Kobenhavn!

So once again, as always I suck at upkeeping of the blog. Today's report of my suckage finds me in Copenhagen doing a 5 week study abroad program in digital arts and media and working with a firm Ornesto Mong on a project in Ostebroj (a small neighborhood in the north of Copenhagen). Link to their site here:


As always traveling has been a whirlwind of emotions and a wave of joys, ups, downs, drunken stumbling, cigarette smoke and burbles of new sound. It's been good. It's been good to be out of my comfort zone again, to go some place familiar yet new and try to see it through a new lens. New lenses are always good. Walking around this city and hearing the language feels so familiar to me, yet different. Copenhagen has gone through a lot of changes in the last 10 years (probably the last time I spent a significant amount of time here) and this is the first time I've ever been here and not been on a family trip. Family trips are great, but there are certain things that you don't experience when your on a family trip, like what do the streets of Vesterbroj look like at 4 am after an all day long street party? Usually not included on the family tour.
So this is a quick check in, I've been here for about two and a half weeks now with another two weeks left in Copenhagen and then I'm off to Stockholm, Oslo and back to Skagen to participate in a family trip. One of the assignments we've had here has been a weekly Journaling project which is essentially a digital media creation that has to do with anything that we feel like expresses some part of us. Here's a quick video slideshow I created for this weeks. I'm not sure what about me it expresses, but all the photos were taken in this trip so far, and it kind of reminds me of the last time I took mushrooms.(which was a while ago for those adult types reading this!)

Untitled from Hans Flinch on Vimeo.

TR: Early Season Skiing!!

The season here went from non-existent to ON almost overnight. Usually we get a slower start with a few runs up on the WROD (white ribbon of death) and then some easy backcountry as things fill in. This year it went straight to the backcountry with some big storms dropping close to 48" at Loveland over a few days. I got a new tiny camera for better easy of portability recently and have been screwing around with the video function. Here's a little mock up of what I've been up to on the odd day off from grad school these last few weeks. Day 4 was yesterday!
Hope you enjoy!

TR: Kelso Ridge, Torreys, 09/28/2010

The banni-maniac hittin' up the knife edge

To steal the words of my friend Tim, this has been some SPLITTER fall weather. Absolutly ideal for running around up high. Recently, between my job and adjusting to a school schedule, getting out and about to go run around up high has been very hard to find time for, so pretty much since Longs I've been mainly running around crags on the front range(especially Eldo) and haven't really had a chance to get out much other than that. So when I saw the forecast of 60 degrees and sunny at the top of Torreys, I gave Ann a call (we've been talking about Kelso Ridge all summer) and said that it was time to go take a look at some aspen trees. From way high up.
So due to my totally screwed up sleep schedule these days, I got woken up by Ann calling me saying that she was at our assigned meeting location already. Learning from experience, (I do sometimes do that), I had packed everything the night before and was out of the house within 10 minutes of her waking me up. (Sorry Ann, I'd say it would never happen again, but that's probably not true :))
A short drive later(which the volvo totally made it up a classified easy 4WD road!!! NO PROBLEM!) we found ourselves below grays and Torreys with a short hike to the start of our climb bathed in beautiful alpenglow.

Our first view of the ridge, looks harder than it is
Kelso is a class 3 ridge, without too much difficult route finding, however, we'd made it a point that if we didn't like the way the wind was or if it had too much snow on it, we'd back off. However, when we got to it, we quickly decided that you couldn't begin to find better conditions and with helmets off the pack up we went.
Kelso is an awesome climb, great easy scrambling, a solid degree of exposure, and a 14er at the end with views of the continental divide. What more could you ask for! I can pretty solidly say that this is the most fun I've had on a 14er without being on skis, highly, highly reccomended!

The ridge from higher up

Author about to head into the chimney, photo by Ann B.

The first major obstacle involved a chimney section (easy moves, but definetly some exposure) followed by a winding ridgeline that moved to the right and left of the ridge, (basically, look for the easiest way up and it stays class 3 with no major difficulties). Climbing this with Ann was a total blast, we chatted while enjoying easy and fun movement, spectacular views, and scary exposure as we wound our way up. The major crux here I would say is route finding, it's nothing super difficult but you definetly have to pay attention, case in point. The most famous part of Kelso is the infamous Knife Edge, 30 feet of drop off on either side exposure over a jagged point of rock that requires the most stellar of all moves to overcome: the butt scoot! Now Ann and I had been climbing for about an hour and a half when we reached a point that we were positive was the knife edge. Both of us looked at it, compared it with our mental photos we'd seen, hemmed and hawwed, decided it was it (since no easy route appeared) and me being relatively chivalrous, started up.

Yours truly, feeling perplexed and pumped. Photo by Ann B.


The second I got on this thing I realized that it was harder than class 3, there was no feet, bad friction, and even though I was straddling it I was still yarding myself up with my arms. My first thought was crap, I can't do this, quickly followed by, oh yes i can! and the adrenaline hauled me up! Definetly 5.0-5.2 I'd say, but hey I thought, the hardest part is over! I turned around to shoot some photos of Ann hauling herself up and onward we continued.

Yeehaw! Airy! Photo by Ann B.

Ann crankin' it



50 feet later and here we are confronted with a second knife edge, which clearly indicated that we were off route earlier. This one was significantly easier than the one that we first encountered, actually requiring only some substantial butt scooting and some substantial exposure. A short pitch of Class 3 later and we're at the summit!

Myself on the ACTUAL knife edge, photo by Ann. B.

I have to comment that the weather on top of Torreys was absolutly unreal spectacular, clear skies, no wind and views all the way to the Elks.
Torreys sits right next to Grays, both which are 14ers and require no more than a class 1 ridge between the two of them. Neither of us having been up Grays we decided to make the quick jaunt up after downing some grub. 30 minutes later, and we were on top of the second 14er in an hour.

Grays summit shot!

After this it was a short retreat to the car and then straight to the bar (Tommyknockers as the Plume saloon was closed-sorry Chris, I tried).
Kelso Ridge=Highly reccomended!!!!, 4 stars from this blogger!