Loveland Interview

I had my interview for a position as a snowboard instructor on Tuesday. It was a group interview, with two interviewers and 5 other interviewees, which was a new experience for me. Overall, I think the interview went well. I was pretty comfortable answering all the standard interview questions. They went around the tables and gave everyone a chance to answer each question, so it was interesting to hear what other people had to say. Some of the other interviewees had some neat answers I hadn't thought of and had very interesting backgrounds.  One guy was a surfer and skateboarder from California, but looked very professional and said he had worked most of his life in construction (I think he was around 40).

The part of the interview that threw me for a loop was the very last thing the interviewers asked us to do. Each candidate had to teach the group something. The Californian went first and handed everyone a piece of paper. He then stood up and taught us how to make a paper airplane. He knocked that task out of the ball park. I went last because I was struggling to find something to teach the class that would engage them and demonstrate my teaching ability. I'm pretty sure I failed, though. All I could come up with was teaching them how to tie a knot, specifically an Eskimo bowline. I took off both my shoelaces, handed one to one of the other interviewees, then began demonstrating how to tie the knot. Only two people participated with me. Hopefully I did well enough during the rest of the interview to get a job.

I'll hear back from them the first week of October, so I'm crossing my fingers until then.

Exploding Plate, Cabin Update, and More

So this is just kind of random. I was making a baked potato in the microwave when I heard a pop sound. I opened the microwave to find this:


I guess there must've been a small crack in the plate that had gotten moisture in it that expanded when it started to heat up.

A quick update on the cabin. I replaced both sections of Plexiglas on the front screen door. The bottom one had been broken and missing for a while and the top one was cracked and faded. The sheets only cost $15 a piece at Home Depot and are fairly easy to install. All you have to do is cut them to size with a table saw, apply silicon sealant the the frame, then slide the panels in and let them dry. For $35 worth of materials, I think the "new door" looks pretty good.

Here's a before shot:


And the after shot:


The pictures don't really do it justice, but the new glass really does make a big difference.

I have a job interview at a ski area tomorrow for being a snowboard instructor. It's a group interview (which I have no experience with), so I'm a bit anxious about how I'll do. Hopefully all goes well and I get a winter job squared away.

I also made a little modification to my Jeep. I removed/cut away the front air dam. I think it looks better, but it should also keep it from getting caught on stuff when I'm 4 wheeling. I removed the license plate cover a while ago, so I think the front end is quite a bit cleaner now.

Before:


After:

Cabin Trim Painting

After I finally finished the second coat of green on the walls of the cabin, I spent a couple of days painting all the trim. It went on pretty quickly and I think it looks great. Here are some of the most recent pictures of the cabin. I still have the back walls to do, but at least from the front and sides, it looks finished. 

The wild flowers I planted are starting to bloom, but something is eating the buds, so I'm not getting as many flowers as I should.

In this picture, you can see the back of the house, which I haven't painted yet. You can tell just how faded and worn the old paint job had become.

flickr has more pictures of the cabin. There are some good up close ones that show the color and detail better.

Climbing Grays and Torreys Peaks

Wow, it's been ten days since my last post. Mostly because I haven't done anything particularly exciting recently.  I have finished the second coat of green paint on the visible sides of the cabin, and started working on the trim. I'll post pictures as soon as I get some more trim paint on. The cabin actually looks pretty good in bright green with brown trim.

I've been studying a lot for my Outdoor Emergency Education class, too. I've read about musculoskeletal injuries and how to treat/splint them over the past two weeks. Pretty interesting stuff. I have to read about soft tissue injuries this week, which I'm not looking forward to, because the pictures in the book are gruesome.

I've also been getting ready for winter. the nights are getting colder, and the average temperature inside the cabin when I wake up is around 60°F. I haven't turned on any of the gas heaters, yet, so I've been making fires in the evenings to warm the house up. I don't have nearly enough wood stored, so I've spent a couple days hiking up behind the cabin and cutting down recent beetle killed trees and chopping them up for firewood. A single tree doesn't seem to make as much firewood as I'd thought, so I've still got quite a bit more work to do before I have enough wood to last through the winter.

So, climbing Mt. Elbert got the bug in me. I climbed two more 14ers this morning, Grays and Torreys Peaks. I was the first person to hit the trail, at six am this morning, when it was just light enough to not need a headlamp. The trail up to Grays is a little under four miles long with  about 3000' of vertical gain. Another three quarters of a mile, down along a saddle and back up 600', and I was on top of Torrey's Peak, all by 10 am. I had each peak to myself for a few minutes, which is apparently fairly rare. Though, I did see several other groups of hikers along the way, and met a few people at the top of Torreys.
Grays peak is on the left, the big rounded one, and Torreys is on the right. Despite how it looks from here, Grays is three feet taller at 14,270'

There was a goat in the middle of the trail between the two peaks I had to detour around. He must be used to the attention, 'cause he stayed pretty still while I took a bunch of pictures of him.

flickr has the rest of the pictures from the trip.
EveryTrail has the trip path and geotagged pictures.

Climbing Mt. Elbert

Tuesday afternoon, I got a message about an opportunity to climb a 14er, one of Colorado's many mountains that is at least 14,000 feet tall. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance. The plan was to climb Mt. Elbert, which at 14,433 ft is the tallest mountain in Colorado, and the second highest in the lower 48 states.

Our group of five (plus one German shepherd) met at a campsite near the trailhead at around 10pm Wednesday night. We set up our tents and made a fire, but soon went to sleep, in anticipation of our 5.40 am wake up call. We were a bit sluggish in the morning, and didn't make it to the trailhead 'til 7.00 am, about the same time that the sun started lighting up the top half of the mountain.


The first couple of hours were on a good trail through the woods, a nice, albeit all uphill, hike.


We hit the tree line around 9.00 am.


From there, it was another three hours to the top. It was mostly easy trail hiking, but the last mile (with 1000 vertical feet to go) had some steep loose rock sections that made the going a bit slower.


After five hours, 4.5 miles, and 4,500 ft of vertical gain, we finally made it to the top. We couldn't have asked for better weather for the climb. Clear blue skies, low winds, and temperatures ranging from the upper 30s to lower 60s made for a great day (though, my face got a bit sun burned). Even at the summit (where I had my celebratory PB&J), the wind was very light.


We hung out on the summit for a few minutes, then started the journey back down. It took us less than three hours to make the return trip. For me, going down was worse than the trip up. That's when I started to feel it in my quads. Most of the way up, I felt great, aside from the normal increased breathing rate and pulse that accompanies uphill hiking. I don't think I really started to feel the altitude until we got to around 13,500 ft, which I attribute to the fact that I live at 9,200 feet.

Overall, I had a great experience and couldn't have asked for a better group to climb my first 14er with. Everyone was very supportive and laid back during the climb. Even Isis (the German shepherd) helped by checking on each one of us constantly, and warning the leaders of any stragglers (this was her third 14er). There are a lot more good pictures on flickr. A plot of our track, with geotagged pictures is on everytrail (I haven't figured out how to embed them well, yet). I'm already planning my next 14er...