Following Bliss

The Start of a New Adventure

2010-02-01T19:19:00.001-08:00

It's been a long while since I've posted anything here, but I wanted to let everyone know about the launch of Great Path Adventures. It's a small trekking company offering hiking and culinary adventures in the mountains of South Korea. The adventure starts this October with an eleven-day tour of Songnisan and Jirisan National Parks. We will hike for several days in each park, stay in traditional inns and enjoy delicious food.

Please check out my website www.greatpathadventures.com for more information. I look forward to seeing some of you on the adventure this fall!

Lynn Hill on Climbing

2008-10-06T22:51:00.000-07:00

Haven't made many posts here, most of it going on www.chrisandlizwandering.blogspot.com. But I wanted to put this interview with Lynn Hill about her climbing career and her thoughts on climbing as meditation as I thought it is apropos to the project we are undertaking right now.

Vote the Environment

2008-06-22T22:14:00.000-07:00

I like the message. It's not just a liberal democrat thing. It's not just for rich white people with too much time and guilt on their hands. It is related to everything. It is our home. I hope that in the years to come "The Environment" becomes a great unifier of people from all walks instead of being a divisive, elitist issue. It's everybody's home.

March Already?!?

2008-03-22T20:24:00.000-07:00

Ugh, I have these items on my checklist that say things like, put pictures from "XXX" on blog. And I don't. Then we go on another trip, and I add posting those pictures to my to do list. And I don't. Then what the hell, it's March. Chris says I should stop caring.

Really I should.

I have.

I'm leaving my job in four months.

I have senioritis.

But I do care......sigh.

I am an overacheiver. So I worry about trying to do well planning for a test that I'm not going to be around for (there is one sad thing about leaving my job, no more trips to England). And for some reason I keep worrying about my performance reviews, even though I'm not going to get a raise this year because I'll be gone. Then of course there is the house and the WAAAAAAY too big of a landscaping project I took on. And of course, since I didn't use seed free straw in my garden there is grass coming up EVERYWHERE! And then there is the trip planning.

Sigh...

And you know I don't even think I'm that anal of a trip planner. But we're keeping our house, which means renters, and powers of attorney and MAJOR budgeting. And to get a few more bucks towards our mortgage we're refinishing our basement room (add that to the to do list: Post pictures of basement room remodel). Bad bad bad major pain in the butt. Then of course there are the actual trip plans: plane tickets, visas and vaccinations. We're not even talking about where to go in each country. I like to keep it flexible, but man we really tied ourselves down with the house so there are a lot more loose ends to tie up. It's not like college where you just pick up and go. I don't think I should even be thinking that anymore...most of my life doesn't (and should not) even remotely resemble college. Like KU just beat UNLV and I only know because I was on the phone with my parents and my dad was watching the game. I am happy that KU made it past the 2nd round, and since I really screwed up and watched KU in Orange Bowl, I'm going to do the basketball team a favor and not watch any of the games.

It's interesting how different I seem from my college self. I'm pretty sure that I would not have envisioned alpine climbing, backcountry skiing or hiking being my hobbies back in Kansas. Speaking of which, skiing was the original purpose of my posting, but how I digress.

February brought lots and lots and lots of snow. So much that Snoqualmie & Stevens pass were closed for a week with lots of natural (as opposed to human triggered) avalanches on paths that hadn't gone for a couple of decades. We got some really good trips in before that. The pass being closed gave us time to work on the basement.

This picture of Preston kind of sums up February...

We got really spoiled, all through Christmas, January and February. Lots of crazy sick powder. We have also discovered that Preston is like a snow divining rod. He can always seem to find the good snow.

Deep seems like an inadequate adjective.

This is my one successful attempt at sports photography. It's hard to get everything to focus when people ski fast, it's overcast, snowing and the snow, sky and everything in between seems to be the same color and depth. Many props to "real" photographers!

More pictures from Kendall ridge

The crown of my whole season was the Slot and Crooked Couloir on Snoqualmie Mountain.

Alex, Preston, Chris and I headed up there with increasingly lowered expectations as the temperature went up and up. But oh, the north side, always holding a powdery treat (a thought reinforced later in the season on Mt. Catherine). 5300 ft of vert and three amazing runs. The next day, I bowed out with a cold, but the three of them were even badder-asses and skied the Paradise Glacier to add another 4500 to the weekend.

Preston and I had a chill day on Lichtenberg (another good discovery this season). It was the trip that made me realize how different things are from what I thought they would be just five years ago. I posted my first (hopefully not only) report on Turns All Year, a website of mostly Northwest skiers dedicated to year 'round skiing (yep it's possible here in the Northwest!).

http://www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboarding/trip_reports/index.php?topic=9368.0

So that brings us to March. And it's still snowing. The house and garden beg to be taken care of but the mountains beckon. Hopefully it won't be June by the time I post more :).

Yodelin - New Year's Eve 2007

2008-01-03T17:30:00.000-08:00

I could write or post pictures, but I think the day is best described by Preston's short little movie:

http://faculty.washington.edu/pfew/12.31.07big.mov

787 Rollout

2007-12-30T17:53:00.000-08:00

I know this is a seriously belated post. But if the airplane can be late to fly, can't I be late to post some pictures? We were going to use this picture for our Christmas card, but thought it might be too dorky. In the end, it didn't fit on the card, so we opted for the skiing pictures. Anyways, back to the rollout...we went backpacking in the North Cascades for the Fourth of July holiday and hemmed and hawed over whether we should go. In the ended I pushed Chris to go since he's put so many hours into working on this plane. We were pleasantly surprised, the whole operation was pretty cool. There were some glitches with parking and actually getting everyone into the factory on time (despite showing up an hour early, we were still 20 minutes late to the ceremony). There was a lot of blah blah about how great the airplane was, but when it came time to actually roll the plane out (or rather in), it gave me chills. Afterwards we were all free to walk around the airplane. We took lots of pictures and got to see a lot of people we knew. It was nice to catch up with everyone in a casual setting. The weather was really nice too. It was like a picnic, only with stale popcorn and water instead of hamburgers.

You can see my pictures in my web album:

787 Rollout

Christmas Break

2007-12-30T16:07:00.000-08:00

It's so much fun to have a Christmas Break. It's the one thing I really miss from school, that and summer vacation.

Chris and I are trying to start a rotation of one year in New England, one year with my family and one year for us. So this year we decided to just stay put in Seattle. I miss seeing my family, but at the same time, it has been so nice not traveling and being in town for the inevitable Christmas storms. We've been doing a lot of things that needed to get taken care of around the house (like blogging), cooking great meals (because our families gave us awesome pots for Christmas) and of course skiing. It's snowed 8-10 feet in the last two weeks. This has made for some sketchy avalanche conditions at times, but there has still been plenty of skiing (deep and oh so powdery) in the trees. The snow has been very light and I've had some of the deepest skiing ever this past week (even more than Hakkoda).

I love our Christmas tree. It's a little blurry, but you get the gist. We've been putting the stove to good use. Carmen (our second cat) really appreciates it because it's more comfortable to sit in front of the fire rather than on the heating registers!

Christmas Eve Chili! We had a growler of stout from North Fork Brewery (up near Mt. Baker) from the day before, so we decided to make a big batch of chili to go with it. We had to open up a gift a little early (Thanks so much Eric & Cathleen!) so we had a pot big enough to cook all of it in. That's a three gallon pot and you can see it's mostly full!

White Christmas in Seattle! We intended to go skiing, but slept a little too late (probably from that growler the night before!), so we decided to just hang out and cook a big breakfast. A little after that it started snowing, and pretty soon it was puking! It didn't stick around long, but it made for a beautiful Christmas walk!

Christmas Dinner: We put all our new Christmas gifts to good use. Mom and Dad brought us a fondue pot over Thanksgiving, so we had fondue for Christmas Dinner! So easy to make, and the pot heats nice and evenly on the stove. I think we'll be doing fondue fairly often now.

Enjoying a great time skiing on Mt. Catherine (near Snoqualmie Pass).

Chris put together a sweet video of us skiing on Mt. Catherine (up at Snoqualmie Pass), click on the album below to watch it.

Mt Catherine 12-27-07

You can find more pictures in my web album (click on the album below).

Christmas Break

Los Angeles

2007-11-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

I ran into Josh at my 10 year reunion, and after never making good on my promise to visit him in college, I decided to go visit him in LA. He's the head coach of the Pomona/Pitzer College swim team in Claremont. It's funny, I was picturing hanging out at cafes on near beaches, but he lives in the far east corner of the county, so picture lots of desert and urban sprawl for miles. Despite that I had a great time. Most of my pictures are in a web album (click on the link below).

Los Angeles

One thing I didn't take pictures of was the LA County Fair. We went there the first day I was there. Where there is anything resembling agricutlure in LA County I'm not sure. The Test Director here in England assures me there is...somewhere, because he parents used to farm in LA county. Anyways, it was a scene. I ate fried coke, which is exactly like what is sounds. Other highlights of the night included a chicken breast on a krispy kreme donut with honey and raspberry sauce.

Washington Pass

2007-09-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

Chris had Labor Day weekend off from climbing, so we took a long weekend up to Washington Pass just east of North Cascades NP to do some climbing of our own. It was the first multi-pitch trad climb I've ever done. I'm a little disappointed with myself that I only lead one pitch, but I'll write if off as having a cold. Although I'm still wondering about working up my nerve for next time. It feels so much more exposed up there!

This is Chris climbing up to Liberty Bell. It gets to be a much a harrier scramble after this, but I was too afraid to pull out my camera at that point lest it get hit by tumbling rocks.

This is the start of the Becky Route, a nice easy three pitches with a bit of a scramble to the top. It was a great intro to trad climbing.

For reference, this is what we were climbing up, but on the less serious looking backside. Liberty Bell is the big one to the right, then Concord Tower, North Early Winter Spire and South Early Winter Spire. This is just outside of North Cascades NP, just east (or really at) Washington Pass.

Mt. Shuksan

2007-08-11T21:37:00.000-07:00

I've wanted to climb Mt. Shuksan since we first moved to Washington. I saw it the first winter we were here when we were skiing at the Mt. Baker ski area. It's pretty amazing looking in the winter, all frosty with glaciers hanging off it everywhere. It was partially what motivated me to take the climbing class to begin with, but one thing came up and then another, and I just never got around to climbing it. So last weekend we finally decided to climb it. Diana came along with us. Trying to track down all the gear for her was an adventure in itself.
Diana's never been backpacking, we really threw her off the deep end, but she looks pretty comfortable here!

This is the view from the top of the pass right before we got on the snow. The climb up to this point is an unmaintained climbers trail off an old logging road. If felt like it was nearly straight up. On top of that the (bitting) flies in the forest were terrible. I'm not sure Diana was convinced that this was something to do for fun. She looks like a pro here, so I guess she decided it was fun.

After a couple hours on the glacier and then an hour scrambling up the summit pyramid, we made it to the top.

I'm working on fully getting my web albums set up, but I have one set up for this climb. To see more pictures check out my Picassa album.

Mt. Shuksan

Diego also put together a great album on yahoo:

http://new.photos.yahoo.com/album?c=4gabrieli@verizon.net&aid=576460762405183247&pid=&wtok=mOwdNZb1gNo14PA5OC8eWw--&ts=1187574946&.src=phhttp://new.photos.yahoo.com/album?c=4gabrieli@verizon.net&aid=576460762405183247&pid=&wtok=mOwdNZb1gNo14PA5OC8eWw--&ts=1187574946&.src=ph

Shotgun Lady

2007-03-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

Yep that's me holding a shotgun! I even managed to hit three clay pigeons. I took a
Washington Outdoor Women basic shotgun class this past Saturday. I've never touched a gun in my life, and I'm definatley afraid of them. This class really helped me put that fear away. I'm not sure I'd ever become an avid hunter, but it seems like a good skill to have!

mmmmm powder

2007-01-31T05:52:00.000-08:00

Okay this is a little narcissitic, but this picture makes me happy:

I'm off to Korea to see my mom and family tomorrow. I'm excited. Should have some good pictures to post after then.

Skiing in Hakkoda-san

2007-01-21T04:02:00.000-08:00

I am way delayed on posting these...Chris enjoy :). Too much sushi eating and drinking of Godiva hot chocolates, I guess I just can't find time to post! Hee hee!

The Hakkoda-san tram. There and one short two-seat lift comprise the ski area. There are two official "courses," everything else is off-piste powder amazing-ness. The tram is about 12 minutes to the top. A season pass is about $450. In the two days there I only skied the front of the mountain but that alone was almost worth moving to Japan for a season. In the lodge I met a Canadian who found an ad for a WWOOF-ing position at the lodge and flew out like two days later. He doesn't speak any Japanese. He shovels snow, washes dishes and rides all day. I think skiing/riding is a universal language all it's own that unites people. I'm really tempted to take that job next season.

The snow monsters at the top of Hakkoda-san. Those are trees! Apparently they get about three times as big as that! That was also about the clearest it ever got up top. The wind cranks up there!
It was too much of a white out to take pictures on the run, so here we are at the bottom. Despite all the snow, it really hadn't started until about the time I showed up (lucky me) so there was no snow bridge over the creek.
I've never seen a forest so white, it was like this snow dream land. Unfortunately much of it is low angle like you see here. When that's the case, I hate to say it, but there really can be such a thing as too much snow!

What can I say I love trees :). The sun tried it's hardest to come out after lunch, but to no avail.
The Sansou lodge at the base of the gondola. The owner is the happiest man I've ever met and he owns the cutest dog! We had an incredible dinner of stewed crab and clams and such and the best sake I've ever had in my life!

A beautiful morning! Supposedly there was 35 cm of new overnight.

I know these are all really low angle shots. I wasn't going to stop on the steeper stuff (too much fun with the face shots), plus I was always in the back. So the only time I took pictures was on the traverse...again my thing for trees.

The second day we skied with Ted, who flew all the way from Sweeden to ski in Japan.
I'm not sure if this convey's it, but it was NASTY at the top where you get of the tram. That's not a snow cave, there is a building underneath there...somewhere.

I'm heading back up there this weekend, so maybe I will have some better pictures...I know I will definately have more snow filled stories!

Do these jeans make me look fat?

2007-01-20T04:25:00.000-08:00

I went shopping today. I'm not much of a shopper, but I figured I needed to experience what seems to be the official pasttime of Tokyo. While I picked up a few good deals, and a few oddities (like maple syrup flavored tofu chips), it was mostly and exercise in killing my self esteem. I'm short, everyone I know except for this one girl in my house in college is taller than me. I feel like I giant here. In the GAP, they sell XXS shirts and size 00 pants. The largest size I found in there was a size 6. I picked up a new jacket and it was an large/extra-large. I even have trouble finding my shoe size (I wear a size 7). There are a lot of skinny girls here, but there are a lot of normal sized people too...I wonder where they shop?

This is the intersection outside of Shibuya train station. All four (or five, there might be a fifth street in there) lanes of traffic stop and then it's this melee of people crossing in everywhich direction. I don't think I've ever seen so many people crossing the street at one time.

I was in this one boutique looking at a skirt that was on sale for $320. There was this rasta version of "If I Were a Rich Man" (I'm not kidding you know, the one from Fiddler on the Roof?) and the lyrics were saying "The rich are richer while the poor are getting dumped." Kind of surreal. I'm not pointing this out as a unique feature of Japan, rather it's pretty typical of 1st world consumerist-capatilist thinking. I just tend not to hang out in big cities in the US (I've only been to NYC once, very breifly). I wonder what's makes them so fascinating when I'm in Asia? Because I can't understand anything anyone is saying, does that make it easier to sit on the outside and watch?

2 days 65 cm

2007-01-16T05:55:00.000-08:00

Hakkoda-san in northern Honshu. 20 cm on Saturday, 35 Sunday morning and 10-15 more by the end of the day. This place is wicked deep. It was a good weekend. More later.

Dinner Time

2007-01-10T05:11:00.000-08:00

"If you are ambitious, you WILL accidentally order chicken skin, liver, cartilege, squid suction cups or something with a fish head. Try some then move on."

e-mail from a co-worker giving tips on food in Japan.

The MHI guys took us out to dinner and ordered beers and a bunch of snacky dinner-ish foods to go with it. A plate of skewers came out, with skewers of beef, chicken, some kind of meat ball, what looked like some kind of fish cake, grilled onions and leeks. The onions looked really good, all golden and crispy, cut in big thick slices. I picked one up with my chopstick and popped it in my mouth. Just as I was thinking that it was a pretty firm onion, I bit down and winced. Kevin’s e-mail came to mind. Chicken cartilage. Tanaka-san looked at me and asked if it was good. I half smiled and tried not to look completely repulsed. You can't even take a huge swig of beer and try to wash it down. You have to keep chewing otherwise you'll choke. It sounds like the first bite of cruncy celery only it never gets softer…it just keeps loudly crunching and crunching. Later on I reached for the beef, then had a second thought. Suspicious, I asked what it was. Chicken liver. This in itself isn’t really that bad but the taste of any liver makes me gag. The whole plate was chicken: liver, skin, a wing (a real wing not the kind you get with buffalo sauce), cartilage and a few gristly chunks of dark meat. Lovely. That was only day two. Fish head's I'm used to, now I'm waiting for the squid suction cups. I'm really hoping that I can't top chicken cartilage.

Welcome to Japan

2007-01-08T04:01:00.000-08:00

Today was my first full day in Tokyo. It was a long trip over, which was filled with four pretty bad movies (DaVinci Code, The Last Kiss, The Gaurdian and Little Miss Sunshine--oh wait that one was pretty good) and an absolutely terrifying landing--super heavy cross winds. I'm on the 31st floor of the hotel:
This is the Tokyo Metropolitain Government Building. You can see Mt. Fuji just to the left of it, but couldn't because of the light when I took this picture.

Today is a holiday, which is alwasy a nice way to start a business trip. Ken said it's coming of age day. Best I can tell it's a whole bunch of 21 year old women dressing up in kimonos and men wearning smart suits with hair done up more than the women (well the women had pretty fancy hair, but I guarentee some of those guys spent at least a half hour on their hair). The took over the lobby of our hotel this afternoon:
I took the afternoon and wander around. I was looking for a watch (I forgot mine) and ended up buying a fleece (because you know, I need another one of those) and a Tokyo guidebook (I actually do need that!). It's amazing how much Tokyo reminds me of Seoul....they have a lot in common, both large Asian cites of about 12million. But it's more the non-stop neon, and blinking and megaphones and noise and just pure endless insanity. It's ironic because when I was in Korea and I visited southern Japan (which is not Tokyo) I was amazed at how much Japan reminded of the US.

The author world food Japan describes Tokyo as "a Mad Max-meets-Blade Runner meaglopolis, a 24-hour neon cyclone that chases it own tail and spins ad infinitum with limitless human energy."
These pictures probably don't even do it justice, but for those of you who have been here or to Seoul, you know what I'm talking about. It's like New York on Animae steriods.

I love all the drink vending machines on every street corner here, but I like this picture for the girl's hat. The funny this is it wasn't even that cold. It's a great hat though.

I'll try to keep this updated throughout the trip. I'll probably really only have interesting pictures to post after the weekend. Sounds like I'll be busy during the week. Keep tuned!

Christmas in Connecticut

2007-01-08T03:48:00.000-08:00

Chris and I flew to his hometown in Connecticut for Christmas. It was three days straight of meeting friends and family, eating obscence amounts of food (seriously one day I ate almost continuously over the course of 12 hours) and drinking copious amounts of Magic Hat and red wine. And my goal had been to at least maintain the same weight over Christmas...ha.

Funny, I just looked and I don't actually have any pictures from Connecticut. I'll have to get them from Chris and post later!

Our adorable cat Haley. She doesn't get very excited about the holidays.

Our Christmas mantel. We don't quite have enough ornaments for a tree, plus I felt kind of bad cutting one down (Chris and I haven't resolved the fake versus real debate yet), so I just used the trimmings from our cedar to make a wreath for the door and decorate our mantel.

Thanksgiving

2007-01-08T01:46:00.000-08:00

A little behind on posting this, but I thought I'd share these pictures. The daughter of the host family I lived with in Korea came up from Oakland to visit over Thanksgiving weekend. We ate a lot and shopped a lot. You all know me, I'm not much of a shopper so shopping Thanksgiving weekend definately tried my patience. I did have a great time while she was here though, and she did endure a rather frustrating day of skiing for my benefit. It was great to have someone come out to show around Seattle.

Here are some photos:

Stuffing the turkey! We had 7 people over. Everyone brought such good dishes over that the turkey took a backseat. We had a lot of leftovers!

Kyung-hee helped me make pie crust and then she made the pumpkin pie! Her first Thanksgiving and her first pie! It was tasty.

Our first Thanksgiving in our new house!

Does it look like me?

2006-12-03T21:22:00.000-08:00

So what do you think, does this avatar (learned a new word today!) look like me?

Love the glasses

2006-11-21T22:26:00.001-08:00

Everyone makes fun of my glacier glasses. I love them. They were only $25 (compared to $90 for most) and they're the only one's that fit my really freaking flat face. I don't really care because I can't see them, but a lot of people stare at me. There is even one girl that almost won't climb with me because she is so embarassed by my glasses. When we climbed Mt. Rainier, I threw up most of the way up. There really isn't anything glamorous about mountain climbing unless you're Steve House or something, so ugly glasses are probably the least of my worries.

Slower than Molasses

2006-11-04T15:39:00.000-08:00

Well I'm off to a slower start than I thought. If you are reading this it means I finally got my butt in gear and e-mailed this link to everyone. Chris and I moved into the house last weekend. We had these grand plans of cleaning it up before we moved in. We even had two weeks to do it! Instead the time flew by and we spent all our time cleaning the old house! Luckily it's stormy raining so it will keep us inside this weekend unpacking boxes and getting everything sorted out. I wanted to use this blog primarily to share pictures, so I'll stick some in now:

This is Tony and I on the ferry over to the Olympic Peninsula when the whole Riggs clan came out for a visit.

I've been needing to send this one out for a while but this is Chris and I at the top of Mount Rainer..really I know it looks pretty flat! There were two different people taking pictures and we were looking at two different cameras.

This is the Eden project in Cornwall, UK. I had to travel for another test in September. Mostly I slept because I was so worn out, but I did take a weekend to drive out here. I can really only describe it as Disneyworld for plant geeks (I know I'm a total dork). The place is super cool, check out their website www.edenproject.co.uk

I'll keep posting more pictures...and figure out how to become a funnier writer in the meantime. For writing that will entertain you I would recommend my sister Diana's blog, www.dianariggs.blogspot.com.

My first blog

2006-08-31T23:05:00.000-07:00

I've finally joined the rest of the world...sort of, I still don't have a cell phone. But maybe just maybe this will work better than me promising I will e-mail all of you. Not that my life is that interesting, but at least you can look at photos...hopefully.