We were out watching for the Quadrantid meteor shower last night. Unfortunately we had quite a few clouds blocking the part of the sky that the meteors were supposed to be originating from. After a while the clouds did go away, but even then all we saw were a few very faint meteor streaks, and only one big fireball. Even so, it was a fantastic night to be out stargazing!
[edited to add: Portland Velocipede became a sponsor of this website in January . This post was written prior to that time.]
We were in Portland, Maine (the real Portland!) over the weekend, and stopped by the Portland Velocipede. The establishment is just half a year old, but already an iconic presence.
Portland Velocipede focusesexclusively on transportation cycling. They sell Pashley, Gazelle, Batavus, Abici, Linus, Civia,Brompton and Bakfiets- as well as accessories by Brooks, Velo Orange,Basil, Po Campo,Nutcase, and more. As far as I know, no other bike shop on the East coast outside of NYC stocks this type of merchandise all at once.
The shop occupies a huge, warehouse-style space that was once an art gallery, and they certainly make good use of that space. Almost an entire wing is dedicated to a flock of Pashleys. The Roadster, the Guv'nor, the Princess, and even the Tube Rider - they have them all.
In another part of the shop stands a herd of Gazelles, as well as severalBatavus models (theOld Dutch, the Flyslan, the Bub and the Personal Delivery).
The famous "paperclip bike" (Batavus Bub), suspended from the ceiling.
For me, the main point of interest were the Abicibicycles, which I had never seen in person before. This shot reminds me of the "I want candy" scene in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. The colours, the colours! Well, I have now not only seen an Abici bicycle in person, but have ridden one all over Portland. I will post a test ride report shortly.
I had also never seen a Bakfiets in person before. Those things are beautiful! The Co-Habitant immediately wanted to cart me around in one, but I opted out of that form of entertainment. (Well, maybe next time!)
Instead I examined the Gazelle Toer Populair, which is the contemporary version of my Gazelle A-Touren. It saddened me to see that the Gazelles currently in production are not manufactured in the same manner as my late 1990's model. The "loop connector" is nowweldedrather than lugged, and the seat cluster is partly welded as well. It is still a beautiful bicycle, but why are manufacturers of classic bicycles moving in this direction? I suppose it cuts costs, and they figure customers will not notice or will not care? It is a sad thing to lose such beautiful details. Thankfully, the fork crown on the Gazelle is still lugged and chromed with the little embossed gazelles on it, and its lugwork elsewhere has remained the same as well.
Having now seen Gazelle, Batavus and Pashley side-by-side, I would say that the quality of craftsmanship is by far the highest on the Pashley, with Gazelle in second place and Batavus in third. If I had to buy a new bicycle today and choose from what is available in American shops, I would probably still choose a Pashley Princess (albeit I would now go for the largest, 22" frame).
Whether you turn your eye to the bicycles, to the accessories, or to the clothing,Portland Velocipedeis a sea of gorgeous colours and inviting textures.
As I wandered around the shop I felt as if I was lost in some alternate universe: Too much, too beautiful! Some of the items I knew about, but have never seen in person - and now here they were, all together. Other items were new to me, such as the clothing line by Sheila Moon (pictured above), and a spectacular line of panniers from Linus. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to photograph it all systematically, but I am a mere mortal and cannot be expected to remain calm in this kind of bike shop - so this is what you get. As mentioned earlier, we did extensively test-ride bicycles: I rode a lilac Abici and the Co-Habitant rode a Pashley Guv'nor, so reports are forthcoming.
Amazingly, the charming owners (Gillian and Josh) trusted us not to abscond with their precious candy-coloured inventory - for which we thank them! We also thank them for establishing this wonderful shop in New England, and for all the energy and care they obviously put into it. Portland Velocipede is a magical place and an invaluable resource for those interested in classic transportation bicycles.
(Photo: Coming up the 5.8 pitch one of Mr. P's Wurst.)
So nice to be back home in the Gunks.
After nearly two months away, I longed for the old familiar climbing surroundings.
The overhangs.
The pitons.
The long reaches.
The horizontals.
I was climbing with Margaret on an October Sunday. She wanted some easy leading and our first target was Three Pines. Unfortunately Three Pines at 9 a.m. already had a party of three on the first pitch and another pair at the base waiting to start. This was hardly a surprise on a Sunday during peak season.
My general policy is not to wait for climbs in the Trapps. In my experience, you always find something else open if you keep looking. Sure enough, we went a little further down the cliff and found Minty (5.3) available so we were in business.
Margaret led pitch one. I think this pitch is a great introductory Gunks lead because it has an early move that seems several grades harder than the rest of the climb. This might not seem like an ideal situation for a new leader to deal with, but it happens all the time on climbs of every grade in the Gunks. You have to confront it eventually, so you might as well start to get used to it when you're leading 5.3!
On Minty, the move can catch you by surprise. You start up this little corner. A big shelf is right there for you to grab, just one step up. But the feet are these tiny, polished little half-pebbles. You have to trust your feet just long enough to step up to grab that ledge.
The move should be no big deal.
But it seems totally possible you could fall here.
So you stand there thinking "This is supposed to be 5.3! How can I be such a failure that I am worried about this little move on a 5.3??"
And you psyche yourself out.
And you try this, and you try that, desperate to avoid this tenuous little step.
Finally you just do the stupid move and feel like an idiot.
Welcome to the Gunks.
(Photo: Past the crux on pitch one of Minty (5.3).)
The other hazard on Minty is that you might go up the wrong corner. The climb keeps moving left, and all the corner systems look alike. The first time I did the route, with Liz, she went up too soon, when she should have continued moving left. But if you make this mistake, you'll likely end up on Tipsy Trees, which is another nice 5.3. So no worries.
To stay on track you should look up for the distinctive Minty tree. It is a pine tree over 100 feet up that sticks out sideways from the cliff. This tree is where pitch one ends. If you keep in mind that you are heading for this tree, you should find the correct route.
(Photo: The 5.2 pitch three of Minty.)
Minty has lots to offer. The steep, juggy climbing you'll find in the second half of pitch one and all of pitch two is especially nice. Pitch three goes at a very casual 5.2 and it isn't terribly long, but it too has good moves out from a corner system and then up jugs to the top.
My personal preference for descending from climbs in the Minty/Snooky's area is to walk a short distance to the bolted rap route at the top of the Madame G buttress. Using the bolted rap route guarantees a safe descent and avoids throwing ropes over nervous leaders on very popular climbs. The problem with this method is that the Madame G rap starts from the GT Ledge and you have to follow your nose and downclimb from the top to find the bolts. If you aren't already familiar with the location it will be hard for you to find it. In the past I have spotted the distinctive tree which grows out at an angle from the cliff right next to the rap bolts, but I must have done this at a time of year in which the trees have no leaves. Last weekend with Margaret I couldn't spot the correct tree from the top and I had some trouble finding the bolts, overshooting the right path and having to work my way back. Still, I prefer these few minutes of hunting to rapping off of the manky anchors which come and go atop the cliff.
Coming down, I could see it wasn't going to be easy to get on another three-star classic. The cliff was looking very crowded. There were parties on Madame G's, on Finger Locks or Cedar Box, on Hyjek's Horror, on almost every climb in sight. Was this a nature preserve? It bore a greater resemblance to Occupy Wall Street.
I suggested to Margaret that we do an empty climb right in front of us: Mr. P's Wurst. The climb, which ascends the right side of the Madame G buttress, is almost always open, even though it sits amidst some of the most popular routes in the Trapps.
I've been wanting to get on Mr. P's for some time, in part because I like the name, which Ivan Rezucha and Rich Perch bestowed on the route in the best Hans Kraus tradition.
Hans put up Madame G's (full name: Madame Grunnebaum's Wulst) in 1943. How many climbers understand the bawdy humor in this classic route's name? I'd wager that very few get the joke. As Susan E.B. Schwartz explains in her biography Into the Unknown: the Remarkable Life of Hans Kraus, the name was not inspired by a real person. Instead, Hans looked up at the buttress and saw two bulges up high that-- to his one-track mind-- resembled a woman's bosom. The route he created begins at a pine tree and weaves between the two breast-like features. Grunnebaum is German for green tree and wulst means bulge. Thus the route's name can be translated in full as "Mrs. Greentree's Boobs."
Once you understand the humor in Madame G's name, the meaning of Mr. P's Wurst becomes obvious. The latter route snakes up right next to Ms. Greentree's bulges, and what could be better nestled in those bulges than Mr. Perch's sausage?
Apart from the name, what interested me about Mr. P's was that no one ever seems to do it. It is always open, despite the fact that Dick Williams decided to anoint it with two stars in his 2004 guidebook. Dick also did his part to make the route more accessible, describing a new start from 50 feet up the gully to the right of the buttress instead of the 5.6 R climbing previously needed to get established on the route.
I think this new start is actually one of the reasons the crowds stay away. The gully looks unappealing and from the ground it is hard to see exactly where you're supposed to jump onto the wall.
It looked to me as though the right spot was about five or ten feet below the rap bolts that are on the other side of the gully. We decided to do pitch one of Northern Pillar (5.1) instead of climbing the gully, with Margaret leading up and cutting left near the top of the pitch to set up a belay either at or near the bolts, from which point I'd decide exactly how to get over the gully and onto the wall for Mr. P's.
Margaret ended up building a belay to the right of the bolts, in order to avoid having parties constantly rapping through as she stood there waiting for me. This worked out fine, although I think it would have been okay to use the bolts so long as she set up on the left side of them. It seems to me that when people rap and pull the ropes from above they usually fall just to the right of the bolts. So if Margaret had anchored into the bolts but stood to the left she would probably have been unaffected by the rapping parties. In the final analysis, it would have been simpler just to go up the gully.
(Photo: Approaching the crux of the 5.8 pitch one of Mr. P's Wurst. From the photo you can get some idea how overhanging the final bits of the pitch are. The other climber in the photo is on Madame G's.)
From our belay at bolt level, I traversed to the gully, downclimbed a few moves, and then made the step across to the other side. These moves are easy, but if you do it this way you need to place pro as you step down, and then again at the other side of the gully, if you want to protect your second. Again, probably it would have been better just to go up the gully.
Now I was finally on Mr. P's. The pitch wasn't difficult to follow. Good holds lead up and around the corner until you find yourself on the right side of the face of the Madame G buttress. The climbing is juggy throughout the first pitch, and the rock quality is generally good. The angle gradually steepens until it becomes overhanging for the last ten to fifteen feet of the pitch. The crux move comes at three ancient pitons. I equalized the lower two and then clipped the third one as well, hoping at least one of them would hold in the event of a fall.
A big move up to a bomber horizontal, a good cam, and another move up to a tenuous stance finished the pitch beneath a roof.
(Photo: Looking down from the hanging belay at the end of pitch one of Mr. P's Wurst (5.8). My belayer Margaret is in blue. The climber in red is descending by the bolted rappel route.)
I found the hanging belay suggested by Dick to be rather unpleasant. There are two ancient pins, plus enough horizontals to place a few cams. It isn't unsafe, but it is truly a hanging stance; I couldn't let go with both hands in order to set up my anchor. Equalizing the cordalette and tying it in a knot with one hand wasn't easy.
(Photo: Approaching the hanging belay at the end of pitch one of Mr. P's Wurst (5.8).)
Pitch two is rated 5.7+. I followed Dick's instructions exactly, moving through the roof at the break and then stepping left. The move was fun and well-protected (you can get a good cam in the break in the roof), but I thought it was a big, reachy move, definitely harder than 5.7. It reminded me of the crux moves on Maria Direct and No Glow, both 5.9.
The rest of the pitch was easier, but still good. Getting past another roof on its right side requires a couple more interesting moves, and then the route joins Madame G's to the finish.
(Photo: Just over the roof on the supposedly 5.7+ pitch two of Mr. P's Wurst.)
After I pulled up the rope and put Margaret on belay, she immediately took a fall. Then she seemed to have no trouble climbing the pitch. She told me when she arrived at the top that she'd tried the roof my way, found it ridiculously hard, and then had moved four feet or so to the left, where she found 5.7 climbing up past the roof.
So maybe Margaret's way is the right way to do it, since it is 5.7. But it isn't how Dick describes the route. Personally, I enjoyed pulling the roof, and I did exactly what Dick instructed me to do, but if you do it this way the roof move is the hardest move on the whole route, and the 5.7+ pitch becomes more like a 5.9-. So you make your own call.
I would gladly climb Mr. P's again, but I would do it differently. I would just go straight up the gully rather than deal with the bolted rappel freeway and the downclimb/traverse. And I think I would bring a few extra cams and runners and do it in one pitch all the way from the ground to the finish on the GT Ledge. This would avoid the unpleasant hanging belay. And then you'd get one super long pitch of juggy steep climbing, wholly in keeping with other great climbs on the same buttress, like Columbia (5.8) and Madame G's (5.6).
If you do it this way I'm sure you too will end up a friend to Mr. P.
The sun is out and the temperatures are soaring: 49 at Paradise today! Come out and ski in your shorts.
This week's snow pit was dug just below the bathrooms at Panorama Point. Except for the surface, the top 100 cm of snowcontains6 layers that are all the same hardness and temperature and a mixture of rain crust, ice crust, and rounds. There was about 5 cm of heavy snow on top of a rain crust as of yesterday afternoon. By noon today there was a good 5 cm of slush on top.
Stabililty tests for the snow pit were as follows:
ECTX
CTN
STH @ (15cm) Q2
The weekend forecast shows a drop in the freezing level (finally) and somesnow headed our way!
What a great day. Hiked up the Devil Track River for the first time (I know... one of those things... I've livedin CookCountymy whole life and never gone up there before!), got a LOT of cool new pictures, then headed into Grand Marais and had a late lunch, pizza at Sydney's Frozen Custard, WOW was that ever good! The strawberry banana smoothie made the meal unforgettable! THEN saw a CRAZY COOL storm front come over Grand Marais with some freaky clouds and a lot of lightning. AND last but not least, an awesome double rainbow over the lake as we drove back home to Grand Portage!
Devil Track Riverwas such an amazing, mind-blowingly beautiful hike that I myself can't believe I had never done it before. I had so much fun photographing the many bends and cliffs along the river. We spent almost 6 hours on the river and I could have easily spent 6 more that day. Each curve in the river revealed views even more interesting than the ones we had seen just moments before. Jessica commented that she felt like she was in a different state :-)I can't wait to go back and explore it some more!
During our hike we saw a lot of cool and interesting trees, but one stood out from the rest as being by far the most fascinating. On one bend in the river this large cedar tree was protruding out from the bank and upon closer inspection we realized that the trunk itself was no longer touching the ground at all! This large tree is holding on by nothing more than its roots... due to erosion the soil between the trunk and the bank had all washed away. It was a mesmerizing tree and even had small colonies of ferns growing on some of the larger roots.
After our hike we headed in to Grand Marais and when we arrived in town the weather was absolutely perfect for a late summer/early fall day. Virtually no wind, sunny sky and lots of "popcorn" clouds. A couple of hours later a storm front moved in from the west and before we knew it the sky was dominated by this huge wall cloud that was rolling in overhead. Lightning flashed every few seconds as the storm approached. There was an eerie calm that preceeded the storm, but once the "wall" was over us, the wind hit shortly after and then the rain came. It poured for about half an hour, the wind blew and the lightning flashed. As we drove back home we were following the storm and were treated to a nice display of lightning ahead of us while a rainbow floated out over the lake to our right. By the time the sun went down everything was calm again.
Looking out across the little bay toward the mountains that hide the town of Seaside which was hit by hard storms this winter. It is kind of a neat sight to see all the rocks sticking up out of the water. No wonder there were so many shipwrecks along the Oregon Coast.
Greece is a favourite summer holiday destination of ours and we have become regular visitors to the mediterranean islands in the past years. In Lesvos Island last summer we did a lot of island village expeditions with our rental scooter. Dutchman and I sped on the highways, took the small country-island roads, the tiny narrow village streets and even the off the beaten tracks.
One of the many lovely villages we visited were Vatousa and Antissa in the eastern part of the island.
Vatousa
This traditional village looked so nostalgic from the main road. It reminds me of a place with secrets. Pandora’s box? Elegant, beautiful from a distance yet eerie.
Antissa
Not very far from Vatousa is Antissa. It’s a much bigger town, has more facilities, as well as a thriving local community of old men hanging out in the village square in the afternoons.
This is very typical in the Greek Islands to see men of age gathering together, playing cards, backgammon or whatever games they get their hands on, and drinking coffee. While the older women get some afternoon fresh air by sitting outside their house’s doors.
Here we lost our way (lots of one-way streets!) as we navigated the scooter through the village centre. I like it that the village square is very cozy. The trees have definitely given a different ambiance to the whole place.
Then a local man driving a white Hilux pick-up car came to our rescue. He knew we were lost as we were going around in circles. He motioned us with his hand to follow him. Just before we reached the intersection that would lead us out of the village, I managed to take a picture of him. He has this wide grin across his face as he waved his arm approvingly at us. I hurriedly shouted, ‘Efcharisto!’
Greek people in the islands are very helpful and friendly!
We cannot wait to go back again this summer to the Greek Islands!
