First Entry

Welcome to the blog.  I gave quite a lot of thought into whether or not I wanted to start something like this having seen plenty of other people fail to maintain a blog so here is my attempt.  If you don't already know me I'm a climber who just graduated college and now I'm grappling with the new-found freedom that comes with it.  In December I had a chance to visit my childhood friends from Connecticut and see how they are doing which really made me feel lucky because of how far I've gone.  Climbing and mountaineering have really taken hold as passions in my life, and looking at so many people who are trying to find their purpose in life at my age I'm pretty blessed to have such an opportunity to pursue my climbing goals and lifestyle.

There are a few reasons why I decided to start documenting what I'm up to on a blog.  I realize I need something substantial to show people what I'm up to, I think it's pretty easy to just say "oh I went to the crag, it was fun" and not really go into depth about some climb or goal that we are working towards.  I'd like to use this soap box to keep friends and other people (stalkers?) to keep people up to date with a couple plans I have down the pipelines (some rebolting, possible new lines, Portland Mountain Rescue events).

I've always thought of my first year out of college as a potential break-out year, where I can truly put 100% into climbing and get great rewards.  I know of lot of people are on that cusp of really starting to train and devote your mind completely to climbing (or some other passion), and I see the blog as a way of keeping myself accountable.  If its online and people are reading about it, maybe I'll get that nagging desire to actually follow through with what I'm spewing about.  You'll get to hear a little bit about my first (and far too late) attempts at training periodization and that will certainly keep me honest about it, even if I'm the only one reading about.

Another goal, that will take some time, is to develop my own writing style as a climber and outdoorsman.  If you've made it this far into the blog, you probably already know that I have some work to do in this aspect.  Right now it actually feels a little embarrassing to be writing about this stuff, I think I generally like to keep a low profile and not 'spray' too much but I need to find the fine line between self promotion and giving attention to the climbing and also showing off what fantastic climbers that happen to tie in with me.

I just moved to this place, yeah that's the West side of Smith Rock, no big deal

Couple of Arete Projects: Latest Rage 12b, in 2011 trying this once gave me raging elbow tendonitis,  now it'll go down relatively quickly

Chain Reaction 12c, not sent yet, but probably the one I'll be most psyched about

Krischa Berlinger snapped this rad picture of me dynoing the last move on Heresy, definitely one of my favorite pictures.  I'm not sure how I'm doing this as I am clearly not looking at the hold.

Cam and me just before Christmas.