On the last day of our trip to Vegas for climbing in Red Rocks, Wyatt uses a tent stake to eat his oatmeal from the packet. The latter’s not so unusual — it’s a great way to avoid doing dishes — but usually we use plastic spoons. Except when a New Year’s Eve storm blows them, and everyone’s underwear, far, far away.
Jamin, Wyatt and Joe tangle up at a belay station on Cat in the Hat, Red Rocks, Las Vegas. Later, after nightfall, things got considerably cozier as six of us set up our double-rope rappel at this very station, with just three headlamps between us.
Rock climbers, in my experience, are not especially given to discussing statistical factor loadings. For climbers, figuring out the loads on each element in the rope system has, shall we say, more grave and immediate consequences.
Straddling the worlds of p-values and Yosemite Decimal System ratings, as I do, and being given to a predilection for imposing my geekiness on others, I fairly squeaked with joy when I found today a rock-climbing illustration of a statistical concept. It is (tum ta tum!) the scree test. It’s a graphical way of deciding which factors to retain following a principal components analysis. You plot your eigenvalues on a line plot, which ends up looking at the left like the steep mountains we climbers so enjoy surmounting, and on the right like the more gently sloping (but still arduous to traverse) scree fields (piles of jagged rocks just right for ankle-twisting) you typically find at the base of a big, juicy rock face. You then dump the factors that form the scree field because they’re, well, scree, and nobody likes it.
Pictured here is the one person in the world I can think of who’d be likely (p <.05) to be just as excited about this as I am.
The summer Minnesotaclimbing.com gathering drew more than 70 people this year, including an impressive Nebraska contingent: Doug, Jake, Tim, Jami, Javal, Shannon, Mark and … and … that guy whose name I can’t remember right now! Anyone who was there knows the title of this entry is … well … optimistic. But that’s water under the bridge. Next time we face climb on dry sandstone, we’ll look back to the wet and mossy Sioux quartzite and think everything else is just a piece of cake.
Here’s a slideshow.
Chris, Devin, Jon and I took a great early-season climbing trip to Colorado the weekend of March 4.
Day One was some challenging slab climbing in a new area near Garden of the Gods called Red Rock Canyon Open Space. I led three 5.9’s, which felt like 5.10’s owing to the almost complete lack of hand- and footholds. Jon, our calendar boy for this update, took more than 30 minutes to lead a 5.10b and cried like a little girl most of the time. We all had a great time doing the running dyno start to a small jug on the last route of the day.
Day Two featured my first climb of the First Flatiron, a 1000-foot face that took us eight pitches. Free soloists were passing us constantly, but we stayed roped up. It got a tad chilly on the summit ridge, with sustained wind speeds of 30mph+. I’d do it again with a lot less gear on a much warmer day.
Here’s a slideshow.
We went to Colorado after Christmas for our annual snowshoeing trip and managed to get some outdoor climbing in as well, owing to the fantastic 45-degree weather. I got to use the Black Diamond nut set I opened just days earlier, which made me giddy as a schoolgirl … umm, that is, happy as a clam.
Here’s a slideshow.
My photos of three-fifths of the Nebraska contingent’s October Blue Mounds trip are now up. More personal details will have to wait until this graduate student has time to write them, likely in 2007. Until then, this trip report on MinnesotaClimbing.com has all the news about the trip most people thought would be too cold — but actually was perfect.
Photos from last month’s Black Hills Climbing Trip are up, finally. (”Finally up” would have ended the sentence with a preposition, and that is something up with which I shall not put.)
The climbing season’s pretty much over for me and my lame lateral meniscus. Anyone out there who’s succesfully, yet inexpensively, treated this apparently quite important piece o’ cartilage?
Just posted: Golden Climbing Trip Slideshow. More later.
The Colorado climbing trip’s over and we’re back in the Flatlands. Trip report coming for your perusal and enjoyment, along with pictures of Brian sporting the cutest French-braid ponytails you’re ever likely to see. And a whole lot more. In the meantime, why not rate the trip using the handy-dandy poll on the upper-left side of the page?
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