Janzen Gear is in Business!

It took two years for the hangboard idea to become a reality, but now it exists! I have something to sell!

Janzen Gear Hangboard 0.1, 0.5 and Two 0.8s

I could say more, and I hopefully will over the next couple days, but for starters head over to Janzen Gear and check out the development blog. After you get a taste of the little bit of the first business that I tried to start, and failed, and I suppose am having some success now, head over to Etsy and buy a Janzen Gear Hangboard 0.8!

Thank you guys for reading! This is probably the first time that I have taken something from concept to product and actually have something to sell. It's exciting. This is releasing the entrepreneur in me! I'll probably shoot for the moon once I actually sell one.

Anyway, take a look, tell your friends, tell me you saw this, and go read some Janzen Gear.

Our Climb of Devils Tower

Once you begin climbing there are certain things, at least throughout the United States, that stand out as something worth giving a try. Yosemite, Rocky Mountain National Park, the Enchantments, Mt. Rainer, Moab, the Tetons, My. Washington, and Devils Tower among others. The sight of Devils Tower is just strange. It does not look like anything else I can think of. 

Devils Tower from the KOA parking lot with my 287,000 miles experienced van in the foreground

Since a few coworkers and friends in Dubuque were getting into climbing, and I have more or less been on hiatus from climbing since 2010, I started to do more of it this year. After a few climbing outings I wanted a goal. Something worth going climbing to train for. My family saw the tower from a distance in 1999 and it came back up in memory. A tower around a thousand feet tall, a couple hundred miles from any other long multipitch climbing objective I know of. It seemed like the perfect weekend road trip. A grade two (typically a half day) climb and a moderately long (13 hours) drive one way from Dubuque. The kind of thing worth spending a weekend doing, but a dubious expenditure of precious vacation time. 

The Newbie, at the Trailhead

So we left Dubuque at noon Friday and drove and drove and drove. Actually with four drivers, it is not bad at all. After a few hours someone can take a rest in the back. Plus, we drove my van, and without the middle seat there is a significant amount of room so the people in the back can really stretch out their legs. These things helped us pass the time until it was around 1AM mountain time when we arrived at the 1/3 full campground below Devils Tower.

Th original plan was to wake up at 4AM and go from there. However, 4 AM came and our most excited climbing advocate woke up and tried to get the rest of us up, but it had rained the night before and I wanted the rocks and dirt to dry out a little more, so we slept another hour or hour and a half. We finally woke up, and it was light enough we didn't need headlamps. It was interesting, I am the kind of person that once I'm up, I'm ready to get going, but most people are not like that. So my comrades brushed their teeth and changed their clothes and stood around eating. I suppose I learned years ago that the way to get things done is move in that direction and not stand around. In other words, when you are getting ready for a mountain adventure, why put on a long sleeve shirt after you wake up if you intend to take if off in 15 minutes?   This kind of goes back to some sort of desire I have to be the first ready or fear of being the person everyone is waiting on.

The climb was interesting. I consider it a resounding success. We all went up and down safely with no permanent injuries. Two of the four of us made the summit. (One was not planning to climb at all and only did the fourth class approach.) It was nice to have him along for at least that bit. Then one of us only made the penultimate belay, a mere 100 feet below the summit. Of course, the last pitch was not a piece of cake and it started raining, hailing and lightening minutes after I arrived on the summit. 

Roping Up 

A few things, we didn’t have the greatest approach. We started around 6:30 AM, later than planned but it had rained the night before and we decided more time to let it dry would be good. I think it went well but we ascended the talus too far to the east of the tower and not the south of the tower where our route was. So we ended up doing some traversing I am not sure we had to do. Then I didn’t lead very fast. There have been many times when I have led things lickety sizzle, moving up the rock with a strong rhythm. Today, I write this on my laptop hours after the climb, I did not have a strong rhythm. Many of the pitches and moves were very physical. I suppose that when it says “mostly fists and off width” that it means this is not your standard little ledges and finger cracks trad climb. I would describe the route as very physical. Knees and elbows were used for many key jams along the route. That’s not normal traditional climbing.

Me Leading Pitch One on the Durrance Route

Another interesting factor was having two novice climbers with me. So I did all of the leading and the belay site management was a little more hectic than with more experienced climbers or just one rope. As far as the route was concerned, we did the Durance route with the direct finish. The second pitch was somewhat hard and the last 15 feet of the last pitch really gave me a hard time. Also the penultimate pitch I went part way up, but wasn’t so sure about the chock stone so I descended and tried two other no go options before deciding the let the party behind us pass us, and trail a rope up 30 feet to the next belay. Then I climbed it on top rope, feeling incompetent because the move was not that hard. That is the way it is sometimes. Collaboration is used to acquire the objective, even if not every individual does the originally intended task.

I struggled significantly the last 20 feet of technical climbing. It was an inside corner with a not terribly steep face with 1 inch ledges every four feet and on the left was a flaring off width between the face wall and the left wall which was slightly overhanging. I ended up using painful  left arm jams with small holds for my right hand and feet. Plus I had introduced a ton of rope drag based on a weaving route so I was pulling the rope up as I struggled just to push myself up. I will have a few more back of the hand scars after this jam fest.

Once on the top, the rain started. It was late, probably 3 PM or so when I topped out. I had significant difficulty belaying the second because of the rope drag. This is actually a common problem in rock climbing. The leader will end up with a lot of rope drag and after climbing the route gets no rest before having to pull all the rope up for a second. So the climber below is yelling “take... take... up rope!” and the leader is but it goes slowly. After a quick summit video we started the rappels down. The rain started in earnest and then some hail, but not significant hail. While it was uncomfortable, I was pleasurably sucking the water off of my shirt and arms because I ran out of water about a half hour before and my mouth was very very dry, so the rain was a blessing in that respect. Plus, rappelling in the rain, is not all that bad. The ropes are so heavy that you go even slower than on a dry rope. Then since the rappel devise is squeezing water out of the rope the device is getting water cooled, which is much more efficient for heat transfer. So you can almost take your hands off of 10mm ropes on a double rope rappel when it is wet without worrying about picking up too much speed. At least a 130 pound person goes slowly. As we were setting up the second rappel the rain diminished and the third and fourth rappels were nearly dry. 

Me halfway down the second rappel. 

When we reached the ground our friend who had gone bicycling and hiking during the day met us and we walked back along the paved trail to the van. Lest any climbing story end at the parking lot we went to the KOA and had hamburgers and buffalo burgers and texas toothpicks, which is a local dish with jalapeños, onions and green beans fried, as we watched the beginning of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We took a shower and headed to South Dakota. It’s funny to take your pants off after such a physical jam fest. Our ankles and knees were red and green, scraped and inflamed. There are aesthetic routes for climbing and this, while perhaps aesthetic from the ground, was not aesthetic climbing.

Enjoy the video! It is two minutes that sum up the adventure. 

It has taken me a week to get this posted and I have had some time for reflection. First, it's really hard to watch myself on video. I feel like there are so many things to critique. On that note, in the video from the summit, I was wasted! I was so physically exhausted and somewhat mentally as well and perhaps a little emotionally. In fact, the physical exhaustion that you see there is about as worn out as I get. Sure it is worse after a marathon, but not much, and certainly not much exhaustion in my upper body like in this video.The strange thing is I watch this and it doesn't look like I am struggling much. I suppose I put on a good show. 

Stumbled Up and Blown Down

I once again attacked my favorite mountain, Long Peak. This time I attacked it in the winter. Since all of my native Colorado climbing partners were busy I was fortunate enough to be joined by G my mountaineering partner from WPI. The plan was to ascend the north face. We brought ropes, a little gear, crampons and two ice axes/ice tools each.

We ate steak the night before in Loveland and drove up to the Long Peak Trailhead for a few hours of terrible sleep. It was great to catch up because G and I spent quite a few mountaineering Saturdays in New Hampshire going up and down the classic 5000 foot peaks. He also did a huge amount of work to get the ice axes manufactured. I would work with him again professionally any day and I would rope up with him any day as well.

before we went to sleep we agreed on a 1AM wake up time. At 1AM we agreed on a 2AM wake up time. At 2AM we started moving around, eating drinking, dressing, and by 3AM we were walking up the trail. We signed in at the register and started uphill. Within ten steps I was huffing and puffing. Going from 1000 feet to 9200 feet in 45 hours is a little quick. We slowed down and settled into a seemingly slow pace. However, we kept moving and soon enough were above treeline, well before the sun was up.

The wind was rather strong. Gusts were initially in the 30-40 mph range, which is not very challenging, but it gets your attention. Plus viewing the world with the light of a headlamp gives you a rather one dimensional view of the world. We kept moving and were continually losing the trail. I have hiked up and down that trail more than a dozen times, but in the snow and wind I felt like a total novice.

I tried to angle up toward the trail junction with Chasm Lake. However we never hit the trail junction on the way up. Under the assumption and feeling that we were moving like snails, and with at least one gust to about 60mph (the forecast said gusts to 80mph) we called it a day and started heading down.

As it happens we were nearly a mile farther up the trail that I thought. We were on the side of Mt. Lady Washington well above the trail junction. On the way down we ran into the trail that curves around to the gap and followed that down to the junction. We took a few minutes of a break there and this about describes the situation:

The Situation!

Okay, I can't torture you like that and leave you hanging so much. It wasn't as bad as Febuary 2006 on Mt. Adams with I. Windchill of -50F is so cold...

The Situation! With Less Drama. (By the way notice the nice boots!)

I took some video as well, which I will post when I have a little more time. I still have to go for a run and drive to Denver today. Anyway, the moral of the story is I have some amazing friends and going from 1000 feet to 12,200 feet or so in 48 hours is definitely possible with enough hydration and conditioning, but it is not recommended. Oh yes, I already knew that you can't walk in wind more than 50mph, but I'll repeat it for the benefit of others. 

Abaqus, Bodycote, Alpinist, Legalzoom

Today was fairly progressive. I spent most of the day working on an Abaqus problem with the mesh not agreeing with the geometry which is a result of my partitioning and the following meshing. The problem was/is hard enough that the resident post-doc simulation master couldn't solve it, or at least he didn't spend the time to really figure it out. Abaqus: 1284 Isaiah: 63

Tonight at the ASM Worcester meeting Roger Fabian the president of ASM International gave a talk about the future of materials engineering and reasons to join materials societies. He ended up talking at least five minutes about the aerospace industry. Eclipse went out of business and sold itself to EclipseJet. Boeing isn't doing to hot. The jets up in Canada aren't going crazy. The A380 is still being made. The point he made was that he expects the aerospace industry to turn around the end of this year. Business jets on the other hand he expects to not make a full recovery until 2012. (For the few of you that I have spilled my dreams to you know that this is actually good news!)

This afternoon I read a blurb that Alpinist Magazine is coming back with almost the same quality that it used to have before it was canceled in October. So I decided that instead of complain about it's demise I would buy a subscription to do my part to prevent that from happening again. The nice part is that for first time members the price is only 34 per year instead of 46. 

My marketing director for my mountaineering gear company told me about legalzoom.com today and I just checked it out for a few minutes. I'm thinking that I will have some free time in May and then I can form a LLC or incorporate. Have a friend build a website this spring or summer while I'm away. Then when I get back in August start selling/building. I've read that often people sell products before it exists (think houses, contractors, fast food, guiding/cruises). So the thing to do would be outsource all of the stuff to be built in May and early June so that it would be on my door step by August and then I could proceed to get UIAA certification and other testing done while someone builds batch two of this and the website starts selling these things.