River photos and general work stuff

Buckskin Mary Camp on the Dechutes - Family course
Chilli for Dinner - staff training on the Deschutes
One of the 4 gear boats on the Deschutes - Jess in the princess seat with Kellen and steve at the oars.
A Lesson on something? - Deschutes

The put in for the Clackamas river
Beckett and Whitney trying to look all serious - the deschutes river
Kellen asleep on one of the four gear boats - early morning on the deschutes.
A student going off the big jump on the Deschutes - Family course

Me demonstrating how not to do the big Jump (I just like to look where i'm going) deschutes river family course. Photo coutesy of steve ironsides

As promised. Glaciers and stuff

The video was a fair bit of effort on my now old laptop but hopefuly is of some interest (or humor) to some. Really it is for an all staff day in a couple of weeks but is now complete. I left Australia I flew to Oregon, slept for 3 hours, got in a van and drove to mt hood (i think around 3300m+) got hammered by some scottish weather, left a lot of gear up there, retreated and then went back up for some more. Since then I have been on Lead instructor training which involved some educational stuff and also some amazing rivers including the Deschutes, the white salmon (Washington) and the Clackamas. It has rained so much here onto the epic snowpack (largest in ten years?) that all the rivers were much bigger than expected The river photos, while cold, do not really match the mountain photos but may well follow.

Apologies for the language in the movie, I only filmed when things were really going wrong................

okay so the video appears to have worked so here are the best of the photos

Ryan overcoming the cornice (the first good weather day)

Below - me trying not to look at where Eric want to take me. (I am probably watching an avalanche (or mt st helens) as the snow pack was pretty unstable that day) - taken by Mick.

Next one down - Drew prodding a crevasse on the Reid glacier with the rope teams silhoutted.

Next one down - Camp at Illumination saddle with Mt Jefferson beyond.

The last of Australia for a while

Everything is packed and now I am just left to procrastinate while I should be cleaning my room. Back to Oregon today for another season at OB wilderness then to ........... somewhere.

My last week at OB Australia has been great with lots of time spent hanging out with groups and sleeping in a cave to meet groups early morning for the "descent" (basically a massive abseiling/flying fox activity). This has been great and stopped me thinking about leaving too much as well as the early nights in the very cold cave allowing me to catch up on some sleep. So here are the photos, the next ones should be of glaciers

Clare (the bear) and peter perfect at the start of the descent, early morning with the rain clouds brewing behind


Clouds spill into the honeysuckle valley at dawn as we meet the first group of the course.


Bear coiling ropes at the end of another long day (in some very scottish conditions)



Pabi belaying bear as she abseils down the first level of the descent just after dawn.

Cave life, Ali and Bear

Bear making the strongest hot chocolates in the world just before getting in our sleeping bags (5pm!!)

Cooking dinner from my two sleeping bags.

Just before course started. One final climb at Booroomba rocks with Tipu and Caleb. Beers on the summit after climbing the beautiful "determinant" with the "termination" finish. My hands still bare the cuts from having to jam up the final crack with frozen hands.

Some work/home photos of Australia

Its getting colder and the stormy season looks like its arrived. My Blog appears to be working again so I thought I would get back to what I originally intended to do - put up pretty photos for people to check out. Enjoy

(I have been accused of only photographing sunsets and sunrises so have tried to throw some others in there as well!)

Storm passing in the valley (taken from outside the staff accomodation block)

Below- waiting for a group to turn up at an abseiling site







Evening sunlight over base
A couple of minutes later the kangaroos (in my garden) pulled one of my T-shirts off the line. (really - I have photographic evidence)


Evening Light on the gum trees






















"Rhino" and the brumbies on the Cooleman plains










Below - Life in base camp around the fire drum


Tom and Roman cooking dinner at Cooleman base camp











































Sunset from base camp, Cooleman

Sunrise in the bush

Roman in the spectacular "Claustral" canyon, blue mountains

Sunset through the bivy, Cooleman

Students on the side of Tantangra dam

Argentina Photos

Storm clouds over "El Bolson"
On the edge of the hielio azul glacier
Looking towards the Chilean border (the small person is me)
Moraine colours below Aconcagua
Cold and windy, 1st Camp for Aconcagua

Refrugio Frey with Cerro Cathedral behind
The South face of Aconcagua, we are standing at 4200m
Laguna Frey
Oh yeah!

one last photo (nick leading the crack, wanaka NZ

just back from new zealand and start work tommorrow, have decided though to kill this site as it is not really behaving itself. my original plan was to have loads of pictures up to show people what i am up to but they dont seem to upload properly.

one last shot at a photo and then i think its back to the good old group emails.

merry christmas and have a great hogmanay.

aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiii