Wonderful Friends and Wonderful Weekends

Weather throughout the Inland West, especially in Central Oregon, has been very cold lately. There were probably close to two weeks in town where it never got above freezing and lows were below zero for several nights. This excited me because accessible ice climbing is rare here. However, the down side is that our pipes froze. Eleven days later I am sitting in a hotel, paid for by my landlord, because we still don't have running water. Bummer!

Well, I decided I'd moved to Bend to enjoy life and I wasn't going to let a little inconvenience stop me. So that first weekend Chris and I headed out to Paulina Falls for some water ice top roping. I've climbed lots of snow, neve and rime ice, but very little true water ice so this was a good session. We each did nine laps on various parts of the right flow... and we found a frozen kokanee (not the beer). It was a damn good time and we definitely got our money's worth.

Pictures by Chris Sepic:

Myself on the L side of R falls.

Kokanee!?!? Found frozen solid in the snow... WTF?

Me eating the fishy... I was hungry because it's hard to cook without running water.

The next weekend we were still without water and were supposed to have up to six of my old teammates crashing on our floor for Club Cross Country National Championships. Luckily, by the time everyone arrived my landlord had booked us two adjoining hotel rooms with a kitchen!!! (We only asked for one but I'll take that!) We had an awesome time and it was good to see so many friends in town. Club Nats is quite the race as it attracts professional running clubs and amateur clubs alike. The Open Men's 10km had 410 finishers which is huge for this type of race. It was really fun to watch, a great spectator course. I got to cheer on my friends and former Olympians alike. The course was also hilly and windy with some slick and rough footing... so much fun! I was kicking myself a little for not being in better running shape and competing, but you have to pick your battles and I'm not regretting those weekends at Trout Creek.

On the course I took some video...

Women's Open (4.5 min):

 Men's Open (9 min):

Now all my running friends have left :(
... let's hope our pipes unfreeze soon so we can at least move back home!

One running friend did not come for Club Nats because he is off gnar-bossing trail races. It's okay though because hopefully I will see him for some gnar shredding this winter... Ryan Ghelfi is now officially on the new Nike Trail Running team! And you can check out his great blog's most recent post, an annual recap, here.

In the meantime I'm going to catch up on sleep and try figure out this whole living situation thing... hopefully I'll live in a house that meets legal rental standards soon! Then I can crush it knowing I have a hot shower to come home to. That would be nice.