Long Time No Blog

Hey everybody! Well, my apologies for not blogging in about 3 weeks. It has been a completely insane whirlwind to say the least. On August 1st, Alex passed away. He lived a remarkable life, and I will certainly carry memories of him with me for the rest of my life. I was scheduled to fly home on August 5th, but had to scramble my flights to get home by Saturday. After 3 flight changes and a missed flight Saturday morning, I finally got into the air on my long adventure home. I was pretty sure the entire day that Alex was watching over me, making sure that I a) made all my connections that were exceptionally tight and b) putting on quite a weather show along the way. Flying south through the Southeast Alaska panhandle, there was a beautiful marine layer in place, which made for an amazing under-cast with mountains poking through:

After my flight from Juneau arriving in Seattle 45 minutes early and my flight to Chicago being delayed by an hour, my 12 minute layover became a bit easier :-) On the flights over to Chicago, I was treated to yet another thunderstorm, but forgot to take my polarizing lens for most of them, so the pictures weren't so great. But it was still a cool storm:

My flights in Chicago got delayed enough to allow a 30 minute layover, which equated to 2 of 3 bags getting left there, but it was cool because the bag that arrived in Baltimore with me was the one full of clean clothes :-) Also, when arriving in Baltimore, we were skirting along the edge of another thunderstorm, which made for quite the light show.

The night that I arrived in Baltimore, we promptly drove to Virginia, and then down to Columbia, SC the next morning. The services for Alex were quite beautiful, and then we spent a few days down there hanging around with all his extended family and friends. On Tuesday we drove back home, and then on Thursday we drove up to Cape Cod. The drive up was AWESOME because we got run over by a bunch of thunderstorms over Connecticut, and I was very happy. I also (naturally) took way to many pictures...but here are some of the highlights:

T-Storm over NYC Skyline

Cape Cod was very nice...lots of time on the beach, playing tennis, playing golf, and hanging out with my extended family.
After some nice R & R, we returned home. In short, it was several thousand miles of travel in one week...but all well worth it.

A call for Prayer

I haven't really done this before with my blog, but I would like to take this time to ask all of you to please pray for my best friend Alex.

He has been battling cancer for nearly 3 years, and has fought an inspirational fight. However, as cancer so cruelly does, it is beginning to win and Alex is approaching what may be the sunset of his life. As of recent days it has become quite a struggle, and I ask if you could all pray that he is able to push forward in peace and free of pain, and take whatever path is best for his spirit. He has lead an inspirational life for all of us, and he has been an integral part of my life since I was 3. He has been like a brother to me, and I can't even imagine a life without him in my life.

Again, even if you don't know him, please pray or send positive thought for him in these difficult times, and also for his parents (Julie and Tom), his sister (Maggie), and all his family as they push through this tough situation.

Thank you

Sailing Sailing over the silty blue

Ahoy everybody! Okay, no more pirate talk from my end :-) But I finally got to go sailing in SE AK!!!! This weekend was a blast! I participated in the Admiralty Cove Rendezvous, and crewed on a boat called 'Joy Spring'. The boat was an Ericson 38, and it was myself and two other guys. We woke up Saturday to BEAUTIFUL weather -- sunny skies are something that have been few and far between here in July. It began to cloud up during the race, but luckily the rain held off until after we were done. The race down to the cove ended up being a downwind leg, so up went the kite! We were definitely hauling on the leg -- 10.5 kt in an 18 kt wind! Anywho, the scenery there was quite beautiful, and I was very happy to be out on the water. I was hoping during the trip to see a brown bear, but before I had the chance for that, I was treated to another site I had wanted to see the past two years -- Orca's!


The whales were a lot of fun to watch and very beautiful. They were popping up out of the water to see what all us sailboats were up to, and even were jumping! I didn't get any pictures of the jumping :-( , but it was still really neat. I also got some fun pictures of the other boats in the fleet, as well as Brian and Rob, my fellow sailors:

One thing also worth mentioning -- our finish line was Skull Island. I just thought that it was totally awesome, and naturally took a picture of it when time allowed:


Once we arrived in Admiralty Cove, we anchored up (with much difficulty), and set about relaxing and enjoying the nicer weather while it lasted. That night, all the boats headed onshore where we had an awesome beach party. There was BBQ, fires, and lots of yummy beverages ;-)

On Sunday, we woke up to wicked wind and rain, and knew it was gonna be an interesting day. This part of the race would be upwind, and for a while it was into a 25kt wind. We were definitely hauling (7.5kt upwind), but the rain certainly got a bit miserable after a while. One thing that did keep us going was both being in the lead and seeing a ton of humpback whales throughout the passage! Eventually, right when we didn't want the wind to die, it did, and in the end it became a 7 hour marathon to get to the finish line. I'm not sure what the final results were, but it appeared that we got a 1st and a 2nd, so no complaints there! On the way in, the USS Juneau was in port as well on their grand tour before getting decommissioned. So, I naturally took lots of pictures of the ship and Juneau in general. Here is a bunch of pictures of the boats in our fleet as well as after the finish:


Oh, and no Grizzly :-( All the more reason to find one this week, or to come up again in the future :-)

Quick Update!

Hey everybody! Just wanted to let you know that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth -- the weather has just been kinda nasty here in Juneau. Last weekend I ended up seeing 'The Dark Night' (New Batman movie) on Saturday, thinking the weather was going to be nasty. Instead, I come out of the theater, and the sun is out! So, being a man of opportunity (and feeling quite guilty about wasting sunshine), I looked around me for a hiking trail, and ended up heading up to the Mt. Roberts Tram. It was a fun time -- a muddy hike though -- but I meet some really nice people from Montana in the bar at the top, and had a good time chatting. Sunday was more of the same kind of weather (i.e. 52 and rain haha), so I just chilled all day and did some work. This week has been busy at work, and I've been getting to know a few more people on campus -- it's just too bad I hadn't run into them before. The big (and fun) news is that I'm FINALLY going sailing this weekend! I'll be heading out for a 2 day race down to Admiralty Cove on a 38 ft boat, and am quite pumped. Apparently they have an awesome beach party too, which is pretty sweet. A final plus is that Admiralty Island is COVERED in Grizzly Bears (which is why a boat is awesome b/c they can't get me), and the pinks are running, AND our overnight location is at the mouth of a decently big stream on the island. In short, I really really really hope that I'll finally get to see the elusive Grizzly that I've wanted to see the past two years. As you can tell, I'm excited. Stay posted for updates early next week!

squish squish!

A bit of a shorter hike this weekend. It was a fun but very wet way to get back out on the trails after the big hikes of last week. The hike was up to Spaulding Meadows, which is quite close to where I live on campus. It was a pretty gentle grade which my knees much appreciated given that they haven't been too happy the past week or so. This trail makes for some pretty sights, but it also heads across a marsh/bog, so my boots were quite wet by the end.

The first part meandered through the woods, which was much like the other trails around the area. There were some very neat streams, and the trail would definitely be one to check out via mountain bike (although short).


After a while, it began to open up into the meadows, giving for some nice looks back toward the channel as well as for some neat stunted trees. Most of this hiking shifted over to planks, which was much appreciated as we would later find out.


Further up the trail, we began to hike through mud and marsh, and it was fun, but very wet and messy. However, a little mud never hurt anyone! In the upper meadows we were treated to both a porcupine and some of the orchids that grow in some of the fields and woods around here, which was very neat. It was a bit tough to enjoy everything in the meadows however because it was a prime area for bears, so caution had to be used!



Definitely a fun hike, but one that won't likely be repeated without xtratuffs!

Lace 'em up and hike!

This past weekend was probably the hiking culmination of the summer, with Paul and I completing our 4x4 over the 4th adventure, hiking the four major peaks around Juneau on four consecutive days. Wednesday was Mt. Roberts, Thursday Mt. McGinnis, Friday Heintzleman Ridge/Thunder Mountain, and Saturday Mt. Juneau. It was over 25 miles of hiking, with 13000 vertical in total. There were certainly many sore muscles afterward, along with some fun jokes, and all in all, it was totally worth it. First, Mt. Roberts!

This hike took us about 5 miles and up 3400 feet vertical. We hiked it in beautiful weather, with sunny skies and temperatures reaching into the 70's. The nice weather also brought out a lot of people to the trails, and we came across some para-gliders:

Unfortunately we couldn't summit due to unstable snow conditions, but we did get up to the top of Gastineau mountain. The views up there are outstanding looking back towards the Perseverance trail, and there was all sorts of fun stuff to climb out on :-)

However, our friend triple-M (Marathon Marmot of the Mountain) showed both Paul and I up by climbing all over the cornice and up to the top of Mt. Roberts. Regardless, he was still fun to see:

Day 2 (Thursday) brought us up Mt. McGinnis, which is in my view the hardest of the four mountains. This trail starts on West Glacier Trail, and then proceeds up the Mt. McGinnis trail. This hike was about 3100 vertical where we stopped, as unstable snow conditions restricted our summit. This hike was the hike where we reached the point of hiking stupidity...and then went past it for a bit. However, the views were way worth it, and for what it's worth, we didn't try to summit because the people with ice axes and crampons were having to switchback up to the top. Regardless, Mt. McGinnis gives some excellent eye candy around the Mendenhall Glacier:

Although we couldn't make it to the top of Mcginnis, it was quite smart of us to turn around, as no view is worth the risk of such a decision. However, after two near misses with making it to the top, there was no doubt in our mind that we had to make it to the top of something, and Heintzleman Ridge provided just that opportunity. This hike began a bit later in the day given the amazing 4th of July activities (echo echo echo echo echo!), and provided quite the challenge in itself, with another 3000 vertical feet covered. This hike, which moved along to Thunder Mountain, provided a view of the Mendenhall Glacier that I've never seen before, and what a view it was:

We did find some unstable snow conditions, but luckily we were still able to continue around them rather than over them:

Thunder Mountain also provided some outstanding views of the valley, which got me all the more excited for Mt. Juneau the next day:


Mt. Juneau was another one of the 'big hikes', with about 3600 vertical over a 2.5 mile hike, including a final 1000 ft ascent which is basically a big scramble straight up-gradient. This hike went faster than expected, with Paul and I covering the hike up about 1 hour faster than last year, which we attribute to being hungry and wanting lunch :-) The views from Mt. Juneau of both the city, as well as to the north and south along the inner channels, are absolutely amazing, and are completely worth the difficulty getting up there:

Many fun pictures were taken with Paul's ice ax, and at the end, we felt like acting like the mountain goats. An excellent adventure it was, but one that may not be repeated any time soon :-)

Be sure to check out the rest of my pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/rockygolf87