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June in Boulder
2008.06.30 21:07:26
Listening to: Old Beattles
From the Life and Photography Department
Let's see. Since last time I posted, quite a bit has happened and there are lots of photos as a result. In fact, the last few weeks are a bit of a blur.

Had two visitors. Eleanor was here for two weeks, visiting from Pittsburgh and Jeff crashed on my floor for a few days prior to the Mobisys conference in Breckenridge.

I did quite a bit of climbing including some more sport climbing with Dan up in Clear Creek Canyon. A few pictures were taken, like this one. My outstanding project up there is still Refer Madness (5.11a), which I pretty much have sequenced now. On my next trip, I might try to red-point it. I'll need to climb at 100% to pull it off. Dan threw down on some 12s, notably on-sighting 5.12c/d.

I also did some bouldering up at Flagstaff. I took a break from my V5 project to work on a V3 traverse that climbs like a V6 near the end. Still haven't gotten the last move on that one. A few pictures of myself and others bouldering: And, heck, why not throw in a little top-roping in Boulder Canyon. Yesterday, Eric, Eleanor, Mike, and I went up to the Dome area to play around on some moderates and also to practice jugging and rappelling (which Mike needed to learn for an upcoming backcountry trek). A couple photos: Besides climbing, Eleanor and I also went on a 4 day backpacking trip in the Indian Peaks area, near Eldora. We did a circuit of about 20 miles. The first night was at a still-mostly-frozen King Lake (11,500'). The second day had us traversing along the high lonesome trail (12,000') and doing two passes. The second pass was covered with steep corniced snow, luckily, we made it down using a fourth-class down-climb. That night we stayed by Devil's thumb and the last night went to Jasper Lake. The (seventy or so) pictures from that trip are here. Here's a best-of: James, Eleanor, and I also went shooting up in Left Hand Canyon. Not many pictures from that adventure 'cept these three.

Finally (yes, there's more), I just finished scanning a roll of B&W Film. This is Ilford Delta 400, which I'm pretty damn happy with (it's a film suggestion I poached from Sam's tags). I shot the roll over a few days in Boulder and on a trip up to Denver for a Concert. Here are my favorites:
Posted By Caleb Phillips
Maryland, 24ness, Vail
2008.06.09 01:19:40
Listening to: Neko Case
From the Life Department
I spent the bulk of last week in Annapolis, Maryland in order to attend the ACM SigMetrics conference where I was presenting a poster with Eric. Since I am second author on this paper, my attendance was mostly for the purpose of seeing the talks and only secondarily to support Eric in presenting the poster. It was a good conference. Not really what I was expecting, but good nonetheless.

The third day of the conference was also my (24th) birthday, which I celebrated by consuming some fantastic oysters (Blue Points and Chesapeakes) and clams at a local oyster bar.

After the conference was over, we had one day to spend as we pleased, so we decided (after considering a few options) to go sea kayaking on the Chesapeake Bay. We rented a couple kayaks from SpringRiver and made a little out-and-back trip. I'd never been kayaking before, and my form was sloppy at first, but by the end of the day, I was doing pretty well.

All the pictures from Annapolis are here. These are my favorites: After returning from Maryland, the next day I drove out to Vail to see the World Bouldering Cup at the Teva Mountain Games. It's the first time a World Bouldering Cup has been held in the US, and it's very cool that this happened to be just a two hour drive from Boulder (although, I don't think that's a random coincidence). The competition was awesome to watch - very inspiring. Austria and the US were the strongest teams. France and Italy also made good showings. Killian Fischhuber (Austria) took the gold for the men and Alex Johnson (USA) took the gold for the women. Killian climbed almost perfectly, flashing some problems that none of the other men were able to complete. Alex Johnson climbed very well. She really seemed to take advantage of her hight (greater than six feet, I think) and flexibility (especially for a tall climber). As far as the favourites go - Sharma didn't make the finals. Paul Robinson (lives in Boulder and attends CU), took third for the men. Overall, I felt like the women climbers, especially the US and Austrian, were the most impressive to watch - really amazing stuff. Between the semifinals and the finals I had a chance to check out some mountain biking and freestyle kayaking too, which were, well, a good time-fill between the climbing events. I took a bunch of pictures. These are my favourites: Mountain Biking:
Posted By Caleb Phillips
Three Days On
2008.06.02 14:58:08
From the Climbing Department
I managed to go climbing each of the last three days. The first two days, I made trips up to Flagstaff, where I continued to work on my project there, the three of a kind traverse (V5). Yesterday, I made a trip out to Clear Creek Canyon to do some sport climbing with Dan. While there, I got up on Reefer Madness (5.11a) and got very close to completing the route (well past the crux section), but ultimately, I was just too tired to pull up the last few holds (that's the problem with climbing multiple days in a row, I guess). Reefer Madness is a fantastic route - easily the best roped climb I've done in Colorado. Clear Creek Canyon will definitely get some more attention in the coming months. I took my camera on the later two trips. The photos are here and here. These are my favorites (with extra focus on climbing geekery, just for Ryan):
Posted By Caleb Phillips
Mt. Toll - 3, Eric and Caleb - 0
2008.05.27 21:59:37
Listening to: The Band
From the Climbing Department
On Saturday, Eric and I made our third attempt on the summit of Mt. Toll. The first attempt was in the late summer, the second was in the fall, and now one in the spring. Again, we were unsuccessful. This time, however, we made a perfectly planned assault, but the weather failed to cooperate.

During this time of year, the road leading to the trail-head is closed which adds something like 8 miles to the round-trip distance. Because springtime afternoon thunderstorms are common in the area (and we were warned about earlier than usual storms by the forestry service), we decided to make our alpine push early. We met at 3am in order to start hiking by 4:30 (daybreak is right around 4:45). Our plan put us at Blue Lake at 8am, giving us 4 hours to summit before our definite turn-around time at noon. However, when we got to Blue Lake, we found the mountain hiding in a cloud. That sneaky mountain must have known we were coming to get it, because it didn't even let us see it for a second. And, while the climb is non-technical from that point, meaning we could have done it in the whiteout using compass navigation (hell, we did it once already - but not on purpose) - neither of us really had a desire to stand in the middle of a cloud at close to 14,000 feet and say something like, "Well, I guess this is the top or something". Forty to fifty MPH wind gusts at the Lake (estimated by the it-knocked-me-down-metric), didn't really add to the appeal of summitting.

Hence, at 8, we had lunch in front of a frozen Blue Lake, took a few pictures, and then retreated. All the pictures are here. These are my favorites:
On the climb, I also managed to pull a muscle in my groin which is a whole bunch of fun. Next attempt at Toll will probably be in the late summer again, which will be a good time to try to fetch gear we left on the last retreat. Probably in part because it has been a major pain in my ass, I've really gained an affinity for Mt. Toll.

In other news, yesterday was Memorial Day, which was mostly tangential to my decision to collaborate with John G. and smoke a whole (boneless) pork shoulder and two racks of ribs. Here are a couple good shots from that extravaganza: James and I are eating like kings for the next couple days - leftover ribs and pulled-pork po' boys. You can hardly beat that...
Posted By Caleb Phillips
Spring in Infrared
2008.05.14 00:27:50
Listening to: Andew Bird
From the Photography Department
I just uploaded the photos I took last week with a roll of Ilford SFX 200, an infrared film. The majority of the pictures were taken on a long walk up and down the Boulder Creek Path on a nice sunny day, with my new roomie, James. The rest of the photos were taken around my place and on the CU campus at an end-of-semester get-together with some friends. A couple of the frames were destroyed as the goofballs at Mike's Camera tore my film during processing (!?). They claim that it was like that when they got it, but I think that's B.S.. There's not really any way it could have torn like this and still exposed the frames /after/ the tear correctly. Might have to start developing my own damn film.

I had read that Ilford's infrared film was not nearly as dramatic as the Kodak HIE which seems to be the industry standard. I used a dark red (25) filter to draw out more effects (which required I shoot most of the pictures with a tripod). You can definitly see the effects of the infrared in the white/light foliage and glowing white skintones and black eyes. One thing I didn't really think about is that the strongest infrared effects are in direct (not reflected) sunlight, which makes some of the creek photos look normal. Anyway, enough analysis. Here are my favorites: I just ordered six rolls of film - two each of three different kinds which I observed Sam using in photos of his I liked. When they get here, I will resume my assault on black and white photography. In the mean time, I've got some rock climbing and knitting to do (ain't summertime great?).
Posted By Caleb Phillips
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