Citadel Hike and Ski

First time out skiing with Ward, we had planned on skiing Hagar, but the south face route on Citadel is a little more straightforward so we just switched to that route. We had a few bumps along the way, but overall the route went well, good first day out and hopefully the first of many, Ward's got the right attitude for a long and fruitful ski mountaineering career for sure.

16 years of Memorial Day Weekend Trips

Memorial Day weekend is an annual ritual in which we not only hike and ski some 14ers usually, but we camp, we travel, we eat, we drink, and we honor those who sacrificed the ultimate to afford us the freedom to pursue.  Indeed to not enjoy the freedom that is provided us would be an insult to those who fought and gave all to provide it.

The trips started innocently enough in 2000 with a trip up to Maroon Peak, where we camped at Crater Lake and climbed and skied the east chutes of Maroon Peak.

• 2000 - Bells area, bachelor party for Mike, east chutes of s. maroon, Mike, Marcel, Jim, Jared, Cab, introduced money into marmot society.
• 2001 - Challenger Peak and camping by Willow Lake with Gabe and Mike
• 2002 - Bad snow year, no snow left by Memorial Day
• 2003 - Belford group, Marcel's bachelor party, backpacked up in the basin, Marcel, Cab, Mike Hetzel and Jim
• 2004 - Wetterhorn/Redcloud/Oxford, great camping at the trailhead, Cab, Mike, Jim, Hetzel
• 2005 - Harvard, backpacking in the basin with Gabe, Hetzel, Cab and Jim
• 2006 - Castle/Conudrum/Snowmass, car camping, climbing and skiing Castle, then backpacking up to Snowmass Lake and doing Snowmass.  Cab, Mike, Hetzel, Marcel, and Gabe, probably the best of them all.
• 2007 - Huron/Columbia - Gabe, Hetzel and Mike, car camping and listening to Starman on repeat.
• 2008 - Princeton and Yale, camping with Jay, Adan, Gabe, Mike and Hetzel, the pot milk.
• 2009 - No trip, most likely because we were about to have Phoebe, but I don't really know.
• 2010 - Camping at the difficult campground with Jay and his buddy, Adan and Hetzel, Mike and I camped a night at Crater Lake too, Maroon peak from the summit, dropped a ski and retrieved it.
• 2011 - Camping on south colony lake road with Jay V, Adan, Hetzel, and Mike, climbed and skied Crestone Peak
• 2012 - No trip, bad snow year.
• 2013 - North Maroon, camping at the difficult campground again, Cousin Jay, Adan, Hetzel, and Mike.
• 2014 - Camping at Ridgeway state park with Mike and Adan, climbed in skied Sneffles, rain and cold all weekend, but we survived.
• 2015 - The Sangres, camped on Lake Como, climbed and skied little bear with Mike, Gabe picked me up and we camped and went to the sand dunes and a beautiful waterfall.

Many trips, many memories.

Peak One Ski

After 19 years of skiing the resorts in summit county and staring at Peak One from every angle the bro and I finally climbed and skied Peak One.  Here's some pictures.

2016 Spring Ski Mountaineering Wish List

With spring coming early this year to the Rockies my thoughts turn to the high peaks, the big lines, the climbs and skis that dreams are made of.  So here is what is on the wish list for the spring ski season, conditions pending.

• Peak 1 south face day trip
• Tenmile Peak south face day trip
• Mount Flora day trip
• Ellingwood Point weekend camping trip and ski
• Trip to the Wilsons or Chicago Basin area for Memorial Day

Look Henry I Got Glue Stuck on My Skis

After a grueling climb and ski of Little Bear I had a decent amount of pine needle and sap on my skis, so I took some white gas and cleaned up the bases nicely and put the skis into storage for the summer.   Fast forward to next year and my brother Mike and I are on an early season tour up to Berthoud Pass, at the top of Lift Ggully I go to pull my skins off and there is a whole lot of skin glue stuck on my skis.  Skiing down with that much glue on the skis felt like skiing with your skins on, if your skins were on backwards.  After that run we were done for the day and I was left with my skis in shape best described as no good.  

I did a little research on how to remove skin glue from ski bases, one post on TGR had a few ideas, one was to heat the glue up and scrape it off, another was to use white gas and just clean it off.  Starting with the heating and scraping idea, I was unable to make much progress at all, so I switched over to the white gas approach.  There was a lot of glue on the bases, but eventually by using a bunch of steel wool and white gas, I was able to get it all off.  It took several passes to get rid of the glue, then I switched to a t-shirt rag to do the finishing touches.

The before

and the after

Will it work?  I'm hoping to take the skis and skins out for a little tour up in Breckenridge to find out. I definitely don't want to get on anything too committing or lengthy without knowing for sure the glue stuck to the skin debacle won't happen again.

Learning to Program Course

Here's the basic chapter outline for my new "Learning to Program" course that should be coming out on coursera sometime soon.  Let me know if you want to see any additional chapters.

Chapter 1: How to brew coffee
Chapter 2: How to google for solutions to your problems
Chapter 3: How to paste solutions into your IDE
Chapter 4: How to make more coffee
Chapter 5: How to commit your changes to source control
Chapter 6: How to find the nearest bar to your office
Chapter 7:Learning how your perceived value coincides with how much you complain about other people's software

10 tips for technical interviews

There's lots of advice out there about how to interviews, but after going through about 100 resumes and conducting dozens of interviews over the past 6 months I'd thought I'd share my thoughts.

1. Make sure you resume prints on one page, include all the positions you've had but "built an ecommerce app in a .NET/SQL stack that supported 100,000 users" is enough.
2. Do include links to your social profile on your resume: linkedin, github, etc.
3. Do be knowledgable about the company and if you're not passionate about the business don't bother showing up.
4. When you're asked about how you work through conflicts don't answer "I've never had a conflict with another co-worker", because then it's obvious you're either lying or delusional.
5. Do not be afraid to answer any question "I don't know", nothing is worse than listening to someone stumble through a domain that they don't know.
6. Do ask questions throughout the interview.
7. Remember the WAIT acronym, "Why Am I Talking", brevity is the key to answering questions effectively.
8. Be on time, and if you can't, let the company know ASAP, there is grace for people who communicate effectively.
9. Remember the non-verbal skills: eye contact, dressed appropriately, etc, it's obvious but you'd be surprised.
10. Lastly, for the hiring managers, hire for passion, train for skills.