I’ve posted tons of hiking and climbing trip reports over the years.  Of course, like most folks, the majority of my trip reports have been repeats of climbs or hikes.  No shame in that.  But, I’ve put up a few originals as well.  The one I’m most proud is, of course, the North to South traverse of the Picket Range, while climbing the major routes on Fury and Terror along the way.  That is still the best climbing trip I’ve ever done and I don’t expect to ever surpass it.

But, another one, much more mellow, and far more popular, is the Gore Lake – Deluge Lake loop hike in the Gore Range, near Vail, Colorado.  My sister, my now-brother-in-law, and I did this way back in 2001.  I published it on my site right away and folks seemed to be drawn to it.  Of all the hiking and climbing emails I’ve received, this hike receives the most attention.  I’ve seen many folks write up trip reports on the loop.  It’s been adopted by the Colorado Mountain Club.  And now, in the March 2001 issue of Backpacker Magazine, it’s hit the big time.

(above) Hanging out at Snow Pass after summiting Snow Peak, visible in the background.

This is the biggest snow that I think I’ve ever seen in Georgia.  The storm was due to hit Sunday evening and it seemed that it was all anyone could do was to talk about the coming storm.  I even started to think that this was just the weathermen talking up the storm.  After all, how many times had they done this sort of thing before only to be wrong.  Well, Pat and I returned fairly late in the evening from a really fun basketball game.  A mere thirty minutes later, the snow started coming down hard and fast.  Big wet flakes piled up a couple of inches high in under an hour, and it just kept coming down.  By the following morning, I estimated the damage to be around five inches.  And it wasn’t going anywhere; nothing but freezing weather was forecasted through the week.  Being work days, I’d originally planned to crank through some work during my last two days in Marietta.  But, even I was happy to see that the snow had slammed the door on that idea.  We were all stuck at home and had nothing to do but go for walks, make scary looking snowmen, try our hand and sledding with makeshift sleds on the icy roads, staying warm with chai tea and hot chocolate, cooking and eating, watching the BCS championship game, playing guitar and singing the “Happy Song”, having tea parties, and on and on.  All in all, it was one of those great storms and experiences that one remembers for a long time.

Finally got a chance to join my dad and his friend on an outing of their interesting hobby of huntin’ down graves.  See, there’s this site called findagrave.com which brings together parties who need to hunt down a long lost ancestor’s grave and those who are willing to do the hunting.  It’s 100% a volunteer effort.  As a grave hunter, you basically sign up for the site, register for a particular region, then “claim” requests to hunt down graves whenever one comes in.  You then have two weeks to find the grave, photograph it, and provide the uncovered information to the interested party.

To me, this sounds like a really fun excuse to get out, do some amateur exploring, enlist the help of locals, help folks hunt down their relatives, and so on.  When I heard the story of hunting for an old graveyard and finally discovering by stumbling across a tombstone long-covered by brush and leaves, I was hooked.  And, on top of that, one of the tombstones uncovered and cleaned off had but a single word carved on it:  “Indian”.  Awesome.  Many of the graves go back into the 1800′s.  Real Indiana Jones material, right?

Well, I joined for an outing that promised to be simple – and was.  But, the day’s setting was perfect – a bit misty and foggy with a light rain falling.  We were hunting for the Bethel Methodist Church, somewhere out near Buena Vista, Georgia (pronounced by the locals as “Byoona Vista”). Finding it wasn’t anything special, we had to ask around a bit, but I didn’t realize how many dirt roads that Georgia still had.  We finally found the church, a classic small white church, far down a sandy dirt road, basically out in the middle of nowhere.  The only recent evidence of anyone passing by in the neighborhood were prominent deer tracks crossing across the small and sandy parking area of the church.  The graveyard in the back was sparsely populated and hunting down the graves was a piece of cake.  We got our pictures and called it a day and headed for the reward for the morning’s work: lunch at Aunt Mary’s Country Kitchen in downtown Buena Vista, Georgia.

Satellite view of Bethel Methodist Church:

Saw more than my fair share of movies over the holiday.  Might be the last time I can see movies for free.  Dang!  Anyway, here they are, ranked from FIRST to WORST:

Black Swan (2010)

Cast: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Genre: thriller, mystery, drama

Trailer Black Swan

by CinemaRx

1) Black Swan – I give this one top honors because it kept me on my toes all throughout the movie.  If you’re thinking this is just a delightful little movie about ballet, you’re way off.  I think I was most shocked by the various horror-inspired thrills placed throughout the movie.  Natalie Portman obviously prepared well for the role.

True Grit (2010)

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon

Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Genre: western, drama, adventure

Trailer True Grit

by CinemaRx

2) True Grit – I’m not a fan of westerns, but this was a really well done movie, and I suppose it’s now my favorite western.  I liked the smallness of the story; it wasn’t a grand adventure where our heroes set out to save the world.  Plus, the cast was nice and small which lent itself to good character development.  My favorite scene was the long night scene at the cabin.

The Tourist (2010)

Cast: Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Genre: thriller, romance, mystery

Trailer The Tourist

by CinemaRx

3) The Tourist – I don’t know why this movie got so hammered by the critics.  Maybe because it wasn’t edgy or didn’t challenge anything.  It was just a basic, light intrigue, movie with big stars set in Venice.  The setting certainly gave it a bonus.  This one’s good if you’re in the mood for a low intensity and enjoyable movie.

The Fighter (2010)

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams

Director: David O. Russell

Genre: drama, biography, sport

Trailer The Fighter

by CinemaRx

4) The Fighter – Big drop-off in quality now.  Sorry to all of you who enjoyed “The Fighter”.  I thought it was pretty lousy.  It just felt like a two-hour Jerry Springer show.  Even the heroes and heroines (save maybe Mark Walburg’s character) couldn’t help lowering themselves to idiotic bickering and trash-talking.  The fight scenes were surprisingly sparse and goofy – the guy gets beat up for a few rounds then happens to suddenly throw a couple of choice punches (that his crackhead brother told him about) which ended up winning him the fight by KO.  Uh huh.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)

Cast: Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Ben Barnes

Director: Michael Apted

Genre: fantasy, family, adventure

Trailer The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

by CinemaRx

5) Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader – Now we’re in to the real dregs.  I enjoyed the last Narnia movie, but i just couldn’t wait for this one to end.  The new cousin character was beyond obnoxious (big relief when he was turned into a dragon).  I found myself not caring one bit about the various emotional scenes.  Especially the awful teary-eyed goodbye.  I didn’t even think the effects were anything special.

Unstoppable (2010)

Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson

Director: Tony Scott

Genre: thriller, drama, action

Trailer Unstoppable

by CinemaRx

6) Unstoppable – Not much to say here other than ‘awful’.  There were lots and lots and lots of shots from the perspective of the tracks.  Next in frequency of appearance were the zoomed shots showing the train approaching.  That’s about it.  Both characters had personal life issues that had no bearing on the story. I fell asleep a few times.

I was able to adjust right away to the new time.  I slept well and got up at a reasonable hour, maybe 6:30, which is pretty good after traveling to the other side of the world.  We decided to spend my first full day back in the US at the Georgia Aquarium which is a really impressive and worthwhile destination.  I went with my sister and little niece and watching her was probably the highlight.  The aquarium is interactive; one of the first things you can do is go to a small pool full of sting rays which you can touch.  The assistant told us:  “Use two fingers”.  I don’t think that sort of thing is possible in a place like China (nor many other things we enjoy in the US).  The beluga whale exhibit is fascinating to watch.  I was really blown away by the size of the various artificial habitats.  The main one was tremendous, featuring a sixty-foot (I think) viewing window.  Another viewing area was a clear tunnel passing through the base of the aquarium.  This tank held all sorts of fish including a couple of immature whale sharks, the biggest critters on site.  One of the neatest exhibits was the penguins exhibit which featured crawling tunnels and small glass domes that allowed for up-close ‘n personal viewing.

We went on a Thursday and there was practically no one there.  If it weren’t for a couple of schools who were there, it would have been practically empty.  But, there were a few times where we were completely alone and many times that there were only a few folks enjoying the same exhibit.  I hear the aquarium can get really crowded some days.  Got lucky there.

As always, I had a great Christmas vacation in the US.  Some highlights:

Catching up on sleep.  Well, maybe I wasn’t catching up, but I certainly slept a ton, typically 9 hours a night.  Also, for some reason, I can’t adjust to the time in one day when traveling directly to Atlanta.  Traveling to Seattle or back to China is never a problem, but it takes me about five days fully adjust when coming to Georgia.  And just when I was starting to enjoy getting up at 5am and working for two hours before going back to bed for another couple of hours, I started sleeping through the night.  Can’t win ‘em all.

Accompanying my mom to the charity food shelter. Actually, I don’t know what the official name of it is, and I certainly don’t claim to be Mr. Charity, but I did enjoy spending the afternoon bagging up groceries to give to the less fortunate folk in town.  I also enjoyed eaves-dropping on the counselor talking with the visitors, learned a lot.  The quote of the day goes to a rambunctious woman named Wanda who quipped to the counselor, “Now this man we elected president said he was gonna get us jobs!  I don’t see no jobs!!!”

A typical Christmas Eve Dinner with family and friends: Beverly and Ed, Matthew and parents.  Though my favorite dish (Beef Wellington) wasn’t served, it was still the best meal of the year. Topped off with perfect bananas foster toasted in a huge fireball.  The picture on the left shows the main course – dang, what’s the name.  Andouille sausage, shrimp, and fetuchini in a rich sauce (what was in that sauce?).  Now, that’s quality!

Hiking around Pine Mountain, Georiga.  Wow, it was a big hike – 4.5 miles and maybe 500 feet of elevation. Well, I disrespected the mountain by wearing my casual shoes and not bringing any water, so it was fitting that I felt tired afterwards.  Scenery was nice.  Would be fun to explore the whole area one day, maybe camp out too.

My dad and I visited the new National Infantry Museum. The building is beautiful and the exhibits are even better.  It’s very well-organized in sections, though winding your way within the sections can be confusing.  We easily spent 2.5 or 3 hours here, even though it felt a little rushed.  Why not make a day trip of it and split the exhibits with lunch?  Yeah, that sounds good.

I always try to take in lots of free movies while in town. I’m sad to say that this was a relatively slow year in terms of movies.  Avatar was mostly a disappointment. Here are my reviews (out of 5 stars):

• Invictus – 3.0 stars.  I had high hopes for this one, but it’s no “Gran Torino”.  My main problem with this movie was that there was no real story arc.  You could watch the first 20 minutes and pretty much have a sense of the entire movie.  The rugby scenes were good and Morgan Freeman was excellent.
• Law Abiding Citizen – 2.5 stars.  Certainly not a great movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed the action and fun. It certainly leaned on the sadistic side which made it hard to cheer for the protagonist, though I appreciated his intentions.
• 2012 – 3.0 – A surprisingly high ranking given the director’s sad history.  But, I was stunned at visual effects.  The movie would have been a solid thumbs up had it not been for a horrendous close quarters, underwater scene at the end.  Just horribly filmed, edited, and all together stupid.
• Avatar – 2.5 stars. Welcome to the most overrated movie of the year!  Yes, I enjoyed it very much, but the story is “Dances with Wolves”.  The effects were great, but not as great as people are making out to be.  I still think Lord of the Rings looks better.  Star Wars Episode III too, but it’s easier to animate machinery than people.  It’s the Emperor’s New Clothes all over again!  But, realize, I’m rating on a scale here!  Expectations play a big role.
• Sherlock Holmes – 3.0 stars.  I fell asleep a couple of time in the first half, but woke up to proclaim, “It’s better than Avatar”!  It’s obviously more in-yo’-face than typical Sherlock Holmes, but they held on to enough good stuff to make it a fun movie. Got to see Jason, my pro wrestling friend, too.
• Up in the Air – 3.5 stars.  I enjoyed this movie a lot, very good story-telling and acting.  Ending was refreshing, though not happy.

Airplane Movies (out of 5 stars):

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – 2 stars.  Yeah, I’m sure the book was really good but this movie was a real yawner.  Bo-ring!
• Inglorious Basterds – 4 stars.  The surprise hit of the holiday for me.  I normally don’t like Tarantino movies, but I loved the story-telling in this one.  Brad Pitt’s character was great too, very funny.

Cranking on work.  I know I’m doing what I want now because I woke up each day excited to crank out more work on my two big projects. I parked myself at the kitchen table each morning very early.  It became a ritual.

Jamming with Chris.  Met up with an old friend from high school and jammed together on guitar, the first time since “Sittin’ There”, an old hit of ours.  We did a version of Frozen Taco’s “Sacrificed” which I hope he will add a solo to soon (I’ll post it when it’s available).  He also produced a cartoon that I drew in either the 8th or 9th grade. It was the earliest “work” of mine (outside of really early school stuff that hangs around my folks’ house) that I’d ever seen.  Really funny getting a look into that early period.

Working on brand new FT with Matthew.  This was interesting and fun as always.  And despite only using an electric guitar with no amplifier (and a neck that needs attention), we worked on another tune, old school style, where Matt only brings lyrics and an idea about how to sing the song and I try to find music to fit it. It’s always a give-and-take progress and the final product was different from what we started with.  When will the final version be available?  I have no idea.  The songs that we did this summer should have been finished by now; I’ve just been too busy to finish off the guitar work. Sounds like a project for me over Chinese new Year.

Of course, spending time with fambly and friends is always the best, but I have to call out special attention to baby Caroline.  I was amazed at how fast she progressed “babily” in the short weeks I was there.  She went from “inchworming” for locomotion to a full on crawl in just one week.  Not too shabby.

After the climb of Slippery Slab Tower, I headed into Cashmere to hang out at Robert’s cabin for a short retreat.  The great thing is that there was no internet connection, phone, and so on.  I was planning to stay there for about four or five nights, but ended up staying less after Daniel confirmed a Wednesday departure for a trip to the North Ridge of Forbidden Peak.

Though I ended up staying for only two full days, I accomplished a lot.  Basically, my schedule:

• Wake up, have breakfast
• Dig a little section of trail on the property until about 8:30 or 9:00
• Work on WordPress development
• Have lunch
• Go into town to check email and do a little bit of internet surfing, two hours max
• Work on more WordPress development
• Dinner, read, go to bed

Actually, it was a great break from the usual routine and it confirmed suspicions that I had about my personal productivity.  One of the problems in China was that the internet was so slow that I’d be working on a certain web page, but it would take a little to long to load.  So, I’d tab over and open another page, another site that I needed to work on, investigate, read, or whatever.  Naturally, that page would take a while to load as well, so, I’d open another tab and repeat the process.  Eventually, I’d have ten or so tabs open and rotate to each one as they finish loading.

Switching focus between tasks is undeniably costly.  After a few weeks of this, it became apparent to me that this rapid switching between tasks was costing me a lot of time.  Spending time at the cabin away from the phone and the internet empirically demonstrated that being away from these distractions causes productivity to jump.  So, in only two days I wrote a WordPress plugin that reads a folder on a website and displays each of the files as downloadable links.  This was the first time that I’d written anything in the PHP language.  Not only that, but I also created two admin settings pages that integrate into the WordPress admin panel:  one for uploading files, and one for deleting files.  If I were working on this project in a normal environment, it would probably take me a week to write this.  So, how do I enforce this undeniable law of productivity in a normal environment?  Well, I hope I can qualify this better in the future, but to start with, setting distinct time limits on tasks, in units of hours only, is a good start.  Also, simply accessing the internet at specific times helps too.  I may have to get back on my email checking schedule…

Anyway, thanks, Robert, for the opportunity to stay at the cabin.  I enjoyed it.