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.

Guatemala Motocicleta - San Pedro á la Laguna

Road trip! Guatemala style.

Trees and vines and dirt fly past our heads. Julia is on the back of the motorcycle hugging me with both arms and both legs tight at my waist. I'm in the driver's seat on the fringe of control. In the flow state. She says "careful" with her tightening grip as we take a tight corner. Just another school bus oncoming towards us. This time the bus is using all of our lane except for the width of one motorcycle. We find the hole.

After six days in Central America we finally settled on a plan, a country, a route. El Salvador had the cheapest flights. Then it took a few days surfing in El Tunco and a few more in transit before we found a home in Antigua, Guatemala. Then we just waited to be inspired.

On our second day in Antigua, we were looking to purchase a motorcycle. If we could arrange a good deal for a good bike, we would learn to ride it. The folks at CaTours helped us meet ex pats in Antigua with motorbikes and eventually we were able to arrange a rental with a fellow Vancouverite living in Antigua. Check out this sick DR 250 S Suzuki. There's off road tires, and enough seat for two. Kick start only. No luxuries.

Kenn poses with the candidate bike on our first meeting.

We were eager to depart for a circuit which would take us into the highlands, to the northern jungles, and then back south along the Caribbean coast. But neither of us have ridden a bike and Julia hasn't handled a manual transmission. We had an incredible instructor from Quebec who prepared us over a span of two days. Thanks Frenchie!

Posing on the second day lesson. Up on some volcano somewhere.

Our bags were too heavy, so we trimmed the fat and dropped two thirds of our stuff. Just the essentials - and the Frisbee.

After we graduate, we depart at 10 am sharp. First stop is San Pedro á la Laguna - a chill hangout in the Guatemalan highlands nestled on the far corner of Laguna Atitlan. Chaotic traffic and absent road signs kept us on our toes as we found the Pan-American highway and cruised more than 18 kilómetros beyond our first turn-off. Regresamos!

Random road

Soon we are cruising through the volcanic highlands towards Laguna Atitlan. The twisting pavement is a biker's dream. We reach a river crossing where the bridge has been washed away. No problems. Vroom vroom as we take the river head on.

No bridge!

Cruising on dirt roads we take a hard corner where recent erosion has moved the dirt into a small wall. We don't see it until it is too late. Emergency braking procedures!! But the back wheel locks and Julia starts to slide out sideways. I release the brake and we take the bump head on at reduced speed. It went well. But a scare.

We get our first views of the lake and soon reach Panachel and find a nice break at the local fair.

Then we reach Solola and decide to push through impending storm rains and take a faint dirt road along the north side of the lake through small rural towns, several dead ends, and another river crossing. When we reach Utatlan, we decide to keep pushing on despite impending nightfall. San Pedro or bust!

With the sun setting we reach yet another small town named after yet another saint and ask, "How far to San Pedro?" In a five-minute Spanglish conversation we decipher that San Pedro is 48 kilómetros back in the direction we came from ... then a second villager confirms it, "Caraterra termino" - the road is out.

It has been a great first day out on the bike so we abandon hopes of reaching San Pedro today and race the setting sun back east to anywhere with a room for the night. In Utatlan we settle into Hostalaje Universal well after dark. Then we hit the town and enjoy some delicious corn husks stuffed with potato and chicken in the local plaza.

So ends our first day on the roads of Guatemala.
Tomorrow, Julia is driving! Gulp.

Monmouth Creek - Day 2

We had a grand-ol’ time crossing the Squamish River on Day 1 but forgot our map and our printed copy of the trail. We decided to take the crossing a tad bit seriously here on Day 2, and so we would swim across the river towing our gear behind us in dry bags. It is a glacial river (freakin’ freezing) and so we’d have to rent a wetsuit for Julia. We would learn late in the second morning that you can’t really rent a wetsuit in Squamish and that the friendly staff at Valhalla Pure strongly recommends against swimming across a river with so many hidden dead heads and sweepers. We listened, and thought their comments oddly applicable to a river crossing based on a stratagem of inflatables. We rented a kayak.

The crossing went smoothly.

We knew the trail generally follows a creek up the side of a steep face. We had a written description of the trail and a topographical map of the region, but no map which actually showed the trail. So we approached the creek from the south and then followed a bunch of empty creek beds up to eventually find the creek. Once we had the creek, we waded up it until we found the first waterfalls. All the information required to complete this hike without wading or bushwhacking is readily available online or from Valhalla Pure in Squamish, but it was actually quite good fun to wander our way through the flood plains.

Now it was just following a very nice trail up and up through an endless series of waterfalls. It was really the nicest hiking I’ve ever done around Vancouver.

Some shots of the waterfalls:

This one was really cool! The water has carved a deep tunnel in the rock peering through the tunnel there is just an eruption of waterfalls at the back of it.  I can’t wait to come back and see this one when the water is really high.

Eventually we found the arch. I had read about it online but not seen it. The water has formed a really smooth tunnel through quite a long span of granite and left some amazing features unlike anything I’ve ever seen. We had a great dip here.

And the climber in me just had to go out onto the arch and take a closer look. Some dirty 5.6 moves getting out here, but I really felt happy sitting there on the arch. Truly a great moment!

For me, it was a beautiful swim home. Epic shot here from Julia in the kayak who navigated well in the high winds.

Monmouth Creek – Day 1

I was on The Chief alone when I met a cheerful man who was about to jump off the cliff I was climbing on. He was aiming to paraglide on a little 20 lbs glider, but the wind wasn’t quite right and so we were wasting some time together. We had a nice chat and as he was leaving he pointed into the Tantalus Range and singled out a small peak across the Squamish River. “Best day hike you’ll ever find. You really have to go there.”

I looked into it and found a hike which followed a creek up to Echo Lake. Maps indicated what was obviously visible from my vantage in Squamish – steeps granite with many narrow waterfalls. Gathering information through word of mouth was difficult. Most people entering the Tantalus Range from Squamish do so via the logging roads far down river. I need to get to the west bank where the river empties into the Howe Sound, and this region is accessed only by boat. Not insurmountable, but it means that despite the incredible proximity to the main highway the hike is not broadly known.

Julia had some time off work and she suggested that we attempt the river crossing “on the cheap.” We would buy an inflatable two-man boat from Walmart ($9) and an inflatable Orca Whale ($8) and load up the whale like a pack mule with enough stuff for two nights of camping.  We giggled furiously at the idea – and so it was on! Stoke factor high.

Trouble erupted when Walmart, Canadian Tire, and London Drugs were all sold out of inflatable boats. We had a downtrodden walk on which we mourned the loss of our plan and discussed alternatives. Perhaps renting a kayak for the three days? We decided on a risky option – to buy a Four-in-One Double Queen-Size Inflatable Air Bed from Walmart ($110) with plans to return it for a full refund. It would be a real gamble.


Ready to embark:

Epic shot

At the far side of the river:

Mission Status: Amusing Failure

Sky Walker's Traverse

Julia came up from Vancouver on her day off and I took her out for her first big climb in many years. At the top of the climb we swam in the pools and waterfalls right before the river plunges down 200 meters off the side of the cliff we just climbed.

Pool bathing and waterfall showering

Some folks had a very impressive highline set here above the falls – wasn’t enough time for me to get on it L But this guy was really good.

Chasing the Top 100 in Squamish (Angel's Crest)

I took this time off for a variety of reasons: mostly just to take a break and poke around; but maybe scope out some next steps in my life. Definitely, I want to spend time thinking about problems which are not computer related and to experiment with some different lifestyles.

On my first sabbatical I travelled thousands of kilometers and visited thirteen different countries on three continents. It was a great experience but at the end I was left wishing that I had invested more in relationships  and wished that I had taken the time to explore places more deeply. There would surely be a tradeoff - meeting fewer people and seeing fewer places – but I'm sure it is the right way to do things this time around. So my goals for this sabbatical are focusing on fewer pursuits, smaller distances, and increased depth.

After returning from the Sunshine Coast I had a very mellow birthday with friends and the new Batman movie. Thanks to everybody (both local and remote) for a great day (even though the movie was crappy).

I loaned my only pair of house keys to a friend and he unfortunately took them on his trip home to Ontario, so I was locked out of my house for about six days. I embraced this and decided to get deeper into climbing and head up to Canada’s most popular climbing destination: just an hour’s drive to Squamish.

I'm playing around with a recently published list of Squamish’s best 100 climbs - called the Squamish Top 100. They are distributed across a variety of difficulties and many different climbing areas, so it really encourages quite a bit of exploration. I roughly go for one per day and explore the area around it.

Tim and I started the exploration on the first weekend with Angel’s Crest. This is about a 500 meter climb which using traditional protection up a crest to the summit of the Stawamus Chief climbing at 10b. It is one of my favourite long routes from the ground to the top of the chief. 

Tim leading Angel's Crack (10b)

Kenn leading on Angel's Crest (10b)

Tim and I have some history on this climb. We tried this route for the first time two years starting at 5am and accidentally walked beyond the start of the climb until we found a different but similar looking climb. We followed our noses up and up for over twenty hours of wild and dirty climbing and when we finished (well after midnight) we thought we had completed Angel’s Crest “give or take a pitch or two”. Two weeks later we figured out that we wandered into a totally separate gully system and climbed a line up the infamously dirty North-North Arête.

In stark contrast to our first attempt, our climb this week went smoothly. In fact, the crux pitches felt relatively casual for the grade and we finished the route with enough light for a swim as the sun went down. Great day!

Don't have a good summit shot of the both of us - but have one good one of each of us. This has made me really excited for a few weeks in Squamish exploring new vertical terrain - just one hour’s drive from my house!