Virgin Flight

I recently met the president of the Alpine Club of Canada's Yukon Chapter while in Whitehorse, YT. We spoke of his efforts to promote climbing in Nahanni Park's Cirque of the Unclimbables. Apparently, the national government has sponsored a few flights into the park. He's going. I'm jealous. Over the next week, I get to thinking that I'll try to get on one of these trips by posing as some sort of climber/photographer playing up my big wall experience and the Y6 ArduPilot photography drone which I just happened to have hauled along on this 5,000 km road trip. 

The plan has just one flaw. I've never flown the drone and the only Nihanni trip I know of is leaving next weekend! Surely the bush flight is full, but might as well get things lined up just in case another job comes along.

So I spent Wednesday flashing the firmware, calibrating the compass, calibrating the accelerometers, calibrating the motors, etc.. When I was indoors, the drone was passing the PreArm check and I had finally gotten all six engines to spin together. I completed the pre-flight check-list. I'm ready! 

Except this one time when I was testing without propellers and the motors just stayed on at full power even when throttle was off inexplicably. And another time, when the battery died on the remote control and the navigation system "failed over" to a mode where it tried to fly home and land itself in Vancouver 2,000 km away. In both these cases, the drone would have simply flown off into the sunset. So I'm ready ... enough!

Conditions aren't perfect here in the Walmart parking lot. To be honest, I'm nervous. Nervous I'm going to fly out of control and hit a car. Nervous I'm going to maim a small child. Nervous that I'm inside of the airspace of the Whitehorse International Airport. It just isn't the right place for a virgin flight. But before I move elsewhere, we decide that Mikey is going to hold the drone over his head (so it can't get away) - while I conduct simple incremental tests. Not surprisingly, the drone fails to PreArm and can't take off. 

I spend a few hours tinkering and re-calibrating. I try a few things and consistently I can arm it inside but not outside. Eventually, I re-zero the "ground level" altitude mark while it is outside. It's the fifth or sixth attempt at a launch. I'm expecting another failure. I'm careless. I'm just a few feet away when the red LED changes from the regular flashing pattern to one solid tone. Armed! Or is it? I give it just a little throttle - surely it's not enough to get off the ground!

Next thing I know, I I'm curled up in a fetal ball screaming; pinned between my car and a twelve bladed electric weed whacker. I push it away with my hands, but it just comes back again; flying right into my face. Mikey  gets the thing off me and holds it while it gyroscopes madly. I eventually find the kill switch on the remote.

Put blood on helicopter blades and you get mad splatter effects.

Mikey cruises us over to the emergency room where I get sixteen stitches over my left thumb. I think of CSI as Horatio mentions the "defensive wounds" on the hands of a corpse killed in a stabbing. This awesome doctor cleans and glues the cut through the cartilage of my ear after I recover from the vesa vegal reaction which left me unconscious - sirens in the emergency room blaring the code blue. Mikey just laughs and repeats "better than TV."

On the way home from the hospital I happen on some members of the Alpine Club. One of them just happens to be a RC helicopter enthusiast. He mentions "up here, the magnetic compass has terrible precision and a lot of the auto-stabilizing drones can have very erratic accelerations." Lesson learned, I guess.

Exhibit A: deep cuts on my thumb

Exhibit B: gash through ear cartilage

I propose that the events leading to these two injuries could have easily unfolded in a more displeasing manner. They could have slit my throat - leaving me horribly embarrassed as I bleed out in a Walmart parking lot. For these mercies, drone flight #1 is a marginal success.

Here Comes Summer 2014!

Leavin' next Wednesday. Chilling with Holly tonight doing some trip planning for this trip from June to September.

Leaving Microsoft

Hello Friends,

After six glorious years here at Microsoft I have decided to pursue a few start-up concepts based out of Vancouver.

In my first weeks at Microsoft, I blocked the largest software release in history - Windows XP SP3 - with a recall class bug just two days before RTM. This is truly an experience that only Microsoft could provide! An amazing start to an incredible career. I’ve worked on a broad set of great projects and technologies with the brightest and most interesting minds that I’ve ever encountered.  What a great experience!

It has been an honour to witness the transformation of Live Search into today’s Bing.com, and to facilitate that transformation through my efforts in test, operations, and infrastructure. I wish you all the best in your continued pursuit to revolutionize search - I truly believe our efforts at Bing are making the world a better place. 

I will miss all you fine people and this bustling atmosphere of engineering excellence.My last day will be December 13^th, 2013.

Thanks for everything!

Please keep in touch!

Another Day

It's Wednesday. Another day at the office.

8am wake up. High tide. Small breakfast and Drew and I are out paddling for waves by 830.

First teleconference is at 10am PST – so that’s not until noon here. There’s time for second breakfast and I log on to casually close out an easy work item. Time for scrum! Reclined in a hammock, I dial-in with salty fingers and wet shorts. There is always a Priority 0 bug to deal with when you release every day. Hammer time.

A truck rolls up to the hostel with ceviche, fresh fruit, or fresh pastries. Time for some more meetings – these ones are fun brain storming sessions or time set aside to discuss implementation details. Then it’s time to code – today I’m consolidating one of our frameworks onto a different configuration system. The heat of the day goes unnoticed as my mind and my keystrokes drift off to Seattle. I bring elegance and order to a chaotic realm of divergent configuration solutions. The sun is softening and I race to test my changes and send out the code review. My favorite part of the day is sunset out on the break.

There is howling today as the horizon blazes. The waves are mellow and glassed and at high tide even I can drop one or two of them. Paddle hard for a Right. You got it, you got it, you don’t got it. I back-paddle and take a minute to look up. “This sport is weird. It’s about waiting.” My back is to the sunset, but still the sky is pink and purple. On the horizon, the full moon rises over the trees.

Home is a beachfront family Casona which operates as a hostel during Costa Rica's busy season. It’s a 250 meter walk from south beach. My brother Drew and I join forces with solo travelers and a group of firemen from Canada to make a beast of a community dinner. Fresco.

Bellies full, drinks in hand, we head down to the beach and find a couple sitting alone at a roaring bonfire. “Of course! Of course you can join us,” says the woman. The man says nothing and glares at us with disapproval. Blocked! as fifteen of us join in a circle around his fire. Sara and Drew assemble drum kits from drift wood, rocks, and hollowed out turtle shells. Adam, Les, and I share two guitars - my god, Adam can wail.

It gets late. Drinks get drunk and we sing and smoke and smile. But tonight is special. I've been talking about it all day. We have brought longboards down to the bonfire hoping the moon will provide enough light for one last surf. Five of us strip down naked and start to paddle out.

*

Thursday morning comes early. High tide.

“Hey Kenn?" Drew's voice comes from the bunk below me. "Surfing?”

Just another day at the office.

And the ladies...
Photo from Emma.

New Years Bowl - Cloudburst Mountain

Nothing like bringing in the New Year with a three day ski trip into the back country. New and old friends together with alcohol, good food, and untouched powder lines. We intended to head out to Roger's Pass for some alpine action but stayed local to try to get into the Tantalus. We called Blacktusk Helicopters on Friday night to book a Saturday flight, but they recommended to avoid the Tantalus right now. We decided to skin up to Cloudburst leaving Saturday morning.

Leaving the car at 11, we arrive in New Years Bowl after a four hour skin. Photo shows Ken Jones following a pre-cut ski track on approach to the bowl.

Time to catch some laps before dark.

As night falls, we begin to dig the snow cave:

This is us in the cave when it is complete. I thought it was our best roof yet! Cribbage, dinner, and drinks in the cave.

New Years Eve! Very grey day.

We take our snow profile of a North-East face.

Amazing snow pack! A firm base with stable powder. Green light for steeper lines!

A few short gladed runs close to camp. Jones and Tim skiing back down to our skin track.

In the afternoon we pick our line up the gut of New Years Bowl. I don't have a good photo of the entire slope. This photo shows the topmost third with the straight zigzag on the left showing our ascent and perfect turns on the right for descent.

Tim up on the ridge. We spent our days in the shadow of the mountain but caught a few rays of light up on the ridge before descending off left.

Paul and Natassja are expected to join us before dark but they are nowhere to be found. We ski down and find them after thirty minutes or so. Two hours to skin back up to camp with our new heavy load - firewood, three bottles of wine, tequila, champagne, bottled water, snow peas, Doritos, a French Press, and dry mittens. Paul brings the party as usual!

Evening starts with a few drinks by the fire.

Fighting in the snow and New Years count down.

Bring in 2013 with a midnight slightly intoxicated ski! First of the year!

New Years Day is a blue bird! We are running laps up to the ridge for that beautiful 40% powder descent. Each lap is about an hour up and ten minutes down.

View from the bottom. The graininess, noise, and lack of colour is 'art' (this was a terrible photo taken from very far away).

View from the top of the ridge:

After two laps on the ridge we ski for about two hours through gladed terrain and logging roads. When we reach the car, we head straight for chicken and bacon.

OMG bought a GPS last week!!! I'm really enjoying this.

Tikal Ruins, Guatemala

Nestled in an expansive jungle wilderness, the Mayan city of Tikal contains enormous pyramids of rock which reach high into the surrounding jungle canopy. Visiting ruins is pretty common in Central America - so we aren't to amped about the rocks. I used to try to get into the culture; to learn about the civilization and all that jazziness. Now I kind of hang out in the temples because they feel different and its cool to imagine what it was all like. Its really a fantasy world. But here in Tikal, it's the jungle that captures us.

Tourists are forbidden to climb Temple II but we're pretty bad ass. Here we are sitting on Temple II looking out at Temple I because nobody is around at noon when it's super hot. To help your imagination, the temple we are sitting on looks very similar to the one across the plaza.

Light fades and we end up stumbling around in the dark jungle to find the exit. When we do exit the park, the ranger approaches and asks "do you want to sleep on the temple tonight?" It's a good suggestion. We ask some questions and quickly learn that he only knows one sentence of English. Thank goodness we have been practising our Spanish because our tent is in Antigua. I ask "Tienes uno tenta?" Tenta is not a real word in Spanish. Instead of tenta, he hears Do you have a tienda (store)? and since this makes no sense whatsoever - he simply responds with "Si! No problemo." We ask for a blanket and for a mattress (frezada and colchón) in a similar fashion, and receive a look of recognition and a simple "Si! No problemo"

Okay, let's go for it.

We negotiate a price and then walk 25 minutes through the jungle in the dark using a cellphone to light the path. We cross into the large Mayan plaza and ascend Temple II. At the top, we are level with the jungle canopy and pleased with the setting. But to our surprise, our guide has no tent, no blanket, no mat. He lied! I call him out: "Hables una tenta!" (Makes no sense at all - You say a store!) He responds by pulling three industrial black garbage bags from his satchel. He calmly points to a slab of concrete for us to lie on and asks for his money. We are not pleased. We try to get him to bring a blanket, give up and try to get a better price, then give up and just complain. In the end,  we just say "Probamos" (we try)

There are stars and a half moon overhead and the lightning storm on the horizon looks like it will miss us. At least he gives us a good price - the required park entrance free for the next day plus $2 per person. It is actually the cheapest place to stay in town. Things are a bit creepy when he leaves, then just uncomfortable as our bones argue with concrete through a bed of socks and sandals. The endless grunts of the howler monkeys sound like a depressed jungle cat and sometimes like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park. Toucans win the prize for best bird call ever. We embrace, and listen to the jungle as the moon crosses the sky.

Eventually the sun peaks over the canopy and we descend. In no time, we are just two more tourists in the crowd.

View of Temple II (where we slept) from Temple IV - a partially excavated temple deeper in the jungle.

Julia styles it out on the garbage bags wrapped in her nicest of silk liners.

Searching for a Good Camera

"Just throw it! I'll take a picture of you." Julia is swimming deep offshore in Laguna Atitlan. I'm diving off something or other.

"It'll sink if we miss it," I've been here before. This camera has history. There has been more than one rescue from the bowels of a water body.

"Don't miss." She has come in closer now. Egg beater with both hands ready to receive.

I draw back my arm. Take a step forward and swing the camera in a gentle arch. I even remember adjusting for the wind. The camera sails through the air. Short! It's a terrible toss. Two feet short of the target. Kerglunkah.

Julia chases the flickering reflection of the camera screen as it sinks but thick weeds halt her pursuit after a little over a meter. We exchange glances and some laughter at the most unfortunate of "Told ya so"s.  Some naked children see the blunder and come to lend a hand with the rescue. They rely on vision - but it's too dark to see down there.

We begin a grid search using only touch on the bottom of the lake. Lots of weeds and a beer can. Hopeless. I excavate a 3m x 3m square over a period of about an hour. It's more than 200 lbs of water soaked vegetation. Then start to search in the dark using touch.

Search

All of the photos from the trip are lost! I'm kicking myself. Stupid. At least I have my cellphone camera.

Twenty minutes pass. The lake is landlocked stagnant water with no rivers out. The ground is covered in cans and  there is a small recess in the middle of the search zone where the garbage gets really deep. Gross.

But it's here somewhere!

The sun departs behind thick clouds and soon it's raining. I'm out of breath and shivering in the cold. I've been over this grid so many times. Despair.

An hour in this garbage and Julia arrives with a diving mask, a snorkel, and rejuvenated hope.
Another half hour and we have given up. But you can see almost a foot with the mask - which is a great help. Just one more search.

I came up out of the water shooting with a happy Julia!

Mask and some of the weeds.

One cold rescuer.