MattK's blog-o-matic

Taking Ella back East

mattk — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:37:00 GMT

^{Surprise birthday celebration for me! Ella helps with the candles.}

Since a lot of you follow me on twitter and facebook, you probably know by now that I'm traveling back east with Ella for two weeks. You'll probably also know that I was in the ER last friday with a super nasty stomach bug. I should really write a blog post on that whole ordeal, but for now, I want to just let you know that I have a bunch of photos posted from the trip.

Here are some of my favs:

....and don't forget this video of the doorway to Pittsburgh .

So far we've had fun in Columbus, Youngstown, and Boswell (PA). We head out to Philly tomorrow to see more family.

Happy Autumn!

mattk — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:30:00 GMT

^{Ella at Smallwood Harvest}

Marqueyssac Gardens

mattk — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:39:00 GMT

^{Is this how you enjoy great wine?}

For our final touristy day in France was spent at the amazing Marqueyssac Gardens. This is just a few kilometers outside of Sarlat and we started the visit off with a picnic that was overlooking 4 different castles while drinking very expensive, but yummy, Chateau Lagrezette wine from Cahors out of sippy cups.

The gardens were just amazing and totally worth the visit there.

This final set of photos begins with a pic of our picnic:

Sarlat market

mattk — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:24:00 GMT

During our last two days in France, we took a bunch of photos. This first group, which has been drastically paired down, is from the Sarlat market and the medieval town itself. This was an amazing place, and we would have loved to spend more time here. Make sure you get a chance to see the video of Ella doing animal sounds.

Pix begin with this yummy photo of an organic breakfast crepe bought at the market.

More France photos - Cahors

mattk — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:45:00 GMT

In an effort to keep you all from French overload, here is another batch of photos from our France trip, all in small bite size piece. This particular day was spent wine touring two hours south of our house, in the region of Cahors. They've been making wine in Cahors since the Romans ruled the area. Great wine, kind of under appreciated like Walla Walla is in America. That's great for us, as we were able to taste and buy wine fairly cheap.

We ended the day in the Medieval city of Sarlat. More on Sarlat tomorrow.

Pix from the trip start with this one:

Perigeux and a pair of wines

mattk — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:47:00 GMT

I'm here hanging with my good friend, Jim Goodman, raiding his wine cellar. We just finished an amazing 1982 Stags' Leap Petit Sirah and going on to the 1969 Robert Mondavi Cabernet, this all after nursing a hangover from the Pearl Jam show at the Gibson Amphitheater last night. Amazing wine, amazing show, and some cool pix from Perigeux, France.

Pix start with this one of ObamaTown:

Wine touring and Aquariums

mattk — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:45:00 GMT

In my next installment of photos from France, we spent a day visiting wineries in Bergerac (see Chateau D'Elle above). The wine from there is very light, almost of a rosé quality. It's good, but it is not my typical choice of wine. In fact, I indeed found the rosés to be of a better quality (yes, I actually drank some rosés).

Following that, we headed to the largest private aquarium in Western Europe, Aquarium du Perigord noir. Ella had a ball there.

This day's photos start with this cute one of Ella on a toy tractor at winery in Bergerac:

Chateau Hautefort

mattk — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:08:00 GMT

As is typical with my trips, my server went down, however this time for the right reasons (core overheated). Thus, I stopped posting halfway thru our trip. Now that I'm home, all is good.

We have a bunch of photos and notes from our adventure in France, however I won't inundate you with pointless banter and endless photos. Instead, I will present them in bite size, daily chunks. The first of which is our stroll through the Chateau Hautefort. This is just one of the over 5,000 castles and chateau's found in the Dordogne region of France, which is where we stayed. In fact, this particular Chateau was in the village next to us about 5 km away.

This day was particularly lazy. I think we walked through the chateau and then spent 90 minutes sitting on the lawn just looking at the scenery. What a great way to do nothing!

Pix from this day start here:

Markets and Castles

mattk — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:36:00 GMT

Lazy days lead to time at the Sunday market in Saint Cyprien and exploration of the Chateau de Beynac. I also discovered I'm getting marginally better taking photos with my tiny point and shoot camera.

Resting in the French Countryside

mattk — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:03:00 GMT

We finally got a chance to take a real vacation as a family. This time one of our friends lent us his farmhouse in Dordogne region of France, which is where I am now. I forgot how nice it was to have a child in Europe. As we traveled thru Paris on Air France, each person...the security personnel, passport control, the flight attendants, everyone stopped us and pulled us to the front of each line. It was awesome. Granted, carrying all of the crap with us along with a woozy toddler was no picnic, they really went the extra mile to keep it simple. Speaking of which, Ella was awesome on the flights to Bordeaux. She slept most of the flight and was sweet when she was awake. What a trooper!

Once in Bordeaux, we grabbed our rental car and headed out two hours east to the French countryside. I couldn't believe how remote we were. The roads were one lane, and they all connected these extremely tiny villages to each other. The farmhouse we are staying at is in the middle of a remodel, so our accommodations are a little rough. However, we did run down to the local market and picked up wine. All the wine we picked up was solid, not spectacular, but who would care at 3E a bottle. We couldn't believe how inexpensive wine was here.

Yesterday we had to drop off our rental car back in Bordeaux, so we decided to walk around the city a bit. It's weird seeing so many people when we are so remote. We also stopped by the water mirror which was hella fun. Then we drifted back to Périgueux for some dinner.

Today we decided was a lazy day. We went in search of market in Cubjac, but instead found beauty.

Since food is super expensive here, we have started making our own food. Tonight we ate something that resembled tacos, but the French don't seem to understand what hot spices are yet.

At some point, I'm actually going to start writing the book I've been planning, but I'm having too much fun just bumming around. Oh yeah, there's supposed to be wineries around here somewhere too.

You can find more photos up on Flickr.

Happy Birthday Ellen!

mattk — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:09:00 GMT

Ellen's 34th birthday fell during Burningman this year, so we had a celebration off the playa after the event. Last weekend we invited everyone over to Vortex to wish Ellen a happy birthday and it was a great excuse to wear costumes that weren't covered in playa dust. The theme of the party was carnival or whatever that meant to you (carnie, clowns, cotton candy, Mardi Gras, whatever).

Ella was dressed as the carnival strongman, Ellen was a carnie, and I was the evil clown. We had a great turnout, you can catch my photos here. Peaboy posted his pix here.

Burningman 2009

mattk — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:31:00 GMT

It's hard to explain, but you can see some of the photos here.

Our newest iPhone App

mattk — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 01:50:00 GMT

Just wanted to let you know we are getting our newest iPhone app ready for release. Wanna try it before the general public?

You do? Great!!

Here's the catch. You need to...

Own an iPhone - any model (duh)
Live in midwest or southeastern US.
Have kids.

If you qualify, shoot me an email. If you don't know my email address, leave a comment below and I'll contact you directly.

Climb For Kids 2009 - Mount Rainier

mattk — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:41:00 GMT

Another week, another mountain summitted for Climb For Kids. This past weekend a group of 8 climbers and 4 guides ascended Mt. Rainier in an effort to raise money and awareness for fetal syndromes. Unlike other CFK climbs this year, we had a couple of extra special surprises on this trip. UrsusFilms tagged along to film a documentary about our story as did Luke Deucy from KOMO News. It was pretty odd having a camera rolling each time you wiped your nose or told a bad joke. More than once the camera caught me doing something inappropriate, I'm sure.

Anyway, the team was really strong even though it spanned a wide range of experience. Each person brought their own style to climbing, and in the end their individual styles were all good enough to touch the highest point in Washington State. As an experienced climber, I felt like the old man in a group of newbies. In that respect it was fun to provide my little tips and tricks to others about what to expect and how to deal with the conditions. The mountain was very broken up due to the extended heat spell we have been having, thus huge crevasses were the norm. In fact high camp was surrounded by these mammoth holes that were just waiting to gobble up tired climbers.

The days leading up to the event were gorgeous and provided excellent views from the mountain. As our summit day grew nearer the clouds starting coming in. When it was time to climb to the top, a lenticular cloud formed over the mountain. Each of us pushed on harder and harder til we reached 13,500 feet. Our fun news reporter got sick, but after a little encouragement from me, he kept on going to the top. Meanwhile, I worked with our documentary crew to provide a perspective of how I was feeling. With the sun coming up, the first thing that popped into my head was one of Emma's favorite songs by the Beatles, "Here comes the sun." It felt good, like a celebration of life instead of mourning what could have been. It made me think of what we were doing was going to help others celebrate life too. That was a great motivator.

As the sun came up, so did Mother Nature's sense of humor. She always seems to be against me on these events. The wind picked up so that we had a sustained 20-25 mph breeze, with gusts about 30 mph. Then ice permeated from the lenticular and we all became walking ice people. After 6 hours of climbing, we all finally reached the summit. Given the conditions we spent a total of 90 seconds up there as the ice and wind was just devastating.

In the end, we all had fun and we all summitted. KOMO got a great story out of our climb (the story won't air til sweeps week in November), UrsusFilms shot a lot of great climbing footage (even though their camera froze up on the summit) and we raised a ton of money for families who need it most. I'm ecstatic for so many reasons.

All of my photos from the climb can be found here, and I've set up a Flickr pool for the other climbers to add their photos here.

With this climb, the 2009 Climb For Kids climbing season is over. A huge thanks to all who participated, and to our sponsors Black Diamond, Patagonia and unnamed beverage that rhymes with "dead rule".

Summit of Mont Blanc - the last mile

mattk — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:50:00 GMT

This post is part trip report, part personal. This was a very difficult, but incredibly special climb for me. Sorry this is long, but that's what happens when you do something life changing.

The story behind this summit attempt actually starts 7 years ago on this very mountain. At the time, I had just summitted the Jungfrau in Switzerland, and I was on a quest to bag my second peak in a few days. As luck would have it, I had a run in with an unsympathetic guide and the attempt was called off as we came down the Mont Blanc du Tacul (the first summit). I was heartbroken to say the least, but I told myself that I would get this peak some day in the future.

Fast forward to today. We had tried desperately to get into the Tete Rousse hut and do the traverse of Mont Blanc from the eastern side. Supposedly, its an easier route. As luck would have it, the hut was full and we had to go to the Refuges de Cosmiques (better known as the Cosmiques hut). This was the standard Mont Blanc traverse route. This is when the story gets weird. My guide, Zoe Hart happened to guide this same route seven years ago on the exact same day I attempted the summit. We are sure of it, because we both know the same guide I had an issue with. She broke trail that day. Thus, circumstance has been set so that I can 1) do the same route I failed at the first time and 2) use a guide from that very day. Something was amiss, but in a good way. The other weird thing was that I wasn't at all scared. Usually, I'm scared shitless when climbing a big peak. Worried that I won't have the fortitude to actually summit. For some reason, I had the confidence that I was going to summit and nothing was going to stop me. That is the first time that has ever happened to me. I still feel scared on Rainier even though I've summitted it a number of times.

At the Cosmiques hut, we had a great dinner of chicken and rice with peanut sauce. It was actually pretty good. Then we were given our breakfast time of 1am, which meant that I would need to wake up at 12:30 to get ready. I didn't finish eating til 7pm the night before and I tried to "sleep" immediately after that. Imagine trying to sleep in a room with 25 other people at 12,500 feet with limited oxygen, all of whom have different agendas and sleep schedules. It doesn't really work. To top it off, I had a top bunk which means I had approximately 2 meters of head space. Climbers' beds were cramped next to each other so close that one time I unfortunately grabbed the blanket from the climber next to me while I slept. She was none too happy with me.

After a small breakfast of cereal and a bowl of coffee (of which I barely drank, didn't want the runs on the mountain), I grabbed my gear, put on my crampons and got ready to climb. I tied in to the rope at 1:49 am and we were off. As we started climbing a weird old french guy hit on Zoe. Seriously... he said that he couldn't see in the fog and he needed to be behind a beautiful American woman to get to the top. Uh... are we in a bar? WTF? Dude, I pity the other person on your rope team. With that, we raced past him and headed up the Mont Blanc du Tacul. The climb up the first summit was standard snow slog. Steep in places, but not technical. It wasn't very cold yet either. It was basically like doing Mailbox Peak at two o'clock in the morning.

As we got to the summit of the Tacul, the wind decided to make itself known. We stopped for a quick bite to eat, at which time I fought the wind to put on my fleece vest under my soft shell. Then I fought the wind to put on my hard shell overtop everything. Then my hands froze. Zoe said it was time to bust out the deep freeze gloves that I always pack but hardly ever use. The wind would be a constant defiant companion for the rest of the climb.

At this point, we were close to 14,000 feet already, but we had a long way to go. It was still very dark. As we walked down the Tacul we passed HUGE seracs and crevasses. The protruding snow/ice was easily bigger than a three story building. It was too dark to get photos unfortunately, but trust me that these things were fucking huge. This was about the point that the altitude started effecting me. I had done a bunch of prep and acclimitization for it, but it wasn't enough. I considered taking diamox, but I didn't want to stop every 20 minutes to urinate. On top of that, the thought of pulling out my tiny guy in the middle of the cold didn't sit well either. To compensate for the altitude, I started pressure breathing constantly. This lasted for the duration of the climb, which turned into a sore throat and a hacking cough by morning.

The next bit of climbing was the most technical. Mont Maudit was the second summit and it made the Tacul look like Mt. Adams. This was almost vertical climbing, to the point where the last bit, approximately 1.5 pitches, was all ice climbing. Nothing too hard, but ice climbing none the less. I put the skills I learned in Ouray to good use. Now mind you, we are at 14,000+ feet and I have had no sleep, little food, and there is limited oxygen. This bit of climbing took a lot of energy from me.

At the summit of the Maudit, the wind became a bitch. One step off the ice, and the wind started pounding us unbelievably. The difference in just two steps was amazing. Now it was time for the slog down the Maudit and up the final summit of Mont Blanc Massif. At this point, it was about 5am. This was also the point where my thoughts became binary. If you've ever ran a marathon, you know what I'm talking about. At some point, you are so tired that you see the world as black and white. Given that, my thoughts were only on three things. Sleeping, my next step and Emma. I tried to sing songs to myself to pass the time, but I couldn't put the lyrics together. The altitude was causing me to become sleepy, sort of like when you are awake at 1:00 am watching TV and your eyes become droopy. That's exactly how I felt.

Emma has a way of pushing me. As I took each step pushing for the summit, she kept popping into my head encouraging me. At some point it became so loud it was like a church bell ringing, or the altitude was giving me a headache. I'm not sure which. At 15,000 feet, we had to walk across a glacier for 1/2 mile. It was the slowest walk I've ever made, but by the end of the walk, the sun reflected off the summit and all I could think about was how much I missed my little girl. Now each step became a mission. As I took each step, I would pressure breathe and say Emma's name in my head. More than once, I had to stop myself from crying. I found myself yelling in the wind to focus on the climb.

By this point, the wind had grown even stronger. I was even colder. Every fifth step, we had to stop because the wind was blowing ice onto our faces. All thoughts about stopping or going back, which is common on a big climb, left my brain. Fuck the ice. Next time we stopped, Zoe asked me how I was doing and I said I was going to climb this mountain come hell or high water. Let's stop resting and start moving. I was motivated. Something inside of me, Emma perhaps, took over. Each step became a battle against the wind, altitude and exhaustion.

Finally at 8:33 am, we summitted Mont Blanc. I took 5 steps on the summit, dropped my pack, and wept. I had done it. I had finally discovered where Emma lives in this world for me. Much in the same way my close friend Bob is at the summit of Kilimanjaro, Emma's physical home is at the summit of Mont Blanc. It felt right, and I felt her presence. I also felt the fucking wind which was howling and causing my tears to freeze on my cheeks. At this point, I knew what I had to do.

I had Zoe do the obligatory summit photo for me. Then she took a special photo for my family, some of whom were visiting, and one whom I felt would call this place home. As you see in the photo above, I am wearing a necklace from Ellen that she made for me, Ella's favorite toy, and a photo of Emma. After the photo was taken, I said a few words to Emma and let the strong wind take the photo from my frozen hand. Wouldn't you know it, but the photo flew into the direction of the Matterhorn in Zermatt. I'm sure it didn't get all the way there, but damn if I didn't find symbolism in the direction it flew. (Ellen and I got married in Zermatt, which is a special place for us.)

As we left the summit, the thoughts of Emma left me. Now my thoughts were about how I was going to get off this mountain. The walk down was very long. As we passed Refuge Vallot (a bivi hut), we climbed over a knife ridge and finally arrived at Gouter hut, but I was completely wasted. From the summit, this took about 3 hours. After a quick lunch and bathroom break, we left the glacier and the Gouter hut to rock climb down to the Tete Rousse hut another 2,000 ft below. I had Elvis legs at this point (term for legs that hop uncontrollably because they are tired) and down climbing became a challenge. Thank god there was a cable tied to the rocks to provide assistance.

Finally at the bottom of the rock climb and I felt great but tired. I knew the rest of the way down of was an easy trail to the train station. Zoe and I stopped for some more food, of which I despised at this point, and headed on down the trail. What I thought was going to be quick, just wasn't. My feet were getting beat up in my boots. Blisters were a welcome feeling compared to what was happening to my toes (note to self, bring double leather boots next time instead of double plastic). Every step caused my toes to get beat up. My legs were jelly, and hey that old football injury in my left knee decided to rear its ugly head too.

As I started bitching to Zoe about where the hell was this damn train, it dawned on me why this was taking so long. All great things take a long time to become fruitful. All of my climbing/hiking friends have heard the story about the "last mile" and how I've threatened to write a book about the last mile of each hike. Every last mile I've ever taken has been the hardest part of the hike/climb that day. After a 13 hour climb, this last mile became the bane of my existence. I realized that this last mile symbolizes the life I would like to lead after Emma. It won't be easy, but the reward will be the self satisfaction that I pushed myself and left everything on the table. No regrets. Give everything I have to my family, my friends and myself. That last mile can be a bitch, but it is what defines you. Enjoying life on my own terms means that I have to push through that last mile. Climbing Mont Blanc reinforces my passion to enable others to enjoy life and push through that last strenuous mile as well. As we finally found the train station, I was completely spent. However, locating the final home for Emma made it all worth it.

Pix from the climb can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nomadicentrepreneur/sets/72157621904844722/