Hannah and I received an email yesterday from the folks at Rutabaga inviting us to speak about last summer’s kayak trip at their Canoecopia expo. We are unbelievably excited. Canoecopia is one of, if not the largest paddling expos in the world, and we get to speak there! We got hooked up with Rutabaga through Headsweats who sponsored our kayak trip. The email we received said their newsletter goes out to 60,000 people. Holy cow! I saw some pictures on the website and it looks amazing.

We don’t have many actual details about the whole thing but if you are in Madison, WI March 12-15 next year stop by the Alliant Energy Center and check us out! We will share more info as it comes but we wanted to share the initial excitement.

Hannah and I spend way to much time inside to make us happy.  After a summer where we may have been indoors for a few hours total the past few weeks of never ending responsibility have been excruciating. We have been out a little, on a short hike and few long walks with the dog but nothing compared to what we are used to and what we would like.  The terrible weather we have had this fall and work and school have really taken their toll on our mental states. Hannah and I needed a break so we headed to Marquette to see to one of our favorite bands, Steppin In It, in concert. I called my brother to see if we could stay at his house and he was thrilled we were coming down because the weather finally was turning and, in addition to the concert, he wanted to do some climbing.

The show Friday night was amazing, 4+ hours of dancing to great music. Saturday morning dawned to warm air, sunshine and a mild hangover. It took a while to get moving but the 60 degree temps and cloudless sky were more than enough motivation to shake my headache and head out.  We stopped by Down Wind Sports so Hannah and I could buy my brother a climbing harness for an early Christmas present then headed to Ishpeming with the dogs. We had been to Suicide Bowl last spring and enjoyed the convenience and decent climbing so we decided that it was the perfect spot for the day.  We pulled onto the road to the ski jump and headed down a two track near the base of a rock face jutting from the ground. Being outside felt so good and all of my worries from the weeks before and about the weeks ahead just seemed to melt as we dropped our top rope.

The crag is about 35-40 ft of good solid rock and the top of the ridge has an awesome view to the south. I am not much of a rock climber, never really have been. I really enjoy it but it doesn’t play to my strengths so I haven’t spent much time on it.  The first route we attempted was a bit beyond me and after a few tries I called it quits to move on to something easier.  Hannah has a mild fear of heights and seriously messed up her hands kayaking this summer so she struggled as much as me even though she is a much more capable climber.  The second route was much easier and it was fun to climb one that made me feel like I was accomplishing something.

There isn’t a ton of info on climbing at this crag. I found a list of routes and grades on RockClimbing.com but I can’t figure out which routes are which and I can only guess at what routes we were actually on. I think we started with El Matador and moved to Fifth Grade Science Project. RockClimbing.com has both routes rated at 5.10a which seems way off to me. Neither of these routes are that tough.  If anyone has any info on this area I’d love to know.

We were there for about 4 hours and it was just what Hannah and I needed.  All of our stresses, at least for the time being, seemed to dissolve.  We headed back to my brother’s as the sun was setting. We were all tired and sore but couldn’t have been happier. We ate a quick dinner and headed back into Marquette to catch Steppin’ In It’s second night on stage.  It was a perfect day.

We have a few more photos up on our Picasa site and you can read my brother’s account of the day, as well as his post about our first trip to Suicide Bowl on his blog: Inside the Outside.

If you have more info on this crag, or any others in the U.P for that matter I’d love to hear from you. There is a distinct lack of beta on climbing in Michigan’s better peninsula. A friend and I tried launching a website to help remedy that last year but neither of us had the time to dedicate to it and we didn’t get a lot of support from others. You can check out our start at UPRockAndIce.com. If you have climbing info and think it is a cool project let me know and we might put some more effort into it. If not we will probably just let it drop.

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I am not sure we have mentioned this on the blog yet. Hannah and I are going to attempt to thru hike the Pacific Crest Trail next summer, beginning sometime in the second week of May when she graduates. We already have a spot on the website for it but there really isn’t content there yet.

Hannah and I started officially planning our thru hike today on our drive home.  We have been talking over the larger points for a few months but we got down to details today.  Aside from the timing, money and logistics of the whole thing we naturally turned to one of our favorite subjects: gear.  We both love backpacking and we love backpacking gear even more.

I came home and started putting together a gear list in Microsoft Excel, basing my gear choices off my Appalachian Trail gear.  After a while we came up with a nice, color coded spreadsheet that will serve as a start for all of our gear decisions over the next 6 months.  I pasted my entire beautiful spreadsheet into Google Documents, which promptly ruined most of the formatting I had done, and I want to make it available on here so I can get some feedback on our gear choices.  We love to hear others’ opinions about gear.  The spreadsheet is at the bottom of the post but I will explain how I laid it out and some of our choices first.

The spreadsheet is separated by who is carrying what with a big column for each of us. Within that big column you can find what the gear is (brand and model),  the weight in ounces and I have color coded which portions of the trail we will carry it.  I also colored gear we still have to purchase in tan. These are the items we are most interested in people’s opinions of, but we would like to hear any comments about any of the gear as well as the entire system. If there is anything we obviously forgot please let us know. When viewed on this page the whole thing is a bit ungainly so if you want to view it in it’s own window you can click HERE.

The base weight of our packs will change through out the hike as we need more or less gear. In the desert we don’t anticipate needing our rain gear and when we enter the High Sierra we will need things like a bear canister and ice axes. Speaking of rain gear, we decided that rather than actual rain jackets we would just use DWR (durable water repellent) coated wind jackets in an attempt to save some weight. Any opinions on this?  My pack weighs more than Hannah’s by about the same proportion that I weigh more than her so any questions as to why she gets to carry the light pack should be answered. My pack ranges from about 13 pounds base weight in the desert to just over 18 pounds in the Sierra. Hannah’s goes from about 8 lbs to 13 lbs. I also included total weight which includes not only our packs but the cloths we are wearing, shoes, trekking poles, etc.

If for some reason the spreadsheet below doesn’t work you can access it HERE.

Like I said, we really want feedback on all of this so if you have any oppinion at all please leave us a comment. Even if you think we idiots. We want our gear to work as well as possible and knowledge is power. Thanks in advance.

Matt and I were getting the itch today to blow off our responsibilities and go for a hike. The choice between doing work and having fun is always pretty easy, so we left our responsibilities behind and took off on a short 3 mile hike with our dog, Rainy, at Bare Bluff. We headed out toward Lake Superior around 1:30 pm. The bluff is located on the eastern side of the Keweenaw Peninsula about half a mile off of Lake Superior. To get to the trailhead you have to drive about 4 miles down a seasonal road that is posted private at the beginnnig (but isn’t). The road was recently widened, ditched, and graded making the trailhead accessible in pretty much any type of car as long as there’s no snow on the ground and you’re willing to drive slow. We started our hike from the parking lot for the Bare Bluff-Grinell memorial trail just out of sight of the Lake. For as long as we’ve lived up here and as often as we’ve explored the Keweenaw, neither Matt nor I had ever hiked this trail. We were happy to find a very nice bit of single track that wove in and out of fallen trees, along the bottom side of cliffs, and up a narrow, steep ravine that housed a small stream. On our way up we met 3 other hikers who were coming down from the top of the bluff and had also never been there and were quite impressed by the view from the top. The trail wound up and up and up and came out at the top of the cliff that we walked past the base of earlier. The view from atop Bare Bluff was very nice and may have even been classified as stunning if the sun had been shining and there were a few more leaves on the trees; it was a classic Lake Superior view that makes you wonder how you could ever leave a place like this.. At the top we took a few minutes to appreciate the view, take some pictures, and climb a tree before heading back down the other side of the loop.

The hike back to the car was pleasant and fairly easy, sloping gradually downwards without the steep sections and rock scrambles that were present on the ascent. At the end of the hike all of us were feeling pretty good about our time outside. The dog was all tuckered out after sprinting back and forth along the trail and spent the entire car ride home asleep on my lap. Matt and I were both happy to have gotten out for a hike, no matter how short, and to have had a chance to stretch our legs and shake the daily stresses of work, school, and home-ownership.

If you want to see more photos from our hike you can check them out at our picasa site.

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