so many people suffering, gay marriage is worth spending millions to fight? Shame on those who would rather spend money on fighting for fear and intolerance rather than helping others.

Poland:
Leave Calgary at 6:00 p.m., change planes a bunch,  (you know you've spent to much time in airports when you know which lounge to go to at the Frankfurt airport, and recognize some of the servers...), get off last plane in Krakow, Poland. Surprisingly, it looks pretty much like Germany or something. Massive construction, nice houses, very Western European feel. Locals drag me off to dinner in the nicest wooden building I've ever seen, then somewhere else, and then it's 7:00 in the morning and I'm drytooling up the side of an obscure quarry so jet-lagged I can barely lift my tools. But it's fun. The weather is supposedly too shitty to go alpine climbing in the Tatras, then the sun comes out and we go sport climbing in another quarry somewhere.
There's a really obvious cool roof crack line, but I end up on some bouldery 7a (11d) in the shade and fall off in a frozen haze. Then it's onto the roof crack, which the local master (serious master--this Micah dude can PULL) absolutely hikes without jamming once. I spool up, fall off the opening move before I even get to any bolts, laugh, then trash my hands in the crack 'cause if you don't jam it's 7b+ or something. I jam like a mofo on the serrated edges and get to the anchor with everyone asking me exactly what the hell I was doing with my hands in the crack--"there are no holds in there?" Then we meet more great people, do an impromptu movie night with the best scotch I've ever tasted,  and then drive somewhere else and then it's off to bed in a haze. 
Morning strikes (it doesn't rise when I'm jet-lagged, it strikes me in the forehead like a snake), and it's more driving. Somehow, despite the distances never being more than a few hundred K, we drive hours and hours each day. This time only drive an hour, and then ride a tram up into the Tatra Mountains, which are incredibly beautiful peaks. My handlers tell me these mountains are small, not so nice, not so many good climbs, etc. By the end of the trip I figure out that if anyone in Poland says something is going to be not so nice then it's going to be great. It's a national characteristic among Poles to talk down everything Polish. Sort of Canadian in a way, I feel right at home. I also suspect there was some serious sandbagging going on with the grades, but payback on that one will be fun when the team comes over to Canada.
Anyhow, we hike up to the top of a peak from the tram, and it's just gorgeous. I spy a long granite ridge running off into the distance and immediately have to do it, it's just too cool looking. My handlers decline my offer to come, and we have no rope anyhow, so it's a solo game. One side of the ridge is in beaming sun and so warm I have to take off everything, the other side is -10 with ice, snow, and frozen turf everywhere. After cruising around some rocky bits I'm into some mixed on the north side, and go for the crampons. Unfortunately they aren't in my pack. All I have is a huge loaf of bread, two pounds of cheese, an empty water bottle, and an mp3 player with broken headphones. I do have one ice tool, so I keep going, ripping my hands up some more jamming in the cracks with added force 'cause, well, I don't have crampons and falling off would be bad. It's a mega couple of hours of breathing hard, going the wrong way, going the right way, climbing past rap anchors, being horrified on the dry sunny grass, being horrified on the frozen grass, and eventually making it back to the tram after one of the coolest ridge traverses I've ever done. Yep, these Polish Tatras are not so nice... Lying Poles, these mountains are fantastic. There were some really nice mixed lines to do if one had two ice tools, some crampons, some gear, a rope and a partner. But no complaints, absolutely a great afternoon of it.
Then it's off on a mad tour of Poland for the Black Diamond slide shows. My translator (Adam) can climb 8c, the guy I'm doing the shows with has done 13 of the fourteen 8,000m (Piotr) peaks, then there's me stuffed in the backseat for at least five hours a day between gigs. I've driven all over the world, but I gotta say that the Polish roads and drivers are far more engaging than I'd expected. The shows go well, nobody dies on the road, and we're back in Krakow in one piece. Adam suggests we visit a local crag that's, "Not so nice," and of course it's a great little crag with perfect grass at the base. We would KILL for a crag like this here in Canada! One more show and then it's off to the after-event party, where I survive one of the all-time greatest attempts on my life. Many people have tried to kill me in foreign countries with drinking games, but this was seriously a world-class effort. I had to use every Jedi mind trick I knew to make it out alive, and still the next morning barely qualified as "alive."
My overall impression of Poland is nothing like what I'd expected. I grew up listening to the radio reports from Poland in the late seventies, when Lech Walesa was leading strikes and the government was pretty aggressive to the people. But what I found was a country a lot more like Germany and Austria than the other countries I've visited in the former "east" European block. Construction everywhere, good infrastructure (good in general, the roads could use some more time in finished state and less under construction), and a generally optimistic people. The "communism" years are ancient history for anyone under 30, and many of the older people simply don't want to look back. I kept digging for information about what the country was like when I was a kid and hearing about the strikes on the radio, but it's a chapter of life that's just less interesting for the Poles than the future. I admire that outlook, and the results show in the country. The Tatras are fantastic and worth visiting again, there are some really big walls with mixed routes to do (maybe already done, no idea, but they look great).
My deepest and sincere thanks to Michal, Adam, Maciev (sorry, you're welcome at my house anytime but I never did figure out how to spell your name!), all the Piotrs and the many stellar people who put us up in their houses and truly went out of the way to help me have a great Polish experience. Sometimes slideshow trips are pretty industrial; this one had industrial moments, but it was without a doubt the most enjoyable week of travel I've had in a long time. I know I'll see some of the people I met in the future, either at my house in Canada or around the world somewhere. I look forward to that. And if some of my hosts show up at my house I'll do my best to show them some things in Canada that, "Aren't so nice..." Right. Thanks also to Raphael for recording the video segments for the shows in Poland, they worked well.
WG
PS--Training: Two days of sport climbing, one day of mountain beating, one day of gym climbing/training, some hiking. Not ideal, but I feel pretty good about getting all that in while on the road so much. Back at it here now!

I'm in Poland, having loads of fun. More later, but some nice photos here. Managing to have a very good time and get some climbing in.

Off to the crags now.

wg

I've had a few emails asking what Spoga is--explained it a few posts ago, but it's what I laughingly call "speed yoga." It's yoga without all the woo-woo, which likely means it isn't yoga to those who practice some form of Yoga. I fit a fairly fixed collection of about 20 different "poses" (asanas) that flow together in roughly five "sets." If I do these straight through they take as little as 20 minutes or as long as an hour. One thing I don't like about most yoga classes is that I often want to stop and work with a position a bit longer, or not go into some movement because my body doesn't feel right for it then. That's what I do in Spoga--do my routine, but feel the positions carefully, really move well into each pose in my own time, feel it. I'm wired like a Jack Russel dog, not a lot of flexibility going on here, but I've been doing my routine off and on for three years now, and it has really helped me. So I often do a set or problem or whatever in the climbing gym, then recover by working through a set of my Spoga poses, repeat. It keeps me moving, helps me breathe well while gasping for air, and fits more good stuff into less time. Spoga, it works for me...
Training:
I'm on this near-compulsive firewood gathering kick, so I've been knocking over dead and living (only when they were destined to die anyhow, I might as well burn 'em rather than have them go to the landfill) trees and carting the carcasses back home. My driveway looked like it belonged in the Yukon, so many logs... My neighbors thought it was pretty funny. The whole process has just worked me. After a lot of work I'm down to about a cord of wood that is too wet to use this year; I've gathered, moved, split and stacked a lot of wood over the last two weeks, and in the last three days that's been my main training. I'm going to get some freaky wood chopping/carrying muscles if these keeps up... I figure moving several tons of wood around has got to be good for something, it's certainly worked all the climbing muscles with the exception of power grip strength and maybe lats (although picking huge rounds up gets in there some).
Anyhow, after the mega wood workout from hell I got back into the gym tonight. Good warmup, then did five laps (up and down until failure) on this longish jug haul problem out a roof, no feet, big moves. Grrr.... Hard enough for me that I had to do spoga between sets, fully anaerobic death. Then an accuracy drill on the tool board where I hang one-handed and try to slot a pocket with the other tool. Harder than it sounds, and an important skill. Then one-handed hangs on the tool shafts (can't hold that long before I end up on the grip), then 20/20 intervals to get a good deep pump. Front lever training to finish it out (still just extending one leg while horizontal, back to full hang, repeat until all I can do is curl my feet up level with the bar, back straight, hold that until done. That's one set. I do somewhere between 3 and 5 depending on what I've got in me).
The intensity level is going up. I'll start climbing more and more as the season progresses, and that will take care of specific strengths and specific endurance. Now I want the power to bust the more difficult moves out without injury. I've got some slight tweak in my anterior delt but otherwise good to go. The 20/20 gives a good level of endurance, the fine-tuning will come in action.

On Sunday the venerable (same age as me except for four days so I can use that term) Dr. Slawinski and I actually went ice climbing. Yeah! Typical early season ice, bit odd and sketchy but super fun afternoon of it. It sure was great to get out into the snowy (yep, snow on the ground!) mountains for the first time of the season, and even better that my knee worked. I'd say I'm fully recovered from meniscus surgery and all the other little injuries, yeah! Fell into a beaver pond kinda for a complete day. Felt solid on the walk--my ice pack is lighter than my kid-carrier pack, I found that sorta funny. The climbing wasn't so hard but no pump once I relaxed, so good to swing tools and be out in the mountains with Raph.
I missed blogging a couple of workouts in there due to the mad scramble to finish a bunch of stuff around the house before the snow flies, and working on some projects for 2009, plus I leave for a Poland tour (three presentations, going to be fun!) this Friday. Full madness, love it.
Anyhow, I've been hiking/charging up hills and hitting the climbin gym, did the gym thing on Sunday, good gym workout last night that involved:
Deep warmup (15 minutes of near-constant motion, cycling the pump a bit as I warmed up).Spoga.Four endurance burns on a 30-move problem with Spoga between efforts.Campusing on the 45 degree wall, big holds, lots of pikes and core effort required to huck the moves.Campus board with tools.
So blasted this morning, excellent! The power workouts always get me...
The rest of the day involved computer time, putting casing around the wood stove alcove, caulking and screwing together the side of the house where the wind was removing it, kidlet action and sorting firewood out. Firewood is a lot of work, could be a training action all of its own! 

Wed., October 15 (really--I somehow tweaked my dates, fixed now for recent entries...)

Savage workout. Limbed some trees, bucked them up, moved them to truck, unloaded. Helped out with some more bucking up of trees also. Eight hours of wrestling chunks of wood ranging from light to 150+ pounds, chainsawing like mad, wicked workout. I think this sort of thing is a real test of how "real world" fit you are; climbing fitness is very specific and that's great, but old-fashioned manual toil is just good for you.

A note on chainsaws: I have a "purse-sized" Stihl (my friend Margo loves to mock it), but it has a short bar and a thin chain that allows it to wail through wood as fast as many bigger saws. Keep the chain sharp and the saw in tune and there's not much that saw won't do with some creativity. I was cutting 24-inch spruce with it yesterday, kinda cool to get a big job done with a small saw. I'm just too cheap to spend $500 on a more manly saw when this one gets the job done well. Yeah, a bigger bar and more power might be nice, but I don't burn out on moving my saw around either, and mostly what I do is cut up logs up to about 12 inches in diameter, often in awkward positions, a small saw is just easier for that. Unless someone wants to send me a big old new saw, maybe I'll get into those timbersports comps, those people are nuts....

Tuesday, October 14th.
-Spoga between sets/exercises as usual.
-Warmup with easy movement.
-Climb up and down slightly overhanging wall locking off as low as possible on good holds, hold lockoff for a few seconds with the other hand over head before grabbing hold, repeat until flamed...
-Boulder with tools in cave, focus on accuracy and swings. Good deep pump several times.
-Tool pegboard, big offset pulls, one per side until can't do anymore. Wicked.

Monday October 13th
-Spoga as usual.
-Long traverses to warm up (cold!)
-Front lever training. Nasty and short but good. Getting better at these.
-Enduro training hanging on tool shafts, odd Figure 4 thrown in just to keep it interesting... 20 on, 20 off, you are pumped up! Let go with one hand occasionally if this is getting easy, and grab the tools above the grips so that you slide down onto them when you're too pumped to hang onto just the shafts anymore...

Sunday October 12th.

Good walk in the woods, nothing too major but good to get out.

Saturday October 11th.

All-time lousy workout. Got sucked into a boulder problem I couldn't do, tired, unmotivated, basically went through the motions but into mentally into the workout. Did my best.

First off, a quick rant about body tension.

I often watch people with saggy-ass syndrome (poor body tension) do endless situps. This does NOT solve the problem of keeping your feet on while climbing. "Core" strength or "body tension" in climbing means being able to hold on with your hands and keep your feet on an overhanging wall. Situps (or any ab-isolating exercise) are near-useless for this, it's all about making your shoulders, lats, and abs work together. Some version of front-lever, or whatever "curl up" exercise you can do, is the base of body tension on steep routes. Off-topic rant, but I hate to see good training time wasted. Of course, if the goal is pretty little stomach muscles then great, but that's not the reason I'm at the gym. And if you can do a front lever you'll have good abs, the difference is that you'll have functional strength, not poseur strength.


Wed. Oct 8th

Wrestled a wood stove most of the day in addition to video work, kid. Wood stove won the opening rounds but not the match. Nothing like trying to move 400+ pounds around... Crossfit style experience.

Rode bike to hill. Went up hill fast on foot. Knee good. 45 minutes.

Soundtrack: The world. I don't listen to music while I'm out in the hills, they sound great au naturel.

Thursday Oct. 9th.

I let life go sideways (Calgary, etc.) so I ended up in the gym at 8:15 in the evening, not my favorite time to train. Had to use chemical stimulants to get it going, yeah, those little cans of motivation. Felt like an ambushed owl for the opening 10 minutes but then got it moving. Warmed up well then got sucked into a boulder session with Big Frank. Super fun, big body-tension moves on decent holds so kinda what I wanted and sure fun. SPOGA between boulder problem goes.

Then about 15 minutes of movement with the tools in the mixed cave. Every time I drytool for the first time of the seasn I hate it. The tools move around too much, I'm terrified they will blow on every movement, and I wonder why I bother. Hell, it's a climbing gym, why not just use shoes and chalk? Then I start hucking small dynos, moving through the fear and it becomes fun, but those first few moves always destroy me. I need to pad the little finger of my Fusions already, forgot gloves the first day and my little finger is already swelling. I helped design these tools and wanted a positive little finger grip, what was I thinking? Well, not ideal for the gym but exactly what you need with gloves on for hard routes.

Then over to the drytool campus board. More vertical offset pulls but with a one-arm lock at the top of each pull, release lower tool for a few seconds. Only did three per side and didn't hold the lock long, but I feel them today for sure, a power movement. Then an exercise I've been doing for a few years to help my shoulder: hang from both tools, let go with one hand, and slowly, slowly, rotate about 150 degrees so you're facing out from the wall a bit, rotate back and grab the other tool. If it gets sloppy put your feet down right away. I think it's important to build all the little muscles and train them to work together for moves like this, seems to help me prevent shoulder problems. Drag your feet if you can't do this in control. Surprisingly hard to do in control, but if you build the coordination and strength to do this then you won't be doing it out of control on a route, and maybe won't rip your shoulder joint apart...

Then front lever (core) training. Getting better recruitment after only one session, could hold one leg out for a few seconds! So much of climbing is specific muscle fiber recruitment and coordination, not just "power."
Finished the evening out with some "pump you up" exercises of hanging onto just the tool shafts (no support from the bumps) on 20-second on, 20-second off intervals. Wicked pump in short order...

Maybe not the perfect workout, but far better than lying on the couch drinking scotch and doing fuck all, which is where I was headed at 8:00 p.m.

Soundtrack: Crystal Method was on in the gym. I always forget how good Crystal Method can be.

Friday October 10:

Passed wood stove inspection. Wrestled wood. Keyboard. Then blast on bike to hill, up hill to "lower rocks," back down. Under an hour. Stoked. Burned first load of wood in stove, house did not burn down. Cool.

I ship a lot of stuff back and forth to the US and around the world. I've just had the most incredible go-around with UPS, and still don't have some parts that were overnighted from Utah more than a week ago. The parts made it from Utah through Canadian customs in about 24 hours, then spent two days sitting on the ground while UPS's private contractor tried to figure out how to get a box across town in Nanaimo. They couldn't figure that out for more than 48 hours despite the "super priority" shipment status. I left town before they could figure it out, and called UPS three times to get the box forwarded to Canmore. Unfortunately they couldn't even tell me where it was until today. Yep, Nanaimo. UPS promises delivery tomorrow, we'll see. I really like my local UPS guy here in Canmore, but as far as actually delivering a package on time, well, UPS is not going to get any more of my business, and I'll urge everyone I work with to use Fedex, DHL, Purolator, donkey express or anyone but UPS. Fedex normally gets my packages back and forth to the US in well under 48 hours. UPS sucks.

Back to your mountain sports blog now.

WG

Training

It's that time of year again when the nights are well below freezing, the snow is sticking up high and the leaves are committing suicide in a very beautiful way. Yep, winter climbing is coming and quickly. I'm coming off a decently strong fall of rock climbing (for me) so I've got a base in there somewhere, but in the last two weeks I've done nothing but drive (sit) and fly the paramotor (sit) with a few aerobic blasts but not much. Two weeks and my arms are smaller than their normal skeletal size, my ab muscles aren't looking too defined and my aerobic fitness is pretty pathetic. Time to get it on.

My goals are all over the place at the moment, but I have a couple of big ice/mixed trips coming up and one weird goal that I'll maybe share later. That goal would involve an insane amount of ice, so I need to have the power for decently hard mixed and the endurance to go hard for many hours of "easy" movement on steep ice... Totally contradictory physiological goals, what else is new.

I'm going to post my workouts and climbing efforts as they happen, both to amuse the reader and motivate me. Maybe some public pressure to get it done will help, and I'll take any scrap of motivation I can find. I have a 16-month old star of a daughter, work, a hole in the side of my house that needs fixing (love those renos) and a lot of other stuff that's competing for my time and energy. In short, I'm likely a lot like many of you who read these ramblings: over-committed, short on time and looking for all kinds of climbing action instead of specificity.

Tuesday, October 7th: Day One. Weather poor in general.

Back in the source of power, the Vsion. After two weeks totally off I wanted to start kinda slow, I've found that's a good way to prevent injury. I had one hour and 30 minutes to get it done, here's what felt right:

20 minutes of movement on the walls: Just moving, stretching on the wall (this is great for range of motion and feeling where my body is at), getting to the point where removing the sweatshirt is necessary. No movements that tax me, mellow but real pump.

First half of my 30-minute speed yoga (Spoga) thing (three A suns, three B, bunch of flow poses that I link, it works for me to keep my body from binding up too much). I used to care if I looked like a geek in the gym while doing this routine. Thankfully I've made peace with the fact that I am a geek in the gym, I need to do this Spoga thing or I start moving like a geriatric. Let the kids laugh, it's good for them and me.

-Four laps on "Yellow," about 30 moves on generally big holds, enough to get pumped and have to try a bit but no tweaky moves, with the rest of my Spoga done between intervals. No time in the gym should be wasted; either you're going at it, stretching, belaying or gasping. Sitting around is a waste of time.

-Dangle off tools in the mixed cave for about about 10 minutes. Make sure to release gently and fully onto each shoulder in one-handed hangs, keep it controlled and very smooth. Not really bouldering, just letting my shoulders and hands know that I'm going to be abusing them in the coming weeks--but not today.

-Three rounds of: vertical offset pullups (one per side, both sides, good form, no straining), front levers off tools (nowhere even close to front levers, rock climbing does NOTHING for my core compared to mixed. Just pull knees to chest, extend one leg, collapse, repeat until I can't get knees to chest).

-Mess about with a few figure 4s off tools focusing on smooth releases and catches, not going to failure at all, just remembering the motions and feeling my body move through the range of its joints.

Closed it out with a few minutes of light campusing, I still want to do a few rock climbs that require some degree of contact strength...

That's it, 90 minutes of near-constant motion of varying intensity. On a scale where "1" is my couch and "10" is all-out I'd rate this one about a 4.73. The emphasis is on waking my body up to the movement and stress, not building new strength. I'll be sore tomorrow because I haven't trained these movements but not painfully so. The worst mistake I could make right now would be to blast my muscles and joints so hard that things started to break down either suddenly (injury) or over time (injury).

Soundtrack: Buck 65:
"Sign of the times, choose a blind man to guide the blind,
We all try to find a good excuse to hide behind
Difficult isn't it? The point? there is none
Forget what you know, cause that's true wisdom

Chorus: Cop shades, falcon versus eagle
Cop shades, weapons and sex toys
Cop shades, falcon versus eagle
Cop shades, waepons and sex toys"

For the last 15 years I've flown at least 50 or 60 days a year in western North America, and watched the winds aloft for at least another 100 days a season. I do this through Navcanada's flight planning site, a useful tool for any pilot. I've always thought that I "knew" the winds in western North America pretty well; they blow out of some derivative of west most of the time, unless there is a big low, high or something whacky going on. Then they'll blow whatever direction for a day, maybe two, before settling back into a range of about 220-320 degrees.

For the week we were on Vancouver Island the winds as far east as Cranbrooke blew from between 90 and 200 degrees. Every day. My line over the strait depended on some version of west winds. I never once saw anything approaching 270. There are a lot of ways to fly over the Strait, but the safest plan is to use west winds and line up some possible landing features such as islands. We saw more east and southeast winds aloft than I've ever seen. It felt like groundhog day--check the updated winds aloft at night, predicted southeast. Morning, predicted stronger southeast. Actual: strong southeast aloft. Paramotor engines sometimes just don't work. Although sorely tempted, I was not willing to take off over the Strait with the winds against me. And even if I had made it over the strait there was no place to go on the mainland with the southeast winds....

I was reminded of the variable nature of paramotor engines on Tuesday while doing a flight from the Keenan farm. The winds on the ground were north, the sky perfectly blue, I just couldn't believe that the winds up high were southeast. I took off, climbed to about 1,000 feet, and sure enough the winds were southeast.... I was messing about shooting some stills and slowly descending when the engine stopped. Hmmm.... I tried to restart, nothing, primed, got gas, checked anything I could while looking at the engine over my shoulder, and then headed for a rocky beach. Fortunately I had more than enough altitude to glide to land and not end up in the water, but the beach I had as a "reserve" was really rocky. Stuck the landing fine, the Keenans's and my dad came up and got me, soon we had the head and cylinder off in the Keenan's field. Stewart was a real assist for that, I'm no two-stroke mechanic but he knew a lot. In the end the diagnosis was simple: there was a big hole in my piston, right above the spark plug. I called up RPM and they sent parts right away, then I took the engine into Walker's Saw shop in Nanaimo to to get a Walbro rebuild kit.

Walker's is a Naniamo institution, the kind of place where any man who ever ran a chain saw would recognize as a mecca of all things two-stroke. Don Walker is a second-generation two-stroke master; he raced Kart at a high level, and instantly diagnosed the engine problem and volunteered to fix it overnight. Problem was, UPS sent the parts to Africa... In the end we had to limp homeward with no parts, the wind still south and a broken engine in the truck bed. I'm going to send the motor back to Walker's though, it's just dead obvious when you meet someone with a world-class knowledge of something, thanks to him.

I had to push the dates of this trip back due to knee surgery; August would have been better. Other than that we just had winds against us. I still feel lucky that the motor didn't blow up over the ocean somewhere too far from the beach to glide to...

I'd like to say thanks to my dad, Ben, for support, Peter at Talon Helicopters for believing in the madness, Mark Miller with Discovery, Mark Johnson (who has the best bachelor life of about any man on the planet!), the Keenan clan (great people!) and everyone else who worked with us to try and make this happen. JK and Gabe at RB provided positive energy and support too, nothing would happen without them. I WILL be back, and will send this trip, it's a dream that won't go away. Resistance is natural in life; sometimes you gotta be the ocean and just wear the SOB down until you can get over it. Big goals have big problems; the trick is to just never give up.

WG

I'm on Vancouver island with a paramotor. The obvious thing to do from here is fly it back over to the mainland, and then maybe on home to Canmore. The strait isn't too wide, about 35-50K depending on where you went, but it's pretty wet and not a good place to land. The Vancouver airport also makes things more difficult due to all the airspace restrictions and heavy jet traffic.

My dad came along to help out with logistics and chase, and we've been in the Qualicum Beach area for the last three days. The reasons I haven't flown back over yet are varied, mainly that the wind has been warping out of the southeast for the last three days. I've also blown a hole in the top of my piston, we're going to rebuild today if the parts show up...

The best part of the trip so far has been the amazing help I've had from locals. Mark Johnson, a bud from back in the day, has been invaluable in helping to find launch locations and just generally being his positive self. The first real problem here was to find some kind of place to launch north of Nanaimo; the island has a lot of trees, and not many clearings...

We were driving around the Fanny Bay area looking for fields when we saw this absolute perfect farm; big fields, several possible launch directions, nice grass, just a very well-tended piece of Vancouver Island. So we drove up and knocked on the door, and had the great good fortune to meet the Keenan family. I can't thank them enough for all their help and enthusiasm. Yesterday when I blew a hole in my piston on a test flight they came and got me with their truck, then helped break down the engine on tailgate, diagnose the problem, and then feed us lunch. I think I would have thrown the motor into the ocean and gone home without the Keenan family, thanks. So much of flying for me is not just the flying but the opportunity to meet great people I might not meet otherwise.

Parts should be here today, Mark ("Yeah, I have all the bits necessary to do anything to a motor, bring it on over.") Johnson is on the situation. Thanks.

The weather is perfect, we just need wind other than southeast so I can fly northwest!

Last night we hiked up a peak around here to get rid of some stress. So much focus, intensity, desire and the general unknown of the situation had wrung me out. The sunset was fantastic, and on the hike I realized that having the piston blow in a place where I could land on a rocky beach was a lot better than having it blow in the middle of the strait. It was a lucky day.

WG