The Legend of Bsodius

Juliet and I were going to turn over a new leaf with the blog- we were determined to be more disciplined and consistent in our efforts to update it. It was last Friday that we made the decision to update it every Sunday so that it would be ready to read come Monday. This would give us a goal and add a little bit of routine to our lives.

Saturday was spent writing a new blog. We were on schedule to meet the first of our new deadlines.

On Sunday, I booted up the computer, ready to add some of those finishing touches that make our blog just so special. Instead of booting through Windows though, our computer would only displayed the widely feared “Blue Screen of Death” (hereafter referred to as BSODius).

Bsodius is like the Voldemort of computers. It sits silently somewhere in your system, cloaked in a veil of self-emanating evil. It is an intangible dark energy looking to manifest itself into the physical world. And like Voldemort sucking the blood from Unicorns in the Dark Forest for energy, Bsodius maintains its vitality by sucking the hemoglobnic (your welcome Webster) 1's and 0's from the fibrous bits that make up the lifeblood of your computer. Neither picture nor document has immunity from its deadly embrace.

“Windows has failed to boot, there's nothing you can do about it.” Troubling times call for a hero who possesses the ultimate telltales of courageousness and strength. Like Harry Potter before me, I knew destiny was calling. At first, I desperately tried to ignore the call- who was I to face Bsodius? Surely there was someone more capable than I. But destiny proved more persistent than a Salvation Army bell ringer. You can avoid eye contact, but the guilt will eventually cut through you like a katana through warm pumpkin pie (yes, I do use a samurai sword to cut my holiday desserts and it's even more awesome than it sounds).

I was plunged into the deepest darkest realm of the known universe. A place so damning that no mortal has ever went and returned with their sanity in tact. A place where the very ideas of logic and rationality are incapable of being manifested either as an idea nor as process of efficiency. I am referring to, of course, the land of Outsourceus Techsupportium.

Nothing could have prepared me for the eternity that I spent there, and my memory is fuzzy on recalling the exact order of events or details of the characters that I came across. I was cast down the rabbit hole only to find myself in some strangely enchanted land that my human sense could not make coherent. When I tried to ask for help, the only response I could get from the residents here were incoherent ramblings that, when finally decrypted, seemingly had nothing to do with the predicament that I found myself in. I can only imagine that it was a bit how Alice felt when she tried to navigate her way through Wonderland, only to stumble across the drunken rantings of that sociopathic Cheshire Cat, the pure nonsensical idiocy of the Tweedle brothers, or the psychosis of the mad hatter who's brain had long since been turned into Swiss cheese by mercury exposure.

I taxed the mental and physical strength of my body's every cell to the point of depletion, then demanded more, in a fashion that mimicked the US budget. But I needed to keep focused on the task at hand. I needed to find Bsodius and release my operating system from his evil influence. But every time I turned the corner I seemed to see a duplicate image of what I had just been through. Every time I tried asking someone for help, they began unintelligibly regurgitating what those before them had told me. What do they call it when you try the same thing over and over expecting a different result?

There was nothing I could do but be persistent. I finally reached a castle and met a fellow wearing what resembled a cap made of tin foil. He seemed to be unaffected by the strange ambiance that made everyone in Outsourceus Techsupportium so hopelessly unhelpful. He explained to me that he was a “case manager” and that Outsourceus Techsupportium is an illusionary world, created by Bsodius to throw off his opponents- to make them go insane and to give up trying to rid their computer of him. He told me that Bsodius was hiding in one of my sticks of RAM, so that if I removed the mystical stick I would have Bsodius contained, for now. I trustingly sent him the stick of RAM but wasn't convinced that this “case manager” wouldn't inflict its malice upon some other unsuspecting computer.

We no longer have the Blue Screen of Death, but you never know when it will rear its ugly head. The only way to protect yourself from its destruction is to back up your personal files and to do so often. Head the warnings of the legend of Bsodius or face dire and irreparable consequences.

And now for some unrelated photos:

Beautiful cousins: Nicolette and Toriann

Toriann rocking at climbing

Nicolette also being awesome at climbing

Lorenzo learning how to belay, Nicolette getting ready for her climb

Mountain bikers: Antie Cheryl, Tori, Lorenzo, Nicolette, Me (Juliet)

Jon making some Thanksgiving homemade chips

The truck broke down but luckly Uncle Kurt was around to save

Ying-Yang 5.11c. Great climb

An early Christmas present!!

Another day at the office

3:00 AM:  The alarm clock is going off which leads to a great deal of confusion.  “That can't be right,” I thought to myself, “I feel like I just fell asleep.”  I look over at the clock to check the time.  I look at my watch and confirm the bad news.  Time to get up.  The truck is loaded and ready to go.  Our gear is organized and we had even packed our lunch.  Today we will climb Epinephrine.  

3:30 AM:  We leave Juliet's aunt's house right on schedule.  It is pitch black in every direction except towards the Las Vegas strip.  Is the sun rising already or is it just the light pollution? We head up Hwy 160 and continue to flank the rolling hills that contrast the desert floor.  Five more miles down a BLM managed dirt road will take us into the heart of the precipitous Red Rocks and to the entrance of Black Velvet Canyon.

4:30 AM:  The rest of our approach is now by foot.  We are working under headlamps and take only the two backpacks that will be with us for the 2,000’ journey.  We spend the next hour scrambling through an old river bed turned boulder field that splits the middle of the canyon. We had practiced this approach the day before as we wanted to be as efficient as possible. 

5:30 AM:  We have a head start on the sun but already know we will be racing it down at the end of the day.  We are now at the base of our climb.  I begin climbing by head lamp, knowing that we only have 10 hours of daylight before we will be cast back into darkness. Juliet leads the next pitch as the sun finally finds us.  We studied our map of the climb one last time before plunging into its infamous chimney section.

 
9:30AM:  I had climbed deeper into the chimney than I would have liked, but it was the only way to protect the pitch.  It was wider further out and would have been easier climbing with the trade off of being more exposed.  

I had used chimney technique (back against one wall, feet against the other, push with feet and scoot back up wall 1mm, move feet up, curse, repeat), until it became so narrow that my legs couldn't get into the right position.  A five inch off-width crack began to run up the route for the remainder of the climb.  

I remember Tamas showing me the butterfly technique in Indian Creek (cross your arms and put the back of your hands together, push your fingers out and away from each other so that they push against each side of the wide crack).  Using this hand technique, I would pull my body up as high as I could before thrusting my left leg, thigh deep into the crack.  With leg wedged, I could reach up with both hands and repeat the process.  I finally caught a glimpse of the chains marking a small belay ledge and the end of the pitch and hurried my way up.  Physically exhausted, I tried to catch my breath and calm my stomach. 
 

10:30 AM:  Juliet led us out of the first half of the chimney system. The pitch was short and sweet.  I climbed up behind her.  We pulled out the map again.  A bolt on the previous pitch had been mislabeled.  We had actually managed to combine two of the chimney pitches and were now looking at the last sixty feet before we were on top of the Black Tower.

The pitch had two bolts which I hyper-focused on as I climbed, already exhausted.  To my relief, the walls of the chimney were studded and pocked with formation, making the climbing much easier than the varnished walls of previous pitches.  I took my time but moved confidently while in limbo between the first and second bolt.  

Once the second bolt was clipped, I couldn't seem to climb fast enough to get to the summit of the Black Tower. All we had to do was haul the bags up once more and the chimney sections would be behind us.

11:30 AM:  We had finally reached the top of the Black Tower.  We watched some climbers make their way up a neighboring route on the Black Velvet Wall and we felt a little less alone.  With six pitches of face climbing left, we were eager to continue.

Juliet led us off of the Black Tower and up the exposed face of the Black Velvet Wall. We swapped leads for the next 800 feet and were happy to see that the route was straight-forward and easy to follow.

4:00 PM:  We had spent the day watching the shadows of Black Velvet Peak get closer and closer to the distant Las Vegas Strip.  The sun was setting fast.  I belayed Juliet up the “last” pitch. The summit of this colossus rock formation still loomed hundreds of feet overhead. Without delay, we scrambled around the rock formation, carefully following an exposed ramp that proved much more technical than we were hoping.

We finally spotted the huge and lonely Ponderosa Pine that marked the top of the route. A very thin goat trail wound its way up the final few hundred feet.  Twilight was upon us and we were in a hurry, but we decided to rope up for the small, thin and very exposed approach to the goat trail.  

5:00 PM  We gained the summit just as darkness fell on the twinkling city far below.  Still before us was the ominous descent.  Hiking by headlamp, we followed cairns across two intersecting ridges.  We were aware that getting lost or descending off of the ridge too early would be dangerous so we moved slowly and cautiously.  

Nearly an hour into our descent we lost the cairn trail.  We spent the next 90 minutes tracing and retracing our steps, looking for the next cairn to lead us in the right direction, but there was none.  Tired and exhausted, our patience was greatly tested and we talked about the possibility of spending the night on the ridge so as to be able to find our way down in the day light.

We agreed to scramble to a distant peak to try and get our bearings.  As we approached the peak we realized that the actual “peak” was a ten foot tall cairn.  We briefly rejoiced and hurried on along the ridge.  We quickly gained the final peak which marked our descent.  Another hour of knee-pounding downhill took us to the top of the Whiskey Peak Gully.  We knew our way from here as we had climbed Frogland the week prior which exits the same gully.  

9:00 PM:  We finally made it back to the car and in good spirits.  As soon as we sat down our endorphins expired and every ache and pain became acutely accentuated.  We did very little for the next several days but had a lasting feeling of accomplishment that we had done something epic.

A lovely anchor and belayer on Frogland



 

A fun section on Frogland

 

On the top of Frogland with Las Vegas in the background




The top of Frogland with Epinephrine in the background



Chim-chimney, chim-chimaroo



The fabled Ponderosa Pine



Somewhere on the long ridge down...

Part II : Reaping What We Sow

It was apparent that being able to live for free would help us reach our goal that much quicker.  Juliet agreed to stay on and do dog sledding for another winter season and I joined her.  While we were both accustom to working hard for what we wanted, the next couple of years were challenging.

When you are living on a farmstead, the changing of the seasons are intensified by the natural processes of the animal world.

Spring, of course, is filled with excitement.  The days become longer and the radiance of the sun more intense.  You convince yourself that every snow fall is the last for the season.  Finally rain falls more often than snow, everything thaws, then blooms, and summer settles in. The dogs want nothing more than to lay around in the shade in an attempt to escape the heat.  The humans seem inclined to follow suit as time spent grilling, swimming, and biking to nowhere in particular increases multifold.  

As fall draws near we get back to work.   The changing colors of the deciduous trees, while beautiful, is also symbolic of the natural declination of the life force that seemed to be fluttering around us unrestrained in the previous months.  We prepare for the dog sledding season by doing trail maintenance, repairing sleds, mending dog houses, and beginning training.

While humans have proved a certain degree of engineering prowess evident in numereous technological advancements, we have yet to invent a material that is able to keep you warm and dry during fall training runs.  Freezing rain and fall flurries leave standing water strewn throughout the trails.  The constant pattering of dog paws as they pull against the transmission of the four wheeler mixes dirt and water into a slurry of mud that gets into absolutely everything. 

But all of the preparations pay off after the first big snow fall of the season.  While winter signifies the recession of life for most organic matter in the great north woods, this is the time when the dogs come alive.  They transmit their excitement to you everyday as they beg to run and run and run.  They truly want nothing else.

+++

Juliet and I have handled literally hundreds of sled dogs during our two year vocation.  To compare these dogs to a domesticated house dog is misleading and inaccurate both on a physiological and emotion level.  These dogs have a sense of pack which they get both while in the dog yard as well as when they are working as a part of a well trained team.  The dogs need a specialized diet high in protein and fat depending on the time of year, age, sex, and activity which is closely monitored.  The dogs receive vitamin and mineral supplements for skin and coat health as well as regular immunizations and nails must be kept short for running. 

In terms of exercise, sled dogs that are well taken care of will run far more than any house dog.  Even the youngest and oldest dogs will run 500 miles per year while dogs in their prime years will run many thousands of miles in a season in preparation for longer races or expeditions.  As you prepare the sled for a run, the yard explodes into a frenzy of barking and chaos as the dogs beg to be picked for the day's run.  As you hook up your team for a run their instincts take over similar to what might go though Lance Armstrong’s mind as he gets on his bicycle.  They will lunge forward again and again, hungry for the feeling of pulling something.   There is no command for "go full speed" - full speed is the default setting for these dogs.  Maintaining a sustainable speed, braking for turns, and stopping is an art that takes a musher years to master.

And no, your house dog would not make a good sled dog.  I don't know how many times I've had to nod and smile while someone told me that Fido is fit to pull.  I promise that it is not.  Sled dogs are not house dogs.  Proportionately a sled dog will have larger hearts, bigger feet, more efficient lungs, a higher metabolism, and much more power per pound than any house dog.  Sled dogs have been bred to be the best at what they do and there is no comparison.  On many levels, they are simply the greatest athletes on the face of the planet.  They are also the most loving animals on the planet.  And when the dogs are literally your life blood you certainly make sure that they are well cared for. 

How many house dogs get their needs met everyday to such an extent?  Sure, there are sled dogs that are mistreated and neglected, but from what I've seen I can't imagine that the maltreatment rate is greater than that of house dogs, many of whom spend their days locked in a kennel and scarcely see the light of day or smell the scents of their natural environment.

Dog sledding, when done right, is some of the hardest work that can be taken on.  Couple that with a job and the days really tend to escape you.  This is how Juliet and I saved for our trip.  We spent nearly two years sharing a 12' x 12' cabin.  It was simple and beautiful.  We shared a car and commuted together into town for work everyday.  Oftentimes, I would work in the morning and Juliet would work in the evening.  Juliet would drop me off and either go back home to do dog chores or run errands in town until she began work.  Once I was off of work, I would take the bus downtown and wait for her shift to be over.  It wasn't such a bad thing that she worked at a climbing gym as it was a fairly pleasant place to have to spend time.  Our free time was nearly non-existent and our hobbies, other than dog sledding, fell by the way side.  We made a plan to budget Juliet's paycheck for our living expenses and to put my pay checks into a savings account for our trip.  I took all of the web design jobs that I could to help speed up this process. 

Neither one of us made very good money, but we were committed to living well below our means for this period of time.  We talked often about the dream of traveling and being immersed in new experiences and it helped us through the hard times of feeling exhausted and overwhelmed.  The experience, though, was rejuvenating.  We didn't go to an office everyday.  We were both working in our fields of study and dog sledding gave us an excuse to be outside everyday during the long winter.

We had made a goal for ourselves and created a graph to track our savings progress.  Only two months before our departure date we bought the truck that we now live out of for cash.  We cancelled any credit cards and set up all of our unavoidable bills so that we could pay them online.  It's not that we are debt free or free from the burden of bills, but we budgeted for them as we saved.  We are okay with the fact that we are not paying back our student loans as quickly as some of our friends or are investing in a mortgage at the moment.  We are not in a hurry. 

There is a great deal of satisfaction in traveling and doing what you love.  What price could we pay to explore the world around us and ourselves?  We have worked extremely hard to get to where we are and have fulfilled a dream that started as just that.  How many people have the will power and work ethic to see such a dream come to fruition? 

While we receive a great deal of support for what we have chose to do (thanks to all of our amazing friends and family), we have also heard criticism.  Some people may see us as lazy or as leeches on society, but I can assure you that our current state of affairs is a product of dedication to our passions and to each other as well as a willingness to forego living with certain comforts.  The success of our great social experiement can only be determined with time.  Stay tuned... 

(Sigh) The dog yard. They make you love the work.

 

Social hour



Nephew Evan scooping poop. There is no better place to learn good work ethic. And as it turns out if you tell him it's fun... it is.

The rewards are great in this line of work.

Very, very great.

The dogs... I can't tell you how amazing it was to work with such hard working, loving animals.

(Imagine 'The Price is Right') AHHH NEW TRUUUUCK!!!!!!

Our first idea.

During moving we learned that accessing stuff from the back of the underneath storage space was a real pain.

Begin construction of the new idea.

Add curtains and sand the edges with a few helpful tips from the supervisor, and you've got...



Home!!!



Our modest kitchen with plenty of fresh garlic as a going away present from my friend Teresa. (We have eaten it all)

Reaping What We Sow : Part I

From Indian Creek, Utah we headed south to meet the Arizona border.  We made Page, AZ by nightfall.  Page is notable for being on the southern coast of Lake Powell and is also home to Glenn Canyon.  We hastily made our way to the banks of Lake Powell just in time to watch the sunset paint the surrounding rockscape in pastel colors which glowed against the dimming backdrop of the sky.  The canyons that have been flooded by the Glen dam to form Lake Powell would certainly be a magnificent destination to scuba dive or snorkel.   A unique environment of contrasts would be found by the underwater exploration of the long-forgotten and once arid floor below.  The previous summits of now submerged cliffs would act as a diving board in which the adventurous could begin a journey into the unknown depths below as an endless gallery of geological artwork is vertically traversed.

The next morning we were eager to keep pushing west to Las Vegas.  Our progress took us through Zion National Park.  We spent a night in Zion and the following day hiking up the infamous "Subway" canyon feature.  Winter temperatures were forecasted in the coming days and so our time in Zion was grossly inadequate to take advantage of all that could be done there.  We swore to go back and do some proper canyoneering when we would rappel, hike, and swim through world class slot canyons that have been carved through the eons by the curious meanderings of creeks and tributaries trying to find their way through the mountainous sandstone desertscape.

The next evening we were in Las Vegas, eager to reorganize our lives using the lessons learned from the first 4000 miles of traveling.  We have since been in Las Vegas for two weeks and have many stories to relay.

However, I'm not going to relay these stories.  After all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.  Just kidding.  But I want to take this opportunity to record some thoughts and recollections of how Juliet and I found ourselves in our current state of affairs for those who are interested.

+++

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, a galaxy called Duluth, MN...

Both Juliet and I needed to complete an internship in order to cast off the shackles of college.  A couple years earlier, I had completed my first internship by living and working at the Dorothy Day House which was a community house meant to provide limited housing for the otherwise homeless.  A very long story short, I met some incredible people who were living an alternative lifestyle (I'm talking about the workers specifically, not the homeless).  Each person came from a very different background and there was an equal amount of diversity in the reasons that brought them to the house.  I continued to live at the Dorothy Day house for the better part of two years as I finished college with the perk of living and eating for free. 

Juliet, an outdoor recreation major, had found herself completing her internship through a dog sledding outfit.  She lived on forty acres that shared a boundary with a lake.  Her home was a 12' x 12' cabin powered by a single extension cord and without running water nestled in an old growth cedar forest.  Between completing school assignments for her internship, Juliet was responsible for the well-being of fifty Alaskan huskies.  Moreover, Juliet would lead dog sledding tours on the weekends as well as help train teams of dogs for various races. 

During this time, both Juliet and I were working part time jobs.  Juliet worked at the local rock climbing gym and I did web design as well as mental health work with adolescents at a hospital.  The prospect of dog sledding was too exciting to pass up and so I began helping with chores on occasion.  The winter came and went quickly and before we knew it, summer was on our hands.

We both managed to finish school and thence came the assault of "the question."  Do I really have to spell it out?  "What are you going to do now that you are done with college."  As obnoxious as this question is to be asked, when you are young and broke and have just filled your brain's grey matter with worthless knowledge for the price of a new Mercedes Benz, I think it has always been meant as a joke.  Established adults know very well that we have been in school our entire lives.  Now that we didn't have academic obligations I felt like Morgan Freeman in the Shashank Redemption as he is let out of prison after serving a sizable sentence.  The world appears foreign and you haven't found your place in it.  You don't know what else is out there.

So that question remained unanswered but Juliet and I have always liked everything outdoors- swimming, sailing, biking, climbing, hiking, camping, and kayaking.  But having been so busy with school, internships, and jobs, we didn't feel like we were able to do these things as often as we had hoped and we weren't getting any younger.

We began to dream of going on a trip.  A long trip where we could find out who we were, what was around us, what our true passions in life were, and maybe start to figure out the question of what we wanted to do next.  The details were really rather unimportant as we knew we could just figure it out on the way.  The big challenge, of course, was being able to finance such a trip. 

to be continued...

Juliet jams up the crux of Way Rambo (Indian Creek)!  Hardest climb of the trip so far!
(Photo by Michael Pang)



Zion National Park : The Subway





End of the line for those without a wetsuit

 

Namesake picture, all a-board

 

If I were an aspiring photographer I would call this something dumb like : "Cascading Pools of Reflection"

We get by with a little help from our friends

Juliet foreshadowed that our participation in the Volunteer Work Day would pay off in the long run.  We've been on the road for two months and live'n ain't cheap.  And although the value of the dollar is plummeting faster than Duluth's fall temperatures, businesses have not yet resorted to taking karma as a valid form of currency for gas and food.  Hey, there's an idea.  I propose a "Karma Kards" program where unemployed Americans (myself included) are given a debit card that can be used to buy groceries.  Points are accumulated proportionately to karma earned.  Helping little old ladies cross the street, reading to a classroom of kindergartners, and ladling spoonfuls of watered-down soup to the homeless on Sundays would all bank points.  As long as the country's 10% unemployment rate doesn't seem to be going anywhere, those in need could be rewarded for helping those in needier.  I know I'd make good use of a Karma Kard as food is our single biggest expense and eating is a habit that we can't seem to kick... for now. 

But the Karma Kard doesn't really exist and so accruing Karma doesn't really do any good unless you are okay settling for intangible things like good fortune and health, feeling one with the universe, and meeting new friends.  It is the latter that we seem to keep getting stuck with.  While having friends isn't as satisfying as a warm hot-pocket (the following is a paid advertisement), with it's golden-brown flaky pastry-like crust and melty-gooey cheese-like filling, I guess it'll have to do.

So while I know everyone would rather read muddled rantings cataloging my favorite aspects of the modern marvel called the frozen food section of your local grocer, I am forced to recount tales of two people we met and spent a significant amount of time with (thanks karma).  So go nuke some pizza rolls, crack open a coke, and settle in for the long haul.  If it's any conciliation to your salivary glands, our friends were from Hungry... seriously.

+++

"Are you going to climbing the Supare Crack?" asked Tom in his broken, but intelligible English.  We hadn't met them yet, but Tom (Tamas) and Ben (Benya) were about to become Karma's playing chips in a game where we were holding the winning hand.  "Oh, the Super Crack, yeah, when Juliet is finished with the climb it will be all yours ," I replied.  Upon Juliet's decent down the 120 foot sandstone face she turned around to see our new friends.  "Do you want to borrow some gear," asked Juliet to the obviously under-equipped Ben.  Ben, who didn't seem to speak English at the time (it was later revealed that he spoke English perfectly well, but chose not to as a defense mechanism for avoiding having to field stupid questions from Americans ("So, do they, like, call it Hungry because there's no food there?")), stared at us blankly.  Tom jumped in replying, "No, no.  Ben is very strong."  We left the issue alone and wished them good luck.

The previous night we had stayed in a group campsite that had been reserved for the Volunteer Day participants.  The campsite consisted of the following amenities: sand.  A large sand parking lot was the space we shared with fifty other individuals that had volunteered that day.   By the time that we woke up in the morning, a layer of fine-sand covered all of our belongings like dust covering the Autobiography of Richard Simmons ("Still Hungry After All These Years") in the public library.  We decided it was time to part with our group and find a campsite that shared fewer characteristics with the environmental descriptions at the beginning of the Grapes of Wrath.

Two miles down the road is a less known campground called the Super Bowl.  It's entrance is marked by a yellow cow grate and nothing more.  Super Bowl became one of our favorite campgrounds because it is much less open than Creek Pasture (the dust bowl), much more accessible than Bridger Jack (the BLM really outdid itself it terms of building a road that can rattle the bolts loose from your engine block), and wasn't prone to flash flooding like the campground at the base of Way Rambo.  We pulled into Super Bowl and were welcomed by the permanent smile that Tom wears on his face contrasted by Ben's reserved stoicism.  We greeted our yet-to-be-friends, asked them how the Super Crack went, then they asked us where they might go the next day where they could climb in the shade.  We told them that Northern Minnesota was probably grey and bleak this time of year but I don't think they got our joke.  We didn't know which wall might be in the shade for a good part of the day and so we did what any sensible person would do when trying to impress strangers- we lied.  We didn't intentionally send them to the sunniest wall in the desert which had a climate similar to that of the Sun-facing side of Mercury.  But we did- and they survived, thankfully, or the rest of our week would have been much less eventful. 

We made camp across the way from our new friends and caught up with them that night.  They were both incredibly humble and offered up little detail as to who they were without us utilizing the social graces of a metaphorical crow bar.  We pried and prodded for the rest of the night and found out the following:

Ben (32) graduated from college with a degree equivalent to that of our P.E. teacher.  He couldn't find a job in that field so he washes windows in high rises in his home-town of Budapest. Ben picked up English while working in England for a year.

Tamas (35) owns an outdoor store in his home town outside of Budapest and has an 18 year old son.  Tamas spent a year in the United States at a language school and was very eager to continue his language development.

They have both traveled the world and, from what we could gather, are semi-professional climbers.  They were just finishing up a two month trip to the United States and had spent most of that time in Yosemite climbing the monstrous granite formations.

My personal climbing productivity plummeted when we took on our new climbing partners.  The spectacle of them climbing was simply amazing- an inspiring combination of acrobatics and athleticism.  I could see it set to music and preformed on broadway.  Juliet was inspired and continued to push her own abilities.  By the end of the week she had climbed several world-famous routes including the epic Way Rambo, a skinny hand crack etched into a hundred foot sandstone pillar by the hand of Zoro (it is literally a huge "Z" running up the wall). 

We climbed hard and they climbed harder, continuing to push the envelope throughout the week.  By the end it seemed that everyone was feeling a bit exhausted.  As we gathered around a campfire cooking our dinners, Ben told us that the next day would be their last in the Creek.  He told us that they would head to Moab to climb the much renowned Castleton Tower.  Juliet and I had discussed doing Castleton Tower a couple week prior but decided against it due to a lack of experience climbing multi-pitch towers and a shortage of rope in which we would need to rappel off the top.  "Come with us," Ben offered. 

We couldn't believe it.  We spent the next hour trying to convince them that toting us along was not a good idea.  "But what if we climb too slow, what if you want to do a harder route, what if..."  Ben smiled and told us that it would be their last day climbing this year and he wanted to do a relaxing climb with his new friends.

Tom and Ben had been climbing world class multi-pitch together for two months.  They became our unofficial guides up Castleton tower and climbed with an efficiency I have never seen before.  We climbed with a total of three ropes which never got twisted or tangled.  The weather was perfect, the climb was perfect, and the company was perfect.  Once we reached the top we spent twenty minutes taking in the spectacular scenery.  The desert floor below runs up a gradual hill to the east which then explodes into the La Sal mountain range.  We had front row seats to the most amazing show on Earth.

We grabbed dinner with Ben and Tom before they had to leave for California and it was hard to say goodbye not knowing when we might get to see them again.  Juliet and I made the 60 mile drive back to Indian Creek in the dark.  When we returned to camp our friends were gone and we were alone.  We spent several more days in Indian Creek but had a hard time getting back into the groove of climbing without the external motivation.  The weather turned cold and it snowed.  Then it rained.  We both developed a sort of short-term seasonal affective disorder that left us lazy and lethargic.  It was time to move on. 

We couldn't wait to get to Las Vegas, take a break from small desert towns and campground communities, and spend some time with Juliet's family in a new and exciting atmosphere.  Up next: Juliet and Jon vivan Las Vegas

Castleton Tower from the parking lot

Tamas and Ben = All business.  Image this picture set to "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys

Beginning the approach

Three amigos at the top

Ben starts up the third pitch

Views to the southeast

Tamas and Ben with views to the north

Awesome

Juliet gets a little southern exposure

Juliet getting in on some rope management

Max'n and Relax'n and Act'n all cool. Ben before the final rappel

Down, down, down with views of our route

I show off my desert camouflage skills.