"Some times you write about life, and some times you live it"

There's been a lot of living happening around my part of town. Here are a few things I've gotten myself into since my last post:

-You've heard about people riding their bikes to work? My friend Ava and I rode our bikes 60 miles one afternoon to get to our work. Beat that. Actually, a couple of co-workers are planning on one-upping us by RUNNING to work!
-Kayaking the Provo river (much more intense than you might think-we almost died).
-My family and I took a cruise to Alaska. Being a tourist sucks.
-Neon Canyon! Navigating this Southern-Utah slot canyon involves the most beautiful rappel. Ever. The floor of the narrow canyon drops away, and you rappel through the roof of a sandstone overhang that encloses a green fern-lined pool some 80 ft below. A real oasis in the desert.
-I joined the BYU sailing club. I've only been able to sail once so far.
-About 50 or so more days and nights on trail with Aspiro. I worked with the girls group all summer!
-Rappelling Corona Arch! Corona is a 150-ish foot high sandstone arch near Moab, UT. After we were done rappelling, we RUINED our two climbing ropes by using them for the most intense rope swing I have ever encountered. The ropes started to fray pretty badly where they rubbed against the sandstone. It was so worth it.
-Arches National Park. Again. I love that place.
-I earned a spot with BYU Emergency Medical Services this semester. I volunteer on campus responding to 911 calls on BYU property. The city paramedics only come if we call them for backup.
-I volunteered for a bit with TERT; the Mount Timponogas Emergency Response Team. It's a group of EMTs, radio geeks, and outdoorsy-types who camp on Mt. Timponogas on the weekends during the summer to provide emergency care to injured or sick hikers. I spent three days on the mountain and didn't treat so much as a blister.
-I've started playing water polo again. BYU has a pseudo-club/group that plays on Saturdays, and there is group that plays up in Salt Lake on Wednesday nights. Nothing feels as good getting kicked, elbowed, pushed, punched, sunk, grabbed, and run over in the water. Except doing those things to other people of course.
-Smearing myself across the pavement of the Provo Canyon bike path. Long boarding the canyon path at night is super fun, but there ARE obstacles (such as potholes!) you should know about if you're going to do it without lights. Also, it would be good to note that trying to play water polo with fresh road rash isn't the smartest idea. Still, it was all worth it.

These are just things I've come up with off of the top of my head. My summer was pretty rad. I'm back in school now. I have finished all the prereqs for my major (print journalism) and have applied to the program. I should hear back from them any time now. In the mean time, I'm spending this semester finishing the last of my GEs. With any luck I should be out of here in three more semesters. I'm looking at going to paramedic school after I finish my bachelors'.
Let the adventures keep coming!
Nic

Update

Just a quick note to let ya'll know what I've been up to.

School ended a few weeks ago, on April 22. After spending a week doing whatever I felt like at the time, I started at Aspiro for the summer.
If you don't know what Aspiro is, you probably don't know me very well.
Aspiro is the Wilderness Adventure Therapy program where I worked for a good portion of last year. I'm back until school starts again in the fall.
My first week of work was with the young adult group. We hiked into and through Coyote Gulch, a desert canyon that feeds into the Escalante River in southern Utah.
Instead of having a week off, I spent the next week doing some guide training stuff.
From the guide training I went right back on trail, this time with the girls' group. Our itinerary took us to the Ouray area, just west of the Utah/Colorado boarder, near Grand Junction.
Ouray might just be the most beautiful place I have been with Aspiro. The canyons we hiked though would open every few miles into broad grass meadows where we often disturbed grazing herds of elk.
But the highlight the Ouray trip was when one of the girls spilled a pot of boiling water on her foot. I got to practice some of my new EMT skills (I passed my final written exam a couple of weeks ago!), and Victoria learned a lesson on the instable nature of ultralight backpacking stoves. I hiked about 18 miles to the car, drove it to Colorado for gas, and drove as close to our injured student as I could--about four miles. Victoria was able to hike out wearing her Crocs--apparently hiking boots aren't terribly confortable when you have a blister three inches long, two inches wide, and an inch and a half tall on your ankle. Go figure.
After a much needed week off (I flew home to San Jose for a week of "rest"--rock climbing and surfing), I was back on trail, this time in Saint George for a week of climbing and babysitting.
Now I'm writing at a library in Orange County. I'm spending my week off sailing with some friends who have bought a 29 ft sailboat. Their plan is to learn something about sailing so they can sail to Australia. They will be leaving in December. I've been invited to come. We'll see how it goes.

BASE jumper injured in Rock Canyon

A BASE jumper was injured in Provo's Rock Canyon last week.

Richard Walkling, 25, jumped from a 450 ft. cliff on the north side of the canyon. Rock climbers who witnessed the accident said Walkling deployed his parachute and was immediately slammed into the face of the cliff.

The impact caused Walkling's parachute to partially collapse, speeding his descent. Walking's parachute swept him into the rock twice more before he landed on a small ledge some 50 ft. above the ground. Walker tumbled the rest of the way to the ground.

Amazingly, Walkling's injuries amounted to no more than a broken ankle and superficial abrasions.

“It was surprising, really surprising,” said Eric Schmitt, one of the first to come to Walkling's aid. “I didn't expect as little as a broken ankle.”

“He probably should have been dead,” said Shawn Peterson, who was with Schmitt.

Peterson and Schmitt, both certified as wilderness first responders, provided first aid until emergency crews arrived.

Police closed the canyon for about two hours while emergency crews brought Walkling down the hillside to a waiting ambulance.

A rescue helicopter landed in the canyon, but was not used in the rescue.


A friend (Kevin You) and I drove to Rock Canyon to climb last Tuesday. We found the police blocking the road. We followed the lead of other climbers and snuck around the police and emergency crews by hiking through the bushes on the south side of the canyon. We found my friends Shawn and Eric climbing with the students at the Aspiro wilderness/adventure program (where I used to work). We learned that they were the first ones to reach the injured jumper and had helped carry him down the hillside. I put my point-and-shoot camera on video mode and had them tell their story.

Here Eric talks about his experience.

Milestones in Human Evolution

Today I found a video that leads me to believe mankind has reached the pinnacle of human achievement. All the scientists can now hang up their lab coats and go home, because I don't see any possible way anything cooler than this could ever be discovered, invented, or even thought of without heads exploding.





Now that we have reached our evolutionary ceiling, the human race will now begin to de-evolve until we are dominated by talking apes.

Squaw Peak

A little more than four years have gone by since I was in the Missionary Training Center getting ready to head Mexico.

With the exceptions of a walk to the temple each week, and the brief walks between buildings, I spent the entire nine weeks inside.

I don't know how I didn't go crazy.

From my classroom window I could look up Squaw Peak, a limestone prow that rises nearly 3300 feet above the city of Provo to 7862 feet above sea level.

I spent more time than I probably should have just staring at that peak. It represented adventure, excitement, and freedom. And it stared back down, daring me to tear off my tie and run, run, run until I collapsed in a sweaty, satisfied heap on the mountainside.

Like I said, spending nine straight weeks indoors was hard for me.

I vowed that when I finished my mission, I would climb that stupid mountain, stand on its summit, and yell like a wild man.

This Thursday I did just that.

I set out from my apartment just before 9 a.m. and rode my bike to the parking lot at the mouth of Rock Canyon. A trail leads through the canyon and up the back side of the mountain to the summit. But I wanted to climb my own route, not the trail.

From the parking lot I traversed about a hundred yards north and started right up the mountain. I followed an indistinct, narrow trail as it rose steeply toward the peak. 45 minutes later, I estimated I was about halfway to the top. My legs and lungs felt like they were on fire, and the trail came to an end.

From the valley floor, it had looked like patches of snow dotted the upper sections of the mountain. Now, standing halfway up the mountain, I saw I had been mistaken--the snow lay not in patches, but in fact fully blanketed the mountain.

As I continued upward, the snow grew deeper and the slope grew steeper. My feet would slip easily on the snow-covered gravel and scree. My hike turned into a scramble, and then into a climb.

When the grew deep enough, I picked up a two-foot juniper stick to help me climb. Over and over, I plunged the stick into the snow on the slope above me and used it to keep from slipping or tumbling backwards while I kicked steps into the snow for my feet.

In this way, I inched upwards. As I neared the top the ground gradually sloped back until it flattening out at the summit. I reached the summit exactly two hours from when I started.

15 minutes, one banana, several photos, and one barbaric scream later, I started down again, plunge-stepping my way down the snow-covered back of the mountain until I reached the main trail of the canyon that brought me back to the road and my bicycle.

Aron Ralston Strikes Back!

Remember Aron Ralston? The guy who cut off his own arm a while back after spending the better part of a week in a slot canyon with his arm pinned under a rock? Well, it's been almost six years since his "accident," and he's still around.

The New York Times did an article on him yesterday, complete with a five-minute video feature (you can't get that in the print version--maybe that's why nobody is reading papers anymore).

You can find it here.

As fascinating as it was to hear about a guy cutting off his own arm, it's even more interesting to see how that, plus the celebrity that has followed, has affected the guy over the years.

Corona Arch

These are from a trip down to Moab with some friends over thanksgiving break.

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning in Arches National Park
Moab, Utah
25 Dec 2008

The envelope I am holding contains the letters from my family that my boss surprised us with on Christmas morning. My boss surprised me with letters, not with my family.

Ride-alongs!

For those of you who don't know, I'm in an EMT-Basic class. It rocks.

One of the requirements is that I get 10 hours of clinical experience. That can be hanging out at the ER, riding on an ambulance, helping the guys who work in the ski patrol clinic, or anything else that puts you in contact with sick or injured people.

This afternoon, I rode my bike over to station number five of the Provo Fire Department to see if they would let me do some ride-along time with them.

Station Chief Joe said they were booked for ride-alongs for the next few weeks, but I could do it today if I didn't have anything else going on. I didn't.

Joe gave me very specific instructions on who I was to take orders from, that I was not to swear in front of patients, and that we do not joke about the patients and their problems while on scene. We do that at the station when the patients aren't around.

We got our first call just a few minutes after I got there; a traffic accident on Center Street.

I was excited and more than a bit nervous while we drove to the scene of the accident. I couldn't see much from the back of the ambulance, and I had no idea what to expect when we got there.

Our patient was an elderly lady who was still seated in the car when we arrived. She complained of pain in her head and in her abdomen. I helped take vital signs while Melissa the paramedic student check her out.

After I finished with the vitals, I stood back and let Melissa do her thing. While I watched, an elderly gentleman approached me and introduced himself as the patient's husband. He wanted to know what had happened and if his wife was okay.

My heart went out to this guy. I wanted to tell him his wife was fine and everything was all right. But I didn't know that.

So I told him I didn't know.

It turned out the patient was badly shaken, but physically fine. We spent no more than fifteen minutes on the scene.

Before we returned to the station we stopped in some residential neighborhood. By the time I got out of the ambulance, ten or twelve young Hispanic boys had surrounded the fire truck in front of us. The firefighters were handing out stickers and answering questions.

I didn't have any stickers, but I did have an extra latex glove. I blew that up, tied it off, and gave one of the boys a kind of balloon he had never seen before.

As we climbed into the back of the ambulance to leave, several boys looked past us to see the interior.

"What do you keep in there?" one asked.

"Lots of things," Melissa told him. "Like bandages and drugs."

The boys were dumbfounded.

"You keep DRUGS on an ambulance?!?"

"Uh, she means medications," I told them.

Melissa the paramedic student pulled the door closed and thanked me for clarifying.

Station Chief Joe decided to invite the paramedic crew from station one over for dinner. I spent most of my afternoon shopping and making chicken enchiladas and salad for ten.

The second call came right after dinner. The alarm rang and the dispatcher radioed us to respond to a patient in the mall with a head laceration.

I rode in the fire truck this time, so, by the time we got there, the ambulance crew had already responded, stopped the bleeding, and quickly bandaged the wound. We were there just to back them up.

The patient was a Hispanic guy, about 20 years old. He said members of another gang sucker punched him.

Either it was a dang good punch, or he hit his head when he fell, because there was blood all over his shirt, face, and arms.

There wasn't much left to do, except take vital signs and figure out if he needed to go to the ER in the ambulance or on his own.

The paramedics were nice enough to let me take the vitals.

It really wasn't too different than all the stuff we've been practicing in class. In fact, this guy was calmer than some of the "patients" we treat in class.

But the blood covering this guy's shirt wasn't made from water and food coloring.

On both calls, I found that the biggest difference between the classroom and the real world was the emotion--not my emotions but the patients'.

I've taken vital signs dozens of times. But I've never dealt with a husband who has to worry while he waits to find out if his wife is going to be okay. I've never dealt with a kid who is royally pissed off because he just got his head cut up by some rival gang members.

I guess that's not the stuff you learn in the classroom.

Bedrooms

I was thinking the other day about all the different bedrooms that have been mine over the years. Here's my list, as best I can remember:

1. Whatever room I slept in Michigan, where I was born and spent the first year or so of my life.
2. Whatever room I slept in at our house near Cropley road in San Jose.
3. The room in the house on Country Walk Circle.
4. My first bedroom in the house on Cedarcrest Ln.
5. Same house, second room.
6. My room at Tutu and Papa's house in Honolulu. (4 months)
7. The Missionary Training Center in Provo, UT. (2 months)
8. El Edificio del Tigre, Salina Cruz, Mexico. (2 months)
9. La casa cerca del dique seco, Salina Cruz, Mexico. (1 month)
10. El Barrio de Pueblo Nuevo, Oaxaca, Mexico. (4 months)
12. Tehuantepec, Mexico. (3 months)
13. Pochutla, Mexico. (1 1/2 months)
14. San Juan Guichicovi, Mexico. (1 1/2 months)
15. Barrio Guelaguetza, Mexico. (3 months)
16. Barrio Violetas, Mexico. (1 month)
17. Juchitan, Mexico. (3 months?)
18. Juchitan, Mexico II. (>1 month)
19. Cedarcrest Ln. house, third bedroom. (1 1/2 months)
20. Wyview building 13, Provo. (4 months)
21. Liberty Square, Provo. (4 months)
22. Victoria Place Two apartment #78. (5 1/2 months!)

Those are the bedrooms that have been mine , not just rooms that I have stayed in. How many have you had?

I have been living in #22 for about 5 1/2 months. This is the first time I have lived in the same place for more than four months in a row since I graduated from high school.

My Apologies

Dear Readers,
Due to the lack of postings, you might have gotten the impression that I have not been doing anything worth writing about. But you would be wrong. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that I have been doing so many thing worth writing about that I haven't had the time to write about any of them. But I new-years resolve to spend more time documenting the more adventurous things I get myself into.
Nic

First Day of Snowboarding

After a week's delay due to lack of snow, Sundance Resort opened its lifts yesterday. Well, they technically opened A lift yesterday. Still, despite the fact that only one run was open, and despite the fact that all but about half an inch of the snow had been made by snow blowers, some friends and I made the lengthy drive (15 minutes!) to welcome in the now-underway snowboarding and skiing season. We were not disappointed. 

The only run open was a beginner-level "green square," and the only ridable snow was man made. But we rode that run a good half a dozen times before calling it quits. Even on such a "tame" run, I got my share of thrills pointing the nose of my board downhill and letting gravity do what it does best.

To help everyone get stoked for the season, I have included a short snowboarding film, shot and edited by yours truly. Enjoy. 

My New Job

Having been unemployed for a while now (since July), I have been checking the classifieds in the BYU Daily Universe every day for decent jobs. Most ads are for pretty lame gigs like yard work or warehouse help. But last week I found an ad that I just couldn't pass up: Hot Air Balloon Crew. I called, spoke to the guy, and set up an interview for today at noon. Apparently this guy has just purchased a nine-man balloon for $80,000, and he needs a crew of helpers so he can take people for rides commercially. He will be the pilot, and the four-man crew will help him unpack, inflate the balloon, and get it in the air. Once airborne, the crew will chase the balloon in a truck, with the goal of being there (wherever "there" happens to be) when they land. Then the crew deflates the balloon and packs it up. 

The interview went well-well enough that I got an email from the guy a few hours later offering me a job!

La Carniceria

August 2008

Mitla, Oaxaca, Mexico

The Hammock Lady, August 2008

Juchitan, Oaxaca, Mexico

This lady has been selling her hammocks in the town square of downtown Juchitan for years. I've bought hammocks from her on three seperate occasions. She can spot a tourist (ie, a potential customer) from blocks away.

A family in Oaxaca City

BYU Triathlon

Today I ran the first ever BYU Triathlon. It was a shorty- a 200yard swim, a 6.2 mile bike, and a 1.8 mile run. I've done other triathlons before, but it had been a long, long time. Because it was so short, I didn't actually train. Ever. I do ride my bike around a lot, and I try to run a couple of days per week, so I wasn't too out of shape.
Check in was from 8:30-9:00am. After checking in a getting my number written on my calves and arms, I set up my bike, shoes, and other stuff in the transition area just outside the pool (on campus). After some stretching, a few warm up laps, and a pre-race meeting, it was time to start. Instead of starting us all at the same time or in heats, one person was allowed to start every 10 seconds. All 154 of us lined up on the pool deck according to our own assessment of our swimming abilities (we had filled out a survey before hand, and were assigned a number). I was assigned to start fourth. After a round of loud cheers, the first swimmer started. Forty seconds later, I pushed off the wall and was off. I had set the goal not to get passed on the swim, and I didn't. Two minutes and thirty seconds later, I climbed out of the pool and ran out the door to the transition area. I couldn't get a road bike for the race, so I was on my mountain bike. So even though I passed two guys in the transition area, they quickly caught up to me on their road bikes.
My goal on the bike was to not push myself too hard. That way, I could still feel okay on the run. It was really tempting to try to hold pace with some of the faster guys on the bike, but I was able to remind myself to run my own race and not to worry about anybody else. When it came time to leave the bikes behind, this self restrain paid off. I quickly caught up to several of the guys who had passed me before.
I finished with a total time of 43 minutes and 15 seconds. I met my only two goals-to run my own race without worrying about anybody else, and to enjoy myself.                                                      

Freedom Peak

Any adventure that involves getting up before four am is bound to be epic. And this one was. 
This morning's trip began when Michael knocked on my door at 4am. We had planned on bagging some peaks up above rock canyon. Because of the recent snow on the mountain tops, I had rented an ice ax from BYU's Outdoors Unlimited. Neither one of us has a car, so we rode our bikes. The ride up to Rock Canyon is long and steep. Despite temperatures in the low thirties, I was sweating by the time we made it to the parking lot. From there, we locked our bikes and started hiking up the canyon. After about three miles, we found ourselves in the Rock Canyon campground, which was completely abandoned. We had a little trouble trying to find our trail on the other side of the campground. While searching in the dark, we saw headlights in the trees about three or four hundred yards away. We bushwacked our way up the mountainside to where the lights had been, and found ourselves on a dirt road we hadn't know about. We were finally able to find our trail, and we continued upward and onward. Pretty soon it started snowing. Just a few small flakes at first, then a bit more, until it was coming down hard all around us. Thick clouds rolled in, obscuring our view of the mountains. We lost the trail, but the route was obvious. With a shallow layer of snow on the loose rock hillside, the going was tough. The ground got so steep that climbing further would have been nearly impossible without an ice ax.
Micheal had an interview to be to at 1pm, which meant we had to have him home by noon-ish. Unfortunately, this meant turning around only half an hour or so from the summit. But mountaineering isn't really about summits anyways. All in all, it was a good 6 miles or so each way, with more than 5000 ft of elevation gain.
The descent was fairly straightforward, and we were able to get back to our bikes and ride home just a few minutes after noon. I slept through the BYU football game without any shame.

Trilogy Butress

In one of my previous posts ("My First Multi-Pitch") I told you about the adventure Jeff and I had on our attempt to climb Trilogy Buttress, a four pitch tower in Rock Canyon. If you read that post, you'll remember that, not only did we fail to make it up the thing, we actually got stuck, and had to spend considerable time figuring out how to get down. Last week, after talking to the guy who made the route, I decided to give it another try. My partner for the climb was Micheal Davidson, a guy I recently met in my new ward here at BYU. After examining pictures and reading descriptions of the Buttress, we decided to take a different route for the 

first pitch. It was rated only 5.6 (really, really easy), but our info showed that although it was a full rope's length (60 meters) long, there were only four bolts on the whole thing. If you do the math, that's one bolt every fifty feet or so. When I asked the guy whole put the bolts in about it, he said that you could definitely bring some trad gear (cam's, nuts, chock, etc), but the rope drag would be awful. 

Nonetheless, 50 ft between bolts is too much for me, so w

e did bring some trad gear, and the rope drag was indeed horrendous. 

Micheal led the first and third pitches, and I led the second and fourth. When we got to where Jeff and I had gotten stuck, we found that we had been literally ten feet from the anchors we had looked for but never found. This time, we found them without trouble, and were able to continue upward and onward without any problems. The climbing was lots of fun, the view was spectacular, and the exposure was dizzying. The last pitch was only a 5.8, but let 

me assure you that 5.8 climbing on top rope, 20ft above the ground is one thing, and 5.8 climbing on lead, 10 ft above your last bolt with 500ft of air below you is 

an entirely 

different thing altogether. Fortunately, I was able to keep my head together, and both Micheal and I made it to the top without any problems. In

stead of rappelling, we were able to hike down the back side and make it to the car just after 

dark. 

But the story doesn't end there. Three days later, I was on Trilogy Buttress again, this time with Jeff Belnap and Jason Webb. We got started just before dark, and made sure to bring headlamps. 

Partly because it was getting dark, but mostly because they are wimps, both Jason and Jeff decided that they weren't going to lead climb at all. Of course, they didn't decide this until we were already at the top of the first pitch. So I got to lead all four pitches (Okay, so maybe leading a new route, in the dark, hundreds of feet off the ground would be a bit scary). In the dark, I didn't get the same 

sense of height that I did in the day-my attention was primarily confined to the small bubble of light from my headlamp.

The highlight of the climb came on the fourth pitch. A few feet above the first bolt, the handhold I was using broke loose, and I suddenly found myself falling through the air. When the rope jerked me to a stop I was a good ten or twelve feet lower than where I had started. When I regained my composure I was able to finish the climb without any more falls. The view from the top was just as amazing at night as it was in the daylight. 

Check this out

stillfree.com

Watch the top left of the four videos first.