New Years Eve Climbing – a.k.a. an Epic Day
**I was getting ready to make another post and found this half finished one so sorry for the late post **
"I couldn't feel my toes for the first half of that pitch"
"I was wondering what was taking you so long"
Ah the perils of climbing in the cold. It's been a very mild winter this year, which has not helped my ambitions to ski this year, but has allowed for an unusually long outdoor climbing season. For me at least. With the high predicted to be in the mid-40's Brad and I decided to spend a day climbing at Seneca Rocks. One small issue we had to pick Brad's fiancee up from the airport by at 6:30 PM. This meant we had to leave the rock by approximately 3 PM. Would we make it?
There's something different about waking up for climbing. The desire to get out of bed is much more palpable. My alarm went off at 5:30 AM. I was immediately out of bed and getting ready. Glass of water. Make coffee. Crap. Out of Coffee. Not a good start. Two bowls of cereal and three hard boiled eggs and I was out the door.
I opted to dress with a thermal base layer upper, long sleeve pull over t-shirt, and no thermal base layer bottoms but soft shell pants and jacket to hopefully cut the wind.
Made it out in Seneca in decent time. As we drove out we were hit with spritz of rain coming through Petersburg. Not a good sign. We made it out to Seneca under very cloudy skies and damp rock. Unsure of what to do we stopped by the coffee shop to see if they had any updated information about the weather. Hopped on the WiFi and the forecast read about as expected, 40's slight chance of rain but likely clearing. So we took our chances and headed out to rock. We got to the base of Ecstasy and dropped our bags and then hid in the Simple J. Marlakay for the sprinkling to stop.
30 minutes of mixed napping and snacking we headed up to the base of the climb. Brad was racked up and headed up pitch 1 of Ecstasy with the plan of me leading pitch 2 of Ecstasy direct. Belaying him from the base I was in the shade and cold. It got cold. It got real cold. Standing completely still for maybe an hour in the cold with only the minimum amount of weather protection gear. My toes got numb fairly quickly as they were only protected from the cold by a thin climbing shoe. I had the pleasure of being able to watch Brad as he climbed, but it became somewhat torturous watching Brad set the belay anchor. It was a gear only hanging belay so Brad was very cautious in the building of it but sitting in the cold waiting for him was not fun.
As I started up the route, I could barely feel my toes. Finding footing smaller than an inch wide was difficult. The climb itself wasn't that difficult otherwise. I eventually warmed up and made it to Brad without much issue. Most of his pro came out fairly easy. Doing a gear exchange at a hanging belay was a first but went smoothly. Unfortunately Brad used four of the cams on the gear anchor and I found myself missing a lot of gear for the next pitch.
The next pitch was a 5.4-5.5 G climb. Was not too bad as a far as a lead is concerned but the first lead of the day is always a bit tenuous. Though not having a ground fall potential since I was already a pitch up made things a little easier. Reaching the belay ledge of Ecstasy Jr I belayed Brad up without issue. The sun was out a bit more and we were a bit warmer and in better spirits.
I re-racked and headed pitch 2 of Ecstasy Jr. It was a route we had climbed with our guide in the fall. A 5.4 PG (though this section I think was a G). I started up and passed a stuck .4 early on in the climb. As I continued up I moved out to the face instead of the crack a bit and ended a bit off route.
"Uh. Ron..."
I was way off route with no pro. Brad was concerned as was I. It was maybe a 20 foot run out with a serious ledge fall ptoential. Finally getting gear in felt a great feeling of relief. Stay in the crack. The rest of the route wasn't too bad. It's a good protectable route with one solid roof move. The roof move is very protected...once you get the piece in. It's a huge crack that takes a big size hex really well. Problem is as you try to place the hex all your other hexes get in the way. It's also a somewhat sustained placement and I ended up pumping out my left arm quite a bit getting that placement in. Once I pulled the roof I wedged myself in the chimney above it to take a breather.
The rest of the route went with little difficulty. I made the rap rings and rappelled down to clean my pieces. When I got to the stuck .4 I went to work trying to get it out. It wasn't overcammed, but one of the trigger wires had fallend off the pull bar. Some work with the nut tool and I had bootied my first piece of gear. And it was in good condition and will be joining my rack.
Brad lead the same pitch and managed to stay on route. Once he rapped back down we joined the two ropes together and did a two rope rap down to the base. The rap is technically able to be done in a single rope rappel but you end up only making it with stretch. Not wanting to chance it we carried an extra rope up to get us down.
Once on the ground we hauled back to the car. I was first off the rope and rushed back to the start of Ecstasty, grabbed our stuff we stashed, changed shoes. Brad quickly joined and we kept moving quickly back to the car. We made it back to the car, the exact time eludes me, but it was just enough time. It was awesome.
We made it back to Manassas with time to spare so we stopped at Chipotle to pick up burritos. We then made it to the airport just as Renee made the curb side. Mission accomplished.
Headed back home, ate my burrito, napped and then headed out to celebrate the New Year. I think I was out to 2 or so. 21 hours, 310 miles, maybe 300 vertical feet of climbing later. It was awesome. Despite the cold it was a great way to ring in the new year.
Over the Streams and Through the Woods
Sunset at Table Rock, Canaan Mountain, WV (Monongahela)
Spent Memorial Day weekend backpacking on Canaan Mountain, in the Monongahela National Forest. It was an eventful trip. The trip was kind of cluster through and through, but we all made it out safe and sound and with good spirits.
Full album is posted here. Full trip itinerary, planned and actual, to be posted later.
Before Saturday:
The tripped started with just Matt and me. Then Conklin was on the fence about joining and seemed pretty into. The week leading up to the trip is when things started to get mixed up. Matt invited his brother Dave which put us at a party of four. This meant getting a second tent since I only have a three person tent. Fortunately, Brad was willing to loan me his tent and pack as well. Andrew also started to get sick starting in the early part of the week and eventually cancelled entirely on Thursday. Matt also re-injured his knee and was on the fence for the trip all week.
34.5 lbs
Friday night I pack for a solo backpacking trip. I have a bivy instead of a tent and all the supplies I need but am a bit nervous about the whole thing. After playing Portal with Brad for a while I google chat with Matt at 1 AM and we reach a compromise so that him and Dave can come too. Basically, they’d try to go and would see what would happen with Matt’s knee. If he had to bail I was ready to go solo. Seven hours later we’re on our way to West Virginia with two cars since Matt and Dave weren’t sure if they were going to stay or bail part way through.
Saturday:
Given the late night and general mess before the trip even started we didn’t leave Arlington until close to 9:30. We arrived at the first trail head and started hiking about 1:30. Within 50 feet of the start of the trail we hit our first, and certainly not our last muddy stretch of the trail. It has been raining quite a bit for the week prior to the trip so pretty much all of the trail was muddy. Matt and I tore through the mud somewhat leisurely in our boots, but Dave had to dance around quite a bit much to our amusement.
The trail was very very muddy and had numerous puddle / stream crossings which made for an interesting hike.
At 4.5 miles in we reached the intersection of Plantation and Lindy run trails and our first and only water stop for the day. The water in the area was interesting it had a very dark brown, almost tea like color to it. Out comes the water filter and we successfully top off my camelback. We then top off Matt’s camelback. The process of filtering seems to have slowed to a trickle and it’s getting pretty so hard to operate the pump that it's useless. I’m not sure what to make of this. I had just cleaned and sanitized the filter the night before so I suspected that I may have forgotten a part or something. I’ve filtered several gallons of water through the filter before with no such performance decrease.
Filtering water from Lindy Run
Day one is halfway over, we’re over four miles into the woods and we have a broken water filter. In addition, Dave’s starting to feel the pack weight and isn’t all that comfortable despite some fine tuning from Matt.
I look at my stash, I have enough iodine to treat roughly 2 gallons of water and we can always boil water as we need it so we decide to push on. Matt and Dave at this point aren’t even sure if they’re staying more than overnight anyway.
Continuing on we hit more and more muddy spots. We eventually reach a shelter and another stream crossing at about 6 miles in. In the back of my mind I think "this is weird" since we had made the last water stop specifically since I thought it was the last reliable water crossing of the day, and I didn’t recall a shelter being on the trail at this point. But foolishly I ignore that little voice and after some GORP and rest we continue to head on.
Shelter on Railroad Grade Trail. Hmm that's weird.
Continuing on we hit yet another stream crossing. I can’t ignore the little voice anymore and I take our bearing.
We’re heading south. We’re supposed to be heading west.
We’re not where we wanted to be.
After some investigation we figure out where we (really me since I’m leading this train wreck) went wrong. In the trail guide there’s this little tidbit, “The junction with Railroad Grade Trail (TR110) is reached at 6.5 mi. This junction may be confusing because it is not at right angles”. Naturally we ended up going down Railroad Grade trail instead of staying on Plantation trail.
So it’s about 6 PM now, it gets dark about 8 PM, we’ve now hiked about 6.5-7 miles from the car, have a broken water filter, Dave’s pack continues to cause discomfort, and we’re now 4.5-5 miles from where we had planned to be.
We decide to deviate from our original itinerary and hike down Railroad Grade trail and look for a new tent site mentioned by the trail guide to be near the fire road. Can’t find the site they specify, but are able to find a good tent side adjacent to Red Run. Dave and Matt setup an improvised lean-to style shelter using the rain fly from the tent, sticks, stones and trekking poles. We cook dinner with boiled water from the run. Dave attempts to start a camp fire but is unable to due to all the wood being wet.
Lean-to style shelter for Matt and Dave because someone forgot the tent poles.
We didn't start the fire...because the wood was too wet.
We don’t have a good view of the night sky so we just enjoy our time for a bit chatting and making new plans for the next day since our itinerary has gotten all effed up.
As we’re getting ready to go to bed, we notice a spider and a daddy long leg on Matt and Dave’s bags already. I’m feeling pretty good about my bivy but we decide to stuff their sleeping bags into the tent without poles and just have the tent collapse on them to at least create a “bug free” area for them to sleep in.
It’s been one interesting trip so far.
The overnight was interesting. Sleeping in the bivy was new to me, I’ve never done it before and woke up at least once to a attack of claustrophobia. This involved desperate searching for and struggling with the zipper of the bivy before getting my upper body out of it and realizing that I was in fact perfectly safe. Matt had similar problems and ended up rigging a pole to support the empty tent fabric over his face to help. Dave didn’t bring a sleeping pad and kind of had a rough night.
Sunday:
I woke up Sunday and thought about our water situation more and remembered a tidbit about cleaning the outside of the ceramic filter element. So I got up and using a paper towel tried to clean the outside of the filter as much as possible. I then tested the filter out and it was working again! To clarify, the filter itself is a cylinder and the outside of the cylinder is a ceramic filter layer. The water has to flow through the ceramic layer to get to the exit at the center of the cylinder. As the filter gets used gunk gets stuck to the outside layer and to clean it you effectively scrape the outside layer of the filter off. After pumping about 3 quarts of water through the cleaned filter it started slowing down again. So we had to clean it again. In the past I’ve operated the filter for multiple gallons without cleaning in between but I started to suspect that the tea colored water had something to do with it, but I was just happy to have a working water filter again. The tea coloring of the water was making me nervous but I was fairly confident that it was of natural origin. We were above any of the factories or coal mines in the area so worries of heavy metals, pollutants and pesticides were non-existent. When we got home we determined that the coloring of the water was due to tannins in the water (similar to tea). The tannins come from decaying vegetation in the water due to the slow moving nature of the bog. The tannins themselves are pretty harmless to drink and are similar to what is found in tea and wine. The tannins themselves can affect the taste of the water but are not unsafe to drink. Furthermore they wreak havoc on a water filter since it tries to remove them from the water and require a lot more frequent cleaning. This explains all of our issues with the filter from the day before and is something to remember for the future.
Sunday morning we boiled more water from the run for oatmeal, broke camp, and Dave patched up his blistered feet with moleskin. The plan we decided on was as follows. Matt and I were going to hike the three miles along the fireroad to the Table Rock trailhead. Dave was going to hike 2-2.5 miles the other way to get the car and meet us at the trail head. Dave also opted to stash his pack in the woods to make it a little easier on his feet. We planned to spend Sunday night at a campsite near the Table rock vista and we were still unsure about the state of Matt’s knee.
Matt and I headed west and we hit a fork in the fireroad. We weren’t sure if Dave would know which way to go so we made an arrow out of sticks pointing towards the right direction and hoped Dave saw it.
Arrow for Dave
The hike along the fireroad was still quite scenic. It was a narrow fire road with Red Run down a steep hill on our left and trees on our right it was more like a really nice smooth trail than your typical “oh god this sucks so much” fire road walk.
We reached the trailhead before Dave did and set ourselves and packs down against a tree for some shade. Twenty five minutes later and there is still no sign of Dave. I start getting nervous and flag down a random car driving along (there aren’t very many of them). I ask the couple in the car if they saw a black Audi and they said they had. I then asked if they had seen a guy walking towards it and the passenger responded, “oh yeah a guy with a wine flask?” That broke the nerves both because they had seen Dave and the image of Dave walking along the fireroad with only his wine flask was hilarious. Dave had brought along a fake leather wine flask as his only water container for the trip, fortunately Matt gave him a camelback.
About 10 minutes after that conversation Dave pulls up. His trip was a bit longer than we estimated and he stopped to pick up some firewood that he saw along the way. We decided upon the following plan for the afternoon. Matt and I were going to hike Mountainside trail, which my estimate was an 8 mile circuit from the start of the Table Rock trail. Matt was going to ditch his pack contents and just bring his camelback for his knee’s sake, I opted to carry my full pack. Dave was going to hike the 1.2 miles to Table Rock and find and establish camp there. If he wanted to he could return to his car and fish but it was up to him. He wasn’t feeling up to a day hike due to soreness and blisters with our without a pack.
Oh and it turns out Matt and I had sat down on an ant hill.
On our way up to the Mountainside trail head we passed by the car we stopped earlier. They were a little confused at why we were missing Dave again and then promptly showed us a picture they took of a 40” timber rattler they saw in a nearby area the day before. How comforting.
Mountainside trail was poorly signed at the start but we were able to find it. The first two miles were interesting with stream crossings and downed trees but after that it got kind of dull and monotonous. With all the leaves on the trees we didn’t have a view of the valley as I had expected and the trail was either muddy or extremely rocky. The rockiness was annoying and was also bad for Matt’s knee. At about 5 miles in we took a quick break and I started to recalculate the distance, in the end I think we figured out the total circuit was closer to 10 miles. We also determined that we would need to pick up the pace if we wanted to get to Table Rock before sundown.
So we started hauling through the forest and the mud, probably keeping a sustained 2.5-3 mph pace over terrain and elevation change. It was, all in all, a pretty terrible trail for the summer. If the views were not obscured by trees it would probably been a good one. We reached the fire road again within good time and continued our pace up the hill back to the Table Rock trailhead. After two brief stops to top off on water and to re-load Matt’s backpack we made it to the Table Rock at about 7:15 PM.
The view for most of the hike
We found that Dave had set up camp, this time using the tent poles for another tent that they had brought to rig up a basic support structure for the tent. It looked pretty sad.
The view from Table Rock was fantastic. With the valley formed by the Red Run and Dry fork to our left and a small valley formed where Dry Fork and Blackwater river meet on our right we had a nice view of the area. We ate dinner on Table Rock while watching the sunset. We had the place all to ourselves. This was a bit surprising as the view itself is quite accessible. It’s only 1.2 miles from the parking area on the fire road.
After dinner we made a small camp fire and stargazed for a few hours. The number of stars we could see was amazing compared to what we were used to. What was most amazing is we couldn’t see any sign of artificial light. Typically you see at least one house with lights on in the distance, but here there was nothing but a faint glow over the horizon to the south. We also lucked out and there was no sign of the moon. Saw several shooting stars and satellites passing overhead. During our stargazing we talked up thoughts of delicious burgers and decided that burgers were going to be eaten when we returned to reality.
An approximate view of what we saw in the night sky.
We startled a deer on our way back to camp but settled in for bed at about midnight. It was a slightly less eventful but a good day nevertheless.
Monday:
Got up and made breakfast on Table rock again. It was sad to see the view go, but the sun quickly heated things up and made it uncomfortable to stay out there. We broke camp and made the 1.2 mile hike back to Dave’s car and headed home.
Oatmeal with a view
Even the drive home is pretty nice. Driving through the Canaan Valley area is fantastic, large open fields, woods and mountains. Occasionally you see a large coal power plant or mines but even those are pretty interesting to see. It’s a slightly windy road with lots of stuff all around to look at. Most interesting to me are the number of wind turbines on the mountainsides. It’s an amazing sight seeing giant turbines spinning on a mountain top. I’m sure there are those that think that it destroys the view but I kind of love it.
We stopped briefly in Petersburg, WV to take a dip in North Fork South Branch Potomac River. Lots of families were out too and Dave and Matt went for a dip and I skipped rocks and waded in up to my knees, not wanting to get fully soaked with two hours left to drive.
We got back to Arlington about 4, got showers and headed to Ted’s Montana Grill since Hellburger appeared to be closed. That was one fantastic burger and a very perfect ending to a great weekend of misadventures.
Delicious
Overall:
This trip I tried to go lighter with my pack weight, trying out Brad’s lighter pack as well as using only a bivy and a lighter sleeping pad and bag. Overall, I felt much better than previous backpacking trips. However, I’m not sure if that’s attributed to the lesser pack weight, the reduced elevation change, my better physical conditioning or all of the above. I think I’ll keep trying to keep my pack weight under 40 lbs in the future, it just feels so much better all around. I didn’t even have sore spots on my hips like I have had in the past!
Table rock was fantastic, definitely recommend it and it’s pretty accessible. However, overall the trip was kind of boring. The trails were really muddy and though it was neat seeing the lush green forest, we were never that far from the fire road and really we could have done all our hiking as day hikes from car camp sites. So really we were backpacking solely for the sake of backpacking. I do enjoy the process of backpacking so it was still enjoyable however I’d like to focus future trips, especially multi-night ones, to try to get to places that you can’t easily reach as a day hike.
The misadventures made the trip more interesting and I’m fortunate that my companions are easy going, roll with the punches types and were in general cool with the whole “we’re not where we wanted to be, the water filter is broken, there’s no tent poles” thing.
It was just nice being away from it all. I thought briefly how I’d much rather be on the muddy viewless trails of the Mountainside trail than in my car as I drove into work on Tuesday morning.
I can’t wait for my next backpacking trip.
Backpacking Itineraries – Thornton River / Devil’s Staircase – Shenandoah
I've recently been planning a backpacking trip to the Monongahela and I was reminded how much of a pain in the butt it is to plan one of these things. With that in mind I decided to go back and post my old itineraries for my own reference as well as anyone who may come across this site.
Trip Summary:
- Circuit Hike
- 2 days
- 1 night
- 16 miles
- Elevation change: roughly 2000 feet from max to min.
- Numerous water stops
- Shenandoah National Park
Reference Material:
I'd recommend using the following for reference
- PATC Map 9 - Covers the area in question. If you do lots of hiking in Shenandoah the whole Shenandoah national park set would be useful. An alternate would be to use the National Geographic Shenandoah Map. I encourage you to use the PATC map, it helps support the local trail builders that make a trip like this possible. Also, because PATC splits the park in multiple maps you get better resolution.
- PATC Appalachian Trail Guide Book - A good additional reference, but by no means an absolute necessity.
- Hiking Upward: Little Devils Stairs - This backpacking trip utilizes a combination of this hike and
- Hiking Upward: Thornton Hollow
- Google Maps for Parking
Other:
The hike involves several water crossings. When we did it in the April we had water up past the knees at points so water shoes and or trekking poles are recommended. You will need to pick up a permit at the entrance to SNP to camp overnight. The closest place to get that is the Thornton Gap / Panorama entrance of the park. There is no fee.
Hike Segments:
| Start | Via | End Intersection | Segment Length | Sub Total | Notes |
| Parking | Little Devil | Little Devil / Pole Bridge / Keyser | 2 | 2 | Water falls |
| Little Devil / Pole Bridge / Keyser | Pole Bridge | Sugar Loaf / Pole Bridge | 0.4 | 2.4 | |
| Sugar Loaf / Pole Bridge | Sugar Loaf | Sugar Loaf / AT | 1.4 | 3.8 | |
| Sugar Loaf / AT | AT | AT / Thornton River | 5.6 | 9.4 | |
| AT / Thornton River | Thornton River | Thornton Hollow / Hull School | 3.2 | 12.6 | Water should be accessible along length
Last .6 miles of this trail include 4 water crossings which may require water shoes depending on water level. |
| Thornton Hollow / Hull School | Hull School | Hull School / Keyser | 2.2 | 14.8 | |
| Hull School / Keyser | Keyser | Parking | 1.2 | 16 |
We ended up camping on Thornton river trail. It was after a bit of a descent so you'll be pretty worn out from basically climbing up hill all day. The location we picked was adjacent to a tributary to Thornton river, so it was a nice easy access to water at night. Please observe the SNP dispersed camping rules when selecting your tent site:
No camping...
- Within 10 yards of a stream or other natural water source.
- Within 50 yards of standing building ruins including stone foundations, chimneys, and log walls.
- The parkland has a rich cultural history. Camping in the area of former homesites impacts the preservation of those resources.
- Within 50 yards of another camping party or "no camping" post or sign.
- Within ¼ mile of a paved road, park boundary, or park facilities such as a campground, picnic area, visitor center, lodge, wayside or restaurant.
- Within 100 yards from a hut, cabin, or day-use shelter. You may camp in a hut or cabin as described in this bulletin. Camping may occur in park-constructed designated campsites at Appalachian Trail huts.
Summary:
The hike itself is good. It's a bit strenuous as you spend the first part of it climbing. It's an exhausting first part of the day. Your joy of reaching the top is a bit muted since at the top you're right next to Skyline drive.
View at Skyline drive from the Appalachian Trail
You'll see lots of people who drive up to the top instead of walking the 1400'+ to get the view that you did. But they didn't get to enjoy the small cascading waterfalls for Little Devil's Stairs. Heading back down from the AT you'll see a cool rusted out old truck. The last day on Thornton River trail you'll perform numerous water crossings. When we went in April the water level was pretty high and made crossing a bit on the difficult side.
Crossing Thornton River - One of the lower water levels. The water was COLD.
The above pictured was a much lower one. There were ones that went up to the knee pretty easily. Either way would definitely recommend water shoes or similar.
For a trip in Shenandoah, it's a good backpacking trip, there's plenty of access to water so you don't need to carry that much water. For better or for worse, the trip crosses right by the Matthews Arm campground area so if you really wanted to you could use a primitive latrine style bathroom on the hike. Like most hikes in Shenandoah you're never that far from Skyline drive, so you're not going to be alone by any extent, but you won't see too many people on Thornton river, at least we didn't.
18 Hours Later
50mm, f/6.3, 1/250, ISO100, gridded-snooted-strobe directly above
Driving back from West Virginia after a long day of climbing is both exhilarating and exhausting. The windy mountain roads of US Highway 33 quickly turn into long stretches of tree lined asphalt. Darkness just beyond the range of your headlights, small rises and dips in the road seem like driving into a black hole. But that's exactly what Brad and I did.
We departed our apartment complex at 6:10 AM, picked up Mark and Shannon and headed to West Virginia. A quick stop in Front Royal, a location we're familiar with after visiting Buzzard Rocks a few times, and we were pushing over the mountain into WV, reaching just over 3400' as we hit the state border. We made another pit stop at a gas station with fried chicken at 10 in the morning then headed down the very bump River Gap road to the crag. Some stretching and re-jiggering of packs and we headed up the trail to the crag.
Along the access trail was mid-atlantic limestone walls varying from 30-90 feet. Incredibly featured, perfectly parallel cracks on some. Giant perfectly formed hand holds on others. It was awesome to see. We also were completely alone. First ones to the crag. Achievement unlocked.
17mm,f/3.2,1/50,ISO100
17 mm, f/3.2, 1/50, ISO100
17 mm, f/2.8, 1/60, ISO100
Our solitude didn't last much longer and we were soon joined by fellow climbers. It's a bit strange seeing someone you see weekly 3 hours away from where you normally see them. But that's climbing, it's a pretty small community with an even smaller selection of outdoor crags. Mark and Brad both sent some solid routes on lead. Shannon cleaning an sport climb for the first time, as well as learning and trying out outdoor lead belaying. She even caught a staged outdoor lead fall. I managed to drag myself up a 70 foot 5.9, and did a mock lead of sorts to get the feeling for it back. It went okay, I need to work on my clipping more.
Hiking out from the crag to a waning sun, we repacked the cars and headed to get some grub. We stopped at the Fireside Cafe in Franklin and enjoyed some pretty delicious food. I had half a BBQ'd chicken. It was sweet and tasty. Much different than the last BBQ'd chicken I had at the Hitching Post in California. Either way it was still delicious. Though really pretty much anything would have been fantastic at that point.
Brad and I had planned on camping with the group overnight and then heading back in the morning since we both had plans in the afternoon. However we realized that it would have been equally miserable trying to drive back in the morning. Now we not only had to drive but we had to setup and tear down the tent, a non-trivial amount of time. I had planned on camping because I enjoy the act of camping. Sitting around BS'ing, ideally with some sort of fire and booze. However, this was camping in the sense of sleeping outside in a tent. We were all zonked out from a day of climbing that we were pretty much going to get to the tent site, setup and go to sleep. There would be no BSing. No booze. Just sleep. At that point, with no climbing the next day, there wasn't much keeping us there. We'd save an hour or so of camp setup / tear down by heading home getting a nice warm shower in and sleeping in our own beds.
So at 9:15 PM, standing in the parking lot of the Fireside Cafe headlamps aglow, we swapped gear and made sure Mark and Shannon got all of there stuff. After some quick good byes and we were on the road racing back to Arlington. After one stop in New Market for gas and red bull we got back to the apartment complex at 12:30 at night; more than 18 hours after we left it. Tired. Smelly. Ready for bed. It was humorous seeing everyone else's Saturday night just getting started at Tarbouch across the street as we were getting ready to end ours.
Overall it was a great trip. Franklin is a unique area that's not that far and I'd like to go again. So many climbs on rock with incredible features. Now I just need to step up my game so I can actually climb them.
Pics from the day are posted here: http://ronsprojects.com/gallery/index.php/Franklin-WV-04-22-11---Sportclimbing
They were really difficult to post process and shoot. The dynamic range isn't that high on the D7000 and trying to get a good shot were half the scene is in sunlight, or worse just spots of sunlight, and the other half is in shade is pretty difficult. There are more shots still to be posted from the F5, I'm waiting for the film to get developed.
These Hands
Calluses everywhere. (35mm,f/5.0,1/200,ISO100)
I've been climbing pretty frequently the last few weeks. I've managed to progress quickly and am getting closer to where I left off last time. I'm sending 5.9 pretty consistently now. When I stopped climbing I was sending 5.10 pretty consistently. I definitely have room to grow, I've been watching Mark send 5.11's on lead now and here I am working 5.9s on top rope.
The result of all this climbing is a feeling of awesomeness, but also torn up hands as illustrated above. They get torn up both internally indicated by muscle and hand soreness and externally in the form of calluses. I tend to develop pretty thick calluses on my middle through pinky fingers palm and first joint. These calluses protect the skin from the abrasion so you'd think it's a good thing. However the downside of a callus is that they will sometimes tear and form a flapper. (Here's a photo of one, it's kind of gross: flapper) So those suck. After tearing two flappers off already I decided to see what I could do to protect my skin a bit.
After a little research the indicators are that
- Thick calluses are bad and tend to rip - When calluses get good and thick (like mine) they tend to become inflexible and rip as a whole piece. You should try to reduce the size of your calluses by sanding them down with fine grit sand paper or a pumice stone.
- Dryness destroys the skin - Dry skin tends to rip.
So with this in mind I purchased a handy pumice stone from CVS. (That was a bit of an awkward purchase) Though after my first use I think I will be getting some fine grit sandpaper instead. The pumice is on the rough and inconsistent side of things for my taste. I also purchased some Metolius Climber's Hand Repair Balm. I have also read good reviews for ClimbOn! products as well, but they didn't have them at my local REI. Hopefully those two combined with being better about moisturizing after climbing will keep my hands in better shape. Will update when I come with some results.
Shooting a Satellite
So this week my former program manager at work gave me a 1/16th scale model of the satellite I spent the last ~5 years working on. Unfortunately, the satellite ended up going into the ocean due to a launch vehicle failure so it was all for naught. The satellite represented a lot to me. It was my first job out of college, it was my first satellite I worked on and I personally put in over 10,000 man hours to get the satellite off the ground. For better or worse, it was a major defining characteristic of my life for my last few years. To get a scale model of it was pretty freaking awesome and meant a whole lot more than the pin I'll be getting for hitting my 5 year anniversary. I was elated to receive it. Thank you so much Mark.
Once I got the satellite built, which was much easier than the real deal, I decided I wanted to take a picture of it. Of course, in my recent photo kick I decided to go all out and get the off camera flashes out as well and try to use some of the things I had read about on Strobist. In the end, it wasn't a particularly difficult light setup but it was a learning experience.
Light setup
For this photo I wanted the satellite to be out in the dark floating in space, so I didn't want a background at all. So I used my black ottoman and couch as the stand and backdrop for the satellite. I mounted the D7000 with the 50 prime on the tripod and adjusted the settings and took a few shots. Pure black for 1/100 @ f/7.1. This was ideal since it meant I didn't have to worry what little bit of ambient light there was.
After making sure there wasn't any ambient light in the exposure, I setup a strobe on a lightstand with a shoot through umbrella about 3 feet in front of the satellite. It tried to make it centered on the body of the satellite. I then adjusted the solar array angles to reduce the hotspots reflected off of them. The one umbrella stand strobe alone I had the following.
Satellite illuminated only with shoot through umbrella
Pretty good right? Things were pretty evenly lit, but there were still some hard shadows on the right side of the satellite. To fix this I placed another flash, this time with a snoot to line up with that face of the satellite facing down the array wings. This light would bring some much needed fill lighting to fill in the shadows, I think it would be considered a kicker. It's contribution to the picture is below:
Photo showing the kick lights contribution
The two lights when combined formed a relatively evenly lit image.
The final picture (50 mm @ f/7.1 1/100)
For the final image (slightly tweaked and with some background elements photoshopped out) see my Photoblog. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I'm still painfully bad at setting up external flashes, but it's a learning process. Only thing I would have done differently would maybe try to light up the base a bit to make it stand out, but that seems really tough to do without lighting up the ottoman as well.
If you're wondering what this type of setup looks like in my living room, it looks like this. The orange mat thing in the background is a crash pad, and yes my place is messy.
Take a picture of a picture?
I met Steph at Mark and Shannon's Cinco de Mayo gathering. During the evening the idea of taking pictures of her artwork for her portfolio / webpage came up. This seemed like a fun little challenge so after exchanging a few e-mails I headed over to her place in Silver Spring to take a few pictures of her artwork. I wanted to do it primarily because if there's one thing I don't get to use often, it's the shoot through umbrellas and light stands and other off camera flash stuff that I've acquired through the years of my interest. I wasn't sure what I would need so I brought anything I thought I might need. I bolded the items I actually ended up using.
- 2 - SB-600s
- SB-800
- 2 - Light stands
- 2 - Shoot through umbrellas
- Tripod
- Snoot
- Honeycomb grid
- 50 mm
- 105 mm micro
- 35 mm
- 17-55 mm
- 14 mm
- Remote IR trigger
- A bagillion batteries (yes I counted)
- various gels
- polarizer and step down rings
- D7000
- D40
- Lens cleaning stuff
So yeah I was rolling heavy. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, or how to go about this. It seems pretty trivial enough set artwork up, illuminate correctly take picture. So I went about this by setting up the two SB-600s with shoot through umbrellas about 60 degrees off each the center line of the piece hung on a wall. Seems like it makes sense right? Shoot through umbrellas give a nice soft light, between the two of them you should be able to cover the full width of the piece right?
Well, that didn't quite work out. The initial result is below. Huh, what the heck is going on?
Result of initial light setup. (Exposure reduced to highlight the effects of the umbrellas)
Well what ended up happening is the nice soft even light of the shoot through isn't quite as nice and soft. It's pretty diffuse really and that's a nice quality when you're trying to illuminate someone's face, but in this case it wasn't really desirable.
The highly reflective glass was reflecting a lot of the light back from umbrellas, but most annoyingly the umbrella was leaving very visible shadows of the support structure.
So crap. Scrap that idea. I tried to adjusting the angle of the umbrellas but was a bit limited by the space and it wasn't really cutting it. Options I considered at this point:
- Remove the cover glass - reduces the reflections of the light, but would be kind of a pain for all of the pieces.
- Polarizer - Not sure if this would actually work but would restrict the light to a orientation, however I suspect the light reflecting off the glass isn't polarized in any one particular direction
- Try a different light setup.
So I went with the third option. I removed the umbrellas and reflected the two lights off of side walls and ceiling of the dining area. This seemed to do the trick pretty well. The artwork was evenly illuminated, there didn't seem to be any harsh shadows being cast.
The new light setup with SB-600s reflecting off of the walls with no light modifiers.
Highlighting reflections and hot spots being reflected. (Exposure adjusted to highlight bright spots)
However upon further inspection, I noted a few bright spots circled in the picture. The lower bright spot closer to the center of picture I determined from the on camera SB-800. This was used to command the other SB-600s. That was a pretty easy fix, I turned the head of the SB-800 around and the spot disappeared. I was surprised by this since the SB-800 was acting only as a master so it shouldn't have been providing light, but only using it's light to command the other flashes. But I guess by the time the picture is taken it is still on.
The top bright spot was a little tougher to figure out. Eventually determined that it was a reflection off of a light fixture. This was fixed pretty easily with some tape and a large piece of paper and tape to cover it up.
With that fixed it was pretty straight forward to get through all the pieces. Steph did all the work at that point. I just reframed the picture and took a few at different exposures. We whipped through most of the pieces pretty quickly.
The last piece we shot was a piece that was glass framed, but was not able to be hung. So I figured we could put it on the ground and using the horizontal configuration of the tripod take a picture looking down over it. I positioned the camera over the piece and reflected the lights off the ceiling. Sounded flawless.
Shadow of the tripod in the artwork. (picture adjusted to highlight shadows of tripod)
...except my tripod and camera aren't transparent.
So we ended up propping the piece up on a table and shooting it with similar lighting as the other pieces.
All in all it turned out pretty well. Took about two hours from start to finish including a lot of time of toying with the lights, for 20 pieces this wasn't too bad. Some amusing notes:
- On several occassions I was reviewing the image on the LCD and noticed something weird, most times it was the art with a different texture
- I didn't even really look at the pieces until I was pushing them through post. Even then I was really just looking at the highlights and shadows. Probably should eventually go through them and actually look at them.
- I ended up taking about three shots of each piece with different exposure levels with the plan of picking out the best when viewed on computer and then tweaking the pictures while I converted the RAW files. This leaves a bit up to me to figure out how to balance the colors of the pieces so I took a good hack at it and hope Stef was happy with the way her art was presented.
- I shot the pieces with the 50 mm. Most of the shots I ended up using were at ISO100, f9-10, 1/200 or so. I didn't look up the MTF charts for the 50 mm, if I had I would have seen that the peak sharpness of the lens is at f5.6-f8.0. So I probably should have shot in that range instead. Not to say the 50 prime was soft at this aperture, it just could have been sharper.
Blog Plans and Photography
So I recently restructured the Ronsprojects.com domain. I did this for several different reasons. The first and foremost was that I wasn't using it. The setup of having multiple sub-blogs within a blog was frankly kind of dumb. It was confusing at best. I didn't have enough content to sustain one blog let alone 3 or 4. Most of those projects were flash-in-the-pans and didn't really require a long term blog. They also just didn't last.
So my goal here is to post blog posts with tags separating each project as I work on it. I can't imagine there will be that many projects, the bulk of my free time is currently spent primarily on climbing, running, and just keeping my life together. But hopefully I'll be able to work on some of these side projects a bit.
Some ideas for projects most of which will likely not see any actual progress:
- Weather prediction accuracy - I've always been pretty curious about how accurate weather predictions are several days out. Also would like to compare predictions between the different agencies.
- DIY Steadicam - There are existing projects for this but thought it would be neat to build them and actually test them using accelerometers and such. This one is probably a stretch.
- Dryers - The dryers in my building seem to vary alot on performance. Let's find out which ones suck less
I"ve got others but I'm kind of brain dead right now. So all really small projects, but we'll see what I can find time and resources for.
In other news, I've added a gallery3 gallery here. It's not at all setup yet, so that's a work in progress. I'm still not sure what gallery set I'd like to use, but gallery3 is the first that I'm evaluating. I'd also like to try Zenphoto and others. My goals is to stop posting photos just to facebook and having them here a little more. For example, I'd like the "Cinco de Mayo" post to have a link to the full gallery of the event, with the full resolution images for other people to see and maybe other images that didn't necessarily make a blog post. Also, like to build a gallery of images that might not fit a blog post . So yeah, I'm on a photography kick, so I'm trying to learn more about the techniques and creating a more professional interface than say facebook.
With that in mind I've been mulling over the idea of a photo-a-week / two-photos-a-month project. Tangent, I use "project" very loosely. The idea is to generate a list of photo types that I'd like to shoot and force myself to shoot them. Examples include, street photography, macro, star trails, focus stacking, brenizer technique, car photography, portrait photography, etc etc etc. So many different techniques and styles that I haven't really tried that I think would be good try, however if I don't set up a structured plan for it I likely get to do it at any speedy time frame.
In other news I was recruited by a friend of a friend to shoot some of her artwork. I'm pulling out all the stops for this one and have prepped the flash heads, packed the umbrellas and a selection of lens. I'm actually also bringing out the old D40 to shoot setup and blog shots as well. That's tomorrow. I'm excited.
That's it for now.
Cinco de Mayo
Cinco de Mayo is one of those "holidays" that I love to celebrate, but also would love to hate. It's a holiday in that it's a celebration of Mexican heritage in the United States. It is only celebrated nationally in the United States and is celebrated regionally in the the state of Puebla in Mexico where the Battle of Puebla took place. It is not, as it is often described, the Mexican Independence Day. That would seem weird to celebrate, but we celebrate some pretty strange holidays.
Oddity about the history of Cinco de Mayo it is a good excuse to meet up with friends and enjoy some food of the culture being celebrated. Last year I made the EPIC mistake of trying to do this by going a tex-mex restaurant in the area. Nothing like waiting for over an hour for a table to enjoy a rushed dinner in a loud room full of the typical drunk young urban professional that is found native to Ballston.
Since last year some things have changed. I've started to cook a lot more, and cook more interesting food. That said I 've also been on a bit of a taco kick. This has been helped alot with the Mark Miller's book Tacos. I've cooked quite a few tacos from his book and they've all turned out fantastic. So I highly recommend it to folks. Anyway, there's a particular taco recipe titled "Skirt Steak from Zacatecas" that I've made I think three or four times that is absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, it's a bit on the time consuming side requiring making a sauce and marinade from scratch. Not to mention if you try to make it in a poorly ventilated kitchen you will have tons of smoke and cover your range in grease stains. Fortunately I do have some really excellent friends who have access to an outdoor grill. So Mark and Shannon ended up hosting Cinco de Mayo at their apartment. I brought some salsa and refried beans and they provided the delicious tacos. It was a good trade in my book.
So Mark and Shannon played host to Cinco de Mayo this year and I decided to bring along my camera. This is the result.
The preparation and gathering took place in the apartment. Mark and I moved down to the grill area of the apartment building to start the grilling.
Mark loads up the grill grid bowl thing with vegetables.
We started with just the potatoes cooking since they take forever but added a colorful smorgasboard of other veggies.
Raw deliciousness.
Finally the steak which had been marinated overnight hit the grill. Delicious meaty spicy smoke filled the area and I drooled all over the camera.
Delicious delicious steak on the grill now.
The vegetables off the grill lacked a little char so Shannon finished them off upstairs.
Shannon flipping vegetables like a boss.
Delicious noms spread out for feasting.
Veggie noms.
The final steak deliciousness. Picture doesn't do justice to how delicious these are or how good they smell.
Lucas and Stef enjoy a post dinner margarita.
...and after that the pictures just kind of go down hill. I had a great time, thanks Mark and Shannon for hosting and preparing so much delicious food. It was fantastic!
First Post
Okay, so I don't think this will replace the photoblog interface. I've yet to find a theme that really combined a photoblog and a text based blog very well. This is my new blog. It's a work in progress.