chunky_milk Around the World

Moving

2009-07-28T14:33:00.000-07:00

I'm lazy and have not had anything interesting to write about becuase I have not done anything notable since May.

New address:

www.mytb.org/Chunky-milk

I switched because blogspot is poorly organized and just doesn't run very well. The new website it much easier for me do and requires a lot less effort.

Formula Hybrid Testing

2009-04-09T17:58:00.000-07:00

The car has been out for 4 hard days of testing and a few more quick runs behind our building. The purpose of these tests is to run the car hard so that anything that can break will break here where we can fix it, instead o fin the middle of a real race. The car weighed in at around 500lbs with a full fluids and ready to race tires. With a little care we could weigh in 400's which is somewhat competitive in the non-hybrid races, and unheard of in the hybrid competition. Another benefit to our minimalist hybrid drivetrain is that we might have one of the most powerful engines in this competition. Our drivers have been training for months in one of our older cars while waiting for the new one to be ready to run. We've been tweaking the spring stiffness, anti-roll bar stiffness, tuning the hybrid controller, and checking for sound levels. Ok I have to go now, but here are some videos:

Failing the sound test by 1db, but it's an easy fix

A quick video of us driving on internal combustion engine only. With the electric system entirely shut off it should still be faster than the winner last year.

Formula Hybrid Assembly

2009-04-09T17:13:00.000-07:00

Me and the Texas A&M 2009 Formula Hybrid car

We (the Formula Hybrid team) spent the entire Spring break wrapping up the build of the car. Building takes forever because there are a million little parts, welds, and little details that were overlooked during design. Multiple parts had to remade because they didn't fit, didn't work, or interfered with other parts. There were no major screwups, but a whole lot of little ones.

A 3d model of the hybrid powertrain

By Wednesday the build room had been converted into a paint booth, and the car was painted. The paint dried for a few days, and Friday at 5Pm we started assembling everything. While the rest of my peers were partying it up on Spring Break, we were busting our butts on this project.

The steel space frame chassis being painted

Assembly started at 5PM and by 3AM the car was assembled and on the ground rolling. The next week was spent wiring the engine, electronics, high voltage electronics, motor, and batteries. We had a deadline of Friday, March 27th to have the car assembled. That Friday was the rollout presentation in front of a board of engineers who reviewed and critiqued our design. We were ahead of schedule, and even took the car on a test drive the night before. We were the first design team in A&M Racing's history to have a car driving under its own power at the rollout presentation.

The car at the rollout presentation

This left us with just over a month to test and tune the car. Our theory is that winning teams have 1) a reliable car 2) a fast driver 3) a fast car. By getting out to drive a full month before the race day, everything that could break during competition will have already broken and fixed. The drivers will have hours and hours of experience driving this type of car and get the feel for it. So far we've had 4 hard days of testing and tuning with only 1 problem. A wheel speed sensor, which is a small metal ring resembling a gear, unbolted itself from the motor. The manufacturer right hand bolt hole in the end of the motor shaft, but it needs a left hand because the motor spins in a direction that tries to constantly unscrew the bolt. Loctite (superglue) solved the problem. Also, the carburetor keeps trying to fall off because the junky connector is plastic. It has been amazingly reliable, fast, and easy to drive considering we were all inexperienced in this and certainly none of us have ever tried to build a hybrid car before. Nobody knew for sure how it was going to perform as a hybrid because of unplanned interactions between the electric motor and the internal combustion engine. It works just as planned, despite what some of the more vocal engineers on the advisory committee thought. Next week we will be practicing for the design event and bossiness presentation, which means I still have alot of work to do. We will be driving to New Hampshire from College Station, which is a 6-day, 4,000 mile round trip. We have to tow the car, 3 sets of wheels and tires, a spare engine and motor, tire machine, full set of tools, and the welder, so we will be towing a monster trailer.

The car and the team completely assembled

Here is a little video of the assembly of the car:

Climbing at Reimer's Ranch

2009-03-02T21:50:00.000-08:00

There's not really a whole lot to say about this trip. I went rock climbing at Reimer's Ranch near Austin TX for the ~50th time with my friends Les, Natasha, and Bookout (Steven Bookout- "like check a book out" as he always explains).

Reimer's Ranch is a very small county park that caters to limestone climbing and Mountain Bikers. On a busy day you might see 20 or 30 cars in the gravel parking lot. It costs $8 per car, and there is no camping allowed. There are well over 100 climbing routes, all bolted, and all very short. An average climb is around 40ft, and some might get up to 90. It's the best climbing that can be done in a day trip from home, so I'm here as often as possible.

Instead of writing alot, I'll just show you a bunch of pretty pictures.

I don't suggest trying to lead a 5.12c at the end of the day when you are already tired. We both made it a little farther than this past , but kept falling back down below the hard part. After each doing the hardest part of the route a couple of times, , falling, and repeating, we gave up and got cheap greasy burgers in town.

Natasha's first lead!

No feet required

Les getting ready to climb the hard stuff

Honey Creek Cave

2009-01-26T19:02:00.000-08:00

The four Aggie Cavers deep in Honey Creek Cave, the Longest Cave in Texas

Honey Creek Cave is the longest cave in Texas, with more than 20 miles of passages. The entrance is on private property, and cavers are permitted in the cave on rare occasions, so it was a special to invited on the trip. I've made it to two of the three trips that occurred since I joined the Texas Speleological Society. Honey Creek Cave has been actively explored since 1984. Most of the passages have been pushed, but one ends in a sump, which is a water filled tunnel. On the first trip I attended last year, we hauled scuab gear and a diver swam the ~1500ft sump and esstablished that it continued as a dry passage. There is rumour that it may connect to nearby caves, making it a giant network of wet and dry tunnels. The purpose of the most recent expedition was to send two divers through the sump to continue exploring the new dry passage.

Drew cools off in the water because his 9mm wetsuit is way too hot

The cave entrance is on local property outside San Antonio, Texas. In 1984 a few Texas Cavers discovered the cave, and located a good place to drill a second manmade entrance to make it easier for cavers to access the cave. The deal was that the cavers would go in the cave, locate a spot, and drill a well for the owners allowing caver access. The well shaft was enlarged to 30" with dynamite, and a telephone pole structure was installed to allow a tractor to lower cavers down on a cable. The manmade entrance shaft puts cavers near the middle of the cave, cutting the round trip down to one long day instead of an overnight ordeal.

Krishna being lowered down the manmade entrance shaft by the tractor and cable

Most of the cave is wet and requies you to wear a wetsuit to stay warm. Cavers also need a helmet, headlamp, kneepads, harnesses, carabiners, knee and elbow pads, and a day of food and water. This cave is the "Ironman of Texas Caving." It requires virtually every caving technique there is: diving, swimming, vertical, crawling, stoop walking (which sucks btw), mud crawling, and "salamandering." Salamandering is floating on your stomach and using your hands and feet to push yourself throught he water. A Honey Creek Cave specific technique is also mud sliding.

We also volunteered to bring two suba tanks to the dive site at the sump. Each tank weighs >30lbs, and is a major PITA (Pain in the ASS) to carry. We had to carry tanks in addition to our own personal gear. There may have been 20 minutes in the whole trip where I could stand upright at all. You can't wear it like a backpack because you are constantly getting up, getting down, or crawling. On dry land where you are belly crawling, you have to push it ahead of you, or drag it behind you. Teamwork was needed to pass them over obstacles and to protect the delicate brass valve, which would be extremely dangerous if it failed. They are not such a PITA in the water because they float (due to foam padding). You can swim and push them ahead of you with your face, like a giant 3olb water polo ball.

Me with the Scuba tank (wrapped in foam to protect it)

This is one seriously tough cave. Even though it's one of the greatest adventures of caving in the Southwest, few actually sign up for trip of this magnitude. 21 cavers in total made it to the sump, each carrying loads such as Scuba tanks, Buoyancy Compensators, or cave radio pieces. Cavers came from all over, including Oklahoma, Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, Florida, and I think Alaska too. The whole trip lasted from 9AM to nearly 2AM, or much later for the slowpokes. The trip actually went much quicker than expected.

The secondary purpose of our trip was to map the cave accurately, and to propose a location for a new entrance shaft that bypasses diving through the sump. Very few people have the gear, experience, or balls to dive a sump a days crawl away from safety. This sump is even more dangerous because of the silt, which makes the visibility just a few feet. Also, the walls of the cave are confining, making it a tight fit with all the scuba gear. We borrowed a Cave Radio, which a very low frequency closed-loop transmitter encased in rugged PVC (homemade of course) housing. It transmits one frequency, and can be received on the surface very accurately, within inches. Cavers set up the radio, and transmit for a specified period at a scheduled time. People on the surface wait for the signal on the surface, near the spot they suspect the cavers will be transmitting from. The hand measured and plotted map was used as a reference point, and the received radio point was only 60ft off! Very impressive mapping skills from the Texas Cavers. Only two of four transmissions were received well because of interference such as metal fences and barns.

At the sump. Believe or not, he is standing in water. Unlike mountaineering, the best view is not at the end of the journey!

The trip was not a complete success. One of the Scuba tanks developed a slow leak, possibly from rough handling while being dragged though miles of rocky cave. By the time everyone reached the sump, the tank was empty. Only one diver swam the sump, so that we could at least send a radio transmission from the other side. We had to wait for hours to wait for a few cavers who had missed a key turn and gotten lost to bring the buoyancy compensators. The room where we waited in for a few hours was what most sane, claustrophobic, or clean-freak people would consider muddy hell, if hell were cold and smelled like caver farts. Wetsuits are only warm if you're moving, otherwise they are frosty! I caught a quick nap in one of those foil emergency blankets and ate four of my six powerbars. With 21 people in one crowded room, the air quickly turned bad, and I suffered from a stout headache and nausea. It took every ounce of my willpower to get over my exhaustion, headache, and weak stomach to get moving away from the bad air. An old caver trick to test the air is to watch a lighter burn. The distance the flame is away from the lighter tells you the air quality. I don;t know what the normal distnace is, but the wasn't too bad, unless you were breathing it for 5 hours. Half an hour later after I got moving all my symptoms subsided and it was a sprint to the finish. Only me and one other person had trouble with the bad air. I had a lingering cold and he was devoloping the flu, so that is likely a contributing factor.

I think the worst part of the whole trip was the 34 degree weather outside. The bottom of the cave was filled with a thick fog where the "warm" (read warmer) air met the cold air. My hands froze so quickly that I could barely get my harness on or tie knots in the rope. Once I got to the surface, someone in a down coat had to help unscrew my carabiners and untie knots. I felt pretty ridiculous wearing a caving helmet, a wetsuit, and a rock climbing harness, and holding a scuba tank in the freezing weather at 2AM in the middle of the Texas plains. Cave Diving is the perfect sport for the caver-diver-mountaineer-climber who can't decide which sport is best, and settles for just looking confused to regular people. This was a pretty tough trip, but definitely one I will never forget, although I was dumb enough to do twice.

Building the Formula Hybrid Car

2009-01-19T15:39:00.000-08:00

The chassis team leader putting the 4130 steel frame on the jig

This is the 1st post on building the Formula Hybrid car, there will be more if I am not busy building the car to write about building the car. The only reason I have time right now is because I managed to get myself sick by working all day every day instead of sleeping. Hopefully tomorrow I will be back in the machine shop, making the motor mount on the mill.

CNC (robotic) milling a block of aluminum to make the motor mounting plate

The team has spent nearly 6 months designing thing son paper, and just two weeks ago we made the first cut of metal. Since this is a hybrid car, and none of us had any experience with hybrid drivetrains, the motor and control tea started working on this last January when the construction of the 2008 car was just beginning. Now 1 day shy of 1 year later, we got our hybrid drivetrain to run this morning, Hurray! The design team is composed of 7 teams:

-Suspension, brakes, wheels, and tires

-Chassis, cockpit, and body

-Drivetrain

-Engine

-Motor and Controls

-Batteries and High Voltage

-Low Voltage and Data aquisition

The engine is mostly stock (if Nascar is "stock" than so is this) so there is not too much work to do there. Our car will also have onboard engine, motor, temperature, and battery monitoring sensors as well as wheel speed sensors, GPS data logging, 3-axis accelerometers and suspension travel measurements. The software we use plots all of these on a GPS acquired map of the course, and allows us to tune the cars suspension, engine, and motor.

A 3D model of the front suspension and steering allows us to test for structural integrity based on spring compression, tire friction and roll stiffness during high g corners.

The teams are 2-3 people, except chassis which has 4 (and needs 7). There is an 8th team, called the "architecture team" that decided how our hybrid car would be put together. I am on the motor and controls team and the architecture teams. We are the hybrid part of the hybrid car. I am the only mechanical engineer on the electrical side of the design. There are really two architectures of a hybrid car- series and parallel. A series car is essentially an electric car that has a gas powered electric generator. It is efficient because the engine can always spin at its optimum speed, but heavy because it must have big batteries and a generator. Most Formula Hybrid cars, including every winner, has been this design. A parallel hybrid car is like a regular car, except that the electric motor is much smaller, and only helps out the gas engine when it is not powerful enough. The motor and batteries can be much smaller and lighter to achieve the same power. Decreasing weight is a great goal for a racecar, and the reason we chose this method. The drawback is reduced fuel economy. We don't care about fuel economy because we are racing against the clock, not the gas tank. Lighter is faster, and that's what really matters (in racing, not highway driving). This method is more complex to pull off in terms of electronics and many times more difficult to design around. The engineer must balance the weight of the motor and batteries and motor against the power gains to select just the right size and configuration.

The Yamaha WR 250 engine, still in the bike for early tuning, with titanium exhaust

Our design will use a 250cc Yamaha dirt bike engine. It's small, but can put out plenty of power for its size. It will also have a very nice titanium muffler kit and an autoclutch. The electric motor we are using is actually an industrial forklift motor. We will be using two boxes full of powerdrill battery packs to power the motor. To recharge the batteries we are going to use the drill companies chargers plugged into our car. We will carry about 30lbs of batteries compared to nearly 300lbs that other teams have used. Also, we modify the battery packs to get nearly 5x more power out of them. A very fancy electric part called a GFI senses if there is a short circuit or someone touching the wires, and automatically shuts down the batteries to prevent injury.

One of the welders uses tungsten-inert-gas welding to put together the frame

The team is working steadily, and we hope to get done in about 10 weeks. That's a tight schedule. Most teams spend a few months designing and a year building, not the reverse. However, no matter how well constructed your car is, you can't win with a bad design.

Formula SAE Driving

2009-01-19T14:55:00.000-08:00

Me driving the 2006 1st place Formula SAE car, converted to stock

The Formula Hybrid team has been busy 24/7 since just after the new year working on the new car. Just for a relaxing day, we took the old car out for a fun day of driving. Last semester a small handful of the team took the task to fix the 2006 Formula SAE car, which won the 1st place in the competition, and won the Road&Track magazine's Triathlon trophy. It previously had a supercharged single cylinder ATV engine , custom exhaust and intake, with an $5,000 aftermarket engine controller that mapped the ignition and injection timing by reading the manifold pressure, speed, and throttle position sensor. If that didn't make any sense don't worry, it was really cool, really powerful, and really unreliable (surprised?) We removed the siezed engine, and replaced it with a stock engine, stock exhaust, and a carburetor. After that we tore out the entire wiring harness and started over. After fixing the shifter and suspension, it was time to drive.

Suited up and ready to drive

I got the opportunity to drive the course first yesterday. It is a very tight autocross style course that limits your speed to less than 60mph, but can require turning at ~1g. Our practice "track" is actually a crappy old runway covered in dirt and grass, oh well. Driving one of these cars requires special safety equipment: a thick engine firewall, five-point safety harness, fireproof suit, gloves, and shoes, a helmet, and arm restraints. The arm restraints tether your arms to the car so you don't break them when the car flips. Rolling the car is pretty unlikely, because the roll center is only about 10.5" off the ground, nearly even with the center of the wheels. The car would have to lean nearly 90 degrees before it would roll over! This leads to very good cornering performance. We also took this opportunity to familiarize the car to potential drivers for the future. A few people we know through various connections who are not on the design team have Formula and Kart racing experience, and may be driving for us. Most of the design team members are engineers, not drivers. Our only experienced driver is about 6'4" and 300lbs, which means he just won't fit. At 6' even, and 170 lbs, I am at the very limit of what fits in the car. It was designed to fit only one driver, and he was much smaller (and faster) than me.

Patrick wondering why the clutch won't work, turns out the cable snapped

The clutch cable snapped after a dozen laps, but we brazed a new connection on the old one with a blowtorch, and got back to driving. I left early that day but a few hours and many laps later the differential threw a few bolts, resulting in some destruction and complete loss of fluid in the drivetrain. by evening the problem was diagnosed, a snapped bolt had punched a hole in the custom made differential case. By 4:00AM the drivetrain team had the parts out of the car and on the operating table. We will have to manufacture a new case for the differential and refill it with fluid, which is the best we could have hoped for. These racing differentials cost $2,700 apiece, plus a few more k for CNC machined mounts, bearings, and joints.

Formula Hybrid Competition

2009-01-19T14:02:00.000-08:00

Formula Hybrid is a competition sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers aimed to give college level engineering students hands on automotive engineering experience. In this competition, student teams from all over the world design, build, and race small Formula style hybrid cars. There are multiple events: acceleration, endurance, autocross, design, and presentation. Our team has taken 1st place three times in the Formula SAE (non hybrid) competition, and 3 won the Road&Track Triathlon trophy 3 times in a row. Every year, the team starts from scratch to redesign and build a new car. Each year's design has done only minor modifications or corrections on the previous design, so we entered the Hybrid competition to bring in a new element of challenge and Engineering design. To clarify, here a few of the rules in (extreme) brief:

-250cc DOT approved twin cylinder motorcycle engine or any single
-Modifications, such as turbochargers, require the use of an air restrictor
-The electric motor must be capable of accelerating the car to 75m in 15 seconds
-Less than $6,000 for batteries

These are not the slow, heavy, fuel efficient hybrid's you see cruising down the highway; this is a racecar that's a hybrid, not the other way around. For comparison, last years acceleration event winner had a 0-60 time of a little over 3 seconds, on par with a Corvette. A typical car has only about 30-40 hp, which doesn't sound like alot. However, with a racing suspension, racing slick tires, and a 700lb weight, it gets moving.

The heart of this competition is engineering. The cars are entirely student designed and built. Students learn how to manage large groups of people and up to 50k+ budgets, how to use modern engineering tools like CAD, mathematical simulations, Structural analysis, and how to manufacture a car. Nearly every part is made in house. We buy the engine, tires, seat, steering wheel, batteries, motor, and differential. Everything else is made by students. This means countless days, hours, weeks, and months in the machine shop, at the mill, or working a welder. A typical design-build cycle goes like this:

-Team organization
-Study old designs, and decide what to redesign
-Conceptual Design, reviewed by a board of professional Engineers
-Solid modeling in computer software
-Finite Element Analysis, a computerized structural analysis method
-Prototyping parts, and testing development of parts like engine and batteries
-CNC machining and milling of parts (like robotic manufacturing)
-Welding of car frame
-Dyno testing, tuning, and programming of hybrid drivetrain
-Final build, assembly, and technical review by board of professional Engineers
-Track testing and driver training
-The final race and technical review

The entire process takes a team of 20-30 students about a year, working 20-100hrs a weeks. It's alot of work, my grades are plummeting quickly, as is my sleep schedule. On the other hand, I think I learned more valuable knowledge this weekend in the shop than I did last semester in my advance dynamics and controls class last semester. I wish a hands on project like this would be a requirement in the engineering curriculum in the future. The learning accomplished in the classroom is incomplete without real practical experience, why not make it part of the degree?

In the mean time, here the winner of the last 2 years and my greatest competition:

This team won two years in a row, only barely modifying their design the 2nd year. My hope is that they continue their design again! Since this is a new competition where most teams have virtually no experience, reliability is the key. McGill didn't win because they had the quickest car, they won because they had the quickest car that finished the race. Our design is potentially much more fail-safe. Additionally, our car has a better power/weight ratio than theirs even when the electric motor isn't running! We will have a good showing if we can just even cross the finish line.

Ice Climbing at Ouray, Colorado

2009-01-11T09:05:00.000-08:00

I recently spent a week ice climbing in the little mountain town of Ouray, Colorado. It's nearest big-name neighbors are Telluride and Silverton. I skied at both neighboring towns. Ouray is the national hotspot for the niche sport in the outdoor community: ice climbing. What is ice climbing? Picture a giant waterfall frozen solid, now put two sharp axes in your hands, and strap 24 steel spikes to your feet, start climbing. It's fun! Ice climbing is a unique form of climbing requiring a different set of skills than other disciplines of climbing or mountaineering. Ice climbing is delicate; requiring precise pick placements, yet enough strength to penetrate the ice. It's spooky to climb a medium that is constantly growing, cracking, melting, and falling down on top of you. A helmet is required equipment. It's not just for safety, it keeps the ice chunks you inevitably let fly from nailing you in the head. Unfortunately helmets (save a few ice specific ones) don't protect your face, leading to more than a few bloody faces, including mine and my partners.
We climbed primarily at the Ouray Ice Park, as the snowpack in the backcountry was avalanche prone due to the recent, heavy snowfall. The Ouray Ice Park is a public climbing area owned by the city of Ouray that allows free access to an entire canyon full of steep fresh ice. The main city water line runs along the top rim of the canyon, and strategically placed water nozzles spray the cliffside at night. After a few months of freezing temperatures and running water, the Ouray Ice Park comes to life. The rumoured beginning of the Ouray Ice Park is that a local with powerdrill drilled a hole in the main city water line, and let it run until an ice climb was formed. Ouray, Silverton, and Telluride are home to countless quality backcountry ice climbs as well. Unfortunately we didn't get on many of them because of the deep snow, but deep snow usually means good skiing instead.

Nice View in Ouray

Looking into the canyon from the upper bridge

Ice tools, carabiners, and an ice screw for anchoring

Of course, it's cold! I swear I'm smiling under all that

Ouray Ice Climbing

2009-01-10T18:46:00.001-08:00

I'm still working on this one

Steep skiing at Silverton Mountain

2009-01-10T17:18:00.000-08:00

After a long day of ice climbing in the Ouray Ice Park, I noticed another vehicle in the parking lot with a unique yellow bat sticker, which is the trademark of the Texas Speleological Society. When I finally got to my car, somebody nearby piped up "So you're the Texas caver?" They noticed my telemark skis in the back of my truck, and the "Ski Taos" bumper sticker on the back , and invited me to ski with them at Silverton Mountain. Silverton Mountain is the only lift-served backcountry skiing in the country. There are no groomers, easy runs, families, or concessions at Silverton, just 3000' of steep powder snow. There is only one lift, and it serves only 2Xblack or Extreme routes.

Steep slopes in the San Juans

It's definitely a unique place; since the slopes are so steep, every skier is required to carry an avalanche beacon, snow shovel, and probe and every run requires at least some hiking to get to. Most of the ski season guides and reservations are mandatory to make sure skiers stay off the avalanche prone areas and hit the best untracked snow. Early season does not require reservations or guides, but you need to ski in groups so that someone can dig you out if there is an avalanche. Silverton Mountain is not a ski resort, it's a ski area. The base area is a tent, there is no running water, and the bathroom is a pit toilet with no TP and no lock. The only food and drink available is sack lunches and the mobile bar. This is where the real skiers ski, no newbies allowed.

The highlights of Silverton were the scenery, the skiing (duh), and the shuttle back to the lift. Since most of the ski runs don't lead back to the only lift, the ski area provides a shuttle back to the base area. The shuttle appeared to be a retrofitted early 80's Fedex van. 30-40 Skiers packed into the back of this van so tight that you can't even move. A few people were even hanging out the front door. Unfortunately I (and many other guys) am 2" too tall to stand upright in the van, so I had to crouch for a few minutes, or deal with a stiff neck.

The fedex van

The group I skied with were all locals, some of them had previously lived and caved in Texas. After the quick hike, I knew I was in for a long day trying to keep up. I managed to keep pace for the first few runs, but by the end of the day I could barely move. I hadn't skied in nearly a year, and my first run of the day was rated extreme, quite a warmup at 9AM. I ended up calling it a day early, and went back to the cabin early to recuperate.

I definitely recommend skiing at Silverton for the experienced skier who doesn't mind skimping on facilities, hiking alot, or riding in a Fedex van. And to top it off, the lift ticket during early season is only $50, compared to $95 nearby at Telluride.

See the complete Silverton Photo Album

San Juan Photos

2009-01-08T21:21:00.001-08:00

Half the photos are up. I'm sleepy, so the rest will be posted later.

Fun in the San Juan's

2009-01-03T18:09:00.001-08:00

It's cold here!

Also, the internet sucks here, so only a few photos got uploaded. I spent a few days climbing in the Ouray Ice Park. The ice is thin this year due to the heavy snowfall, which inhibits good ice devolopment. At the ice park, a group of Texas Cavers saw my bumper sticker and invited me to ski with them at Silverton Mountain. Silverton is a step up from anywhere I've ever skied; It only serves double black runs. Tommorrow will be more skiing at Teluride, and the following days will be backountry ice climbing in the Ouray area.

Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33754295@N03/3164473811/

Yellowstone

2008-12-29T15:41:00.000-08:00

Just a minute, I'm working on this

View Photo Album

Skiing at Taos, New Mexico

2008-12-28T19:45:00.000-08:00

I go skiing almost every spring break with friends/family. Here's a few completely random photos from the most recent trip. They are by no means great photos, but it's what I could dig up on this hard drive. This is one ski run, in reverse order, becasue the stupid program loads them ilogically.

View the complete photo album

View the complete photo album

Mt. Rainier

2008-12-28T17:58:00.000-08:00

My dad, friend Kyle, and his dad John hiked and climbed Mt. Rainier. We did over 50mi. of the Wonderland trail around Mt. Rainier. We spent about a week on the trail, mostly in the rain. After a quick break, we headed out to climb the peak. We climbed a variation of the very common Disappointment Cleaver route. Instead of heading up the Muir snowfield, we headed up the Cowlitz and Ingraham glaciers to the bottom of the disappointment Cleaver.

The Willis Wall on Mt. Rainier, taken from the Wonderland Trail

A few years ago, this was a river of glacial ice, now its a field of gravel. Global warming?

One of our campsites, not far from the top

Little Tahoma Peak from our campsite

Crevasses on the Cowlitz glacier

The very windy summit, as wide as a football field

Where I've been

2008-12-28T12:43:00.000-08:00

This is an interactive map. Cl lick it! The markers contain links to the blogs about them.

Click it, drag it, zoom it, the world is yours to explore

View Larger Map
Updated regularly- and by regularly, I mean occasionally

My Route

2008-12-28T12:11:00.000-08:00

So this is where I am planning on going. I will leave mid August and arrive back in Dallas around July of 2010, just in time to get ready for school again (or postpone adult life 2+ years more). because of a few seasonal time constraints and the need to set a schedule and have tickets purchased to get a few of my visas, I will need to buy all my tickets up till Kazakhstan up front. I'll buy the rest and set a shedule for the rest of the trip as I go.

Click on the map, drag it around, play with it, blah blah . . .

View Larger Map

Rocky Mountain National Park

2008-12-28T10:50:00.000-08:00

We first climbed Long's Peak. The young guys took the very easy but technical Cable's Route. The old guys took the Keyhole Route, which is a long, steep, loose hike with a little rock scrambling. It's crowded in August!

Staring directly at the Cables Route on Long's Peak, which follows right up the center. Photo taken from our campsite.

Climbing the Cable's Route on Long's Peak

The old guys met us at the top. John leads the crowd up the homestretch of Long's Peak Keyhole Route

We also attempted Mt. Ypsilon. The old guys took the Southern Ridge, and the young guys took the Northern ridge, called Blitzen Ridge. Both teams were turned back by an impending afternoon thunderstorm. Blitzen Ridge is lightning prone because of its prominence, and becasue you can't see the clouds coming your way until you're almost to the top, which is exactly what happened to us. We finished all the technical climbing, and had some scrambling left to finish it out. The old guys made it to about the same altitude. We had to do half a dozen rappels, but the rock was terrible quality, so it was a painstaking process to set anchors. It took few hours to rappel maybe 700'

Our rope was a tangled rats nest

A few pitches high climbing Blitzen Ridge on Mt. Ypsilon

Kyle shows his appreciation for long distance rappelling

Interesting formations at the Garden of the Gods

Sufferfest 2007: Grand Teton pt.1

2008-12-27T21:22:00.000-08:00

Sufferfest 2007 was a 3 part adventure: backpacking the Teton Crest Trail, Climbing the Grand Teton, and seeing Yellowstone. For now I'll just talk about the most exciting part, climbing the Owen-Spalding route on the Grand Teton. The Grand Teton is the highest peak in Grand Teton National Park. The Owen Spalding route is a classic route up the back side of the peak. It is a technical climb, requiring most of a full day of technical climbing and an arduous approach hike. I was accompanied on this climb by my friend Kyle, who is studying Outdoor Recreation at the moment.

Since this peak requires both lots of climbing and lots of hiking, we decided to get a head start on it and camp a few miles closer to the technical climbing section. Next day we woke up at 2AM to get an early start, hoping to beat the summer afternoon thunderstorms. The weather was perfect, and we made it to the top with only minor incident.

Kyle feels the effects of a 2AM start

We started out at 2Am to get a head start on the weather, to no avail. We hiked quickly through the darkness, and managed to follow a trail that lead to a boulderfield. The trail died in the boulderfield and went nowhere. We retraced our steps via GPS, but the "trail" fooled us into thinking we were on the right path. Instead we waited until well after 4AM until we spotted some headlamps bobbing in the distance. We sprinted through loose rocks after them, and found our way back to the saddle, where the real climbing begins.

Kyle negotiates the easy "Belly Crawl" with an exhilarating 1000'+ of exposure on his left

Dawn on the Middle Teton, taken from high on the Grand Teton

Proof- A USGS point marker, strangely the altitude is missing?

Our dads hiked in celebratory beers packed in ice for the occasion

Sequoia: Sufferfest 2008 pt. 2

2008-12-27T20:53:00.001-08:00

The first stop on this summers' trip was Sequoia National Forest. Of course it's well known for its trees, but there's so much more. Who would have thought some of the worlds biggest trees, high alpine lakes, and the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states could all be in the same place? It was a beautiful place, rivaling Yosemite and Yellowstone in my opinion.

We took a a few days to hike about 50 miles of the historic John Muir trail, and finishing out on top of Mt. Whitney. The dads dragged along, and eventually everyone made it to the top. The sun was intense, and a t-shirt could be worn until the very top of Mt. Whitney. Almost exactly two years before the whole crew was battling arctic winds on top of Mt. Rainier. Again, I am lazy and don't feel like typing much, so here is few thousand words, in photo form.

Mt. Whitney in Kyle's sunglasses

Camping along Guitar Lake, with Mt. Whitney looming at my back

Night landscape over Sequoia NF

"Leave No Trace"- Everyone is required to poop in a wag bag and pack it out

Yosemite: Sufferfest 2008 pt.1

2008-12-27T20:14:00.000-08:00

Every year my dad, friend Kyle, his dad John, and I take a backcountry trip to a national park in the US. John (60 next year) coined the term "sufferfest," a fitting name. The old guys suffer alot more than the young guys. We stopped by Yosemite after a a week of backpacking in Sequoia National Forest. The weather was picture perfect the whole trip. I will save you the labor of reading too much and stop here (really I'm just lazy). Also, I suck at the html formatting so you're getting centered photos and no text wrapping till I figure something else out. All the photos are hosted on flickr, click the photos, the "Random Photos" bar on your right, or the flickr slideshow at the very bottom of the page.

This was a very brief trip to Yosemite, so we had only time to be tourists, rather than venturing into the backcountry or onto the walls. A few more days and my trad rack (rock climbing anchors for the laymen) would have made this a great trip. For now, we were content to sit and stare while drinking overpriced Margaritas at the Awhnahee Hotel, courtesy of John.

The Awnahee Hotel in the Yosemite Valley

I apologize for the oddly sized photos, I am still trying to learn this, and I am testing out different sizes.

Half Dome from Olmsted overlook, right off the road from Tioga Pass

Half Dome from Glacier Point

El Capitan in B&W from El Capitan Meadows

Maybe one day I'll come back here with my climbing gear, more time, and hopefully stronger fingers. El Cap is a little out of my league right now, but who knows?

See a few more photos on the flick Yosemite set. For now I have a really small upload limit, so there is not much. I plan to upgrade it, so there should be more photos up eventually.

My Trip Plan

2008-12-26T23:28:00.000-08:00

At the end of the summer I will be taking a year off to travel the world. I don't really have any one single reason for taking a trip like this. Maybe its curiosity, maybe its adventure, maybe its itchy feet, maybe its youth. I think George Mallory said it best, "Because it's there!" I will be doing this trip low budget, taking buses and trains wherever possible. The point of the trip is not to see as much of the world as I can quickly, but rather to experience what life is like outside the US.

A rough list of places to go, in approximate order:

-Malaysia A nice and relaxing month or two to see the jungles of Borneo, Teman Negara national park, Bantu cave, and Singapore too

-Indonesia The island of Papua, where tribes of indigenous Papuans still use stone tools. One of the last "frontiers" of human civilization, completely cut off from western influence until recently
-Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan Formerly under Soviet influence, now great travelling though remote and rugged mountains and nomadic life

-China Take local transport from Kyrgyzstan to the historic Silk Road in Western China. Continue riding the trains to Chengdu to see the pandas, and a quick stop by Tibet (pending weather and politics)

-Thailand Hang out, drink a beer, relax, beachbum, catch up on some fantastic limestone climbing, and pick up a few visas

-Cambodia Spectacular ancient history and architecture at temples of Angkor, and horrific modern history under the control of the Khmer Rouge

-India I really don't know what I want to do here. So big! so much to see! Taj Mahal?

-Nepal One of the reasons for the trip at all: hike hundreds of miles for weeks on end through the mighty Himalaya

-Botswana A surprisingly stable nation in Southern Africa, with the worlds largest inland delta, housing wildlife in the marsh

-Zambia Amazing Victoria falls, and elsewhere in Zambia is far off the typical tourist trail

-Tanzania Famous for its parks, wildlife, and beaches

-Kenya Even more famous parks, and a quick tour of Nairobi, one of the most notorious cities in the world

It will be one hell of a year!

Christmas 2008

2008-12-26T19:44:00.000-08:00

This is another test to make sure I actually know how to use this software, so excuse me if it looks like crap.

This is my dad, Hank, and sister, Megan. Mom, Virgina, is in the background. You can see where I get my handsome good looks and witty personality from. This photo was taken on my new camera, a Pentax k200d (it's pretty sweet). We all live in different cities in Texas, so it's not that often that we all get together. Mom and dad live in Dallas, Megan lives in Houston, and I live in College Station.

Aunt Deb visited from Kansa City

Dad dressed up and playing Wii bowling

MERRY CHRISTMAS