Category Archives: climbing

the art of being homeless

Posted on November 10, 2013 by powdork

after my landlord told me in mid july that sydney (aka squiddypup) had to go, i started to hatch a plan. i was already taking the girls to yellowstone for a summer/fall vacation, so it seemed like getting a place before we got back from that would just be a waste of money.
it looked like the three of us (me, nacho, and the squiddypup) would be staying at the outback lodge, a subaru resort, for the better part of september.

while being homeless has some challenges, it definitely keeps you motivated. after all, sitting around the house just isn’t an option. what follows is a pictorial of what ended up being closer to 40 days of homelessness.
the first benefit i noticed was that i could decide where i wanted to wake up based on my plans for the next day. but i had my favorites and some requirements.
one requirement was a nice sunrise
the parking near the crystal bay boulders
crystal bay sunrise

waking up at the angora ridge fire lookout
sunrise over emerald bay

the other requirement was that i could just roll over, open the door and release the hounds
puppies are cute

cuz the puppies be cray cray
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back at it. clamping at kirkwood lake

Posted on July 31, 2013 by powdork

it’s been forever since i’ve posted here. i haven’t been skiing much at all, and let’s face it, that’s what this site is about. i haven’t lost the love for skiing, but i haven’t felt like going to the same places i went to last summer and those are the places that hold the late snows. i still love photography, but lost my favorite subject, sold one of my good lenses, and then kinda sorta maybe ran over the other one a little bit (while it was on the camera). it still gathers light, but doesn’t focus, so this post should prolly be a little about photography too and how to focus with the camera rather than the lens.
so back to our sad tale. the goal was to camp at the potholes for two days, and #climbeverydamnday at old camp bluff. the girls always want to camp, and they love the potholes enough that i can bribe them into climbing each day while it gets warm enough to hit the water. so we load up, and hop in the car, which has been running rough since an incident several weeks ago where it suddenly sounded like there were bolts bouncing around inside the engine. i stop by high sierra automotive on the way out of town to see what adam thinks about the noise. his advice, the pulley on the timing belt has disintegrated, and the timing belt will go soon too. it’s an interference engine (which means timing belt failure is catastrophic), so i shouldn’t even drive the car home. we’re all loaded up for camping (and i’ve never been one to follow sound professional advice) so off we went with our fingers and toes crossed. an hour later we arrive at the eid silver lake west campground to be greeted by signage saying that camping is $25/night plus $3/night/pet. we had 2 dogs and less than $50. uggh! we could afford across the street, but the camping there is less than stellar for what we were looking for. our next stop, kirkwood lake falls into the category of ‘places i went to last summer’ but even so, we were happy to get their last available campsite.

first things first, let’s get wet! skylyn and nacho at kirkwood lake

jasmyn and nacho

sydney (syd, squid, squiddypups) and nacho (nach, cho, nacho libre, nachorooski, rooski)
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stevens peak trilogy

Posted on January 21, 2013 by powdork

i hadn’t been to stevens peak yet this year, despite it holding some of my favorite lines. problem is they normally take a lot of snow to fill in. good thing is, we have a lot of snow. on wednesday, the 16th i invited ashley to gon a tour, thinking we would head back to some of mellower terrain off the north ridge. with dog in tow we (I) decided to skip that and stay on the skin track rather than have nacho post hole the long way around. the elevation gain from road to peak is about 2700′.

since that was not enough of a workout we decided to throw some climbing into the mix when we approached the summit. it started off scrambly, but as it got steeper, nacho had second thoughts

once we reached the top, we realized it wasn’t really the top. YAY!

and then there was some real climbing. it looks like i am in trouble here.

but the views made it all okay
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Posted in backcountry, climbing, doggies, skiing | Comments Off

summer turns to winter

Posted on October 26, 2012 by powdork

with our ability to get our october skiing fix in (and keep our monthly streaks alive) in serious doubt here in tahoe, we decided to head north to the friendly confines of oregon. we would plan to hit a patc h on bachelor, or if we had to we could drive up to hood and actually pay for the opportunity. as the trip got closer it became apparent that we would likely have snow in tahoe when we got back so the skiing took a back seat to the climbing and general vacationing (drinking).
leaving town, ashley had to get something from her house with the keys back in her car. let the climbing begin